Changeless pp-2

by Gail Carriger

  Without further ado, Mrs. Loontwill kissed both of her daughters on the cheek, climbed back into the carriage, and departed in a whirl of lavender perfume and pink stripes.

  Lady Maccon looked her sister over, still in shock. Felicity was dressed in the latest of velvet long coats, white with a red front, hundreds of tiny black buttons running up it, and a long white skirt with red and black bows. Her blond hair was up, and her hat was perched back on her head in just the kind of precarious manner Angelique would approve of most.

  “Well,” Lady Maccon said brusquely, “I guess you had best come in.”

  Felicity looked about at her bags and then maneuvered delicately around them and swept up the front steps and into the house.

  “Rumpet, would you please?” Lady Maccon, left behind with the luggage, indicated the massive pile with her chin.

  Rumpet nodded.

  Lady Maccon stopped him as he passed. “Do not bother to see them unpacked, Rumpet. Not just yet. We shall see if we can arrange this differently.”

  The butler nodded. “Very good, my lady.”

  Lady Maccon followed her sister into the house.

  Felicity had found her way into the front parlor and was pouring herself some of the tea. Without asking. She glanced up when Lady Maccon entered. “I do declare, you are looking rather puffy about the face, sister. Have you gained weight since I saw you last? You know, I do so worry about your health.”

  Alexia refrained from commenting that the only worry Felicity felt was over next season’s gloves. She sat down across from her sister, folded her arms ostentatiously over her ample chest, and glared. “Out with it. Why would you possibly allow yourself to be foisted off on me?”

  Felicity cocked her head to one side, sipped her tea, and demurred. “Well, your complexion seems to have improved. One might even mistake you for an Englishwoman. That is nice. I should never have believed it had I not seen it for myself.”

  Pale skin had been popular in England since vampires officially emerged into, and took over, much of the higher ranks. But Alexia had her father’s Italian skin and no interest in fighting its inclinations merely to look like one of the undead. “Felicity,” she said sharply.

  Felicity looked to one side and tutted in annoyance. “Well, if I must. Let me simply say it has become desirable for me to absent myself from London for a short while. Evylin is being overly smug. You know how she gets if she has something and she knows you want it.”

  “The truth, Felicity.”

  Felicity glanced about as though looking for some clue or hint, and then said finally, “I was under the impression that the regiment was in residence here at Woolsey.”

  Ah, thought Alexia, so that was what was going on. “Oh, you were, were you?”

  “Well, yes, I was. Are they?”

  Lady Maccon narrowed her eyes. “They are encamped around the back.”

  Felicity immediately stood, brushing down her skirts and plumping her curls.

  “Oh no, you don’t. Sit right back down there, young lady.” Alexia took great satisfaction in treating her sister as though she were an infant. “There is no point; you simply cannot stay with me.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because I am not stopping here. I have business in Scotland, and I depart this afternoon. I cannot very well leave you at Woolsey alone and without a chaperone, especially as the regiment is in residence. Simply think how that would look.”

  “But why Scotland? I should hate to have to go to Scotland. It is such a barbaric place. It is practically Ireland!” Felicity was clearly perturbed at this disruption in her carefully wrought plans.

  Alexia came up with the most Felicity-safe reason for traveling that she could think of, off of the top of her head. “My husband is in Scotland on pack business. I am to join him there.”

  “Well, piffle!” exclaimed Felicity, sitting back down with a whump. “What a frightful bother. Why do you always have to be so inconvenient, Alexia? Can you not think of me and my needs for a change?”

  Lady Maccon interrupted what looked to be a long diatribe. “I am confident your suffering is quite beyond all description. Shall I call for the Woolsey carriage so you can at least travel back to town in style?”

  Felicity looked glum. “It cannot be countenanced, Alexia. Mama will have your head if you send me back now. You know how impossible she can be about these things.”

  Lady Maccon did know. But what was to be done?

  Felicity sucked on her teeth. “I suppose I shall simply have to accompany you to Scotland. It will be a terrible bore, of course, and you know how I hate traveling, but I shall bear it with grace.” Felicity looked oddly cheered by this idea.

  Lady Maccon blanched. “Oh no, absolutely not.” A week or more in her sister’s company and she would go categorically bonkers.

  “I think the idea has merit.” Felicity grinned. “I could instruct you on the subject of appearance.” She gave Alexia a sweeping up-and-down look. “It is clear you are in need of expert guidance. Now, if I were Lady Maccon, I should not choose such somber attire.”

  Lady Maccon rubbed at her face. It would make for a good cover story, removing her deranged sister from London for a desperately needed airing. Felicity was just self-involved enough not to notice or remark upon any of Alexia’s muhjah activities. Plus, it would give Angelique someone else to fuss over for a change.

  That decided matters.

  “Very well. I hope you are prepared to travel by air. We are catching a dirigible this afternoon.”

  Felicity looked uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “Well, if I must, I must. But I am certain I did not pack the correct bonnet for air travel.”

  “Cooee!” A voice reverberated down the hallway outside the open parlor door. “Anyone home?” it rang forth, singsong.

  “Now what?” wondered Lady Maccon, fervently hoping she would not miss float-off. She did not want to delay her travel, particularly now that she must keep the regiment and Felicity separated.

  A head appeared around the edge of the doorjamb. The head was wearing a hat comprised almost entirely of red feathers, all standing straight upright, and a few tiny puffy white ones, looking like nothing so much as an overly excited duster with a case of the pox.

  “Ivy,” stated Alexia, wondering if her dear friend was perhaps secretly the leader of a Silly Hat Liberation Society.

  “Oh, Alexia! I let myself in. I do not know where Rumpet has taken himself off to, but I saw the parlor door open, so I deduced you must be awake, and I thought I ought to tell you…” She trailed off upon realizing Alexia was not alone.

  “Why, Miss Hisselpenny,” purred Felicity, “what are you doing here?”

  “Miss Loontwill! How do you do?” Ivy blinked at Alexia’s sister in utter surprise. “I might ask you the same question.”

  “Alexia and I are taking a trip to Scotland this afternoon.”

  The feather duster trembled in confusion. “You are?” Ivy looked rather hurt that Alexia would not see fit to inform her of such a trip. And that Alexia would choose Felicity as a companion, when Ivy knew how much Alexia loathed her sister.

  “By dirigible.”

  Miss Hisselpenny nodded sagely. “So much more sensible. Rail is such an undignified way to travel. All that rapid racing about. Floating has so much more gravitas.”

  “It was decided at the last minute,” said Lady Maccon, “both the trip and Felicity joining me. There has been some domestic difficulty at the Loontwills’. Frankly, Felicity is jealous that Evy is getting married.” There was no way Lady Maccon would allow her sister to seize control of a conversation at the expense of her dear friend’s feelings. It was one thing to put up with Felicity’s jibes herself and another to witness them turned upon defenseless Miss Hisselpenny.

  “What a lovely hat,” Felicity said to Ivy snidely.

  Lady Maccon ignored her sister. “I am sorry, Ivy. I would have invited you. You know I would, but my mother insisted, and you know
how utterly impossible she can be.”

  Miss Hisselpenny nodded, looking gloomy. She came fully into the room and sat down. Her dress was subdued for Ivy: a simple walking gown of white with red polka dots, boasting only one row of red ruffles and fewer than six bows—although the ruffles were very puffy, and the bows were very large.

  “I am assured floating is terribly unsafe, even so,” added Felicity, “Us two women traveling alone. Don’t you think you should ask several members of the regiment to accompany—?”

  “No, I most certainly should not!” replied Lady Maccon sharply. “But I do believe Professor Lyall will insist upon Tunstell joining us as escort.”

  Felicity pouted. “Not that horrible redheaded thespian chap? He is so fearfully jolly. Must he come? Could we not get some nice soldier instead?”

  Miss Hisselpenny quite bristled upon hearing Tunstell disparaged. “Why, Miss Loontwill, how bold you are with your opinions of young men you should know nothing of. I’ll thank you not to cast windles and dispersions about like that.”

  “At least I am smart enough to have an opinion,” snapped Felicity back.

  Oh dear, thought Alexia, here we go. She wondered what a “windle” was.

  “Oh,” Miss Hisselpenny gasped. “I certainly do have an opinion about Mr. Tunstell. He is a brave and kindly gentleman in every way.”

  Felicity gave Ivy an assessing look. “And now here I sit, Miss Hisselpenny, thinking it is you who is probably overly familiar with the gentleman in question.”

  Ivy blushed as red as her hat.

  Alexia cleared her throat. Ivy should not have been so bold as to reveal her feelings openly to one such as Felicity, but Felicity was behaving like a veritable harpy. If this was a window into her behavior of late, no wonder Mrs. Loontwill wanted her out of the house.

  “Stop it, both of you.”

  Miss Hisselpenny turned big, beseeching eyes upon her friend. “Alexia, are you certain you cannot see your way to allowing me to accompany you as well? I have never been in a dirigible, and I should so very much like to see Scotland.”

  In truth, Ivy was vastly afraid of floating and had never before showed any interest in geography outside of London. Even inside London, her geographic concerns centered heavily on Bond Street and Oxford Circus, for obvious pecuniary reasons. Alexia Maccon would have to be a fool not to realize that Ivy’s interest lay in Tunstell’s presence.

  “Only if you believe your mother and your fiancé can spare you,” said Lady Maccon, emphasizing that last in the hopes that it might remind Ivy of her prior commitment and force her to see reason.

  Miss Hisselpenny’s eyes shone. “Oh, thank you, Alexia!”

  And there went the reason. Felicity looked as though she had just been forced to swallow a live eel.

  Lady Maccon sighed. Well, if she must have Felicity as companion, she could do worse than to have Miss Hisselpenny along as well. “Oh dear,” she said. “Am I suddenly organizing the Lady’s Dirigible Invitational?”

  Felicity gave her an inscrutable look and Ivy beamed.

  “I shall just head back to town to obtain Mama’s permission and to pack. What time do we float?”

  Lady Maccon told her. And Ivy was off and out the front door, never having told Alexia why she had jaunted all the way out to Woolsey Castle in the first place.

  “I shudder to think what that woman will choose as headgear for floating,” said Felicity.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Lady’s Dirigible Invitational

  Alexia could see it all in the society papers:

  Lady Maccon boarded the Giffard Long-Distance Airship, Standard Passenger Class Transport Model, accompanied by an unusually large entourage. She was followed up the gangplank by her sister, Felicity Loontwill, dressed in a pink traveling dress with white ruffled sleeves, and Miss Ivy Hisselpenny, in a yellow carriage dress with matching hat. The hat had an excessive veil, such as those sported by adventurers entering bug-infested jungles, but otherwise the two young ladies made for perfectly appropriate companions. The party was outfitted with the latest in air-travel goggles, earmuffs, and several other fashionable mechanical accessories designed to facilitate the most pleasant of dirigible experiences.

  Lady Maccon was also accompanied by her French maid and a gentleman escort. There was some question as to the appropriateness of the gentleman, a ginger fellow who might have trod the boards on more than one occasion. It was thought odd that Lady Maccon was seen off by her personal secretary, a former butler, but the presence of her mother more than made up for this gaffe. Lady Maccon is one of London’s premiere eccentrics; these things must be taken in stride.

  The lady herself wore a floating dress of the latest design, with tape-down skirt straps, weighted hem, a bustle of alternating ruffles of teal and black designed to flutter becomingly in the aether breezes, and a tightly fitted bodice. There were teal-velvet-trimmed goggles about her neck and a matching top hat with an appropriately modest veil and drop-down teal velvet earmuffs tied securely to her head. More than a few of the ladies walking through Hyde Park that afternoon stopped to wonder as to the maker of her dress, and a certain matron of low scruples plotted openly to hire away Lady Maccon’s excellent maid. True, Lady Maccon carried a garish foreign-looking parasol in one hand and a red leather dispatch case in the other, neither of which matched her outfit, but one must be excused one’s luggage when traveling. All in all, Hyde Park’s afternoon perambulators reported favorably on the elegant departure of one of the season’s most talked-about brides.

  Lady Maccon thought they must look like a parade of stuffed pigeons and found it typical of London society that what pleased them annoyed her. Ivy and Felicity would not leave off bickering, Tunstell was revoltingly bouncy, and Floote had refused to accompany them to Scotland on the grounds that he might be suffocated by an overabundance of bustle. Alexia was just thinking it was going to be a long and tedious journey when an impeccably dressed young gentleman hove into view. The leader of their procession, a frazzled ship’s steward trying to steer them to their respective rooms, paused in the narrow passageway to allow the gentleman to pass.

  Instead, the gentleman stopped and doffed his hat at the parade of newcomers. The smell of vanilla and mechanical oil tickled Lady Maccon’s nose.

  “Why,” said Alexia in startlement, “Madame Lefoux! What on Earth are you doing here?”

  Just then, the dirigible jerked against its tethers as the massive steam engine that drove it through the aether rumbled into life. Madame Lefoux stumbled forward against Lady Maccon and then righted herself. Alexia felt that the Frenchwoman had taken a good deal longer to do so than was necessary.

  “Clearly we are not ‘on Earth’ for much longer, Lady Maccon,” said the inventor, dimpling. “I thought, after our conversation, that I, too, would enjoy visiting Scotland.”

  Alexia frowned. To travel so soon after opening a brand-new shop, not to mention leaving both her son and her ghostly aunt behind, seemed unwarranted. Clearly the inventor must be a spy of some kind. She would have to keep her guard up around the Frenchwoman, which was sad, as Alexia rather enjoyed the inventor’s company. It was a rare thing for Lady Maccon to encounter a woman more independent and eccentric than herself.

  Alexia introduced Madame Lefoux to the rest of her party, and the Frenchwoman was unflaggingly polite to all, although there might have been a slight wince upon seeing Ivy’s eyeball-searing ensemble.

  The same could not be said of Alexia’s entourage. Tunstell and Ivy bowed and curtsied, but Felicity openly snubbed the woman, clearly taken aback by her abnormal attire.

  Angelique, too, seemed uncomfortable, although the maid did curtsy as required by someone in her position. Well, Angelique had very decided opinions on proper attire. She probably did not approve of a woman dressing as a man.

  Madame Lefoux gave Angelique a long and hard look, almost predatory. Lady Maccon assumed it had something to do with both of them being French, and her suspicions were
confirmed when Madame Lefoux hissed something at Angelique in a rapid-fire undertone in her native tongue, too fast for Alexia to follow.

  Angelique did not respond, turning her lovely little nose up slightly and pretending to be busy fluffing the ruffles on Lady Maccon’s dress.

  Madame Lefoux bade them all farewell.

  “Angelique,” Lady Maccon addressed her servant thoughtfully, “what was that?”

  “It waz nothing of import, my lady.”

  Lady Maccon decided the matter might wait for a later time and followed the steward into her cabin.

  She did not remain inside for long, as she wished to explore the ship and be on deck to witness float-off. She had waited years to float the skies, having followed the development of airship technology detailed in the Royal Society papers from a very young age. To be on board a dirigible at last was a joy not to be dampened by French mannerisms.

  Once the last of the passengers had boarded and been shown to their respective cabins, the crew cast off the rope tethers, and the great balloon hoisted them slowly into the sky.

  Lady Maccon gasped to see the world retreating below them, people disappearing into the landscape, landscape disappearing into a patchwork quilt, and final, irrevocable proof that the world was, indeed, round.

  Once they floated through normal air and were high up into the aether, a young man, dangerously perched at the very back of the engines, spun up the propeller, and, with steam emitting in great puffs of white out the back and sides of the tank, the dirigible floated forward in a northerly direction. There came a slight jolt as it caught the aetheromagnetic current and picked up speed, going faster than it looked like it ought to be able to go, with its portly boatlike passenger decks dangling below the massive almond-shaped canvas balloon.

  Miss Hisselpenny, who had joined Lady Maccon on deck, recovered from her own awe and began singing. Ivy had a good little voice, untrained but sweet. “Ye’ll take the high road,” she sang, “and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.”

  Lady Maccon grinned at her friend but did not join her. She knew the song. Who didn’t? It had been a forerunner in Giffard’s dirigible travel marketing campaign. But Alexia’s was a voice meant for commanding battles, not singing, as anyone who ever heard her sing took great pains to remind her.