Heartless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Fourth (8 page)

The ghost twirled about in midair, pleased with herself. “Message for you.” She paused, worried and confused. “Custard. No. Conscription. No. Conspiracy. To kill, to kill . . .”

“Me?” Alexia hazarded a guess. She thought it might be a safe bet: someone was usually trying to kill her.

The ghost became agitated, straining at her invisible tether and vibrating slightly. “No, no, no. Not you. But someone. Something?” She brightened suddenly. “The queen. Kill the queen.” The specter began to sing. “Kill the queen! Kill the queen! Kill the quee-een!”

Lord Maccon stopped smiling. “Ah, that’s torn it.”

“Good. Yes? That’s all. Bye-bye, living people.” The ghost then sank down through the floor of their new parlor and vanished, presumably back the way she had come.

Floote returned to the room at that juncture to find a
silently shocked Lord and Lady Maccon staring at each other.

“No documented apparitions come tethered to this house, madam.”

“Thank you, Floote. I suppose we should see to . . . ?” Alexia did not need to continue. The ever-resourceful Floote was already tending to Felicity with a scented handkerchief.

Lady Maccon turned to her husband. “And you should—”

He was already clapping his top hat to his head. “On my way, wife. She has to be within tether radius of this house. There should be a record of her somewhere in BUR’s files. I’m taking Professor Lyall and Biffy with me.”

Alexia nodded. “Don’t be out too late. Someone needs to help get me back into Lord Akeldama’s house before morning, and you know all I seem to do these days is sleep.”

Her husband swept over in the manner of some Gothic hero, cloak flapping, and administered a loud kiss both to her and then, to her utter embarrassment, to her protruding stomach before dashing off. Luckily, Floote was still seeing to Felicity, so neither witnessed the excessive display of affection.

“I suppose that makes Felicity the least of our concerns.”

The sun had just set, and the Maccons were awake, across the temporary gangplank from Lord Akeldama’s house, and downstairs in their own dining room. The conversation had not changed from that of the night before; it had only paused for Conall to conduct some slapdash investigations and then catch half a day’s sleep.

Lord Maccon glanced up from his repast. “We must take any threat against the queen seriously, my dear. Even
if my efforts so far have proved unproductive, that does not mean we can treat the ravings of a ghost with flippancy.”

“You believe I am not concerned? I’ve alerted the Shadow Council. We have a special meeting called for this very evening.”

Lord Maccon looked disgruntled. “Now, Alexia, should you be involving yourself in this matter at such a late stage?”

“What? The rumor has only just been reported! I understand you and Lyall got lengths ahead yesterday after I went to bed, but I hardly think—”

“No, wife. I mean to say, you are not exactly up to your usual galavanting about London with parasol at the ready, now, are you?”

Alexia glanced down at her overstuffed belly and then got
that
look on her face. “I am entirely capable.”

“Of what, waddling up to someone and ruthlessly bumping into them?”

Lady Maccon glared. “I assure you,
husband,
that while the rest of me may be moving more slowly than has previously been my custom, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with my mental capacities. I can manage!”

“Now, Alexia,
please
be reasonable.”

Lady Maccon was willing to concede somewhat due to the nature of her state. “I promise that I will not take any unnecessary risks.”

Her husband did not miss the fact that this statement would have to bow to his wife’s definition of the term
necessary.
He was, therefore, not at all reassured. “At least take one of the pups with you on your investigations.”

Lady Maccon narrowed her eyes.

The earl wheedled. “I should feel much better knowing
someone had care of your physical safety. Even if the vampires are abstaining—and we’ve no guarantee yet that they are—you do tend to get yourself into certain predicaments. Now, it’s not that I think you are incapable, my dear, simply that you are currently much less mobile.”

Alexia did have to admit his reasoning. “Very well. But if I am to troll about with a companion, I want it to be Biffy.”

The earl did not approve this selection at all. “Biffy! He’s a new pup. He can’t even control the change. What good could he possibly be?”

“It’s Biffy or nobody.”
Typical of my husband to see only Biffy’s limitations as a werewolf and not his admirable abilities as a human.

For the young dandy was, indeed, quite accomplished. Much to Lord Maccon’s disgust, he had taken over many of the duties of lady’s maid to his new mistress. Alexia had never bothered to hire a replacement for Angelique. Biffy’s taste was impeccable, and he had a real eye for which hairstyles and fabrics would suit her best—better than Angelique, who had been good but rather more daringly French than Lady Maccon liked. Biffy, for all his audacious inclinations when it came to his own apparel, knew how to be sensible when it came to a lady who scurried around whacking at automatons and climbing into ornithopters.

“It isn’t a wise choice.” Lord Maccon’s jaw was set.

No one else had yet joined them at the dining table. It was a rare thing in a pack to enjoy any privacy outside the bedroom. Alexia took advantage of their seclusion. She scooted toward her husband and rested her hand atop his on the fine lace tablecloth.

“Biffy has had Lord Akeldama’s training. That is a
skill set that branches away from being merely a dab hand with the curling tongs.”

The earl snorted.

“I am not only thinking of my own comfort in this matter. He needs some kind of distraction, Conall. Haven’t you noticed? Five months and he’s still not settled.”

The earl twisted his lips slightly to one side. He had noticed. Of course he had. He noticed everything about his wolves. It was part of his most essential being, to hold the pack together as a single cohesive entity. Alexia had read the papers; scientists called it the soul’s intrinsic cross-linking of the essential humors, the enmatterment of aether. But she could also guess the truth of it: that just as vampires and ghosts became tethered to a place, so werewolves became tethered to a pack. Biffy’s all too frequent melancholy must hurt Conall terribly.

“How will allowing him to accompany you help?”

“Am I not also part of this pack?”

“Ah.” The earl turned his hand over to grip his wife’s in a compliant caress.

“If you ask me, it is not so much Biffy who cannot find his place as Woolsey not giving him the right place to find. You are all thinking of him as you would any new werewolf. He’s not, you understand? He’s different.”

Conall, remarkably, did not jump immediately to the defensive. “Yes, I’m aware. Randolph and I were recently discussing this very thing. But it cannot simply be a matter of Biffy’s preferences. We werewolves are as experimental in our tastes as the vampires, if a little more reserved about the expression of them. And there’s always Adelphus. He’s willing.”

Alexia made a disgusted noise. “Adelphus is always
willing. Biffy does not need a lover, husband—he needs a purpose. This is a matter of culture. Biffy has come to you out of vampire culture.
Lord Akeldama’s
vampire culture.”

“So what do you recommend?”

“Woolsey has managed to accept me into its midst and I am by no means standard werewolf fare.” Alexia played with her husband’s fingers, threading and unthreading them with her own.

“But you are female.”

“Exactly!”

“You are suggesting we treat Biffy as if he were a woman?”

“I am suggesting that you think about him as if he had married in from the outside.”

Lord Maccon gave this due consideration and then nodded slowly.

Lady Maccon realized he must be very troubled by Biffy’s unhappiness to listen to her suggestions with so few protestations.

Alexia squeezed his hand once more and then let go, returning to her meal of apple fritter and boiled arrowroot pudding with melted butter and currant jelly. Of late, her taste in comestibles had leaned ever more in the saccharine direction. Now she ate almost exclusively of the pudding course at any meal. “You think there’s a chance you might lose him, don’t you?”

Her husband did not answer her, which was an admission in and of itself. Instead he busily began tackling a veritable heap of fried veal cutlets.

Lady Maccon chose her next words with care. “How quickly can loner status be established?” She did not want
to be perceived as doubting her husband’s Alpha abilities. Men, even immortal ones, had fragile egos on certain subjects. Such egos could be as delicate and as messy as puff pastry. Though rather less palatable with tea.
Ooh, tea.

“Wolves can go solitary at any time, but it is usually for a specific reason and occurs within the first few years of metamorphosis. Howlers say it has something to do with early bonding to the Alpha. Often it means the unbonded is too much Alpha himself. I don’t believe Biffy falls into this category, but that is the only thing currently in our favor.”

Alexia thought she spotted the real source of her husband’s concern. “If Biffy becomes a loner, you don’t believe he would survive. Do you?”

“Loners are unstable. They brawl constantly. Our new pup is not a fighter, not like that.” Her husband’s lovely eyes were pained and guilty. This mess with Biffy was his fault. Unintentionally his fault, but Lord Conall Maccon was not the kind of gentleman who shifted blame merely because they were all victims of circumstance.

Alexia took a breath and then dove for the kill. “Then you really should give him to me for a while. I’ll see what I can do. Remember, I can tame him if I have to, if he loses control and goes to wolf.” She wiggled ungloved fingers at her husband.

“Very well, wife. But you are to check in with either me or Randolph as to his progress.”

As the earl said this, Professor Lyall wandered into the dining room. The Beta was his usual unassuming self—his sandy hair neatly combed; his angular features arranged into a nonthreatening expression; his demeanor quiet, self-effacing, and utterly forgettable. It was an aura that
Alexia was beginning to suspect Professor Lyall had cultivated for decades.

“Good evening, my lady, my lord.” The Beta assumed his seat.

A maid appeared at his elbow with fresh tea and the evening’s paper. Professor Lyall was the type of man to have
that
kind of relationship with the domestic staff. Even newly hired and after only a day’s residence, they were already providing exactly what he required without need for any time-wasting orders. Between him, Floote, and Biffy, there would never be a single upset in the running of the Maccon household. It was a good thing, too, for the indomitable Lady Maccon had other things to occupy her time and attention. The running of her household was best left to the gentlemen. Although, she did indicate to the maid that she, too, required tea.

“Professor Lyall, how are you this evening?” Alexia saw no reason why familiarity with an individual ought to breed familiarity of manner, except with her husband, of course. Even though she had been living, off and on, among the Woolsey Pack for almost a year, she never relaxed on courtesy.

“Tolerably well, my lady, tolerably well.” Nor, indeed, did Professor Lyall, who was remarkably civilized for a werewolf and seemed particularly respectful of all codes of politeness and gracefulness of manner.

Now that she had both of them at her table, Lady Maccon directed the two werewolves back onto the weighty matter of the queen’s life. “So, gentlemen, anything come out of BUR on the threat?”

“Not an aetheric sausage,” complained the earl.

Professor Lyall shook his head.

“Must be the vampires,” said Lord Maccon.

“Now, husband, why would you say that?”

“Isn’t it always the vampires?”

“No, sometimes it’s the scientists.” Lady Maccon was referring obliquely to the disbanded Hypocras Club. “And sometimes it’s the church.” Now she was thinking of the Templars. “And sometimes it’s the werewolves.”

“Well, I say!” Lord Maccon stuffed another cutlet into his mouth. “I can’t imagine you actually defending the vampires. They’ve been trying to kill you for months.”

“Oh, Conall, do swallow first. Then speak. What kind of example is that for our child?”

The earl looked around as though trying to see if the little being had somehow been born without his notice and was now staring at him with an eye toward modeling its behavior upon his.

Lady Maccon continued. “Simply because the vampires are perennially trying to murder me doesn’t mean they are trying to murder the queen as well, now, does it? One would think their resources would be somewhat taxed, if nothing else. Besides, what could possibly be their motive? The queen is a progressive.” She was moved to defend her stance further. “I thought your lot was supposed to have long memories. Correct me if I’m wrong, Professor Lyall, but didn’t the last major threat to Queen Victoria’s life emanate from the Kingair Pack?”

“Really, Lady Maccon, couldn’t it wait until I’ve at least finished my first cup of tea?” The Beta looked put upon.