The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  Lord Maccon had almost reached her by now. Only Lady Maccon still trailed behind him. The rest had stopped at the sight of the woman’s gun. Alexia glanced back over her shoulder to see Ivy and Felicity huddled near Tunstell, who had a small pistol pointed steadily at the woman. Madame Lefoux stood next to him, her wrist held at just such an angle to suggest some more exotic form of firearm was concealed but enabled just inside the sleeve of her greatcoat.

  Lady Maccon, parasol at the ready, moved toward her husband and the strange woman. He was speaking in a low voice so that the party behind them could not hear through the rain. “What did they get up to overseas, Sidheag? What mess did you get into over there after Niall died?”

  “What do you care? You up and abandoned us.”

  “I had no choice.” Conall’s voice was weary with remembered arguments.

  “Bollix to that, Conall Maccon. ’Tis a cop-out, well and truly, and we both be knowing it. You fixing the mess you left behind these twenty years gone, now that you’re back?”

  Alexia looked at her husband, curious. Perhaps she would get the answer to something she’d always wondered about. Why would an Alpha abdicate one pack, only to seek out and fight to rule another?

  The earl remained silent.

  The woman pushed the worn old hat back off her head to look up at Lord Maccon. She was tall, almost as tall as he, so she did not have to look up far. She was no slight thing either. There was muscle rolling about noticeably under that massive cloak. Alexia was suitably impressed.

  The woman’s eyes were a terribly familiar tawny brown color.

  Lord Maccon said, “Let us inside out of this muck and I will think about it.”

  “Pah!” spat the woman. Then she marched up the beaten stone path toward the keep.

  Lady Maccon looked to her husband. “Interesting lady.”

  “Dinna you start,” he growled at her. He turned back to the rest of their party. “That is about as much of an invitation as we’re likely to receive around these parts. Come on inside. Leave the luggage. Sidheag will send a man out to get it.”

  “And you are convinced she will not simply toss it all into the lake, Lord Maccon?” wondered Felicity, clutching her reticule protectively.

  Lord Maccon snorted. “No guarantees.”

  Lady Maccon immediately left his side and retrieved her dispatch case from the mound of luggage.

  “Does this thing work as an umbrella?” she asked Madame Lefoux on her way back, waving the parasol.

  The inventor looked sheepish. “I forgot that part.”

  Alexia sighed and squinted up into the rain. “Capital. Here I stand, about to meet the dreaded in-laws looking like nothing so much as a drowned rat.”

  “Be fair, sister,” contradicted Felicity. “You look like a drowned toucan.”

  And with that, the little band entered Castle Kingair.

  It was just as drafty and old-fashioned on the inside as its appearance would suggest from the outside. Neglected was too fine a term for it. The carpets were gray-green, threadbare relics from the time of King George; the chandelier in the entranceway supported candles, of all ridiculous forms of lighting; and there were actual medieval tapestries hanging against the walls. Alexia, who was fastidious, ran one gloved finger along the banister railing and tutted at the dust.

  The Sidheag woman caught her at it.

  “Na up to yon high-falutin’ London standards, young miss?”

  “Uh-oh,” said Ivy.

  “Not up to standards of common household decency,” shot back Alexia. “I heard the Scots were barbarians, but this”—she brushed her fingers together, releasing a small cloud of gray powder—“is ridiculous.”

  “I’m na stopping you from heading back out into the rain.”

  Lady Maccon cocked her head to one side. “Yes, but would you stop me from dusting? Or do you have a particular attachment to grime?”

  The woman chuckled at that.

  Lord Maccon said, “Sidheag, this is my wife, Alexia Maccon. Wife, this is Sidheag Maccon, Lady Kingair. My great-great-great-granddaughter.”

  Alexia was surprised. Her guess would have been a grand-niece of some kind, not a direct descendent. Her husband had been married before he changed? Now why hadn’t he told her that?

  “But,” objected Miss Hisselpenny, “she looks older than Alexia.” A pause. “She looks older than you, Lord Maccon.”

  “I would not try to understand, if I were you, dear,” consoled Madame Lefoux with a slight dimpling at Ivy’s distress.

  “I am just about forty,” replied Lady Kingair, unabashed at stating her age before strangers and in polite company. Really, this part of the country was just as primitive as Floote had said. Lady Maccon shuddered delicately and adjusted her grip on her parasol, prepared for anything.

  Sidheag Maccon looked pointedly at the earl. “Nigh on too old.”

  Felicity wrinkled her nose. “Ew, this is simply too revoltingly peculiar. Why did you have to involve yourself in the supernatural set, Alexia?”

  Lady Maccon merely gave her sister an arch look.

  Felicity answered her own question. “Oh yes, I remember now—no one else would have you.”

  Alexia ignored that and looked with interest at her husband. “You never told me you had a family before you became a werewolf.”

  Lord Maccon shrugged. “You never asked.” He turned to introduce the rest of the party. “Miss Hisselpenny, my wife’s companion. Miss Loontwill, my wife’s sister. Tunstell, my primary claviger. And Madame Lefoux, who would be happy to examine your broken aethographor.”

  Lady Kingair started. “How did you ken that we…? Never mind. You always were uncanny with the knowing. You being BUR has na improved that to anyone else’s comfort. Weel, that’s one welcome guest. Delighted to meet ye, Madame Lefoux. I have, of course, heard of your work. We’ve a claviger who’s familiar with your theories, a bit o’ an amateur inventor himself.”

  Then the Scotswoman looked at her great-great-great-grandfather. “I’m supposing you’d as lief see the rest o’ the pack?”

  Lord Maccon inclined his head.

  The Lady of Kingair reached off to the side of the darkened stairwell and clanged a bell hidden there. It made a noise halfway between a moo and a steam engine coming to an abrupt halt, and suddenly the hallway was filled with large men, most of them in skirts.

  “Good heavens,” exclaimed Felicity, “what are they wearing?”

  “Kilts,” explained Alexia, amused at her sister’s discomfort.

  “Skirts,” replied Felicity, deeply offended, “and short ones at that, as though they were opera dancers.”

  Alexia swallowed a giggle. Now there was a funny image.

  Miss Hisselpenny did not seem to know where to look. Finally she settled on staring up at the candelabra in abject terror. “Alexia,” she hissed to her friend, “there are knees positively everywhere. What do I do?”

  Alexia’s attention was on the faces of the men around her, not their unmentionable leg areas. There seemed to be an equal mix of disgust and delight at seeing Lord Maccon.

  The earl introduced her to those he knew. The Kingair Pack Beta, nominally in charge, was one of the unhappy ones, while the Gamma was one of those pleased to see Conall. The remaining four members fell two for and two against and ranged themselves to stand accordingly, as though at any moment fisticuffs might spontaneously break out. Kingair was smaller than the Woolsey Pack, and less unified. Alexia wondered what kind of man the post-Conall Alpha had been, to lead this contentious lot.

  Then, with unseemly haste, Lord Maccon grabbed the surly Beta, who responded in a halfhearted manner to the name of Dubh, and dragged him off into a private parlor, leaving Alexia to mitigate the tense social atmosphere he left behind.

  Lady Maccon was equal to the task. No one of her stalwart character, required since birth to supervise first Mrs. Loontwill and later two equally improbable sisters, was unprepared for even such trying circumstances as la
rge, kilted werewolves en masse.

  “We heard about you,” said the Gamma, whose name sounded like something slippery to do with bogs. “Knew the old laird had suckered himself to a curse-breaker.” He paced about Alexia slowly in a circle as though examining her for flaws. It felt very doglike to Alexia. She was prepared to jump back if he cocked a leg.

  Luckily, his statement was misconstrued by both Ivy and Felicity. Alexia was not known as a preternatural to either of them and she preferred to keep it that way. Both young ladies seemed to assume that the phrase curse-breaker was some queer Scottish term for wife.

  Felicity said, sneering at the enormous man in front of her, “Really, can you not speak English?”

  Lady Maccon said quickly, ignoring her sister, “You have the upper hand on me. I know nothing of you.” They were all so very large. She was not used to feeling diminutive.

  The Gamma’s broad face went pinched at that. “Over a century he was master o’ this pack and he na mentioned us to ye?”

  “Could be me he does not want to know you, rather than you he does not want to talk about,” offered Alexia.

  The werewolf gave her a long, assessing look. “I’m thinking ’tis that he never brought us up, did he?”

  Sidheag interrupted them. “Enough gossip. We’ll show you to your rooms. Lads, go grab in the extras—blasted English canna travel light.”

  The upstairs bedrooms and guest accommodations seemed no better off than the rest of the castle, muted in color and dank in smell. The room given to Lord and Lady Maccon was tidy enough but musty, with decorations of brownish red some hundred years or so outdated. There was a large bed, two small wardrobes, a dressing table for Alexia, and a dressing chamber for her husband. The color scheme and general appearance reminded Lady Maccon of nothing so much as a damp, malcontented squirrel.

  She checked about the chamber for a safe place to secrete her dispatch case, with little success. There seemed nowhere acceptably discreet, so she trundled three doors down to where Miss Hisselpenny was billeted.

  As she passed one of the other chambers, she heard Felicity say, in a breathy voice, “Oh, Mr. Tunstell, shall I be safe in the room right next to yours, do you think?”

  Seconds later, she witnessed Tunstell, panic in every freckle, emerge from Felicity’s room and dive into the refuge of his small valet accommodations just off of Conall’s dressing chamber.

  Ivy was busy unpacking her trunk when Alexia tapped politely on her door and wandered in.

  “Oh, thank heavens, Alexia. I was just pondering, do you think there might be ghosts in this place? Or worse, poltergeists? Please do not think I am at all bigoted against the supernatural set, but I simply cannot withstand an overabundance of ghosts, especially not those at the final stage of disanimus. I heard they get all over funny in the head and go wafting about losing bits of their noncorporeal selves. One rounds a corner of some perfectly respectable passageway only to find a disembodied eyebrow floating halfway between ceiling and potted palm.” Miss Hisselpenny shuddered as she carefully stacked her twelve hatboxes next to the wardrobe.

  Alexia thought back to what her husband had said. If the werewolves here could not change, then the plague of humanization must be infecting Castle Kingair. The castle would have been completely exorcised.

  “I have a funny feeling, Ivy,” she said with confidence, “that ghosts will definitely not be frequenting this locale.”

  Ivy looked unconvinced. “But, Alexia, really you must admit to the fact that this building seems like the kind of place that ought to have ghosts.”

  Lady Maccon clicked her tongue in exasperation. “Oh, Ivy, do not be ridiculous. Appearances have nothing to do with it; you know that. Only in Gothic novels are ghosts linked so, and we both know how utterly fanciful fiction has become recently. Authors never do get the supernatural correct. I mean to say, the last one I read essentially claimed metamorphosis had to do with magic, when everyone knows there are perfectly valid scientific and medical explanations for excess soul. Why, just the other day, I read that—”

  Miss Hisselpenny interrupted her hastily before she could go on. “Yes, well, no need to overset me with bluestocking explanations and Royal Society papers. I shall take your word for it. What time did Lady Kingair say supper was to commence?”

  “Nine, I believe.”

  Another look of panic suffused her friend’s face. “Will they be serving”—she gulped—“haggis, do you think?”

  Lady Maccon made a face. “Surely not for our first meal. But best prepare yourself; one never knows.” Conall had described the disastrous foodstuff, with unwarranted delight, during their carriage ride in. The ladies were living in mortal terror as a result.

  Ivy sighed. “Very well. We had better get dressed, then. Would my periwinkle taffeta be appropriate for the occasion?”

  “For the haggis?”

  “No, silly, for dinner.”

  “Does it have a matched hat?”

  Miss Hisselpenny looked up from tidying her stack of hatboxes with a disgusted expression. “Alexia, do not talk such folderol. It is a dinner gown.”

  “Then I think it will serve very well. May I ask you a favor? I have a gift for my husband in this case. Do you think I might conceal it in your room for the time being so he does not accidentally uncover it? I wish it to be a surprise.”

  Miss Hisselpenny’s eyes shone. “Oh, really! How lovely and wifely of you. I should never have pegged you for a romantic.”

  Lady Maccon winced.

  “What is it?”

  Alexia grappled with her brain for an appropriate answer. What would one possibly buy for a man and then hide in a dispatch case? “Uh. Socks.”

  Miss Hisselpenny was crushed. “Only socks? I hardly think socks cry out for secrecy.”

  “They are lucky, special socks.”

  Miss Hisselpenny saw no apparent illogicality in that and carefully tucked Lady Maccon’s dispatch case behind her stack of hatboxes.

  “I may need to access it from time to time,” said Alexia.

  Miss Hisselpenny was bemused. “Why?”

  “To, uh, check on the condition of the, uh, socks.”

  “Alexia, are you feeling quite the thing?”

  Lady Maccon instantly spoke, in order to throw Miss Hisselpenny off the scent. “Did you know, I just passed Tunstell leaving Felicity’s rooms.”

  Ivy gasped. “No!” She immediately began furiously arranging her accessories for dinner, tossing gloves, jewelry, and lacy hair cap on top of the dress already laid out upon the bed.

  “Alexia, I do not mean to be at all rude. But I really do believe your sister may be an actual nincompoop.”

  “Oh, that is perfectly all right, Ivy dear. I cannot stomach her myself,” replied Lady Maccon. And then, because she felt guilty for having told her about Tunstell, “Would you like to borrow Angelique this evening to do up your hair? The rain’s ruined mine beyond all repair I’m afraid, so it would be a wasted effort.”

  “Oh, really? Thank you, that would be lovely.” Ivy perked up immediately.

  With that, Lady Maccon retreated to her own room to dress.

  “Angelique?” The maid was busy unpacking when Lady Maccon reentered her bedroom.

  “I have told Ivy she may have you for her hair this evening. Not a thing could possibly be done to help mine at this point.” Alexia’s dark locks were a mass of frizzy curls in reaction to the unpleasant Scottish climate. “I shall simply pop on one of those horrible lace matron’s caps you are always trying to get me to wear.”

  “Yez, my lady.” The maid bobbed a curtsy and went to do as she was bid. She paused in the doorway, looking back at her mistress. “Please, my lady, why is Madame Lefoux still with us?”

  “You really do not like her, do you, Angelique?”

  A quintessentially French shrug met that statement.

  “It was my husband’s idea, I am afraid to say. I do not trust her either, mind you. But you know how Conall gets. Appare
ntly, Kingair has a malfunctioning aethographic transmitter. I know, you might well look surprised. Who would have thought a backwater place like this could possess anything so modern? Apparently they do, and it has been having difficulties. Secondhand goods, I understand. Well, what do you expect? Anyhow, Conall brought Madame Lefoux along to give it the old once-over. Nothing I could do to stop him.”

  Angelique looked blank at that and bobbed a quick curtsy, and went off to see to Ivy.

  Alexia ruminated over the outfit the maid had selected for her to wear. And then, because she really could not count on her own sense of style to do any better, put it on.

  Her husband came in just as she was struggling to fasten the buttons up the back of the bodice.

  “Oh, good, there you are. Do this up for me, would you, please?”

  Entirely ignoring her command, Lord Maccon strode over to her in three quick steps and buried his face in the side of her neck.

  Lady Maccon emitted an exasperated sigh but at the same time swiveled around to wrap her arms about his neck.

  “Well, that is very helpful, darling. You do realize we are due for—”

  He kissed her.

  When breathing eventually became a necessity, he said, “Well, wife, been wanting to do that the entire carriage ride here.” He moved his large hands down to her posterior and hoisted her against his big, firm body.

  “And here I thought you were thinking about politics most of the ride; you sported such a terrible frown,” replied his wife with a grin.

  “Well, that too. I can do two things at once. For example, right now I am talking to you and also devising a means by which to extract you from this gown.”

  “Husband, you cannot take it off of me. I just put it on.”

  He seemed disinclined to agree with that statement, instead putting a concerted effort into undoing all her careful work and shoving the dress aside.

  “Did you really like the parasol I gave you?” he asked, sweetly hesitant, drifting his fingertips up over her now-bare shoulders and upper back.

  “Oh, Conall, such a lovely gift, with magnetic disruption field generator, poison darts, and everything. So very thoughtful. I was delighted to find I had not lost it during the fall.”