Instead Rue simply withdrew her hand as soon as was polite. She resisted the urge to rub at the spot his lips had touched. “I was looking for you, Mr Lefoux. If you could spare me a moment?”
Quesnel exchanged a pointed look with the vampire queen.
Countess Nadasdy shrugged – the barest hint of a movement so as not to upset the drape of her gown. There was a dangerously covetous look in her blue eyes. However, she made no objection to the proposed private assignation.
Quesnel tilted his head. “Very well, mon petit chou, come into my lair. Or would you prefer a walk around the grounds?”
Rue decided it was best to keep matters in the open. “The grounds. I could use the fresh air.”
Quesnel offered her his arm, which Rue took, almost scared of his warmth.
He led her through the hall and out the back into the beautifully tended grounds. Before leaving the house, he casually paused to unstrap and toss aside a whole mess of gadgetry. It was a mark of how unsettled the man made her that Rue hadn’t noticed it until that moment.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He dismissed the advanced assemblage. “Tools mostly, I find it useful to have everything on me when I’m working. But they get in the way the rest of the time, when one has lovely visitors to attend.”
Woolsey had once been home to Rue’s father’s pack. In fact, she had been born there, but had never lived in the place herself. It still bore a few signs of wolf occupation. The occasional scratch mark, silver chains in a hall cupboard, and extensive dungeons underground. Over the last two decades, the countess had done her best to improve Woolsey, with only modest success. The castle itself was a patchwork of buildings, for it had been added to by a variety of owners with wide-ranging tastes, including several Alpha werewolves. It proved that even with a millennium of knowledge not every house could be made beautiful.
The grounds were a different matter. The vampires had hired a veritable army of attractive gardeners. The countess, confined inside, could only appreciate them at night – both grounds and gardeners – from the windows of her abode. But she did both, frequently. Much had been done to make the view from above, as well as the walk within, a delight to the eye. There were gazebos and fountains, ponds and dells, bird baths and statues, not to mention an elaborate maze of creamy gravel with contrasting topiary and a cluster of silver birches at the centre.
Under the three-quarter moon, Quesnel led Rue along a winding black stone path, passed well-tended shrubs, beautiful herbaceous borders, rows of fruit trees, and the occasional Grecian temple. They talked of mutual acquaintances, asking after each other’s families until they arrived at a picturesque pond with water-lilies and weeping willows all around.
Rue looked at it thoughtfully. “Is that the pond?”
“Why, yes, it is. Such a high-spirited young thing.” Quesnel rubbed his posterior as though still remembering landing on it.
“Who? Me or you?” Rue wondered.
“Both, I suppose.”
Rue was willing to let bygones be bygones if he was. “Mere childhood kerfuffles.”
“Speak for yourself. I was fully grown and should have known not to tease a spoiled metanatural. I should have also known the rest.” He led her to a marble bench.
They sat.
“What rest? That I’d be strong enough to dump you in a pond at eight years of age?”
“That you’d eventually grow up beautiful with a very long memory.”
He really was a horrible flirt. “But still spoiled? Is that an apology? Accepted.”
He raised golden eyebrows at her. “And?”
“Oh, no, I’m not apologising for dunking you. For all I know, it might need to happen again.”
Quesnel laughed. “Touché. Ah, so, what did you need to see me about, mon petit chou?”
“I’ve been given an airship.”
“I know. I built her. Or at least part of her. Fantastic, isn’t she? I do excellent work. Particularly with kettles.”
Rue swallowed down any snide remarks at this blatant arrogance. “Dama thinks you’re the best candidate for chief engineer. At least on short notice. We’re going to India. What do you say?”
Quesnel did not answer, only gave her a strange look.
Rue babbled, “It’d only be this once. I should think we could easily find a replacement for you after. I could…” She trailed off, uncomfortable.
Finally, Quesnel said, “That’s the most oddly phrased invitation I’ve ever received. Sweet, of course, but odd.”
Rue immediately stood. “Well, if you don’t want to accept that’s perfectly understandable. I only said I’d ask. I know you’re awfully busy and that the countess and your mother like to have you at their disposal.”
“Now, now, pretty lady, don’t be impulsive.” Quesnel grabbed Rue’s hand to keep her from walking off and pulled her back to sit next to him. “Did I say no?”
“It’d be much easier if you did.”
“Now, chérie, when have either of us ever taken the easy route?”
“Good point. So you’re willing?”
He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. Rue knew from past experience they were a disturbing violet colour, but under the moonlight they were silver. He said, “Of course I’m willing.”
Rue said, “Oh bother,” before she could stop herself.
“See, I knew you wanted me there.”
Rue gave him an exasperated look. “Couldn’t you say you had other commitments?”
“When I could torture you for weeks on end in a confined space?”
Rue sighed. “I suppose I can somewhat see the appeal.”
At which, Quesnel Lefoux slid closer and put one arm about her, leaning her back in exaggerated mockery of a Shakespearean lover. “Several weeks aboard ship and you will be unable to resist me.”
Rue batted at him. “Stop it, you ridiculous man.”
Quesnel dived in to administer a loud buzz of a sloppy kiss on Rue’s cheek.
“Mr Lefoux!”
He snickered at his own theatrics and let her go. “Who else has signed on?”
Rue extracted a handkerchief and made a point of wiping off her cheek. “We’ve got a skeleton crew right now. I’ll recruit Primrose and a few others. I’m going to call upon a possible navigator this very evening.”
“Primrose Tunstell? Topping.” On those few occasions when they had met socially, Quesnel always seemed to enjoy Prim’s company. Rue wondered if she detected genuine interest in her friend or if he was simply being Quesnel about it. He did so enjoy the company of women; the ship wasn’t all that big. Either one could prove awkward. Primrose was also a terrible flirt but she had a propensity to actually fall in love, which Quesnel avoided. Besides, if Quesnel felt the urge to be rakish he ought to be rakish with her. Rue was better equipped to withstand his overtures.
“Why India?” Quesnel asked.
“Ostensibly, tea.”
“Ostensibly?”
“Well, Dama is sending me.”
“And you think he has an ulterior motive?”
“When doesn’t he? Fond as I am of Dama, he is still a vampire. Not to mention the potentate. Mainly, I think he’s giving me something to do. So I don’t get into any real trouble here. Cause a scandal in London that even all my parents can’t extract me from.”
Quesnel, horrible creature, did not make the appropriate noises about how unlikely that should be. “Good point, mon petit chou. Anything else I should know?”
“There’s a very disagreeable redhead under you as senior greaser.”
“Aggie Phinkerlington?”
“You know her already, do you?”
“Of course I do. We’re grand old chums. Protégée of my mother’s.”
“Of course you’re friendly. And naturally, she knows your mother. Isn’t that simply spiffing?”
“Ah, chérie, I shouldn’t fret. You’ll manage to keep us all in line somehow.”
He was a
dozen years older than her, but Rue wasn’t going to let that impinge on her authority. “And don’t you forget it. I’m your captain on this trip and…” She paused, searching for an appropriate threat. “I’m certain they have duck ponds in India.”
Quesnel grinned. “Speaking of which.” In a terribly fast movement for a mortal, he stood, scooping Rue up into his arms. He was strong for a mere inventor – probably from moving all those steam engine kettles around.
Rue protested, wiggling.
Quesnel stilled and looked deeply into her eyes. His glittered with guile.
Rue’s stomach sank. Was he going to try to kiss her? She was both terrified and curious. Rue had allowed herself to be kissed before, of course she had, she wasn’t that old-fashioned. But not by Quesnel.
He bent down, face more serious than she’d ever seen it, looking actually handsome instead of boyishly cocky.
She opened her mouth to protest but found she hadn’t any words.
He leaned in closer.
And then she was hurtling through the air to land with a tremendous splash on her posterior in the duck pond.
Rue emerged sputtering but feeling in more control than she had since she first entered Countess Nadasdy’s abode. “Mr Lefoux, this dress is a Worth.” Her lovely grey gown had been through quite a lot that evening, what with the boiler explosion earlier and now this.
“Had to be done, mon petit chou. If you’re to be my captain shortly, I can’t spend weeks cooped up on an airship with you, constantly faced with the mad temptation to dump you overboard. You must see the necessity of getting such things out of the way now?”
Oddly, Rue did. “I understand your reasoning.” She waded out of the pond with as much dignity as possible, trailing lily-pads. Uncle Rabiffano’s lovely hairdo sagged and the seagull hat was a non-starter. It floated away, looking as if something monstrous had drowned.
Quesnel stepped up to help her out of the pond. Rue took his hand warily. But he acted the perfect gentlemen, just as if he hadn’t tumbled her in.
“I suppose I’ll have to leave Percy until tomorrow now, unless I’m lucky enough to dry out on the way back to town.”
“Percy?” Quesnel let go of her hand.
Rue almost slipped back into the pond. She recovered her balance and glared at him. He remembered his manners, embarrassed. However, when he tried to assist her in dumping water out of her boots, she issued him a sharp, “Shoo!”
Quesnel did not try again but he did not let the matter of Percy drop. “Professor Percival Tunstell? Are you in earnest? Please tell me you aren’t in earnest?”
“What, you thought you were the only impossible man I’d have to deal with? Much as I hate to admit it, Dama is as right about Percy as he was about you. He’s my best option. You two will have to get along. Without dunking each other in ponds, I hope. He’s unlikely to be as understanding as I.”
“But he’s so very annoying.”
Rue cocked her head. “Funny, that’s pretty much exactly what I said about you.”
Quesnel was so centred on the fact that he might be trapped on a dirigible for weeks on end with Professor Tunstell that he didn’t bat an eyelash at this insult. “I don’t know what anyone sees in that man.”
“I did hear a rumour that he inadvertently stole something from you last season. I hardly gave it credence at the time but I take it the rumour’s true? Care to elaborate?”
Quesnel bit his lip. “How on earth did you hear such a thing?”
“You forget about my father’s pack. Terrible gossips, werewolves. Worse than Dama’s drones.”
“Are they really?”
Rue nodded gravely. “Yes, less circumspect and louder about it. Plus the drones are actually more interested in politics and fashion than the liaisons of others. If he didn’t steal your waistcoat, hat, or social standing, they don’t give a fig. The werewolves, on the other hand, like to be tangled in relationships. And if they don’t know the details, they’ll make them up.”
“I see.” Quesnel, raised in a respectable sort of hive, clearly didn’t see at all. “But if Pompous Percy’s coming I don’t know if I…”
“Oh no, you can’t back out now. I have your word. And you dumped me in a pond. Fair dues, Quesnel.”
“You called me Quesnel. How nice. Now, how about calling me sweetheart? Wouldn’t that be even nicer?”
He was incorrigible. Sensing the imminent return of her customary urge to poke Quesnel Lefoux in the eye, Rue decided to make good her escape. She gave the man an insultingly brief curtsy before lifting her damp skirts high and saying, “I bid you good evening, Chief Engineer Lefoux. We leave in three days, with the aether current. Do tender my regards to your mother and beg my leave of the countess? I should be getting on.”
Quesnel bowed, taking the hint for once. “Lady Prudence. I look forward to our next meeting.”
Rue sniffed. “So do I, as long as it’s a good deal less soggy.”
CHAPTER THREE
RUE’S PROBLEM WITH REDHEADS
P
rofessor Percival Tunstell moved out of his mother’s hive in Wimbledon and accepted a post as Oxford don the moment he came into his majority. After being summarily dismissed from Oxford for his radical theories on the transcendental sprout-shaped nature of the aetherosphere, he rented a decrepit bedsit behind the British Museum, off Rustle Square. “The better to facilitate my studies,” he explained to his aggrieved mother.
Nor would he tolerate vampire guards. Primrose, his dearly beloved and barely countenanced twin, might secretly enjoy the status conferred by a persistent supernatural escort but Percy spent the lion’s share of his days cooped up in his library researching the breeding habits of sand fleas. He did not require a vampire nanny. Nor, for that matter, did the fleas. After the third of his mother’s minions returned to the Wimbledon Hive with slashes from a wooden letter opener, Baroness Tunstell stopped sending them. Percival Tunstell was nothing if not a great fan of learning. If that education involved sharp pointy sticks, he applied himself just as diligently as to other forms of research and with far more uncomfortable results to those around him. In the end, Queen Ivy gave up mothering her son, and Percy stopped poking her vampires with letter openers.
Rue knocked loudly on the door to his apartments.
Nothing.
She knocked again.
She waited.
She knocked a third time.
Eventually, Percival Tunstell himself answered. The gentleman was wearing a smoking jacket and tweed trousers and carrying a heavy Latin tome. He glanced up at Rue, his skin pale as any vampire’s, spectacles perched at the tip of his nose. Percy, it must be acknowledged, was quite good-looking for a bluestocking ginger fellow, but terribly peaky about it.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Where’s your footman?”
“Dismissed him, kept interrupting my reading.”
“With something sensible like food, I suspect. May I come in?”
“At least you don’t have my ghastly sister with you.”
Rue took that as permission to enter.
Percy resumed reading his book, walking slowly down the hallway away from her.
Rue followed. “You’ll be happy to know she’s doing well.”
“Who is?”
“Your sister.”
“Oh, is she? How unfortunate. It would do her some good to be in ill health for once.”
“Percy, how can you be so tiresome?”
“Rue, I’m terribly busy at the moment. What do you want?”
“Why, what are you busy doing?”
“Agricultural research. I think it might be good for the great British jam industry to move from quinces to crab-apples for pectin production.”
“Oh, indeed? Is there a jam industry of any note?”
Percy continued on as if he hadn’t heard. “But the relative ratios of storage to fruit gelatine are proving difficult to calculate. Plus if crab-apple trees require more water, th
en things may tip back in the quince’s favour. Do you know?”
“Do I know what?”
“If they need more water.”
“No, I don’t. You might ask a farmer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There must be a book on the subject.”
Rue decided this conversation could go on for hours. “Percy, your country needs you.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Very well then – I need you.”
“Don’t tell fibs, Rue, it doesn’t suit.”
Rue took the book away from Percy and said, “I’m flying an airship to India and I require you to be my ship’s researcher, librarian, and navigator.”
“You’re sotted. Have you been drinking? I think you’ve been drinking.” Percy looked mildly concerned. “Do you need to sit? Should I ring for tea? I believe that I still employ a valet.” He made room for her on an armchair by removing the enormous pile of scientific pamphlets occupying it.
“Percy, I am entirely sober and in earnest. What I’ve said is all true. Don’t you think you would enjoy leaving London for a while?”
“No, I do not.”
“You could bring your books along,” she wheedled, wondering if The Spotted Custard could take the extra weight.
“My books are quite fine where they are, thank you very much.”
“It would get you entirely away from your mother.”
Percy’s eyes sparked slightly. “But not my sister, I assume. Since you two have been joined at the hip since we were knee-high to a biscuit.”
“Prim will stay out of your way, I promise. The ship will be swarming with handsome young men to distract her.”
Percy snorted.
Rue tried a new tactic. “Wouldn’t you enjoy seeing some of the exotic lands you’ve studied?”
“Not particularly. All evidence seems to suggest that they are dirty, hot, messy places riddled with disease and chilli peppers. I loathe chilli peppers.”
“But what about all the bits that haven’t been written about? Subjects untapped, discoveries waiting to be made. Percy, you could become the world’s expert on the…” Rue flailed, grappling, and then said triumphantly, “Sacred napping practices of the Punjabi wild cabbage.”
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