Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second

by Gail Carriger

They dashed toward the berm.

  Another shot rang forth.

  Only then did they hear yelling. Alexia peeked around the rosebush. Members of the pack poured out of the castle, looking about for the source of the shooting. Several yelled and pointed up. Clavigers and pack reentered the castle at a run.

  Lord and Lady Maccon stayed hidden until they were convinced that no one would be taking any more shots at them. Then they emerged from behind the bushes. Lord Maccon carried Madame Lefoux, and Lady Maccon retrieved her parasol.

  Upon attaining the house, it was found that Madame Lefoux was in no serious medical danger but had simply fainted from the wound, her shoulder badly gouged by the bullet.

  Ivy appeared. “Oh dear, has something untoward ensued? Everyone is gesticulating.” Upon catching sight of the comatose form of Madame Lefoux, she added, “Has she come over nonsensical?” At the sight of the blood, Ivy became rather breathless and looked near to fainting herself. Nevertheless, she trailed them into the back parlor, unhelpfully offering to help and interrupting, as they lowered Madame Lefoux to the small settee, with, “She hasn’t caught a slight fatality, has she?”

  “What happened?” demanded Lady Kingair, ignoring Ivy and Felicity, who had also entered the room.

  “Someone seems to have decided to dispose of Madame Lefoux,” Lady Maccon said, bustling about ordering bandages and vinegar. Alexia believed that a generous application of cider vinegar could cure most ills, except, of course, for those bacterial disorders that required bicarbonate of soda.

  Felicity decided to immediately absent herself from any possible associated danger via proximity to Madame Lefoux. Which, as it absented everyone else from her, was no bad thing.

  Only Lady Kingair had the wherewithal to respond. “Good Lord, why? She’s naught more than a two-bit French inventor.”

  Alexia thought she saw the Frenchwoman twitch at that. Was Madame Lefoux shamming? Alexia leaned in on the pretext of checking bandages. She caught a whiff of vanilla, mixed with the coppery smell of blood this time instead of mechanical oil. The inventor remained absolutely still under Alexia’s gentle ministrations. Not even her eyelids moved. If she was shamming, she was very, very good at it.

  Lady Maccon glanced toward the door and thought she caught a flicker of servant black. Angelique’s white, horrified face peeked around the corner. Before Alexia could summon her in, the maid disappeared.

  “An excellent question. Perhaps she will be so kind as to tell us once she has awakened,” Lady Maccon said, once more watching Madame Lefoux’s face. No reaction to that statement.

  Unfortunately for everyone’s curiosity, Madame Lefoux did not awaken, or did not allow herself to be awakened, for the entirety of the rest of the afternoon. Despite the assiduous attentions of Lord and Lady Maccon, half the Kingair Pack, and several clavigers, her eyes remained stubbornly shut.

  Lady Maccon took her tea in the sickroom, hoping the smell of baked goods would awaken Madame Lefoux. All that resulted was that Lady Kingair came to join her. Alexia had settled into not liking this relation of her husband’s, but she had not the constitution that would allow for anything to interfere with her consumption of tea.

  “Has our patient awakened yet?” inquired Lady Kingair.

  “She remains dramatically abed.” Alexia frowned into her cup. “I do hope nothing is seriously wrong with her. Should we call a doctor, do you think?”

  “I’ve seen and tended to much worse on the battlefield.”

  “You go with the regiment?”

  “I may not be a werewolf, but I’m Alpha female for this pack. My place is with them, even if I dinna fight alongside.”

  Alexia selected a scone from the tea tray and plopped a dollop of cream and marmalade on top of it. “Did you side with the pack when they betrayed my husband?” she asked in forced casualness.

  “He told you about it.”

  Lady Maccon nodded and ate a bite of scone.

  “I was just sixteen when he left, away at finishing school. I didna have a say in the pack’s choices.”

  “And now?”

  “Now? Now I ken they all behaved like fools. You dinna piss upwind.”

  Alexia winced at the vulgarity of the statement.

  Sidheag sipped her tea, relishing the effect of her barracks language on her guest. “Queen Victoria might not chase the tails of a werewolf agenda, but she isna bleeding to the vampire fang either. She’s no Henry or Elizabeth to be throwing her support full tilt behind the supernatural cause, but she hasna been as bad as we’d feared either. Perhaps she doesna watch the scientists as careful as she might, and she sure plays us close and fast, but I dinna think she is the worst monarch we could be having.”

  Lady Maccon wondered if Sidheag was attempting to guarantee the pack’s safety or if the woman was talking truth. “Do you consider yourself a progressive, then, like my husband?”

  “I’m saying, everyone handled the incident poorly. An Alpha abandoning his pack is extreme. Conall ought to have killed all the ringleaders, not just the Beta, and restructured. I love this pack, and to leave it leaderless and turn to a London pack instead is worse than death. It was a national embarrassment, what your husband did.” Lady Kingair leaned forward, eyes fierce. She was close enough for Alexia to see that her graying hair, pulled tightly back into a braid, was frizzing slightly in the humid air.

  “I thought he left them Niall?”

  “Na. I brought Niall back with me. He was naught more than a loner I met abroad. Handsome and dashing, just what all schoolroom misses want in a husband. I thought I’d be bringing him home to meet the pack and gramps, get permission, and post the bans. Only to find the old wolf gone and the pack in shambles.”

  “You took on the responsibility of leadership?”

  Sidheag sipped her tea. “Niall was an excellent soldier and a good husband, but he’d have made a better Beta. He took on Alpha for my sake.” She rubbed at her eyes with two fingers. “He was a good man, and a good wolf, and he did his best. I willna speak against him.”

  Alexia knew enough about herself to realize she couldn’t have taken on leadership like that so young, and she considered herself a capable person. No wonder Sidheag was bitter.

  “And now?”

  “Now we’re even worse off. Niall killed in battle and no one able enough to take Alpha role, let alone be Alpha in truth. And I’m knowing full well Gramps willna come back to us. Marrying you cemented that. We’ve lost him for good.”

  Lady Maccon sighed. “Regardless, you need to trust him. You should take your concerns to him and talk this out. He will see reason. I know he will. And he will help you find a solution.”

  Lady Kingair put her cup down with a sharp clatter. “There is only one solution. And he willna take it. I have written and asked every year for the last decade, and time is running out.”

  “What is that?”

  “He needs to see me changed.”

  Lady Maccon sat back, puffing out her cheeks. “But that is so very perilous. I do not have the statistics on hand, but aren’t the odds completely against a woman surviving the metamorphosis bite?”

  Lady Kingair shrugged. “No one has tried in hundreds of years. ’Tis one of the ways packs beat out hives. At least we dinna need females to sustain ourselves.”

  “Yes, but vampires still manage to survive longer—less fighting. Even if you do survive the bite, you’re setting yourself up to Alpha for the rest of your life.”

  “Hang the danger!” Sidheag Maccon practically yelled. Alexia thought the woman had never looked more like Conall. Her eyes also turned toward yellow when she was overset with extreme emotion.

  “And you want Conall to do this for you? Risk killing off the last of his living relatives?”

  “For me, for the pack. I’m na having any bairns at my age. He willna be able to continue the Maccon line through me. He’s needing to move on from that. He owes Kingair some kind of salvation.”

  “You’ll likely die.�
� Lady Maccon poured herself another spot of tea. “You have held this pack together as a human.”

  “And what happens after I die of old age? Better to take the risk now.”

  Alexia was silent. Finally she said, “Oddly enough, I agree with your assessment.”

  Lady Kingair stopped drinking her tea and simply clutched the saucer for a long moment, fingertips white with tension. “Would you talk to him for me?”

  “You want me to involve myself in Kingair’s problems? Is that wise? Couldn’t you simply go to another pack’s Alpha for the bite?”

  “Never!” There went that stiff werewolf pride, or was it Scottish pride? Difficult to tell the difference sometimes.

  Alexia sighed. “I will discuss it with him, but it is a moot point: Conall cannot bite you or anyone else to change, as he cannot take Anubis Form. Until we find out why this pack is changeless, nothing else can happen. No Alpha challenge, no metamorphosis.”

  Lady Kingair nodded, relaxing her grip enough to sip at her tea once more.

  Alexia noted that the woman did not crook her finger properly. What kind of finishing school had she been sent to, where they did not teach the basics of teacup holding? She cocked her head. “Is this humanization plague some kind of foolish self-flagellation? Do you want to take the rest of the pack with you into mortality because my husband will not bite you to metamorphosis?”

  Lady Kingair’s tawny eyes, so much like Conall’s, narrowed at that. “It isna my fault,” she practically yelled. “Dinna you understand? We canna tell you because we dinna ken why this has happened to us. I dinna know. None of us know. We dinna ken what’s doing it!”

  “So can I count on your support to figure it out?” Alexia asked.

  “What’s it to you, Lady Maccon?”

  Alexia backpedaled hurriedly. “I encourage my husband’s BUR concerns. It keeps him out of household affairs. And I am interested in these things, as a new Alpha of my own pack. If you have some kind of dangerous disease, I should very much like to understand it fully and prevent it from spreading.”

  “If he agrees to try for my metamorphosis, I’ll agree to help.”

  Knowing she couldn’t make any such promise on her husband’s behalf, Lady Maccon nevertheless said, “Done! Now, shall we finish our tea?”

  They finished drinking in companionable discussion of the Women’s Social and Political Union, whose stance both ladies supported but whose tactics and working-class routes neither was inclined to ally with publicly. Lady Maccon refrained from commenting that, from her more intimate knowledge of Queen Victoria’s character, she could practically guarantee that lady’s continued low opinion of the movement. She could not make such a statement, however, without revealing her own political position. Even an earl’s wife would not be on such intimate terms with the queen, and she did not wish Lady Kingair to know that she was muhjah. Not yet.

  Their pleasant conversation was interrupted by a knock at the parlor door.

  At Lady Kingair’s call, Tunstell’s copious freckles came wandering in, attached to a somber-looking Tunstell.

  “Lord Maccon sent me to sit with the patient, Lady Maccon.”

  Alexia nodded her understanding. Worried and unsure of whom to trust, Lord Maccon was placing Tunstell as a surety against further attacks on Madame Lefoux’s person. Essentially, her husband was utilizing Tunstell’s claviger training. Tunstell may look like a git of the first water, but he could handle werewolves in full-moon thrall. Of course, that meant both Ivy and Felicity were soon likely to take up residence in the sickroom as well. Poor Tunstell. Miss Hisselpenny was still convinced she did not want him, but she was equally convinced she must protect him from Felicity’s wickedness. Lady Maccon felt that the presence of both women would provide a better defense than anything else. It was hard to get up to serious shenanigans under the enthusiastic interest of two perennially bored, unmarried ladies.

  Eventually, however, it became necessary for everyone but Tunstell to leave the still-unconscious Frenchwoman and dress for dinner.

  Upon attaining her chamber, Lady Maccon received her second major shock of the day. It was a good thing she was a woman of stalwart character. Someone had upended her room. Again. Probably looking for the dispatch case. Shoes and slippers were everywhere, and the bed had been torn apart; even the mattress was slashed open. Feathers coated flat surfaces like so much snow. Hatboxes lay broken, hats disemboweled, and the contents of Alexia’s wardrobe lay strewn across the floor (a condition familiar to only the nightgowns).

  Alexia propped her parasol safely to one side and took stock of the situation. The chaos was greater than it had been on board the dirigible, and the crisis was compounded shortly thereafter when Lord Maccon discovered the carnage.

  “This is a gross outrage! First we are shot at, and now our rooms are ransacked,” he roared.

  “Does this kind of thing always happen around a pack without an Alpha?” wondered his wife, nosing about, trying to determine if anything significant was missing.

  The earl grunted at her. “A terrible bother, leaderless packs.”

  “And messy.” Lady Maccon picked her way delicately about the room. “I wonder if this was the information Madame Lefoux had to impart before she was shot. She said something about trying to find me regarding the aethographor. Perhaps she disturbed the culprits in action when she came looking for me here.” Alexia began to form three piles: things beyond salvation, items for Angelique to repair, and the undamaged.

  “But why would someone shoot at her?”

  “Perhaps she saw their faces?”

  The earl pursed his well-formed lips. “It is possible. Come here, woman; stop your fussing. The dinner bell is about to go, and I’m hungry. We shall tidy later.”

  “Bossy britches,” said his wife, but she did as she was bid. It wouldn’t do to get into an argument with him on an empty stomach.

  He helped her unbutton her dress, so well distracted by the day’s proceedings that he only fluttered kisses down her spine and did not even nibble. “What do you believe they were looking for? Your dispatch case again?”

  “Difficult to know. Could be someone else, I suppose. I mean, not the same miscreant as when I was floating.” Alexia was confused. Initially, on board the dirigible, she had suspected Madame Lefoux, but that lady had been asleep and in company all day long. Unless the inventor managed it before she was shot at, this chaos must be attributed to someone else. A different spy with a different motive? Things certainly were getting complicated.

  “What else might they be looking for? Did you bring something I should know about, husband?”

  Lord Maccon said nothing, but when Alexia turned about and gave him the wifely eye of suspicion, he looked like a guilty sheepdog. He left off unbuttoning and went to the window. Throwing aside the shutters, he stuck his head far out, reached around, retrieved something, and returned to her side with a look of relief, carrying a small package wrapped in oiled leather.

  “Conall,” said his wife, “what is that?”

  He unwrapped and showed her: a strange chubby little revolver with a square grip. He clicked open the chamber to display its armament: hardwood bullets inlaid with silver in a cagelike pattern and capped to take the powder explosion. Alexia wasn’t big on guns, but she knew enough about the mechanics to realize this little creature was expensive to make, used only the most modern technology, and was capable of taking down either a vampire or a werewolf.

  “A Galand Tue Tue. This is the Sundowner model,” he explained.

  Lady Maccon took her husband’s face in her hands. His skin was rough with a day’s growth of beard; she would have to remind him to shave, now that he was human all the time. “Husband, you are not here to kill someone, are you? I should hate to find out that you and I were working at cross purposes.”

  “Simply a precautionary measure, my love, I assure you.”

  She was not convinced. Her fingers tightened about his jaw. “When did you start carryi
ng the deadliest supernatural weapon known to the British Empire as a precaution?”

  “Professor Lyall had Tunstell bring it for me. He guessed I’d be mortal while I was here and thought I might want the added security.”

  Alexia let go of his face and watched as he wrapped the deadly little device back up and returned it to its hidey-hole just outside the window.

  “How easy is that to use?” she asked, all innocence.

  “Dinna even consider it, wife. You’ve got that parasol of yours.”

  She pouted. “You are no fun as a mortal.”

  “So,” he said, deliberately changing the subject, “where did you hide your dispatch case, then?”

  She grinned, pleased that he would not think her so feeble as to have kept it where it could be stolen. “In the least likely place, of course.”

  “Of course. And are you going to tell me where?”

  She widened her large brown eyes at him, batting her eyelashes and attempting to look innocent.

  “What is in it that someone might want?”

  “That’s the odd thing. I really have no idea. I took the smallest things out and stashed them in my parasol. So far as I can tell, there is nothing too valuable left: the royal seal; my notes and paperwork on this latest issue with the humanization plague, minus my personal journal, which got pinched; the codes to various aethographors; a stash of emergency tea; and a small bag of gingersnaps.”

  Her husband gave her his version of the look.

  Lady Maccon defended herself. “You would not believe how long those Shadow Council meetings are prone to running, and being as the dewan and the potentate are supernatural, they don’t seem to notice when it’s teatime.”

  “Well I hardly think anyone is ransacking our rooms in a desperate bid to acquire gingersnaps.”

  “They are very good gingersnaps.”

  “I suppose it could be something other than the dispatch case?”

  Lady Maccon shrugged. “This is useless speculation for the time being. Here, help me on with this. Where is Angelique?”

  In the absence of the maid, Lord Maccon buttoned his wife up into her dinner dress. It was a gray and cream affair with a multitude of pleated gathers all up the front and a long, rather demure ruffle at the hem. Alexia liked the gown, except that it had a cravatlike bow at the neck, and she wasn’t entirely behind this latest fashion for incorporating masculine elements into women’s garb. Then again, there was Madame Lefoux.