Soulless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the First

by Gail Carriger

  “Goodness gracious me,” exclaimed Alexia, “what are you wearing? It looks like the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between a pair of binoculars and some opera glasses. What on earth are they called, binocticals, spectoculars?”

  The earl snorted his amusement and then tried to pretend he hadn’t. “How about glassicals?” he suggested, apparently unable to resist a contribution. There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it that Alexia found rather unsettling.

  Professor Lyall looked up from his examination and glared at the both of them. His right eye was hideously magnified. It was quite gruesome and made Alexia start involuntarily.

  “These are my monocular cross-magnification lenses with spectra-modifier attachment, and they are invaluable. I will thank you not to mock them so openly.” He turned once more to the task at hand.

  “Oh.” Miss Tarabotti was suitably impressed. “How do they work?” she inquired.

  Professor Lyall looked back up at her, suddenly animated. “Well, you see, it is really quite interesting. By turning this little knob here, you can change the distance between the two panes of glass here, allowing the liquid to—”

  The earl’s groan interrupted him. “Don’t get him started, Miss Tarabotti, or we will be here all night.”

  Looking slightly crestfallen, Professor Lyall turned back to the dead vampire. “Now, what is this substance all over his clothing?”

  His boss, preferring the direct approach, resumed his frown and looked accusingly at Alexia. “What on God’s green earth is that muck?”

  Miss Tarabotti said, “Ah. Sadly, treacle tart. A tragic loss, I daresay.” Her stomach chose that moment to growl in agreement. She would have colored gracefully with embarrassment had she not possessed the complexion of one of those “heathen Italians,” as her mother said, who never colored, gracefully or otherwise. (Convincing her mother that Christianity had, to all intents and purposes, originated with the Italians, thus making them the exact opposite of heathen, was a waste of time and breath.) Alexia refused to apologize for the boisterousness of her stomach and favored Lord Maccon with a defiant glare. Her stomach was the reason she had sneaked away in the first place. Her mama had assured her there would be food at the ball. Yet all that appeared on offer when they arrived was a bowl of punch and some sadly wilted water-cress. Never one to let her stomach get the better of her, Alexia had ordered tea from the butler and retreated to the library. Since she normally spent any ball lurking on the outskirts of the dance floor trying to look as though she did not want to be asked to waltz, tea was a welcome alternative. It was rude to order refreshments from someone else’s staff, but when one was promised sandwiches and there was nothing but watercress, well, one must simply take matters into one’s own hands!

  Professor Lyall, kindhearted soul that he was, prattled on to no one in particular, pretending not to notice the rumbling of her stomach. Though of course he heard it. He had excellent hearing. They all did. He looked up from his examinations, his face all catawampus from the glassicals. “Starvation would explain why the vampire was desperate enough to try for Miss Tarabotti at a ball, rather than taking to the slums like the smart ones do when they get this bad.”

  Alexia grimaced. “No associated hive either.”

  Lord Maccon arched one black eyebrow, professing not to be impressed. “How could you possibly know that?”

  Professor Lyall explained for both of them. “No need to be so direct with the young lady. A hive queen would never have let one of her brood get into such a famished condition. We must have a rove on our hands, one completely without ties to the local hive.”

  Alexia stood up, revealing to Lord Maccon that she had arranged her faint to rest comfortably against a fallen settee pillow. He grinned and then quickly hid it behind a frown when she looked at him suspiciously.

  “I have a different theory.” She gestured to the vampire’s clothing. “Badly tied cravat and a cheap shirt? No hive worth its salt would let a larva like that out without dressing him properly for public appearance. I am surprised he was not stopped at the front entrance. The duchess’s footman really ought to have spotted a cravat like that prior to the reception line and forcibly ejected the wearer. I suppose good staff is hard to come by with all the best ones becoming drones these days, but such a shirt!”

  The Earl of Woolsey glared at her. “Cheap clothing is no excuse for killing a man.”

  “Mmm, that’s what you say.” Alexia evaluated Lord Maccon’s perfectly tailored shirtfront and exquisitely tied cravat. His dark hair was a bit too long and shaggy to be de mode, and his face was not entirely clean-shaven, but he possessed enough hauteur to carry this lower-class roughness off without seeming scruffy. She was certain that his silver and black paisley cravat must be tied under sufferance. He probably preferred to wander about bare-chested at home. The idea made her shiver oddly. It must take a lot of effort to keep a man like him tidy. Not to mention well tailored. He was bigger than most. She had to give credit to his valet, who must be a particularly tolerant claviger.

  Lord Maccon was normally quite patient. Like most of his kind, he had learned to be such in polite society. But Miss Tarabotti seemed to bring out the worst of his animal urges. “Stop trying to change the subject,” he snapped, squirming under her calculated scrutiny. “Tell me what happened.” He put on his BUR face and pulled out a small metal tube, stylus, and pot of clear liquid. He unrolled the tube with a small cranking device, clicked the top off the liquid, and dipped the stylus into it. It sizzled ominously.

  Alexia bristled at his autocratic tone. “Do not give me instructions in that tone of voice, you…” she searched for a particularly insulting word, “puppy! I am jolly well not one of your pack.”

  Lord Conall Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, was Alpha of the local werewolves, and as a result, he had access to a wide array of truly vicious methods of dealing with Miss Alexia Tarabotti. Instead of bridling at her insult (puppy, indeed!), he brought out his best offensive weapon, the result of decades of personal experience with more than one Alpha she-wolf. Scottish he may be by birth, but that only made him better equipped to deal with strong-willed females. “Stop playing verbal games with me, madam, or I shall go out into that ballroom, find your mother, and bring her here.”

  Alexia wrinkled her nose. “Well, I like that! That is hardly playing a fair game. How unnecessarily callous,” she admonished. Her mother did not know that Alexia was preternatural. Mrs. Loontwill, as she was Loontwill since her remarriage, leaned a little too far toward the frivolous in any given equation. She was prone to wearing yellow and engaging in bouts of hysteria. Combining her mother with a dead vampire and her daughter’s true identity was a recipe for disaster on all possible levels.

  The fact that Alexia was preternatural had been explained to her at age six by a nice gentleman from the Civil Service with silver hair and a silver cane—a were-wolf specialist. Along with the dark hair and prominent nose, preternatural was something Miss Tarabotti had to thank her dead Italian father for. What it really meant was that words like I and me were just excessively theoretical for Alexia. She certainly had an identity and a heart that felt emotions and all that; she simply had no soul. Miss Alexia, age six, had nodded politely at the nice silver-haired gentleman. Then she had made certain to read oodles of ancient Greek philosophy dealing with reason, logic, and ethics. If she had no soul, she also had no morals, so she reckoned she had best develop some kind of alternative. Her mama thought her a bluestocking, which was soulless enough as far as Mrs. Loontwill was concerned, and was terribly upset by her eldest daughter’s propensity for libraries. It would be too bothersome to have to face her mama in one just now.

  Lord Maccon moved purposefully toward the door with the clear intention of acquiring Mrs. Loontwill.

  Alexia caved with ill grace. “Oh, very well!” She settled herself with a rustle of green skirts onto a peach brocade chesterfield near the window.

  The earl was both amused and annoyed to see
that she had managed to pick up her fainting pillow and place it back on the couch without his registering any swooping movement.

  “I came into the library for tea. I was promised food at this ball. In case you had not noticed, no food appears to be in residence.”

  Lord Maccon who required a considerable amount of fuel, mostly of the protein inclination, had noticed. “The Duke of Snodgrove is notoriously reticent about any additional expenditure at his wife’s balls. Victuals were probably not on the list of acceptable offerings.” He sighed. “The man owns half of Berkshire and cannot even provide a decent sandwich.”

  Miss Tarabotti made an empathetic movement with both hands. “My point precisely! So you will understand that I had to resort to ordering my own repast. Did you expect me to starve?”

  The earl gave her generous curves a rude once-over, observed that Miss Tarabotti was nicely padded in exactly the right places, and refused to be suckered into becoming sympathetic. He maintained his frown. “I suspect that is precisely what the vampire was thinking when he found you without a chaperone. An unmarried female alone in a room in this enlightened day and age! Why, if the moon had been full, even I would have attacked you!”

  Alexia gave him the once-over and reached for her brass parasol. “My dear sir, I should like to see you try.”

  Being Alpha made Lord Maccon a tad unprepared for such bold rebuttals, even with his Scottish past. He blinked at her in surprise for a split second and then resumed the verbal attack. “You do realize modern social mores exist for a reason?”

  “I was hungry, allowances should be made,” Alexia said, as if that settled the matter, unable to understand why he persisted in harping on about it.

  Professor Lyall, unobserved by the other two, was busy fishing about in his waistcoat for something. Eventually, he produced a mildly beaten-up ham and pickle sandwich wrapped in a bit of brown paper. He presented it to Miss Tarabotti, ever the gallant.

  Under normal circumstances, Alexia would have been put off by the disreputable state of the sandwich, but it was meant so kindly and offered with such diffidence, she could do nothing but accept. It was actually rather tasty.

  “This is delicious!” she stated, surprised.

  Professor Lyall grinned. “I keep them around for when his lordship gets particularly testy. Such offerings keep the beast under control for the most part.” He frowned and then added a caveat. “Excepting at full moon, of course. Would that a nice ham and pickle sandwich was all it took then.”

  Miss Tarabotti perked up, interested. “What do you do at full moon?”

  Lord Maccon knew very well Miss Tarabotti was getting off the point intentionally. Driven beyond endurance, he resorted to use of her first name. “Alexia!” It was a long, polysyllabic, drawn-out growl.

  She waved the sandwich at him. “Uh, do you want half of this, my lord?”

  His frown became even darker, if such a thing could be conceived.

  Professor Lyall pushed his glassicals up onto the brim of his top hat, where they looked like a strange second set of mechanical eyes, and stepped into the breach. “Miss Tarabotti, I do not believe you quite realize the delicacy of this situation. Unless we can establish strong grounds for self-defense by proving the vampire was behaving in a wholly irrational manner, you could be facing murder charges.”

  Alexia swallowed her bite of sandwich so quickly she partly choked and started to cough. “What?”

  Lord Maccon turned his fierce frown on his second. “Now who is being too direct for the lady’s sensibilities?”

  Lord Maccon was relatively new to the London area. He had arrived a social unknown, challenged for Woolsey Castle Alpha, and won. He gave young ladies heart palpitations, even outside his wolf form, with a favorable combination of mystery, preeminence, and danger. Having acquired the BUR post, Woolsey Castle, and noble rank from the dispossessed former pack leader, he never lacked for a dinner invitation. His Beta, inherited with the pack, had a tense time of it: dancing on protocol and covering up Lord Maccon’s various social gaffes. So far, bluntness had proved Professor Lyall’s most consistent problem. Sometimes it even rubbed off on him. He had not meant to shock Miss Tarabotti, but she was now looking most subdued.

  “I was simply sitting,” Alexia explained, placing the sandwich aside, having lost her appetite. “He launched himself at me, totally unprovoked. His feeding fangs were out. I am certain if I had been a normal daylight woman, he would have bled me dry. I simply had to defend myself.”

  Professor Lyall nodded. A vampire in a state of extreme hunger had two socially acceptable options: to take sips from various willing drones belonging to him or his hive, or to pay for the privilege from blood-whores down dockside. This was the nineteenth century, after all, and one simply did not attack unannounced and uninvited! Even werewolves, who could not control themselves at full moon, made certain they had enough clavigers around to lock them away. He himself had three, and it took five to keep Lord Maccon under control.

  “Do you think maybe he was forced into this state?” the professor wondered.

  “You mean imprisoned until he was starving and no longer in possession of his faculties?” Lord Maccon considered the idea.

  Professor Lyall flipped his glassicals back down off his hat and examined the dead man’s wrists and neck myopically. “No signs of confinement or torture, but hard to tell with a vampire. Even in a low blood state, he would heal most superficial wounds in”—he grabbed Lord Maccon’s metal roll and stylus, dipped the tip into the clear sizzling liquid, and did some quick calculations—“a little over one hour.” The calculations remained etched into the metal.

  “And then what? Did he escape or was he intentionally let go?”

  Alexia interjected, “He seemed perfectly sane to me— aside from the attacking part, of course. He was able to carry on a decent conversation. He even tried to charm me. Must have been quite a young vampire. And”—she paused dramatically, lowered her voice, and said in sepulchral tones—“he had a fang-lisp.”

  Professor Lyall looked shocked and blinked largely at her through the asymmetrical lenses; among vampires, lisping was the height of vulgarity.

  Miss Tarabotti continued. “It was as though he had never been trained in hive etiquette, no social class at all. He was almost a boor.” It was a word she had never thought to apply to a vampire.

  Lyall took the glassicals off and put them away in their little case with an air of finality. He looked gravely at his Alpha. “You know what this means, then, my lord?”

  Lord Maccon was not frowning anymore. Instead he was looking grim. Alexia felt it suited him better, setting his mouth into a straight line and touching his tawny eyes with a determined glint. She wondered idly what he would look like if he smiled a real honest smile. Then she told herself quite firmly that it was probably best not to find out.

  The object of her speculations said, “It means some hive queen is intentionally biting to metamorphosis outside of BUR regulations.”

  “Could it be just the once, do you think?” Professor Lyall removed a folded piece of white cloth from his waistcoat. He shook out the material, revealing it to be a large sheet of fine silk. Alexia was beginning to find the number of things he could stash in his waistcoat quite impressive.

  Lord Maccon continued. “Or this could be the start of something more extensive. We’d better get back to BUR. The local hives will have to be interviewed. The queens are not going to be happy. Apart from everything else, this incident is awfully embarrassing for them.”

  Miss Tarabotti agreed. “Especially if they find out about the substandard shirt selection.”

  The two gentlemen wrapped the vampire’s body in the silk sheet. Professor Lyall hoisted it easily over one shoulder. Even in their human form, werewolves were considerably stronger than daylight folk.

  Lord Maccon rested his tawny gaze on Alexia. She was sitting primly on the chesterfield. One gloved hand rested on the ebony handle of a ridiculous-looking para
sol. Her brown eyes were narrowed in consideration. He would give a hundred pounds to know what she was thinking just then. He was also certain she would tell him exactly what it was if he asked, but he refused to give her the satisfaction. Instead he issued a statement. “We’ll try to keep your name out of it, Miss Tarabotti. My report will say it was simply a normal girl who got lucky and managed to escape an unwarranted attack. No need for anyone to know a preternatural was involved.”

  Now it was Alexia’s turn to glare. “Why do you BUR types always do that?”

  Both men paused to look at her in confusion.

  “Do what, Miss Tarabotti?” asked the professor.

  “Dismiss me as though I were a child. Do you realize I could be useful to you?”

  Lord Maccon grunted. “You mean you could go around legally getting into trouble instead of just bothering us all the time?”

  Alexia tried to keep from feeling hurt. “BUR employs women, and I hear you even have a preternatural on the payroll up north, for ghost control and exorcism purposes.”

  Lord Maccon’s caramel-colored eyes instantly narrowed. “From whom, exactly, did you hear that?”

  Miss Tarabotti raised her eyebrows. As if she would ever betray the source of information told to her in confidence!

  The earl understood her look perfectly. “Very well, never you mind that question.”

  “I shall not,” replied Alexia primly.

  Professor Lyall, still holding the body slung over one shoulder, took pity on her. “We do have both at BUR,” he admitted.

  Lord Maccon elbowed him in the side, but he stepped out of range with a casual grace that bespoke much practice. “But what we do not have is any female preternaturals, and certainly not any gentlewomen. All women employed by BUR are good working-class stock.”