The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (119 page)

Both Lord Akeldama and Biffy looked at her, mouths slightly agape.

“The time has come to move onward. Both of you. Biffy, your choices were taken from you, and that is regrettable, but you
are still an immortal—and not dead—which is more than most can say.” She turned her baleful look upon the vampire. “And you,
my lord, must let go. This is not some contest you have lost. This is life, or afterlife, I suppose. For goodness' sake, stop
wallowing, both of you.”

Biffy looked duly chastised.

Lord Akeldama sputtered.

Lady Maccon tilted her head in such a way as to dare him to deny the truth in her words. He was certainly old
enough to know himself; whether he cared to admit such a fault out loud remained to be seen.

The two men looked at each other, their faces tight.

It was Biffy who closed his eyes a long moment and then nodded briefly.

Lord Akeldama lifted one white hand and trailed two fingers down the side of his former drone's face. “Ah, my boy. If it must
be so.”

Lady Maccon could be merciful, so she moved the conversation on. “Biffy, how did you get out of Woolsey's dungeon?”

Biffy shrugged. “I don't know. I can't remember much when I'm a wolf. Someone must have unbolted the cell door.”

“Yes, but why? And who?” Alexia looked suspiciously at Lord Akeldama. Was he meddling?

The vampire shook his head. “Not me or mine, I
assure
you, blossom.”

A loud knock sounded at the door to the drawing room, all the warning they got before it burst open and two men came stomping
in.

“Well,” said Alexia, “at least he knocked first. Perhaps he's learning.”

The earl strode across the room and bent to kiss his wife's cheek. “Wife, thought I would find you here. And young Biffy,
too—how are you, pup?”

Lady Maccon looked to her husband's Beta, gesturing at Biffy with her free hand. “The pack business that took you away?”

Professor Lyall nodded. “He led us a merry chase before we traced him here.” He tapped his nose, indicating the method of
tracking.

“How'd he get out?”

Professor Lyall tilted his head, which was as good as he would get to admitting that he had no idea.

Alexia nudged her husband in Biffy's direction. He shot her a brief glance out of resigned tawny eyes and then crouched down
in front of the half-naked dandy. It was a very servile position for an Alpha. He lowered his voice to a soft growl, of the
kind meant to be comforting. It's terribly difficult for a werewolf to be comforting—especially an Alpha dealing with a reluctant
pack member. The instinct is to subdue and discipline.

Alexia nodded at him encouragingly.

“My boy, why did you run here?”

Biffy looked up at the ceiling and then back down again. He swallowed, nervous. “I don't know, my lord, some instinct. I'm
sorry, but this is still home to me.”

Lord Maccon looked at Lord Akeldama, predator to predator. Then he turned back to his pack member.

“It has been six months, many moons, and still you are not settling. I know this was not the end you wanted, but it is the
end you have been given. Somehow we must make this work.”

No one missed the
we.

Alexia was extremely proud of her husband at that moment.
He can be taught!

He took a deep breath. “How can we make this easier for you? How can I?”

Biffy looked utterly startled to be asked such a question by such a man. “Perhaps,” he ventured, “perhaps I could be allowed
to take up permanent residence here, in town?”

Lord Maccon frowned, glancing at Lord Akeldama. “Is that wise?”

Lord Akeldama stood as though totally disinterested in the entire conversation. He walked to the other side of the room and
stared down at his torn watercolor paintings.

Professor Lyall stepped in to fill the breach. “Young Biffy might benefit from a distraction. Some form of employment, perhaps?”

Biffy started. He was a gentleman, born and bred; honest work was a little beyond his frame of reference. “I suppose I could
try it. I've never had proper employment before.” He spoke as though it were some kind of exotic cuisine he had not yet sampled.

Lord Maccon nodded. “At BUR? After all, you have contacts within society that might prove useful. I am in a position to see
you well settled with the government.”

Biffy looked somewhat intrigued.

Professor Lyall came around to stand before Alexia, next to her crouching husband. His normally passive face showed genuine
concern for the new pack member, and it was clear that he had put thought into how Biffy might be better integrated.

“We could come up with a suitable range of duties. Regular occupation might help you acclimatize to your new position.”

Lady Maccon looked, really looked, at her husband's second for the first time in their acquaintance. At the way he stood,
shoulders not too straight, gaze not too direct. At the way he dressed, almost to the height of style but with a studied carelessness,
the simple knot to his cravat, the reserved cut to his waistcoat. There was just enough not perfect about his appearance as
to make him forgettable. Professor Lyall was the type of man who could stand in the center of a group and no one would remember
he was there, except that the group would stay together because of him.

And then, right there, holding on to the hand of a half-naked dandy, Alexia discovered the piece of the puzzle she had been
missing.

I
t was you!”

It had taken well over two hours to configure the wine cellar of the new house to hold Biffy for the remainder of the evening
without damage to either the wine, the cellar, or, most importantly, Biffy. They would have to devise a better long-term solution
if he was to take up permanent residence in town. They left Lord Maccon coaching him through the change, arms wrapped about
him, gruff voice keeping him calm.

Alexia had pigeon-holed Lyall and practically dragged him into the back parlor, giving Floote very strict instructions that
under no circumstances were they to be disturbed by anyone. Now she was busy waving her parasol wildly in his direction.

“You're Agent Doom! How ninnyhammered of me not to have seen it sooner! You rigged the whole thing back then. The whole Kingair
attempt. And that was the point, of course, that it should be only an
attempt.
It was never
meant to succeed. The queen was never meant to die. The point was to convince the Kingair Pack to turn against their Alpha,
to give him a reason to leave. You needed Conall to come to London so he could challenge Lord Woolsey. The Alpha who had gone
mad.” The parasol inscribed ever increasing wiggles in the air in her enthusiasm.

Professor Lyall turned away, walking to the other side of the room, his soft brown boots making no noise on the carpet. His
sandy head was bent only slightly. He spoke to the wall. “You have no idea what a blessing it is, to have a capable Alpha.”

“And you are Beta. You would do whatever it took to keep your pack together. Even arrange to steal another pack's leader.
Does my husband know what you did?”

Lyall stiffened.

Alexia answered her own question. “No, of course he doesn't know. He needs to trust you. He needs you to be his reliable second
just as much as you need him as leader. Telling him would defeat the very action you took; it would disturb the cohesion of
your pack.”

Professor Lyall turned to face her. His hazel eyes were tired, for all they were set in that eternally young face. There was
no pleading in them. “Are
you
going to tell him?”

“That you were a double agent? That you destroyed his relationship with his old pack, with his best friend, with his homeland,
to steal him for Woolsey? I don't know.” Alexia put a hand to her stomach, suddenly exhausted by the events of the past week.
“It would destroy him, I think. Treachery from his Beta, his lynchpin. A second time.”

She paused, looking him full in the face. “But to keep this information from Conall, to share in your deception?
You must know that this puts me in an untenable position as his wife.”

Professor Lyall avoided her direct gaze, wincing slightly. “I had no choice. You must see that? Lord Maccon was the only werewolf
in Britain capable of taking on Lord Woolsey and winning. When Alphas go bad, my lady, it is sickening. All that concentrated
attention to pack cohesion and all that protective energy turns rotten—no one is safe. As Beta, I could shield the others
but only for so long. Eventually, I knew his psychosis would leak out, encompassing them as well. Such a thing can drive an
entire pack to madness. We don't talk of it. The howlers don't sing of it. But it occurs. I am not trying to excuse myself,
you understand, simply explain.”

Alexia was still stuck on the horror of having such knowledge when her husband did not. “Who else knows? Who else knew?”

A knock sounded and then immediately the door crashed open.

“Oh, for goodness' sake, doesn't anyone wait to be bidden entrance anymore?” cried Alexia in vexation, whirling to face the
intruder, parasol quite definitely at the ready. “I said
no one
was to disturb us!”

It was Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings.

“And what are you doing here?” Lady Maccon's tone was far from welcoming, but her parasol relaxed into a safer position.

“Biffy is missing!”

“Yes, yes, you're late. He turned up next door, got into a tussle with Lord Akeldama, and now Conall has him down in the wine
cellar.”

The Gamma paused. “You have a crazed werewolf in your wine cellar?”

“You can think of a better place to stash him?”

“What about the wine?”

Lady Maccon abruptly lost interest in dealing with her husband's Gamma. She turned back to Professor Lyall, who was looking
cowed. “Does
he
know?”

“Me? Know what?” Channing's beautiful ice-blue eyes were the picture of innocence. But his eyelids flickered as he took in
Alexia's militant attitude and Professor Lyall's intimidated demeanor, the latter as out of character as the former was standard.
Everyone was accustomed to Professor Lyall skulking about in the background, but he did that with an air of quiet confidence,
not shame.

The major looked back and forth between the two, but instead of leaving them to their private discourse, he turned, slammed
the door, and wedged a seat under the handle.

“Lyall, your disruptor, if you would?”

Professor Lyall reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a harmonic auditory resonance disruptor. He tossed the small crystal
device to Channing, who set it atop the chair in front of the door and then quickly flicked the two tuning forks, activating
the discordant humming.

Only then did he approach Lady Maccon.
“What do I know?”
He asked it as though he could predict her answer.

Alexia looked at Lyall.

Channing cocked his head. “Is this about the past? I told you no good could come of your meddling.”

Lyall raised his head, smelling the air. Then he turned to look at Channing.

For the first time, Alexia realized the two men were probably old friends. Sometime enemies, of course, but only
in the manner of those who have been too long in each other's company, possibly centuries. These two had known each other
far longer than either had known Lord Maccon.

“You know?” Lyall said to the Gamma.

Channing nodded, all patrician beauty and aristocratic superiority as compared to Professor Lyall's studied middle-class inoffensiveness.

The Beta looked at his hands. “Did you know all along?”

Channing sighed, his fine face becoming suffused with a brief paroxysm of agony. So brief Alexia thought she had imagined
it. “What kind of Gamma do you take me for?”

Lyall laughed, a huff of pain. “A mostly absentee one.” There was no bitterness to the statement, simply fact. Channing was
often away fighting Queen Victoria's little wars. “I didn't think you realized.”

“Realized what, exactly? That it was occurring? Or that you were taking the brunt of it so he'd stay off the rest of us? Who
do you think kept the others from finding out what was really going on? I didn't approve of you and Sandy—you know I didn't—but
that doesn't mean I approved of what the Alpha was doing either.”

Alexia's previous self-righteousness disintegrated under the implication of Channing's comments. There was more to Lyall's
manipulations than she had realized. “Sandy? Who is Sandy?”

Professor Lyall twisted his lips into a little smile. Then he reached into his waistcoat—he always seemed to have everything
he needed in that waistcoat of his—and pulled out a tiny leather-covered journal, navy blue with a very plain cover dated
1848 to 1850 in the upper left corner. It looked achingly familiar.

He walked softly across the room and handed it to
Alexia. “I have the rest as well, from 1845 on. He left them to me on purpose. I wasn't keeping them intentionally away from
you.”

Alexia could think of nothing whatsoever to say. The silence stretched until finally she asked, “The ones from after he abandoned
my mother?”

“And from when you were born.” The Beta's face was a study in impassivity. “But this one was his last. I like to keep it with
me. A reminder.” A whisper of a smile crossed that deadpan face, the kind of smile one sees at funerals. “He didn't have an
opportunity to finish it.”

Alexia flipped the journal open, glancing over the scribbled text within. The little book was barely half full. Lines jumped
out at her, details of a love affair that had altered everyone involved. Only as she read did the full scope of the ramifications
come into focus. It was rather like being broadsided by a Christmas ham.

Winter 1848—for a while he walked with a limp but would not tell me why,

said one entry. Another, from the following spring, read:

There is talk of a theater trip on the morrow. He will not be permitted to attend, of that I am convinced. Yet we both pretended
he would accompany me and that we should laugh together at the follies of society.

For all the tight control of the penmanship, Alexia could read the tension and the fear behind her father's
words. As the entries progressed, some of his sentences turned her stomach with their brutal honesty.

The bruises are on his face now and so deep sometimes I wonder if they will ever heal, even with all his supernatural abilities.

She looked up at Lyall, attempting to appreciate all the implications. Trying to see bruises almost twenty-five years gone.
From the stillness in his face, she supposed they might be there—well hidden, but there.

“Read the last entry,” he suggested gently. “Go on.”

June 23, 1850

It is full moon tonight. He is not going to come. Tonight all his wounds will be self-inflicted. Time was once, he would spend
such nights with me. Now there is no surety left for any of them except in his presence. He is holding his whole world together
by merely enduring. He has asked me to wait. Yet I do not have the patience of an immortal, and I will do anything to stop
his suffering. Anything. In the end it comes to one thing. I hunt. It is what I am best at. I am better at hunting than I
am at loving.

Alexia closed the book. Her face was wet. “You're the one he's writing about. The one who was maltreated.”

Professor Lyall said nothing. He didn't need to respond. Alexia was not asking a question.

She looked away from him, finding the brocade of a nearby curtain quite fascinating. “The previous Alpha really was insane.”

Channing strode over to Professor Lyall and placed a hand on his arm. No more sympathy than that. It seemed sufficient. “Randolph
didn't even tell Sandy the worst of it.”

Professor Lyall said softly, “He was so old. Things go fuzzy with Alphas when they get old.”

“Yes, but he—”

Lyall looked up. “Unnecessary, Channing. Lady Maccon is still a lady. Remember your manners.”

Alexia turned the small slim volume over in her hand—the end of her father's life. “What really happened to him, at the last?”

“He went after our Alpha.” Professor Lyall removed his spectacles as though to clean them, but then seemed to forget he had
done so. The glasses dangled from his fingers, glinting in the gas lamplight.

Channing seemed to feel further explanation was necessary. “He was good, your father, very good. He'd been trained by the
Templars for one purpose and one purpose only—to hunt down and kill supernatural creatures. But even he couldn't take on an
Alpha. Even an insane, sadistic bastard like Lord Woolsey was still an Alpha with a pack at his back.”

Professor Lyall put his spectacles down on a side table and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I told him not to, of course.
Such a waste. But he was always one to pick and choose listening to me. Sandy was too much an Alpha himself.”

Alexia thought for the first time that Professor Lyall and Lord Akeldama shared some mannerisms. They were both good at hiding
their emotions. To a certain extent, this was to be expected in vampires, but in werewolves… Lyall's reserve was practically
flawless. Then she wondered if his very quiet stillness were not like that of a child climbing into hot water, afraid that
every little movement would only make things hotter and more painful.

Professor Lyall said, “Your father's death taught me one thing. That something needed to be done about our Alpha. That if
I had to bring down another pack to do it, so be it. At the time, there were only two wolves in England capable of killing
Lord Woolsey. The dewan and—”

Alexia filled in the rest of his sentence. “Conall Maccon, Lord Kingair. So it wasn't simply a change of leadership you were
after; it was self-preservation.”

One corner of Lyall's mouth quirked upward. “It was revenge. Never forget, my lady, I'm still a werewolf. It took me nearly
four years to plan. I'll admit that's a vampire's style. But it worked.”

“You loved my father, didn't you, Professor?”

“He was not a very good man.”

A pause. Alexia thumbed through the little journal. It was worn about the edges from countless readings and rereadings.