“Lord Maccon will not be joining me, Floote. Are any of the men available to act as escort?”
Floote took a long moment to consider his mistress’s options. Alexia knew she had tasked her butler with quite a conundrum. With drones, werewolves, and clavigers to choose from, distributed among two households and currently bumbling about most of London, there was quite the crowd for even a butler of Floote’s cranial capacity to keep account of. All Alexia knew was that Biffy was working and that Boots was visiting relations in Steeple Bumpshod.
Floote took a small breath. “I’m afraid there is only Major Channing immediately available, madam.”
Alexia winced. “Really? How unfortunate. Well, he will have to do. I can’t very well travel by train alone, can I? Would you tell him I request his attendance as escort, please?”
This time it was Floote’s turn to wince, which for him was a mere twitch of one eyelid. “Of course, madam.”
He glided off, reappearing moments later with her wrap and Major Channing, the London Pack’s toffee-nosed Gamma werewolf.
“Lady Maccon, you require my services?” Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings was a man who spoke the Queen’s English with that unctuous precision instilled only by generations of the best schools, the best society, and an overabundance of teeth.
“Yes, Major, I must visit Woolsey.”
Major Channing looked as though he would quite like to object to the very idea of accompanying his Alpha female into the countryside, but he knew perfectly well that Lady Maccon would ask for him only if she had no other alternatives. He also knew who was most likely to bear the brunt of Lord Maccon’s wrath if she were allowed to travel alone. So he said the only thing he could say under such circumstances.
“I am, of course, at your disposal, my lady. Ready, willing, and able.”
“Don’t overdo it, Channing.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Lady Maccon eyed the Gamma’s outfit with a critical eye. He was in his military garb, and Alexia wasn’t entirely certain that was appropriate for calling on vampires. But do we have time for him to change? To give insult by being very late indeed or by bringing a soldier into the house of a vampire queen? Quite the conundrum.
“Floote, what time does our train depart?”
“In one half hour, madam, from Fenchurch Street Station.”
“Ah, no time for you to change, then, Major. Very well, collect your greatcoat and let’s be away.”
They rode the train in an uncomfortable silence, Alexia pondering the night out the window and Major Channing pondering an exceedingly dull-looking financial paper. Major Channing, Alexia had discovered much to her shock, was interested in figures, and as such was bursar to the pack. It seemed odd for a man of breeding and snobbery to dally with mathematics, but immortality did strange things to people’s hobbies.
Some three-quarters of an hour into their journey, they consumed some very nice tea and little crustless sandwiches provided by an obsequious train steward who seemed very well aware of the dignity of Major Channing and rather less of that of Lady Maccon. As she nibbled her cucumber and cress, Alexia wondered if this were not one of the reasons she disliked the major so very much. He was awfully good at being aristocratic. Alexia, on the other hand, was only good at being autocratic. Not quite the same thing.
Alexia became increasingly aware of a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, as though she were being scrutinized carefully. It was a most disagreeable sensation, like stepping one’s bare foot into a vat of pudding.
Pretending travel fatigue, she arose to engage in a short constitutional.
There were few other occupants in first class, but Alexia was startled to find that behind them and across sat a man in a sort of floppy turban. That is to say, she was not startled that there was someone else in the carriage but that a man was in a turban—most irregular. Turbans were well out of fashion, even for women. He seemed unduly interested in his daily paper, suggesting he had, until very recently, been unduly interested in something else. Lady Maccon, never one to take anything as coincidence, suspected him of observing her, or Major Channing, or both.
She pretended a little stumble as the train rattled along and fell in against the turbaned gentleman, upsetting his tea onto his paper.
“Oh, dear me, I do apologize,” she declaimed loudly.
The man shook his damp paper in disgust but said nothing.
“Please allow me to fetch you another cup? Steward!”
The man only shook his head and mumbled something low in a language Alexia did not recognize.
“Well, if you’re quite sure you won’t?”
The man shook his head again.
Alexia continued her walk to the end of the car, then turned about and returned to her seat.
“Major Channing, I do believe we have company,” she stated upon reseating herself.
The werewolf looked up from his own paper and over. “The man in the turban?”
“You noticed?”
“Hasn’t taken his eyes off you most of the ride. Bloody foreigners.”
“You didn’t think to tell me?”
“Thought it was your figure. Orientals never like to see a lady’s assets.”
“Oh, really, Major, must you be so crass? Such language.” Alexia paused, considering. “What nationality would you say?”
The major, who was very well traveled, answered without needing to look up again. “Egyptian.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, Major, you do so love to annoy, don’t you?”
“It is the stuff of living, my lady.”
“Don’t be pert.”
“Me? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
No further incidents occurred, and when they alighted at their stop, the foreign gentleman did not follow them.
“Interesting,” said Alexia again.
The Woolsey Station, a new stopover, was built at considerable expense by the newly relocated Woolsey Hive with an eye toward encouraging Londoners to engage in country jaunts. The greatest disappointment in Countess Nadasdy’s very long life was this exile to the outer reaches of Barking. The Woolsey Hive queen had commissioned the station to be built and even allocated a portion of Woolsey’s extensive grounds. From the station, visitors could catch a tiny private train, conducted by a complicated tram apparatus without an engineer. The location of the hive was no longer a not-very-well-kept secret. The vampires seemed to feel some sense of security in the country, but they were still vampires. There was no longer a road leading directly to Woolsey; there was only this special train, the operation of which was tightly controlled by drones at the castle terminus.
Lady Maccon approached the contraption warily. It looked like a chubby flat-bottomed rowboat on tracks, with a fabric-covered interior and two massive parasols for protection from the elements. Major Channing helped her to step inside and then followed, settling himself opposite. At which juncture they sat, staring at the scenery so as not to look at each other, waiting for something to happen.
“I suppose they must be alerted to the fact that we have arrived.” Alexia looked about for some kind of signaling device. She noticed that off to one side of the bench sat a fat little gun. After subjecting it to close examination, she shot it up into the air.
It made a tremendous clap. Major Channing started violently, much to Alexia’s satisfaction, and the gun emitted a ball of bright white fire that floated high up and then faded out.
Alexia looked at the weapon with approval. “Ingenious. Must be one of Madame Lefoux’s. I didn’t know she dabbled in ballistics.”
Channing rolled his ice-blue eyes. “That woman is an inveterate dabbler.”
They had no further time to consider the gun, for the rowboat jolted once, causing Alexia to fall back hard against one of the parasol supports. It was Major Channing’s turn to look amused at her predicament. They rolled forward, first at quite a sedate pace and then at increasing speed, the tracks running up the long, low hill to where Woolsey Castle crouched, a confused and confusing hodgepodge of architecture.
Countess Nadasdy had done what she could to improve the Maccons’ former place of residence, but it did little good. The resulting building merely looked grumpy over the indignity of change. She’d had it painted, and planted, and primped, and festooned, and draped to within an inch of its very long life. But it was asking too much of the poor thing. The result was something akin to dressing a bulldog up like an opera dancer. Underneath the tulle, it was still a bowlegged bulldog.
Major Channing helped Alexia out of the tram, and they made their way up the wide steps to the front door. Alexia felt a little odd, pulling the bell rope at what once had been her home. She could only imagine what Major Channing felt, having lived there for goodness knew how many decades.
His face was stoic. Or she thought it was stoic; it was difficult to tell under all that handsome haughtiness.
“She certainly has made”—he paused—“adjustments.”
Lady Maccon nodded. “The door is painted with silver swirls. Silver!”
Major Channing had no opportunity to answer, for said door was opened by a beautiful young maid with glossy ebony hair, decked out in a frilled black dress with crisp white shirt and black pin-tucked apron front. Perfect in every way, as was to be expected in the countess’s household.
“Lady Maccon and Major Channing, to see Countess Nadasdy.”
“Oh, yes, you are expected, my lady. I’ll inform my mistress you are here. If you wouldn’t mind waiting one moment in the hall?”
Lady Maccon and Major Channing did not mind, for they were busy absorbing the transformation the countess had enacted upon their former abode. The carpets were now all thick and plush and blood red in color. The walls had been repapered in pale cream and gold, with a collection of fine art rescued from the wreckage of the hive’s previous abode on prominent display. These were luxurious changes that neither appealed to a werewolf’s taste nor suited his lifestyle. One simply did not live with Titian paintings and Persian rugs when one grew claws on a regular basis.
Major Channing, who hadn’t seen the place since the pack left it, arched one blond eyebrow. “Would hardly have thought it the same house.”
Lady Maccon made no answer. A vampire was oiling his way down the staircase toward them.
“Dr. Caedes, how do you do?”
“Lady Maccon.” Dr. Caedes was a thin, reedy man, with a hairline paused in the act of withdrawal and an interest in engineering, not medicinal matters, despite his title.
“You know Major Channing, of course?”
“We may have met.” The doctor inclined his head. He did not smile nor show fang.
Ah, thought Alexia, we are to be treated with respect. How droll. “My husband would have attended your summons, but he was called away on urgent business.”
“Oh?”
“A family matter.”
“I do hope it is nothing serious?”
Alexia tilted her head, playing the game of reveal with aplomb. She had been some time now a member of the Shadow Council and was a quick study in the fine art of conversing upon matters of great importance yet saying nothing significant. “More bedraggled, I suspect. Shall we proceed?”
Dr. Caedes backed down, having to follow the niceties of conversation that he and his kind had insinuated into society. “Of course, my lady. If you’d care to follow me? The countess is awaiting you in the Blue Room.”
The Blue Room, as it turned out, was the room formerly occupied by the Woolsey Pack’s extensive library. Alexia tried to hide her distress at the destruction of her favorite retreat. The vampires had stripped it of its mahogany shelving and leather seats and had papered it in cream and sky-blue stripes. The furniture was all cream in color with a decidedly Oriental influence and, unless Alexia was very much mistaken, Thomas Chippendale originals.
Countess Nadasdy sat in an arranged manner, draped to one side over the corner of a window seat. She wore an extremely fashionable and extraordinarily elaborate moss-green receiving dress trimmed with pale blue, the skirt tied back so narrowly that Lady Maccon wondered at the queen’s ability to walk about, and the sleeves were so tight Alexia very much doubted the vampire could lift her arms at all. Biffy had tried to foist such absurdities upon Alexia, but only once, at which juncture she insisted that mobility was not to be sacrificed for taste, especially not with a child like Prudence dashing about. Biffy hunted down daringly cut fluid styles influenced by the Far East for his mistress to wear instead and said no more about it.
The countess had the ample figure of a milkmaid who had partaken too freely of the creamy results of her labors, which did not suit the style of the dress at all. Alexia would never have said a word, but she shuddered to think of Lord Akeldama’s opinion on such a figure in such attire. She planned, of course, to describe it in detail to her dear friend as soon as possible.
