Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4)

Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4) Page 22

Lady Maccon waddled past him as though the summons had nothing whatsoever to do with her. “Oh, hello, Dewan. The potentate will be happy to explain everything. Please excuse me, my lords. Important business.” She paused, searching for an excuse. “Shopping. I’m certain you understand. Hats. Very critical hats.”

“What?” said the werewolf. “But you directed me to attend you! Here, Lady Maccon! At the house of a vampire!”

Lord Akeldama stood up from his consciously relaxed posture as though he might try to waylay Lady Maccon.

Alexia waved at them both cheerily from the doorway before hobbling out and into her waiting carriage. “Regent Street, please, posthaste. Chapeau de Poupe.”

Lady Maccon barely glanced at the hats. She headed straight through the shop past the sputtering attendant in a, it must be said, very grand Lady Maccon–like manner. “I shall make my own way,” she said to the fretful girl, and then, “She is expecting me.” Which was, of course, an outfight fib but served to mollify the chit. Luckily, for all concerned, the shopgirl had the presence of mind to flip the CLOSED sign and shut the door before anyone could observe Lady Maccon’s disappearance into the wall.

Madame Lefoux was in her contrivance chamber, looking, if possible, even more gaunt and unwell than when Alexia had seen her last.

“My dear, Genevieve! I thought I was the one meant to be laid up. You look as though you could use a week’s rest. Surely this new project cannot be so vital you must damage your health over its completion.”

The inventor smiled wanly but barely glanced up from her work, concentrating on some engine schematic rolled out on a metal crate before her. The massive bowler-hat contraption she was still building loomed behind her, looking more of-a-piece. It was at least three times Lord Maccon’s height, with its podlike driving chamber now seated atop multiple tentacle-like supports.

Alexia thought perhaps her friend’s intense focus on work was a necessary distraction from her aunt’s terminal condition. “Goodness me, quite a fearsome thing, is it not? How do you intend to get it out of the chamber, Genevieve? It will never fit through that passageway of yours.”

“Oh, it’s only loosely assembled. I shall take it out in pieces. I have an arrangement with the Pantechnicon to utilize a warehouse for the final stage of construction.” The Frenchwoman stood, stretched, and turned to face Lady Maccon full-on for the first time. She scrubbed her grease-covered hands with a rag and then came over to greet her guest properly. A soft kiss was pressed lovingly against Alexia’s cheek, and Alexia was reminded of her friend’s consistently solicitous care in the past.

“Are you certain there is nothing you wish to talk about? I assure you I am the soul of discretion; it should go no further. Is there nothing I can do to help?”

“Oh, my dearest lady, I wish there were.” Madame Lefoux moved away, elegant shoulders hunched.

Alexia wondered if there might not be some other component to her friend’s unhappiness. “Has Quesnel been asking about his real mother again?”

Genevieve and she had discussed such matters in the past. Angelique’s violent death was deemed too much for an impressionable young boy. As was the former maid’s identity as his biological mother.

Madame Lefoux’s soft chin firmed. “I am his real mother.”

Lady Maccon understood such defensiveness. “It must be hard, though, not telling him about Angelique.”

Genevieve dimpled wanly. “Oh, Quesnel knows.”

“Oh, oh, dear. How did he?.?.?.??”

“I should prefer not to talk about it just now.” The inventor’s face, always tricky to read, shut down completely, her dimples vanishing as surely as poodles after a water rat.

Alexia, saddened by such icy reticence, nevertheless respected her friend’s wishes. “I actually have a matter of business to consult you on. I recently learned something of your aunt’s past activities. She undertook the manufacture of special automated teapots, I understand, very special ones. Nickel plated?”

“Oh, yes? When was this?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Well, I should hardly remember that myself, I’m afraid. You may be correct, of course. We can attempt to converse with my aunt on the subject or look through her records. I warn you, she is difficult.” She switched to her perfect musical French. “Aunt Beatrice?”

A ghostly body shimmered out of a wall nearby. The specter was looking worse than last time, her form barely recognizable as human, misty with lack of cohesion. “Do I hear my name? Do I hear bells? Silver bells!”

“She has gone to poltergeist?” Alexia’s voice was soft in sympathy.

“Unfortunately, almost entirely. She has some lucid moments. So not yet completely lost to me. Go ahead, try.” Genevieve’s voice was drawn with unhappiness.

“Pardon me, Formerly Lefoux, but do you recall a special order for a teapot, twenty years ago. Nickel plated?” Alexia relayed some of the other details.

The ghost ignored her, drifting up toward the high ceiling, floating about the head of her niece’s massive project, extending herself so that she became a crude kind of tiara.

Genevieve’s face fell. “Let me go check her old records. I think I may have kept them when we moved.”

While Madame Lefoux fussed about a far corner of her massive laboratory, Formerly Lefoux drifted back down to Alexia, as if drawn against her will. She was definitely beginning to lose control over noncorporeal cohesion, the end stages before involuntary disanimus. As her mental faculties failed, she was forgetting she was human, forgetting what her own body once looked like. Or that was what the scientists hypothesized. Mental control over the physical was a popular theory.

The ambient aether feathered hazy tendrils off the ghostly form, carrying them toward Lady Maccon. Alexia’s preternatural state fractured some of the remaining tether of the ghost’s body, pulling it apart. It was an eerie thing to watch, likes soap suds in water curling down a sink.

The ghost seemed to be observing the phenomenon of her own destruction with interest. Until she remembered her selfhood and tugged back, gathering herself inward. “Preternatural!” she hissed. “Preternatural female! What are you—Oh, oh, yes. You are the one who will stop it. Stop it all. You are.”

Then she became distracted by something unseen. She swirled about, drifting away from Alexia, still muttering to herself. Behind her murmuring voice, Alexia could make out the high keening wail that all her vocalizations would eventually dissolve into—the death shriek of a dying soul.

Alexia shook her head. “Poor thing. What a way to end. So embarrassing.”

“Wrong track. Wrong track!” Formerly Lefoux garbled.

Madame Lefoux returned, walking right through her aunt she was so lost in thought. “Oh, oops, sorry, Aunt. I do apologize, Alexia. I can’t seem to locate the crate where I stashed those records. Allow me some time and I’ll see what I can find later tonight. Would that do?”

“Of course, thank you for the attempt.”

“And now, if you will excuse me? I really must return to work.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“And you must return to your husband. He’s looking for you.”

“Oh? He is? How did you know?”

“Please, Alexia, you are wandering around out of bed, with a limp, grossly pregnant. Knowing you, I’m quite certain you are not meant to be. Ergo, he must be looking for you.”

“How well you know us both, Genevieve.”

Lord Maccon was indeed looking for his errant wife. The moment her carriage drew up before their new town residence, he was out the front door, down the steps, and scooping her up into his arms.

Alexia withstood his solicitous attentions with much forbearance. “Must you make a scene here in the public street?” was all she said after he had kissed her ardently.

“I was worried. You were gone much longer than I expected.”

“You thought to catch me at Lord Akeldama’s?”

“Well, yes, and instead I caught the dewan, for my pains.” This was growled out in a very wolfish manner for a man whose husbandly duties rendered him not a werewolf at that precise moment.

The earl carried his wife into their back parlor, which five days’ absence had seen adequately refurbished, if not quite up to Biffy’s exacting standards. Alexia was convinced that once recovered from this month’s bone-bender, the dandy would see to it the room was brought back up to snuff.

Lord Maccon deposited his wife into a chair and then knelt next to her, clutching one of her hands. “Tell me truthfully—how are you feeling?”

Alexia took a breath. “Truthfully? I sometimes wonder if I, like Madame Lefoux, should affect masculine dress.”

“Gracious me, why?”

“You mean aside from the issue of greater mobility?”

“My love, I don’t think that’s currently the result of your clothing.”

“Indeed, well, I mean after the baby.”

“I still don’t see why you should want to.”

“Oh, no? I dare you to spend a week in a corset, long skirts, and a bustle.”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Oh, ho!”

“Now stop playing games, woman. How are you really feeling?”

Alexia sighed. “A little tired, a lot frustrated, but well in body if not spirit. My ankle is paining me only a little, and the infant-inconvenience has been remarkably patient with all my carriage rides and poodling about.” She contemplated how to raise the subject of Lord Akeldama’s thoughts on the matter of the queen. Finally, knowing she had little inherent delicacy of speech and that her husband had none at all, she decided he would probably appreciate directness.

“Lord Akeldama thinks the London mastermind of your Kingair plot was a Woolsey Pack member.”

“Does he, by George?”

“Now, stay calm, my dear. Think logically. I know that is difficult for you. But wouldn’t someone like Channing take—”

Lord Maccon shook his head. “No, not Channing. He would never—”

“But Lord Akeldama said that the previous Alpha was not right in the head. Couldn’t that have had something to do with it? If he ordered Channing to—”

Lord Maccon’s voice was sharp. “No. But Lord Woolsey himself? That is an idea. Much as I hate to admit it. The man was mad, my dear. Utterly mad. It can happen that way, especially to Alphas when we get too old. There’s a reason, you know, that we werewolves fight amongst ourselves. I mean aside from the etiquette of the duel. Especially Alphas. We shouldn’t be allowed to live forever—we go all funny in the brain. Or that’s what the howlers sing of. Vampires do, too, if you ask me. I mean, you only have to look at Lord Akeldama to realize he’s?.?.?.?but I digress.”

His wife reminded him of where they were in the conversation. “Lord Woolsey, you were saying?”

Lord Maccon looked down at their joined hands. “It can take on many forms, the madness—sometimes quite harmless little esoteric inclinations and sometimes not. Lord Woolsey, as I understand it, became deviant. Even brutal in his”—he paused, looking for the right word that might not shock even his indomitable wife—“tastes.”

Alexia contemplated this. Conall was an aggressive lover, demanding, although he could be quite gentle. Of course, with her, he had no real teeth to do damage beyond a nibble or two. But there had been one or two times, early on in their courtship, when she had wondered if he might not actually think of her as food. She had also read overmuch of her father’s journals.

“You mean, conjugally violent?”

“Not precisely, but from what I have been told, he was inclined to derive pleasure from sadistic activities.” Lord Maccon actually blushed. He could do that while touching her. Alexia found it little-boy endearing. With the fingers of her free hand, she stroked through his thick dark hair.

“Gracious. And how did the pack manage to keep such a thing secret?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Such proclivities are not confined to werewolves alone. There are even brothels that—”

Alexia held up a hand. “No, thank you, my dear. I should prefer not to know any additional details.”

“Of course, my love, of course.”

“I am glad you killed him.”

Lord Maccon nodded, letting go of his wife’s hand, then standing and turning away, lost to his memories. He fiddled with a little cluster of daguerreotypes arranged on the mantelpiece. That quick, feral quality was back to his movements, a supernatural facet of his werewolf self. “As am I, wife, as am I. I have killed many people in my day, for queen and country, for pack and challenge; rarely do I get to say I am proud of that part of my afterlife. He was a brute, and I was fortunate indeed that I was just strong enough to see him eliminated, and he was just mad enough to make bad choices during the passion of battle. He allowed himself to enjoy it too much.”