“And the countess stole him from Genevieve. So Genevieve built an octomaton and destroyed the hive house trying to get him back.”
“Upon my word, that’s escalating things rather much.”
“I daresay it is.”
Lord Akeldama stopped tapping and began swinging his monocle back and forth while he took up a slow pace about the room. His white brow creased in one perfect line between the eyebrows.
Lady Maccon rubbed her protesting belly with one hand and sipped tea with the other. For once, the magic liquid was unable to disseminate any beneficial effects. The child was not happy, and tea was not going to pacify the beast.
The monocle stilled.
Alexia straightened up in her chair expectantly.
“The question remains, what is to be done with an entire hive skulking in my back alley?”
“Have them in for tea?” suggested Lady Maccon.
“No, no, not possible, little cream puff. They can’t come in here.”
Vampires were peculiar about etiquette. “Buckingham Palace? That should be relatively secure.”
“No, no. Political nightmare. Vampire queen in the palace? Trust me, darling, it is never a good idea to have too many queens in one place, let alone one palace.”
“To be really safe and buy us some extra time, we really ought to get her out of London.”
“She won’t like that at all, but there is sense to the suggestion, bluebell.”
“How long do we have? I mean to say, how long does a swarming usually last?”
Lord Akeldama frowned. Concerned over whether he should give her this information, she suspected, rather than over any possibility of his not having it. “A newly made queen has months to settle, but an old queen has only a few hours.”
Lady Maccon shrugged. Only one solution readily presented itself. It was the safest place she knew of—defensible and secure.
“I will have to take her to Woolsey.”
Lord Akeldama sat down. “If you say so, Lady Alpha.”
There was something in his tone that gave Alexia pause. He sounded like that when he had recently purchased a particularly nice waistcoat. She couldn’t understand why he should be so self-satisfied with this predicament. As her benighted husband would say, vampires!
Someone had to do something. They couldn’t let the Westminster queen simply cool her heels in an alleyway behind Lord Akeldama’s and Lord Maccon’s respective houses. What a scandal if the papers ever found that out! Alexia very much hoped Felicity was locked away. “It will only be until we can determine what’s to be done with her. And how to resolve this situation with Quesnel. Hopefully without destroying any other perfectly innocent buildings.” Lady Maccon tilted back her head and yelled, “Floote!”
The rapidity of Floote’s appearance suggested he had, indeed, been waiting just outside the door.
“Floote, how many carriages do we have in town?”
“Just the one, madam. Just arrived back in.”
“Well, that’ll have to do. Hitch up the goers and have it brought round to the back, please. I shall meet you there.”
“A journey? But, madam, you are unwell.”
“Can’t be helped, Floote. I cannot justifiably send a hive of vampires into a den of werewolves alone and without diplomatic assistance. The clavigers would never allow it. No, someone has to go with them, and that someone has to be me. The staff at the castle won’t listen to anyone else, not on full moon.”
Floote vanished, and Lady Maccon stood and began to make her way with stilted awkwardness out of the drawing room and through Lord Akeldama’s house. The vampire followed. About halfway, however, she held up a finger at her host.
The baby inside of her had shifted. It felt a little lighter somehow. Well, who was she to question such a helpful adjustment? She patted her belly approvingly. However, she also rocked from one foot to the other. The infant-inconvenience had come to rest on a certain portion of her anatomy.
“Uh, oh, dear. How embarrassing. I really must visit your?.?.?.?uh?.?.?.?that is?.?.?.?um.”
If he could have blushed, Lord Akeldama would have. Instead, he took out a red lace fan from the inside pocket of his jacket and fanned himself vigorously with it while Alexia tottered off to see to the necessary business. She returned several long moments later, feeling better about all aspects of life.
Then she led the way onward through Lord Akeldama’s house, behind the grand staircase and past the servants’ stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Lord Akeldama minced along solicitously after her.
Behind the house, past such shockingly vulgar objects as dustbins and a clothesline, the hive waited. Much to Lady Maccon’s shock, there were gentlemen’s undergarments on that clothesline! She closed her eyes and took a deep and fortifying breath. When she opened them again, she looked past the necessities into the delivery alley where a clot of vampires paced restlessly.
Countess Nadasdy was there with Dr. Caedes, Lord Ambrose, the Duke of Hematol, and two other vampires Alexia did not know by name. The hive queen was not in any condition to converse on any topic, mundane or otherwise. She was in obvious mental distress, her movements frenzied and her nerves overset. She paced to and fro, muttering and jerking at any noise. A startled vampire can leap to amazing heights and move at incredible speeds; this ability made the soft, round queen grasshopper-like. Sometimes she fought against one of her male counterparts as though trying to escape from the loose circle they formed around her. Occasionally, she would lash out at one of them, clawing at his face or biting hard into an exposed body part. The male vampire would only gentle her back into the center of the group, his wounds healed by the time she resumed her twitching.
Lady Maccon noted with relief that Quesnel had been transferred to Dr. Caedes’s care. It was clearly not safe for a mortal to be near the queen. Alexia caught the young scamp’s violet eye under his floppy thatch of yellow hair. He looked terrified. She gave him a wink and he brightened almost instantly. Theirs was not a long acquaintance, but she had once supported him in the matter of an exploding boiler, and he had trusted her implicitly ever since.
Alexia moved forward, only to pause, finding herself alone and Lord Akeldama left standing in a dramatic pose on the stoop behind her. Frankly, she had been surprised he even considered walking through the kitchen. He’d probably never even seen that part of his house before.
She turned back. “You aren’t facilitating this conversation?” Never had she known Lord Akeldama to step aside when something significant was afoot.
The rove vampire chuckled. “My little dumpling, the countess would not tolerate my presence in her current condition. And I could hardly stand to endure such waistcoats as Dr. Caedes seems to favor these days. Not to mention the universal lack of headgear.”
Alexia looked over the vampires with new eyes. It was true; the gentlemen seemed to have misplaced their top hats during the kerfuffle.
“No, no, my cream puff, this is yours to play now.” He spared her a worried glance. She had not stopped clutching her protruding belly since she first reappeared in his drawing room. “If you are certain you can handle it with sufficient dexterity.”
Lady Maccon took a fortifying breath, almost overbalancing. Responsibility was responsibility and no baby was going to prevent her from seeing everything right. Her world, currently, was in disarray. If Alexia Maccon was good at nothing else, she was good at putting things to rights and bringing order to the universe. Right now the Westminster Hive needed her managerial talents. She could hardly shirk her duty for so mere a trifle as pregnancy.
Without a backward glance at Lord Akeldama, she strode forward into the midst of the panicking hive. Or she would like to say she strode; it was more a gimpy kind of shuffle.
“Wait, Alexia! Where is your parasol?” Lord Akeldama sounded more concerned than she had ever heard him, devoid of both italics and pet names.
Lady Maccon gesticulated in an expressive way and yelled back to him, “Underneath what’s left of the hive house, I suspect.” Then she faced her muhjah duties full-on. “Right, you lot. I’ve had about enough of this waggish behavior.”
Countess Nadasdy turned and hissed at her. Actually hissed.
“Oh, really.” Lady Maccon was revolted. She looked at the Duke of Hematol. “Would you like me to sober her up?” She twiddled her naked fingers at him.
Lord Ambrose snarled and leaped, in one of those fantastic supernatural feats of athleticism, to place himself between Lady Maccon and his queen.
“Apparently not. Have you a better solution?”
The duke said, “We could not have her mortal and vulnerable, not in such an unprotected state.”
Behind them, clattering through the alley behind the long row of town houses, the Woolsey carriage drew to a stop, the chestnut travelers hitched up rather than the parade bays. The countess leaped toward it as though it were some fearsome foe. Lord Ambrose held her back by snaking both arms around her from behind in an embarrassingly intimate gesture. It was only an old-fashioned gingerbread coach with a massive crest on its side and just that kind of superfluous decadence that would appeal to Lord Akeldama but that Lady Maccon had always felt was ever so slightly embarrassing for Woolsey. It was built to make an impression, not for speed or nimbleness. But Alexia hardly thought even such grandiose ugliness warranted a vampire attack.
“Well, then, as Lord Akeldama will not invite you in for tea and a sit-down, I was thinking I might suggest we retreat to Woolsey for the time being. Take refuge there.”
All the assembled vampires, even the countess, who seemed to have only a limited ability to follow what was going on around her, paused to look at Lady Maccon as though she had just donned Grecian robes and begun hurling peeled grapes at them.
“Are you certain, Lady Maccon?” asked one of them, almost timidly for a vampire.
The doctor stepped forward, elongated and frail-looking, for all he held the struggling Quesnel as though the boy weighed no more than one of Madame Lefoux’s automated feather dusters. “You are inviting us to stay, Lady Maccon? At Woolsey?”
Alexia did not see the source of their persistent confusion. “Well, yes. But I’ve only the one carriage, so you and the boy and the countess had best come with me. The others can run behind. Try to keep up.”
Lord Ambrose looked at Dr. Caedes. “It is unprecedented.”
Dr. Caedes looked at the Duke of Hematol. “There is no edict for this.”
The duke looked at Lady Maccon, rolling his head from one side to the other. “The marriage was unprecedented, and so is the forthcoming child. She but maintains her brand of tradition.” The duke moved toward his mistress. Cautiously, careful not to make any sudden movements.
“My Queen, we have an option.” He spoke precisely, careful to enunciate each and every word.
Countess Nadasdy shook herself. “We have?” Her voice sounded hollow and very far away, as though emanating from the bottom of a mine. It reminded Alexia of something, but with the child inside her creating a fuss and the prospect of a long drive ahead, she couldn’t remember what.
The countess looked to Lord Ambrose. “Who must we kill?”
“It is an offer freely given. An invitation.”
For a moment, Countess Nadasdy seemed to return to herself, focusing completely on the faces of her three most treasured hive members. Her supports. Her tentacles. “Well, let us take it, then. No time to spare.” She looked around, cornflower-blue eyes suddenly sharp. “Is that laundry? Where have you brought me?”
With a nod to Lady Maccon, Lord Ambrose hustled his queen into the Woolsey carriage. Quicker than the mortal eye could follow, he ducked back out again, his movements made smoother without the need to monitor a hat. He leaped to the driver’s box, unceremoniously dismissing the perfectly respectable coachman who sat there and taking up the reins himself. Lady Maccon arched a brow at him.
“Pardon me?”
“I once raced chariots,” he explained with a grin that showed off his fangs to perfection.
“I do not think it is quite the same thing, Lord Ambrose,” remonstrated Alexia.
Dr. Caedes and Quesnel climbed inside next. And then, reluctantly, Lady Maccon. She struggled a bit with the steps, and no vampire was willing to offer her any kind of assistance, no touching, not even for politeness’ sake. Once inside, she was unsurprised to find that the vampires were seated together on one bench so that she must sit alone on the other.
Lord Ambrose whipped the horses up and they took off at a canter, far too fast for the crowded streets of London. The clattering on the cobbles was awfully loud, and the carriage seemed to gyrate around the turns far more than Alexia had noticed before. Her belly protested the swaying.
It ordinarily took just under two hours to reach Woolsey from central London, less time for a werewolf in full fur, of course. The Count of Trizdale once claimed to have run it in his highflyer coach in only an hour and a quarter. Lord Ambrose, it seemed, was intent on trying to break that record.
