Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second (27 page)

At the same time, she looked over at the Kingair Beta and said, “Settle the issue to your mutual satisfaction, did you, gentlemen?”

Dubh gave her a deadpan expression that still managed to indicate a certain profound level of deep disgust in her very existence,
let alone her question. Alexia only shook her head at such petulance.

The Kingair claviger returned bearing a flask of cider vinegar. Lady Maccon immediately began to copiously douse her husband
about the face and neck with it.

“Ouch! Steady on, that stings!”

Dubh made to rise.

Lord Maccon instantly struggled to his feet. He would have to, Alexia surmised, to maintain dominance. Or it could be that
he was trying to get away from her vinegar-riddled attentions.

“I know it stings,” she said. “Not nice to have to heal the old-fashioned way, now, is it, my brave table warrior? Perhaps
you will pause to consider next time before you commence fighting in a confined space. I mean really, look at this room.”
She tutted. “You both should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.”

“Nothing has been settled,” Dubh said, returning hastily to his slumped position on the carpeted floor. He appeared to have
gotten the worse end of things. One of his arms looked broken, and there was a nasty gash in his left cheek.

However, Lady Maccon’s brisk application of vinegar seemed to have shattered everyone else’s collective inertia, for they
began bustling around the fallen Beta, splinting up his arm and tending to his wounds.

“You still abandoned us.” Dubh sounded like a petulant child.

“You all know
exactly
why I left,” Lord Maccon growled.

“Uh,” said Alexia timidly, raising a questioning hand, “I do not.”

Everyone ignored her.

“You couldna control the pack,” Dubh accused.

Everyone present in the room gasped. Except Alexia, who did not comprehend the gravity of the insult and was occupied trying
to pick the last of the meringue off her husband’s dinner jacket.

“That isna fair,” said Lachlan, not moving from his stance. Unsure of his allegiance, the Gamma simply stayed away from both
Conall and Dubh.

“
You
betrayed
me.
” Lord Maccon did not yell, but the words carried and, even though he could not change to wolf form, there was wolf anger
in them.

“And you pay us back in kind? The emptiness you left, was that fair?”

“There is naught fair about pack protocol. You and I both know that; there is simply protocol. And there was none to cover
what you did. It was entirely unprecedented. So I was cursed with the dubious pleasure of having to make it up myself. Abandonment
seemed to be the best solution, since I didna want to spend another night in your presence.”

Alexia looked over at Lachlan. The Gamma had tears in his eyes.

“Besides”—Lord Maccon’s voice softened—“Niall was a perfectly good Alpha alternative. He led you well, I hear. He married
my progeny. You were tame enough for decades under his dominance.”

Lady Kingair finally spoke. Her voice was oddly soft. “Niall was my mate, and I pure loved him. He was a brilliant tactician
and a good soldier, but he wasna a true Alpha.”

“Are you saying he wasna dominant enough? I heard naught of lack of discipline. Whenever I ran a recognizance on Kingair,
you all seemed to be perfectly content.” Conall’s voice was soft.

“So you did check up on us, did you, old wolf?” Lady Kingair looked hurt at that rather than relieved.

“Of course I did. You
were
once my pack.”

The Beta looked up from where he still lay on the floor. “You left us weak, Conall, and you knew it. Niall had na Anubis Form,
and the pack couldna procreate. Clavigers abandoned us as a result, the local loners rebelled, and we didn’t have an Alpha
fighting for the integrity of the pack.”

Lady Maccon glanced at her husband. His face was carved in stone, relentless. Or what little she could see behind the puffy
eye and bloodstained cravat seemed that way.

“You betrayed me,” he repeated, as though that settled the matter. Which, in Conall’s world, it probably did. He valued few
things more than loyalty.

Alexia decided to make her presence known. “What is the point of recriminations? Nothing can be done about it now, since none
of you can change into any form at all, Anubis or otherwise. No new wolves can be made, no new Alpha found, no challenge battles
fought. Why argue over what was when we are immersed in what isn’t?”

Lord Maccon looked down at her. “So speaks my practical Alexia. Now do you understand why I married her?”

Lady Kingair said snidely, “A desperate, if ineffectual, attempt at control?”

“Oooh, she has claws. Are you positive you never bit her to change, husband? She has the temper of a werewolf.” Alexia could
be just as snide as the next person.

The Gamma stepped forward, looking at Lady Maccon. “Our apologies, my lady, and you a newly arrived guest among us. We must
truly seem the barbarians you English take us for. ’Tis only that na Alpha these many moons is making us nervous.”

“Oh, and here I thought your behavior sprang from the whole not-being-able-to-change-shape quandary,” she quipped back sharply.

He grinned. “Well, that too.”

“Werewolves without pack leaders tend to get into trouble?” Lady Maccon wondered.

No one said anything.

“I don’t suppose you are going to tell us what trouble you got into overseas?” Alexia tried to look as though she wasn’t avidly
interested, taking her husband’s arm casually.

Silence.

“Well, I think we have all had enough excitement for one evening. Since you have been human these many months, I assume you
are keeping daylight hours?”

A nod from Lady Kingair.

“In that case”—Lady Maccon straightened her dress—“Conall and I shall bid you good night.”

“We shall?” Lord Maccon looked dubious.

“Good night,” said his wife firmly to the pack and clavigers. Grabbing her parasol in one hand and her husband’s arm in the
other, she practically dragged the earl from the room.

Lord Maccon lumbered obediently after her.

The room they left behind was filled with half-thoughtful, half-amused faces.

“What are you about, wife?” Conall asked as soon as they were upstairs and out of everyone’s earshot.

His wife plastered herself up against him and kissed him fiercely.

“Ouch,” he said when they pulled apart, although he had participated with gusto. “Busted lip.”

“Oh, look what you did to my dress!” Lady Maccon glared down at the blood now decorating the white satin trim.

Lord Maccon refrained from pointing out that she had initiated the kiss.

“You are an impossible man,” continued his ladylove, swatting him on one of the few undamaged portions of his body. “You could
have been killed in such a fight, do you realize?”

“Oh, phooey.” Lord Maccon waved a dismissive hand in the air. “For a Beta, Dubh is not a verra good fighter even in wolf form.
He is hardly likely to be any more capable as a human.”

“He is
still
a trained soldier.” She was not going to let this rest.

“Have you forgotten, wife, that so am I?”

“
You
are out of practice. Woolsey Pack Alpha has not been on campaign in years.”

“Are you saying I’m getting old? I’ll show you old.” He swept her up like some exaggerated Latin lover and carried her into
their bedchamber.

Angelique, who was engaged in some sort of tidying of the wardrobe, quickly made herself scarce.

“Stop trying to distract me,” said Alexia several moments later. During which time her husband had managed to divest her of
a good percentage of her clothing.

“Me, distract you? You are the one who dragged me off and up here right when things were getting interesting.”

“They are not going to tell us what is going on no matter how hard we push,” said Alexia, unbuttoning his shirt and hissing
in concern at the array of harsh red marks destined to become rather spectacular bruises by the morning. “We are simply going
to have to figure this out for ourselves.”

He paused in kissing a little path along her collarbone and looked at her suspiciously. “You have a plan.”

“Yes, I do, and the first part of it involves you telling me exactly what happened twenty years ago to make you leave. No.”
She stopped his wandering hand. “Stop that. And the second part involves you going to sleep. You are going to hurt in places
your little supernatural soul forgot it could hurt in.”

He flopped back on the pillows. There was no reasoning with his wife when she got like this. “And the third part of the plan?”

“That is for me to know and you not to know.”

He let out a lusty sigh. “I hate it when you do that.”

She waggled a finger at him as though he were a schoolboy. “Uh-uh, you just miscalculated, husband. I hold all the high cards
right now.”

He grinned. “Is that how this works?”

“You have been married before, remember? You should know.”

He turned on his side toward her, wincing at the pain this caused. She lay back against the pillows, and he ran one large
hand over her stomach and chest. “You are perfectly correct, of course; that is exactly how this works.” Then he made his
tawny eyes wide and batted his eyelashes at her, pleading. Alexia had learned that expression from Ivy and had employed it
effectively on her husband during their, for lack of a better word, courtship. Little did she know how persuasively it could
be applied in the opposite direction.

“Are you going to at least see me settled?” he murmured, nibbling her neck, his voice gravelly.

“I might be persuaded. You would, of course, have to be very very nice to me.”

Conall agreed to be nice, in the best nonverbal way possible.

Afterward, he lay staring fixedly up at the ceiling and told her why he had left the Kingair Pack. He told her all of it,
from what it was like for them, as both werewolves and Scotsmen, at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s rule, to the assassination
attempt on the queen planned by the then Kingair Beta, his old and trusted friend, without his knowledge.

He did not once look at her while he talked. Instead his eyes remained fixed on the stained and smudged molding of the ceiling
above them.

“They were all in on it. Every last one of them—pack and clavigers. And not a one told me. Oh, not because I was all that
loyal to the queen; surely you know packs and hives better than that by now. Our loyalty to a daylight ruler is never unreserved.
No, they lied to me because I was loyal to the cause, always have been.”

“What cause?” wondered his wife. She held his big hand in both of hers as she lay curled toward him, but otherwise she did
not touch him.

“Acceptance. Can you imagine what would have happened if they had succeeded? A Scottish pack, attached to one of the best
Highland regiments, multiple campaigns served in the British Army, killing Queen Victoria. It would have thrown over the whole
government, but not only that, it would have taken us back to the Dark Ages. Those daylight conservatives who have always
been against integration would call it a nationally supported supernatural plot, the church would regain its foothold on British
soil, and we would be back to the Inquisition quicker than you could shake a tail.”

“Husband”—Alexia was mildly startled, but only because she’d never given Conall’s political views much consideration—“you
are a progressive!”

“Damn straight! I couldna believe
my pack
would put all werewolves into such a position. And for what? Old resentments and Scottish pride? A weak alliance with Irish
dissidents? And the worst of it was, not a one had told me of the plot. Not even Lachlan.”

“Then how did you find out about it in the end?”

He huffed in disgust. “I caught them mixing the poison. Poison, mind you! Poison has no place on pack grounds or in pack business.
It isna an honest way to kill anyone, let alone a monarch.”

Alexia suppressed a smile. This would appear to be the aspect of the conspiracy that upset him the most.

“We werewolves are not known for our subtlety. I had realized they were plotting something for weeks. When I found the poison,
I forced a confession out of Lachlan.”

“And you ended up having to fight and kill your own Beta over it. Then what, you simply took off for London, leaving them
without leadership?”

He finally turned and looked at her, propping himself on his elbow. Seeing no judgment or accusation in her eyes, he relaxed
slightly. “There is no pack protocol to cover this kind of situation. A large-scale betrayal of an Alpha with no qualified
reason or ready replacement. Led by my own Beta.” His eyes were agonized. “My
Beta
! They deserved to be without metamorphosis. I could have killed them all, and not a one would have objected, least of all
the dewan, save that they were not plotting against me; they were plotting against a daylight queen.”

He looked to her and his eyes were sad.

She tried to distill the story down into one manageable chunk. “So your leaving was a point of pride, honor, and politics?”

“Essentially.”

“I suppose it could have been worse.” She smoothed away the frown creasing his forehead.

“They could have succeeded.”

“You realize, as muhjah, I am forced to ask: will they try again, do you think? After two decades? Could that explain the
mysterious weapon?”

“Werewolves have long memories.”

“In the interest of Queen Victoria’s safety, is there a way for us to provide a surety against this?”

He sighed softly. “I dinna know.”

“And that’s why you came back? If it’s true, you’ll have to kill them all, won’t you, sundowner?”

He turned away from her words, his broad back stiff, but he did not deny them.