The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (83 page)

The outlandishly garbed group seemed unflustered by Alexia's party, closing in around them in a manner that managed to be
both protective and threatening. They then turned to face down the panting gaggle of drones who drew to a surprised stop just
on the other side of the border.

One of the white-clad men spoke in French. “I would not cross into our territory if I were you. In Italy, drones are considered
vampires by choice and are treated as such.”

“And how would you prove we are drones?” yelled one of the young men.

“Did I say we needed proof?” Several of the swords
shinked
out of their sheaths.

Alexia peeked around the side of the Italian hulking in front of her. The drones, silhouetted against the rising moon, were
stalled in confusion. Finally they turned, perhaps calculating the better part of valor, shoulders hunched in disappointment,
and began walking away back down the French side of the mountain.

The lead nightgowner turned inward to face the three refugees. Dismissing Madame Lefoux and Floote with a contemptuous glance,
he turned his hook-nosed gaze onto Alexia. Who could see quite unsatisfactorily far up his nostrils.

Alexia spared a small frown for Floote. He was pinch-faced and white-lipped, looking more upset by their current stationary
position than he had been when they were running around under gunfire.

“What is it, Floote?” she hissed at him.

Floote shook his head slightly.

Alexia sighed and turned big bland innocent eyes on the Italians.

The leader spoke, his English impossibly perfect. “Alexia Maccon, daughter of Alessandro Tarabotti, how wonderful. We have
been waiting a very long time for you to return to us.” With that, he gave a little nod and Alexia felt a prick on the side
of her neck.

Return?

She heard Floote shout something, but he was yelling from a very long way away, and then the moon and the shadowed trees all
swirled together and she collapsed backward into the waiting arms of the Pope's holiest of holy antisupernatural elite, the
Knights Templars.

Professor Randolph Lyall generally kept to a nighttime schedule, but he had spent the afternoon prior to full moon awake in
order to conduct some last-minute research. Unfortunately, Ivy Tunstell's revelation had served only to complicate matters.
The preponderance of mysteries was beginning to aggravate. Despite a day spent tapping all his various sources and investigating
every possible
related document BUR might have, Lord Akeldama and his drones were still missing, Alexia's pregnancy remained theoretically
impossible, and Lord Conall Maccon was still out of commission. The Alpha was, most likely, no longer drunk, but, given the
impending full moon, Professor Lyall had seen him safely back behind bars with strict instructions that this time
no one
was to let him out or there would be uncomfortable consequences.

He himself was so involved in his inquiries as to be quite behind schedule for his own lunar confinement. His personal clavigers—his
valet and one of the footmen—awaited him in the Woolsey vestibule wearing expressions of mild panic. They were accustomed
to Woolsey's Beta, tamest and most cultured of all the pack, arriving several hours ahead of moonrise.

“I do apologize, boys.”

“Very good, sir, but you understand we must take the proper precautions.”

Professor Lyall, who could already feel the strain of the moon even though it had not yet peeked above the horizon, held out
his wrists obediently.

His valet clapped silver manacles about them with an air of embarrassment. Never during all his years of service had he had
to bind Professor Lyall.

The Beta gave him a little half smile. “Not to worry, dear boy. It happens to the best of us.” Then he followed both young
men docilely down the staircase and into the pack dungeon, where the others were already behind bars. He gave absolutely no
hint of the discipline it took for him to remain calm. Simply out of obstinacy and pride, he fought the change as long as
possible. Long after his two clavigers had reached through the bars and unlocked
his manacles, and he had stripped himself of all his carefully tailored clothing, he continued to fight it. He did it for
their sake, as they went to stand with the first shift of watchers against the far wall. Poor young things, compelled to witness
powerful men become slaves to bestial urges, forced to understand what their desire for immortality would require them to
become. Lyall was never entirely certain whom he pitied more at this time of the month, them or him. It was the age-old question:
who suffers more, the gentleman in the badly tied cravat or those who must look upon him?

Which was Professor Lyall's last thought before the pain and noise and madness of full moon took him away.

He awoke to the sound of Lord Maccon yelling. For Professor Lyall, this was so commonplace as to be almost restful. It had
the pleasant singsong of regularity and custom about it.

“And who, might I ask, is Alpha of this bloody pack?” The roar carried even through the thick stone of the dungeon walls.

“You, sir,” said a timid voice.

“And who is currently giving you a direct order to be released from this damned prison?”

“That would be you, sir.”

“And yet, who is still locked away?”

“That would still be you, sir.”

“Yet somehow you do not see my difficulty.”

“Professor Lyall said—”

“Professor Lyall, my ruddy arse!”

“Very good, sir.”

Lyall yawned and stretched. Full moon always left
a man slightly stiff, all that running about the cell and crashing into things and howling. No permanent damage, of course,
but there was a certain muscle memory of deeds done and humiliating acts performed that even a full day of sleep could not
erase. It was not unlike waking after a long night of being very, very drunk.

His clavigers noticed he was awake and immediately unlocked his cell and came inside. The footman carried a nice cup of hot
tea with milk and a dish of raw fish with chopped mint on top. Professor Lyall was unusual in his preference for fish, but
the staff had quickly learned to accommodate this eccentricity. The mint, of course, was to help deal with recalcitrant wolf
breath. He snacked while his valet dressed him: nice soft tweed trousers, sip of tea, crisp white shirt, nibble of fish, chocolate
brocade waistcoat, more tea, and so on.

By the time Lyall had finished his ablutions, Lord Maccon had almost, but not quite, convinced his own clavigers to let him
out. The young men were looking harassed, and had, apparently, deemed it safe to pass some clothing through to Lord Maccon,
if nothing else. What the Alpha had done with said clothing only faintly resembled dressing, but at least he wasn't striding
around hollering at them naked anymore.

Professor Lyall wandered over to his lordship's cell, fixing the cuffs of his shirt and looking unruffled.

“Randolph,” barked the earl, “let me out this instant.”

Professor Lyall ignored him. He took the key and sent the clavigers off to see to the rest of the pack, who were all now starting
to awaken.

“Do you remember, my lord, what the Woolsey Pack was like when you first came to challenge for it?”

Lord Maccon paused in his yelling and his pacing to look up in surprise. “Of course I do. It was not so long ago as all that.”

“Not a nice piece of work, the previous Earl of Woolsey, was he? Excellent fighter, of course, but he had gone a little funny
about the head—one too many live snacks. ‘Crackers' some called him.” Professor Lyall shook his head. He loathed talking about
his previous Alpha. “An embarrassing thing for a carnivore to be compared to a biscuit, wouldn't you say, my lord?”

“Your point, Randolph.” Lord Maccon could only be surprised out of his impatience for a brief length of time.

“You are becoming, shall we say, of the biscuit inclination, my lord.”

Lord Maccon took a deep breath and then sucked on his teeth. “Gone loopy, have I?”

“Perhaps just a little bit noodled.”

Lord Maccon looked shamefacedly down at the floor of his cell.

“It is time for you to face up to your responsibilities, my lord. Three weeks is enough time to wallow in your own colossal
mistake.”

“Pardon me?”

Professor Lyall had had more than enough of his Alpha's nonsensical behavior, and he was a master of perfect timing. Unless
he was wrong, and Professor Lyall was rarely wrong about an Alpha, Lord Maccon was ready to admit the truth. And even if Lyall
was, by some stretch of the imagination, incorrect in his assessment, the earl could not be allowed to continue to be ridiculous
out of mere stubbornness.

“You aren't fooling any of us.”

Lord Maccon resisted admission of guilt even as he crumbled like the metaphorical cracker. “But I turned her out.”

“Yes, you did, and wasn't that an idiotic thing to do?”

“Possibly.”

“Because?” Professor Lyall crossed his arms and dangled the key to his Alpha's cell temptingly from one fingertip.

“Because there is no way she would have canoodled with another man, not
my
Alexia.”

“And?”

“And the child must be mine.” The earl paused. “Good gracious me, can you imagine that, becoming a father at my age?” This
was followed by another much longer pause. “She is never going to forgive me for this, is she?”

Professor Lyall had no mercy. “I wouldn't. But then I have never precisely been in her situation before.”

“I should hope not, or there's a prodigious deal regarding your personage about which I was previously unaware.”

“Now is not the time for jocularity, my lord.”

Lord Maccon sobered. “Insufferable woman. Couldn't she have at least stayed around and argued with me more on the subject?
Did she have to cut and run like that?”

“You do recall what you said to her? What you called her?”

Lord Maccon's wide, pleasant face became painfully white and drawn as he went mentally back to a certain castle in Scotland.
“I'd just as soon not remember, thank you.”

“Are you going to behave yourself now?” Professor Lyall continued to wave the key. “Stay off the formaldehyde?”

“I suppose I must. I've drunk it all, anyway.”

Professor Lyall let his Alpha out of the cell and then spent a few minutes fussing about the earl's shirt and cravat, tidying
up the mauling Lord Maccon had inflicted while attempting to clothe himself.

The earl withstood the grooming manfully, knowing it for what it was: Lyall's unspoken sympathy. Then he batted his Beta away.
Lord Maccon was, when all was said and done, a wolf of action.

“So, what do I have to do to win her back? How do I convince her to come home?”

“You are forgetting that, given your treatment of her, she may not
want
to come home.”

“Then I shall make her forgive me!” Lord Maccon's voice, while commanding, was also anguished.

“I do not believe that is quite how forgiveness works, my lord.”

“Well?”

“You remember that groveling business we once discussed during your initial courtship of the young lady?”

“Not that again.”

“Oh, no, not precisely. I was thinking, given her flight from London and the generally slanderous gossip that has resulted
and permeated the society papers ever since, that
public
groveling is called for under such circumstances.”

“What? No, I absolutely refuse.”

“Oh, I don't believe you have a choice, my lord. A letter to the
Morning Post
would be best, a retraction of sorts. In it you should explain that this was all a horrible misunderstanding. Hail the child
as a modern miracle. Claim you had the help of some scientist or other in its conception. How about using that MacDougall
fellow? He owes
us a favor, doesn't he, from that incident with the automaton? And he is an American; he won't protest the resulting attention.”

“You have given this much thought, haven't you, Randolph?”

“Someone had to. You, apparently, were not putting thought very high up on your list of priorities for the past few weeks.”

“Enough. I still outrank you.”

Professor Lyall reflected he may have, just possibly, pushed his Alpha a little much with that last statement, but he held
his ground.

“Now, where is my greatcoat? And where is Rumpet?” Lord Maccon threw his head back. “Rumpet!” he roared, bounding up the steps.

“Sir?” The butler met him at the top of the staircase. “You yelled?”

“Send a man into town to book passage on the next possible channel crossing. It's probably first thing in the morning. And
from there a French train to the Italian border.” He turned to look at Lyall, who made his own more sedate way up the stairs
from the dungeon. “That
is
where she has gone, isn't it?”

“Yes, but how did you—?”

“Because that is where I would have gone.” He turned back to the butler. “Should take me a little over a day to cross France.
I shall run the border tomorrow night in wolf skin and hang the consequences. Oh, and—”

This time it was Professor Lyall's turn to interrupt. “Belay that order, Rumpet.”

Lord Maccon turned around to growl at his Beta. “Now what? I shall go by the
Post
on my way out of town, get
them to print a public apology. She is very likely in danger, Randolph, not to mention pregnant. I cannot possibly win her
back by dawdling around London.”

Professor Lyall took a deep breath. He should have known having Lord Maccon in full possession of his faculties might result
in rash action. “It is more than just the regular papers. The vampires have been mudslinging and slandering your wife's character
in the popular press, accusing her of all manner of indiscretions, and unless I miss my guess, it all has to do with Alexia's
pregnancy. The vampires are not happy about it, my lord, not happy at all.”