Heartless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Fourth (23 page)

The ambient aether feathered hazy tendrils off the ghostly form, carrying them toward Lady Maccon. Alexia’s preternatural state fractured some of the remaining tether of the ghost’s body, pulling it apart. It was an eerie thing to watch, likes soap suds in water curling down a sink.

The ghost seemed to be observing the phenomenon of her own destruction with interest. Until she remembered her selfhood and tugged back, gathering herself inward. “Preternatural!” she hissed. “Preternatural female! What are you—Oh, oh, yes. You are the one who will stop it. Stop it all. You are.”

Then she became distracted by something unseen. She swirled about, drifting away from Alexia, still muttering to herself. Behind her murmuring voice, Alexia could make out the high keening wail that all her vocalizations would eventually dissolve into—the death shriek of a dying soul.

Alexia shook her head. “Poor thing. What a way to end. So embarrassing.”

“Wrong track. Wrong track!” Formerly Lefoux garbled.

Madame Lefoux returned, walking right through her aunt she was so lost in thought. “Oh, oops, sorry, Aunt. I do apologize, Alexia. I can’t seem to locate the crate where I stashed those records. Allow me some time and I’ll see what I can find later tonight. Would that do?”

“Of course, thank you for the attempt.”

“And now, if you will excuse me? I really must return to work.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“And you must return to your husband. He’s looking for you.”

“Oh? He is? How did you know?”

“Please, Alexia, you are wandering around out of bed, with a limp, grossly pregnant. Knowing you, I’m quite certain you are not meant to be. Ergo, he must be looking for you.”

“How well you know us both, Genevieve.”

Lord Maccon was indeed looking for his errant wife. The moment her carriage drew up before their new town residence, he was out the front door, down the steps, and scooping her up into his arms.

Alexia withstood his solicitous attentions with much forbearance. “Must you make a scene here in the public street?” was all she said after he had kissed her ardently.

“I was worried. You were gone much longer than I expected.”

“You thought to catch me at Lord Akeldama’s?”

“Well, yes, and instead I caught the dewan, for my pains.” This was growled out in a very wolfish manner for a man whose husbandly duties rendered him not a werewolf at that precise moment.

The earl carried his wife into their back parlor, which five days’ absence had seen adequately refurbished, if not quite up to Biffy’s exacting standards. Alexia was convinced that once recovered from this month’s bone-bender, the dandy would see to it the room was brought back up to snuff.

Lord Maccon deposited his wife into a chair and then knelt next to her, clutching one of her hands. “Tell me truthfully—how are you feeling?”

Alexia took a breath. “Truthfully? I sometimes wonder if I, like Madame Lefoux, should affect masculine dress.”

“Gracious me, why?”

“You mean aside from the issue of greater mobility?”

“My love, I don’t think that’s currently the result of your clothing.”

“Indeed, well, I mean
after
the baby.”

“I still don’t see why you should want to.”

“Oh, no? I dare you to spend a week in a corset, long skirts, and a bustle.”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Oh, ho!”

“Now stop playing games, woman. How are you really feeling?”

Alexia sighed. “A little tired, a lot frustrated, but well in body if not spirit. My ankle is paining me only a little, and the infant-inconvenience has been remarkably patient with all my carriage rides and poodling about.” She contemplated how to raise the subject of Lord Akeldama’s thoughts on the matter of the queen. Finally, knowing she had little inherent delicacy of speech and that her husband had none at all, she decided he would probably appreciate directness.

“Lord Akeldama thinks the London mastermind of your Kingair plot was a Woolsey Pack member.”

“Does he, by George?”

“Now, stay calm, my dear. Think logically. I know that is difficult for you. But wouldn’t someone like Channing take—”

Lord Maccon shook his head. “No, not Channing. He would never—”

“But Lord Akeldama said that the previous Alpha was not right in the head. Couldn’t that have had something to do with it? If he ordered Channing to—”

Lord Maccon’s voice was sharp. “No. But Lord Woolsey himself? That
is
an idea. Much as I hate to admit it. The man was mad, my dear. Utterly mad. It can happen that way, especially to Alphas when we get too old. There’s a reason, you know, that we werewolves fight amongst ourselves. I mean aside from the etiquette of the duel. Especially Alphas. We shouldn’t be allowed to live forever—we go all funny in the brain. Or that’s what the howlers sing of. Vampires do, too, if you ask me. I mean, you only have to look at Lord Akeldama to realize he’s . . . but I digress.”

His wife reminded him of where they were in the conversation. “Lord Woolsey, you were saying?”

Lord Maccon looked down at their joined hands. “It can take on many forms, the madness—sometimes quite harmless little esoteric inclinations and sometimes not. Lord Woolsey, as I understand it, became deviant. Even brutal in his”—he paused, looking for the right word that might not shock even his indomitable wife—“tastes.”

Alexia contemplated this. Conall was an aggressive lover, demanding, although he could be quite gentle. Of course, with her, he had no real teeth to do damage beyond a nibble or two. But there had been one or two times, early on in their courtship, when she had wondered if he might not actually think of her as food. She had also read overmuch of her father’s journals.

“You mean, conjugally violent?”

“Not precisely, but from what I have been told, he was
inclined to derive pleasure from sadistic activities.” Lord Maccon actually blushed. He could do that while touching her. Alexia found it little-boy endearing. With the fingers of her free hand, she stroked through his thick dark hair.

“Gracious. And how did the pack manage to keep such a thing secret?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Such proclivities are not confined to werewolves alone. There are even brothels that—”

Alexia held up a hand. “No, thank you, my dear. I should prefer not to know any additional details.”

“Of course, my love, of course.”

“I am glad you killed him.”

Lord Maccon nodded, letting go of his wife’s hand, then standing and turning away, lost to his memories. He fiddled with a little cluster of daguerreotypes arranged on the mantelpiece. That quick, feral quality was back to his movements, a supernatural facet of his werewolf self. “As am I, wife, as am I. I have killed many people in my day, for queen and country, for pack and challenge; rarely do I get to say I am proud of that part of my afterlife. He was a brute, and I was fortunate indeed that I was just strong enough to see him eliminated, and he was just mad enough to make bad choices during the passion of battle. He allowed himself to enjoy it too much.”

Lord Maccon’s head suddenly cocked—supernatural hearing making out some new sound that Alexia could not discern.

“There is someone at the door.” He put down the image he had been toying with and turned to face the entrance, crossing his arms.

His wife picked up her parasol.

*   *   *

The ghost was confused. She spent a good deal of her time confused these nights. She was also alone. Everyone had gone, to the very last, so that she floated in her madness, losing her afterlife into silence and aether. Threads of her true self were drifting away. And there was no friendly face to sit with her while she died a second time.

She remembered that there was something unfinished. Was it her life?

She remembered there was something she still needed to do. Was it die?

She remembered that there was something wrong. She had tried to fix it, hadn’t she? What should she care for the living?

Wrong, it was all wrong. She was wrong. And soon she wouldn’t be. That was wrong, too.

A
knock came at the back parlor door, and Floote stuck his debonair head around the side. “Madame Lefoux to see you, madam.”

Lady Maccon placed her parasol carefully to one side, pretending her husband had not just given her due warning. “Ah, yes, show her into the front parlor, would you, please, Floote? I’ll be in shortly. We simply can’t have company in this room yet—it’s not decent.”

“Very good, madam.”

Alexia turned back to her husband, beckoning with one hand to get him to come help her stand. He did, bracing himself.

“Oomph,” she said, attaining her feet. “Very well, I shall add Lord Woolsey to our ever-growing list of suspects who are now dead and thus useless. Death can be jolly well inconvenient, if you ask me. We can’t possibly prove his involvement.”

“Or what bearing it might have on this new threat to
the queen.” The earl placed a casual arm about his wife, assistance couched in a more Alexia-acceptable act of affection. Nearly a year of marriage and he was finally learning.

“True, true.” His wife leaned against him.

Another knock sounded at the back parlor door.

“What now!” growled Lord Maccon.

Professor Lyall’s sandy head popped in this time. “You’re wanted, my lord, on a matter of pack business.”

“Oh, very well.” The earl helped his wife waddle down the hallway. He abandoned her at the door to the front parlor and then followed his Beta out into the night.

“Hat, my lord,” came Professor Lyall’s mild rebuke, a disembodied voice from the darkness.

Conall came back inside, scooped a convenient top hat off of the hall stand, and disappeared outside again.

Alexia paused at the door to the front parlor. Floote had left it slightly ajar, and she overheard conversation drifting from within, Madame Lefoux’s mellow voice and that of another, clear and erudite, confident with age and authority.

“Mr. Tarabotti had significant romantic success. I often wondered if the soulless weren’t dangerously attractive to those with too much soul. You, for example, probably have excess. You like her, don’t you?”

“Oh, really, Mr. Floote, why this sudden interest in my romantic inclinations?”

Lady Maccon started at that. She might have recognized Floote’s voice, of course, except that she had never heard him string so many words together at once. It must be admitted, she had privately doubted his ability to formulate a complete sentence. Or at least his willingness to do so.

“Be careful, madam.” The butler’s voice was stiff with rebuke.

Alexia flushed slightly at the very idea of her staff taking such a tone with a
guest
!

“Is it my care you are concerned with or Alexia’s?” Madame Lefoux seemed well able to withstand such a grave breach in domestic protocol.

“Both.”

“Very well. Now, would you be so kind as to check up on Her Highness? I am in a bit of a rush and the evening isn’t getting any longer.”

At this juncture, Lady Maccon made a great blundering noise and entered the room.

Floote, unflappable, backed away from his intimate proximity to the French inventor as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Madame Lefoux, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company? I seem to have just left you.” Alexia made her way laboriously across the room.

“I have that information you were looking for. About the teapots.” The inventor handed over a sheaf of old parchment paper, yellowed about the edges, thick and ridged, marked by hand and the assistance of a straight edge into some sort of ledger. “It’s in my aunt’s code, which I am certain you could decipher if you wished. But essentially it indicates that she had only one order for the teapot invention that year, but it was a big one. It didn’t come through any suspicious channels. That’s the intriguing part. It was a government order, out of London, with funds originating in the Bureau of Unnatural Registry.”