Page 21 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

He swims across to meet the wiry-haired hound with a dynamic grace that doesn’t seem feasible given who he is.

“Porthos?” his deep voice asks, puzzled.

And then he lifts his gaze beyond Captain Porthos, landing on me.

The man doesn’t just stare. He examines me with dark eyes, the silver in them blackened to onyx by the low blue light in the room.

I’ve never felt as small in my life as I do at that moment, when that shrewd gaze sizes up my every flaw and deems me worthless. It’s like being condemned by Rory, only a thousand times harsher.

Perplexity registers across his noble, aristocratic face as he drinks me in, and all at once I feel underdressed and stupid, so achingly stupid, to follow a dog around an unknown house that isn’t mine, to be led directly to the owner of both house and dog and more. So much more. A master in title and name and manner.

As he slowly rises from the pool, Oscar Munro pins me in place with beetle-black eyes. Water sluices down his muscular body, low light glinting off the spray.

With the curt English sharpness I’ve come to expect after listening to him on public broadcasts, he asks, “Who in the dickens areyou?”

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