Biffy immediately left off fastening all the copious small buttons at the back of her gown and circled around to stand next to her, meeting her eyes via the looking glass. “My lady, you know you have only to ask.”
“Oh, yes, of course. But this is a matter of some delicacy. I want it to be your own choice. Not one driven by pack or status.”
She turned so they could look at each other face-to-face and took one of his hands in hers. He felt the effect of her touch instantly, an awareness of mortality, a dimming of his supernatural senses. It was a little like dropping out of the aether into the lower atmosphere, a sinking sensation in the stomach. He had learned to ignore the feeling. What with dressing and arranging Lady Maccon’s hair, he experienced it frequently.
“I have a little private consortium. I was wondering if, perhaps, you might be persuaded to join.”
Biffy was fascinated. “What kind of consortium?”
“A sort of secret society. I will, of course, require a vow of silence.”
“Naturally. What do you call yourselves?”
“The Parasol Protectorate.”
Biffy smiled. “I am enthralled by the concept of a society named after an accessory. Do go on, my lady.”
“I am afraid you would be only our third member. Currently, the society consists of myself and Ivy Tunstell.”
“Mrs. Tunstell?”
“She was rather invaluable in a matter of some considerable delicacy just before Prudence was born.”
“What is the purpose of this society?”
“I suppose the root of the Protectorate is to seek truth and protect the innocent. In as polite and well accessorized a way as possible, of course.”
“That seems quite glamorous enough to me.” Biffy was rather taken with the idea of being in a club with the estimable Lady Maccon. It sounded most diverting. “Do I make a pledge?”
“Oh, dear. I did invent one for Ivy, but it is a tad ridiculous.”
“Splendid.”
Lady Maccon giggled. “Very well. Fetch me one of those parasols, please. I’m afraid the original pledge required my special parasol, but one of those will do as a replacement.”
“Your special parasol, my lady?”
“Oh, just you wait. I’ll have something made for you. Perhaps a particular top hat?”
“Particular?”
“Lots of hidden gadgets, concealed compartments, covert weaponry, and the like.”
“What a horrid thing to do to a perfectly nice top hat!”
“Cane, then?”
Biffy tilted his head in consideration. Then he remembered Lord Akeldama’s gold pipe that was actually a glaive. “Perhaps a cane. Now, about that pledge?” He was not about to allow Lady Maccon to deny him ready amusement.
His mistress sighed. “If you insist, Biffy. Spin the parasol three times and repeat after me: I shield in the name of fashion. I accessorize for one and all. Pursuit of truth is my passion. This I vow by the great parasol.”
Biffy couldn’t help it; he started to laugh, but he did as he was bid.
“Do try to keep a straight face,” said his mistress, although she said it around her own grin. “Now pick the parasol up and raise it open to the ceiling.”
Biffy did as instructed.
“Ivy insisted we seal the vow in blood, but I hardly think that necessary, do you?”
Biffy raised his eyebrows. It was fun watching Lady Maccon squirm.
“Oh, I had no idea you would be so difficult. Very well.” She retrieved a small knife from her armoire. It was not silver, so in order to make the cut, she had to hold on to Biffy’s wrist with her bare hand, keeping him mortal.
“May the blood of the soulless keep your own soul safe,” she intoned, cutting a tiny slice in the pad of her thumb and then in his and pressing the two together.
Biffy had a moment of panic. What might her preternatural blood do to his werewolf blood? But the second she let go, his cut healed instantly, leaving no remnant mark behind.
“Now, Mrs. Tunstell goes by the sobriquet Puff Bonnet.”
Biffy let out an uncontrolled bark of laughter.
“Yes, yes. Well, I go by Ruffled Parasol. What would you like your moniker to be?”
“I suppose it ought to be another accessory of some kind?”
Lady Maccon nodded.
“How about Wingtip Spectator?”
“Perfect. I will inform Ivy of your indoctrination.”
“And now, my lady, I assume there is a reason for your recruiting me at this particular time?”
Lady Maccon looked at him. “You see, Biffy? That’s what I mean. You are an adorably smart thing, aren’t you?”
Biffy raised an eyebrow.
“I require someone to monitor London while Ivy and I are abroad. Keep me informed as to the nature of the murder investigation. Keep an eye on Channing’s behavior—and Lyall’s for that matter. And the vampires, of course.”
“Tall order, my lady. Professor Lyall?”
“Everyone has secrets Biffy, even Lyall.”
“Especially Professor Lyall, my lady. I’d say he is keeping a goodly number of everyone else’s secrets as well as his own.”
“You see, what did I say? Perceptive. Now, there will be irregular dirigible mail during our steamer crossing. I’ll provide you with a schedule of the ones you’ll need to utilize, depending on where we are. After that, I intend to set up an aethographic connection to the public access transmitter in Alexandria. I have the valve frequensor codes here, and I will give them mine. Thereafter, you will have to send all messages in code. I’ll send you the first one just after sunset the day after we arrive—London sunset. Please coordinate the timing and be ready to receive. Lord Akeldama trained you in the use of an aethographic transmitter?”
“Of course.” Biffy had known the workings of every single transmitter since the technology first came to London those many years ago. “This is going to be delightful fun, isn’t it, my lady?”
At that, Lady Maccon put an arm about his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”
“Oh, dear heavens, Ivy, must you bring so many hats?”
They had let the entire first-class coach for the short haul from London to Southampton, where their steamer awaited the tides. Lady Maccon stood next to her husband on the platform waiting to board.
Mrs. Tunstell was wearing a traveling gown of pale pink and apple-green stripes, trimmed with multiple blue trailing ribbons. Her hat was a great tower of feather puffs, pink and green, through which peeked the heads of stuffed bluebirds and more ribbons. In addition to her hatboxes, of which she took the greatest care and supervision, Mrs. Tunstell was accompanied by her husband, her children, their nursemaid, the wardrobe mistress, the prop master, a set designer, and six supporting cast members. Being actors, the whole lot of them performed the simple act of loading and boarding a train with all the pomp and circumstance of a three-ring circus.
Everyone was a flutter of broad gestures, eye-searing attire, and loudly projected voices. Tunstell was his usual cheery redheaded self, the excitement of travel merely causing him to grin more broadly at the world. Alexia wouldn’t exactly accuse Tunstell of being the kind of man who wrote sonnets, but his britches were overly tight and in a vocal plaid, his top hat was purple, and his traveling coat was scarlet. In fact, his entire outfit seemed an impressionistic take on riding out for the hunt. Biffy, who had come to the station to see them off, looked as though he might faint at the very sight of it and took his leave quite hurriedly.
Alexia carried Prudence in her naked arms, waiting until the sun was properly up, at which juncture she could hand the squirming toddler off to her husband without fear of any furry recriminations. It was a great embarrassment to be seen in public without her gloves, but she was taking absolutely no chances. They had a train to catch. Prudence simply couldn’t be allowed to delay matters by turning wolf and running off.
There had been a very tearful good-bye
before they left their house. Lady Maccon held Prudence close while Lord Akeldama peppered his puggle with kisses. Tizzy, Boots, and all the other drones made their farewells as well, doling out an excessive number of coos and coddles to Prudence, as well as small gifts for the journey. Lady Maccon was beginning to suspect her child of being rather spoiled. All this excitement caused Prudence to come over tetchy for the duration of the ride to Waterloo Station. Alexia had only just gotten her settled when they were summarily immersed in the chaos of the Tunstells’ acting troupe.
Of course, Prudence was beaming in delight at all the drama and color. She was very much Lord Akeldama’s daughter in this and clapped her chubby little hands when Mrs. Tunstell ordered the porter to fit all her hatboxes inside the train car at once and the poor man went tumbling backward, hats flying everywhere.
“Stay!” Mrs. Tunstell ordered her hats.
“Oh, really, Ivy. Let the porter handle things. The man knows what he is doing. Get your party settled.” Alexia was as annoyed as her daughter was delighted.
“But, Alexia, my hats, they simply can’t be left to just anyone. It’s the collection of a lifetime.”
Lady Maccon told a calculated fib in order to expedite matters. “Oh, but, Ivy, I do believe I see the nursemaid trying to attract your attention from within. Perhaps the twins—”
Mrs. Tunstell immediately forgot all about her precious hats and climbed hurriedly up into the train to see if her little angels were indeed suffering any possible distress.
Unlike Prudence, the Tunstell twins were apparently bored by the prospect of foreign travel. Perhaps their ennui was brought on by near constant exposure to the theatrical lifestyle. Primrose was quietly entranced by all the trim and sparkle about her, clearly her mother’s daughter. Periodically tiny arms would wave out from her bassinet, reaching for a feather or a particularly gaudy bow. Percy, on the other hand, had spit up obligingly all over the lead villain’s velvet cape and then gone to sleep.
“Alexia, Lord Maccon. Good morning.” A warm, faintly accented voice came wafting from behind them.
Alexia turned. “Madame Lefoux, you made it in good time, I see.”
“As if I would miss this for the world, Lady Maccon.”
“As you can see, it is quite the kerfuffle,” Alexia said. They watched as the last of Ivy’s entourage made their way on board, leaving a mound of luggage behind on the platform.
“Conall, tip the porters well, would you, please?” Lady Maccon prodded her husband into coping with the mountain.
“Of course, my dear.” Lord Maccon wandered over to see to the logistics.
Alexia shifted Prudence to her other hip. “Prudence, this is Madame Lefoux. I don’t believe you have met since your arrival into this world. Madame Lefoux, may I introduce Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama?”
“Dama?” queried Prudence at that.
“No, dear, Lefoux. Can you say Lefoux?”
“Foo!” pronounced Prudence with great acumen.
The Frenchwoman shook Prudence’s pudgy little hand solemnly. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, young miss.”
“Foo Foo,” replied Prudence with equal gravitas. Then, after giving the lady dressed as a gentleman a very assessing look, she added, “Btttpttbtpt.”
The inventor brought along only a small portmanteau for the journey and a hatbox Alexia remembered as being a hatbox only on the surface. Underneath it was a cleverly devised toolkit.
“Expecting trouble, are you, Genevieve?” Alexia forgot to be formal, falling all too quickly into the familiarity bred by a previous journey made together across Europe—a time when she and the inventor had been friends rather than cautious acquaintances.
“Of course. Aren’t you? No parasol, I see. Or not a real one.”
Alexia narrowed her eyes. “No. Mine happened to get destroyed when a certain person brought a certain hive house down around everyone’s ears.”
“I am sorry about that. Things got a touch out of hand.” Madame Lefoux dimpled hopefully.
Alexia was having none of it. “Sorry isn’t good enough. I lost my parasol.” She practically hissed it. The absence still rankled.
“You might have said something. I could easily have made you a replacement. The countess has me very well set up.”
Alexia arched her eyebrows.
“Ah. You don’t trust me now that I belong to the Woolsey Hive. May I remind you that you put me there?”
Alexia sputtered.
“Dada,” said Prudence, warning them both.
Lord Maccon had seen to the luggage. “Well, ladies, Madame Lefoux, shall we? The train is about to depart, and I believe everyone is aboard, save us.” It took him a moment to sense the tension between his wife and her erstwhile friend.
“Now, now, what’s all this about?”
“Foo!” pointed out Prudence.
“Yes, poppet, so I see.”
“Your wife is still missing her parasol.”
“Ah. My dear, I did order you a new one, but it is taking far longer than I expected. You know how scientists can be.”
“Oh, thank you, Conall! I did think it might have slipped your mind.”
“Never, my dear.” He bent and kissed her on the temple. “Now, if that settles matters?”
The sun peeked up, outside the station but definitely rising. The train sounded its horn, loud and long, and the engine began to ramp up, belting bouts of smoke and steam out onto the platform like a sudden, smelly fog.
Lord Maccon grabbed Madame Lefoux’s portmanteau and tossed it up into the coach to the waiting steward. His strength was taxed by the rising sun, but not so much as to make even a large piece of luggage much of a burden. He took Prudence from his wife. His daughter wrapped chubby arms about him in delight. Prudence was growing to love daylight, since she associated it with hugging her father. In addition, her aunt Biffy and her uncle Lyall were more likely to scoop her up and twirl her around when the sun was up.
“Dada,” she said approvingly. Then she leaned forward toward his ear, as if to tell him a secret, and spouted a whole stream of incomprehensible babbling. Alexia figured this was Prudence’s version of gossip. It was probably quite interesting and informative, had it actually been composed of words.
“Prudence, darling,” said her mother as she climbed up into the train. “You must learn to use proper English. Otherwise, you can’t possibly hope to be understood.”
“No,” said Prudence, most decidedly.
Madame Lefoux seemed to find this terribly amusing, for Alexia heard her chuckle behind her as she, too, climbed inside the coach.
The Tunstells’ troupe had already struck up a rousing chorus of “Shine Your Buttons with Brasso,” an extremely bawdy tune entirely ill-suited to the first-class compartment of the Morning Express to Southampton.
Lady Maccon looked at her husband as if he might be one to justify such behavior.
He shrugged. “Actors.”
Prudence, lacking in all sense of dignity and decorum, squeaked in delight and clapped along with the song.
Madame Lefoux immersed herself in some papers from the Royal Society, humming along.
Tunstell demanded ale, despite it being early morning. One of the young ladies from the supporting cast began to dance a little jig in the aisle.
“What will the steward think of us?” said Alexia to no one in particular. “This is going to be a very long trip.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Biffy Encounters a Most Unsatisfactory Parasol
In the years that followed, when Lady Maccon had occasion to recall that nightmare morning, she would shudder at the horror of it all. She who has not traveled in the company of ten actors, three toddlers, a werewolf, and a French inventor cannot possibly sympathize with such torture. The chaos of the train station was a mere appetizer to the main course of utter insanity that was the Maccon party’s attempt at boarding the steamer at Southampton. Miraculously, they managed to do so with few actual casualties
. Ivy lost one of her hatboxes to the briny deep and had a fit of hysterics. The man playing the villain, a fellow named Tumtrinkle, barked his shin on the side of the entrance ramp, an occurrence that, for some strange reason, caused him to sing Wagnerian arias at the top of his lungs to withstand the pain for the next three-quarters of an hour. The wardrobe mistress was in a panic over the proper treatment of the costumes, and the set designer insisted on handling all of the backdrops personally, despite the fact that he had a dodgy back and a limp. One of the understudies was not pleased with the size and location of her room and began to cry, claiming that in her country, ghosts were tethered near water, so she could not possibly be in a room that overlooked the ocean… on a boat. Percy spit up on the captain’s lapel. Primrose ripped a very long feather out of a lady passenger’s hat. Prudence squirmed out of her father’s grasp at one point, toddled over to the railing, and nearly fell over the edge.
Lady Maccon felt, if she were the type of woman to succumb to such things, a severe bout of nerves might have been called for. She could quite easily have taken to her apartments with a cool cloth to her head and the worries of the world far behind her.
Instead, she oversaw the loading of the mountain of luggage with an iron fist, distributed cleaning cloths to the captain and Percy, rescued and returned the feather to its rightful owner, sent a steward to Ivy’s room with restorative tea, insisted Tunstell comfort the hysterical understudy, distracted the wardrobe mistress and set designer with questions, corralled her daughter with one arm and her frantic husband with the other, and all before the steamer tooted its departure horn and lurched ponderously out into a dark and choppy sea.
Finally, once everything was settled, Alexia turned to Conall, her eyes shining with curiosity. “Who did you order it from?”
Lord Maccon, exhausted, as only a man can be when put in sole charge of an infant, said, “To what could you possibly be referring, my dear?”
“The parasol, of course! Who did you order my new parasol from?”
“I took a good hard look at the available options, since Madame Lefoux was off the market, and thought we needed someone who at least knew something of your character and requirements. So, I approached Gustave Trouvé with the commission.”
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