The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set by Gail Carriger
“It would be a terrible destruction, and I should be opposed, save that we canna simply have these things wandering around the empire. Imagine if they fell into the wrong hands?”
“Such as the Hypocras Club?” Lady Maccon shuddered to even think it.
“Or the vampires.” No matter how integrated the two became into civilized society, werewolves and vampires would never really trust one another.
Lady Maccon stopped suddenly. Her husband got four long strides ahead before he realized she had paused. She was staring thoughtfully up into the aether, twirling the deadly parasol about her head.
“I have just remembered something,” Alexia said when he returned to her side.
“Oh, that explains everything. How foolish of me to think you could walk and remember at the same time.”
She stuck her tongue out at him but began drifting toward the house once more. He slowed to match her pace. “That bug, the one that scared me at breakfast. It was not a cockroach at all. It was a scarab beetle. From Egypt. It must have something to do with the artifacts they brought back.”
Lord Maccon’s lip curled. “Yuck.”
They had fallen some distance behind the rest of the party. The others were busy entering the castle just as someone else emerged. There was a pause while they all politely greeted one another, and then the new figure headed purposefully in the direction of Lord and Lady Maccon.
The figure rapidly resolved itself into the personage of Madame Lefoux.
Alexia waved a “how do you do” at the Frenchwoman. She was wearing her beautiful morning coat of dove-gray, striped trousers, a black satin waistcoat, and a royal-blue cravat. It made for a pretty picture, the Kingair castle—mist-shrouded and gray in the background—and the attractive woman, as improperly dressed as she may be, hurrying toward them. Until Madame Lefoux neared enough for them to realize she was also wearing something else: a concerned expression.
“I am glad I ’ave found you two.” Her accent was unusually strong. She sounded almost as bad as Angelique. “Ze most extraordinary thing, Lady Maccon. I waz looking for you just now to let you know, we went to check on the aethographor; then I saw—”
The most tremendous clap resounded through the Scottish air. Alexia felt certain she could see the mist shake with the noise. Madame Lefoux, her face changing from worry to surprise, stopped midsentence and midstep and tumbled forward, as limp as overcooked pasta. A bloom of red appeared on one immaculate gray lapel.
Lord Maccon caught the inventor before she could fall completely to the ground and carefully lowered her there instead. He held his hand briefly before her mouth to see if she was breathing. “She is still alive.” Alexia quickly pulled her shawl from about her shoulders and handed it to him to use as a bandage. No sense in his spoiling the last of his good cravats.
Alexia looked up at the castle, scoping the battlements for a glint of sun on a rifle barrel, but there were too many battlements and there was too little sun. The sharpshooter, whoever he might be, was not visible.
“Get down this instant, woman,” ordered her husband, grabbing her by one skirt ruffle and yanking her down next to the fallen Frenchwoman. The ruffle ripped. “We dinna know if the shooter was aiming at her or at us,” he growled.
“Where’s your precious pack? Shouldn’t they be hightailing it to our rescue?”
“How do you ken it isna them shooting?” her husband wondered.
“Good point.” Lady Maccon shifted her open parasol defensively so that it shielded them as much as possible from sight of the castle.
Another shot rang out. It hit the ground next to them, splattering turf and small pebbles.
“Next time,” grumbled the earl, “I shall pay extra and have that thing made with metal shielding.”
“Oh, that will be tremendously practical for hot summer afternoons. Come on, we need to find cover,” hissed his wife. “I shall leave the parasol propped here as a diversion.”
“Break for that hedge?” suggested Conall, looking over to their right, where a little berm covered in wild roses seemed to be the Kingair formal garden hedge substitute.
Alexia nodded.
Lord Maccon hoisted the Frenchwoman over one shoulder easily. He might no longer have superhuman strength, but he was still strong.
They dashed toward the berm.
Another shot rang forth.
Only then did they hear yelling. Alexia peeked around the rosebush. Members of the pack poured out of the castle, looking about for the source of the shooting. Several yelled and pointed up. Clavigers and pack reentered the castle at a run.
Lord and Lady Maccon stayed hidden until they were convinced that no one would be taking any more shots at them. Then they emerged from behind the bushes. Lord Maccon carried Madame Lefoux, and Lady Maccon retrieved her parasol.
Upon attaining the house, it was found that Madame Lefoux was in no serious medical danger but had simply fainted from the wound, her shoulder badly gouged by the bullet.
Ivy appeared. “Oh dear, has something untoward ensued? Everyone is gesticulating.” Upon catching sight of the comatose form of Madame Lefoux, she added, “Has she come over nonsensical?” At the sight of the blood, Ivy became rather breathless and looked near to fainting herself. Nevertheless, she trailed them into the back parlor, unhelpfully offering to help and interrupting, as they lowered Madame Lefoux to the small settee, with, “She hasn’t caught a slight fatality, has she?”
“What happened?” demanded Lady Kingair, ignoring Ivy and Felicity, who had also entered the room.
“Someone seems to have decided to dispose of Madame Lefoux,” Lady Maccon said, bustling about ordering bandages and vinegar. Alexia believed that a generous application of cider vinegar could cure most ills, except, of course, for those bacterial disorders that required bicarbonate of soda.
Felicity decided to immediately absent herself from any possible associated danger via proximity to Madame Lefoux. Which, as it absented everyone else from her, was no bad thing.
Only Lady Kingair had the wherewithal to respond. “Good Lord, why? She’s naught more than a two-bit French inventor.”
Alexia thought she saw the Frenchwoman twitch at that. Was Madame Lefoux shamming? Alexia leaned in on the pretext of checking bandages. She caught a whiff of vanilla, mixed with the coppery smell of blood this time instead of mechanical oil. The inventor remained absolutely still under Alexia’s gentle ministrations. Not even her eyelids moved. If she was shamming, she was very, very good at it.
Lady Maccon glanced toward the door and thought she caught a flicker of servant black. Angelique’s white, horrified face peeked around the corner. Before Alexia could summon her in, the maid disappeared.
“An excellent question. Perhaps she will be so kind as to tell us once she has awakened,” Lady Maccon said, once more watching Madame Lefoux’s face. No reaction to that statement.
Unfortunately for everyone’s curiosity, Madame Lefoux did not awaken, or did not allow herself to be awakened, for the entirety of the rest of the afternoon. Despite the assiduous attentions of Lord and Lady Maccon, half the Kingair Pack, and several clavigers, her eyes remained stubbornly shut.
Lady Maccon took her tea in the sickroom, hoping the smell of baked goods would awaken Madame Lefoux. All that resulted was that Lady Kingair came to join her. Alexia had settled into not liking this relation of her husband’s, but she had not the constitution that would allow for anything to interfere with her consumption of tea.
“Has our patient awakened yet?” inquired Lady Kingair.
“She remains dramatically abed.” Alexia frowned into her cup. “I do hope nothing is seriously wrong with her. Should we call a doctor, do you think?”
“I’ve seen and tended to much worse on the battlefield.”
“You go with the regiment?”
“I may not be a werewolf, but I’m Alpha female for this pack. My place is with them, even if I dinna fight alongside.”
Alexia selected a
“He told you about it.”
Lady Maccon nodded and ate a bite of scone.
“I was just sixteen when he left, away at finishing school. I didna have a say in the pack’s choices.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now I ken they all behaved like fools. You dinna piss upwind.”
Alexia winced at the vulgarity of the statement.
Sidheag sipped her tea, relishing the effect of her barracks language on her guest. “Queen Victoria might not chase the tails of a werewolf agenda, but she isna bleeding to the vampire fang either. She’s no Henry or Elizabeth to be throwing her support full tilt behind the supernatural cause, but she hasna been as bad as we’d feared either. Perhaps she doesna watch the scientists as careful as she might, and she sure plays us close and fast, but I dinna think she is the worst monarch we could be having.”
Lady Maccon wondered if Sidheag was attempting to guarantee the pack’s safety or if the woman was talking truth. “Do you consider yourself a progressive, then, like my husband?”
“I’m saying, everyone handled the incident poorly. An Alpha abandoning his pack is extreme. Conall ought to have killed all the ringleaders, not just the Beta, and restructured. I love this pack, and to leave it leaderless and turn to a London pack instead is worse than death. It was a national embarrassment, what your husband did.” Lady Kingair leaned forward, eyes fierce. She was close enough for Alexia to see that her graying hair, pulled tightly back into a braid, was frizzing slightly in the humid air.
“I thought he left them Niall?”
“Na. I brought Niall back with me. He was naught more than a loner I met abroad. Handsome and dashing, just what all schoolroom misses want in a husband. I thought I’d be bringing him home to meet the pack and gramps, get permission, and post the bans. Only to find the old wolf gone and the pack in shambles.”
“You took on the responsibility of leadership?”
Sidheag sipped her tea. “Niall was an excellent soldier and a good husband, but he’d have made a better Beta. He took on Alpha for my sake.” She rubbed at her eyes with two fingers. “He was a good man, and a good wolf, and he did his best. I willna speak against him.”
Alexia knew enough about herself to realize she couldn’t have taken on leadership like that so young, and she considered herself a capable person. No wonder Sidheag was bitter.
“And now?”
“Now we’re even worse off. Niall killed in battle and no one able enough to take Alpha role, let alone be Alpha in truth. And I’m knowing full well Gramps willna come back to us. Marrying you cemented that. We’ve lost him for good.”
Lady Maccon sighed. “Regardless, you need to trust him. You should take your concerns to him and talk this out. He will see reason. I know he will. And he will help you find a solution.”
Lady Kingair put her cup down with a sharp clatter. “There is only one solution. And he willna take it. I have written and asked every year for the last decade, and time is running out.”
“What is that?”
“He needs to see me changed.”
Lady Maccon sat back, puffing out her cheeks. “But that is so very perilous. I do not have the statistics on hand, but aren’t the odds completely against a woman surviving the metamorphosis bite?”
Lady Kingair shrugged. “No one has tried in hundreds of years. ’Tis one of the ways packs beat out hives. At least we dinna need females to sustain ourselves.”
“Yes, but vampires still manage to survive longer—less fighting. Even if you do survive the bite, you’re setting yourself up to Alpha for the rest of your life.”
“Hang the danger!” Sidheag Maccon practically yelled. Alexia thought the woman had never looked more like Conall. Her eyes also turned toward yellow when she was overset with extreme emotion.
“And you want Conall to do this for you? Risk killing off the last of his living relatives?”
“For me, for the pack. I’m na having any bairns at my age. He willna be able to continue the Maccon line through me. He’s needing to move on from that. He owes Kingair some kind of salvation.”
“You’ll likely die.” Lady Maccon poured herself another spot of tea. “You have held this pack together as a human.”
“And what happens after I die of old age? Better to take the risk now.”
Alexia was silent. Finally she said, “Oddly enough, I agree with your assessment.”
Lady Kingair stopped drinking her tea and simply clutched the saucer for a long moment, fingertips white with tension. “Would you talk to him for me?”
“You want me to involve myself in Kingair’s problems? Is that wise? Couldn’t you simply go to another pack’s Alpha for the bite?”
“Never!” There went that stiff werewolf pride, or was it Scottish pride? Difficult to tell the difference sometimes.
Alexia sighed. “I will discuss it with him, but it is a moot point: Conall cannot bite you or anyone else to change, as he cannot take Anubis Form. Until we find out why this pack is changeless, nothing else can happen. No Alpha challenge, no metamorphosis.”
Lady Kingair nodded, relaxing her grip enough to sip at her tea once more.
Alexia noted that the woman did not crook her finger properly. What kind of finishing school had she been sent to, where they did not teach the basics of teacup holding? She cocked her head. “Is this humanization plague some kind of foolish self-flagellation? Do you want to take the rest of the pack with you into mortality because my husband will not bite you to metamorphosis?”
Lady Kingair’s tawny eyes, so much like Conall’s, narrowed at that. “It isna my fault,” she practically yelled. “Dinna you understand? We canna tell you because we dinna ken why this has happened to us. I dinna know. None of us know. We dinna ken what’s doing it!”
“So can I count on your support to figure it out?” Alexia asked.
“What’s it to you, Lady Maccon?”
Alexia backpedaled hurriedly. “I encourage my husband’s BUR concerns. It keeps him out of household affairs. And I am interested in these things, as a new Alpha of my own pack. If you have some kind of dangerous disease, I should very much like to understand it fully and prevent it from spreading.”
“If he agrees to try for my metamorphosis, I’ll agree to help.”
Knowing she couldn’t make any such promise on her husband’s behalf, Lady Maccon nevertheless said, “Done! Now, shall we finish our tea?”
They finished drinking in companionable discussion of the Women’s Social and Political Union, whose stance both ladies supported but whose tactics and working-class routes neither was inclined to ally with publicly. Lady Maccon refrained from commenting that, from her more intimate knowledge of Queen Victoria’s character, she could practically guarantee that lady’s continued low opinion of the movement. She could not make such a statement, however, without revealing her own political position. Even an earl’s wife would not be on such intimate terms with the queen, and she did not wish Lady Kingair to know that she was muhjah. Not yet.
Their pleasant conversation was interrupted by a knock at the parlor door.
At Lady Kingair’s call, Tunstell’s copious freckles came wandering in, attached to a somber-looking Tunstell.
“Lord Maccon sent me to sit with the patient, Lady Maccon.”
Alexia nodded her understanding. Worried and unsure of whom to trust, Lord Maccon was placing Tunstell as a surety against further attacks on Madame Lefoux’s person. Essentially, her husband was utilizing Tunstell’s claviger training. Tunstell may look like a git of the first water, but he could handle werewolves in full-moon thrall. Of course, that meant both Ivy and Felicity were soon likely to take up residence in the sickroom as well. Poor Tunstell. Miss Hisselpenny was still convinced she did not want him, but she was equally convinced she must protect him from F
Eventually, however, it became necessary for everyone but Tunstell to leave the still-unconscious Frenchwoman and dress for dinner.
Upon attaining her chamber, Lady Maccon received her second major shock of the day. It was a good thing she was a woman of stalwart character. Someone had upended her room. Again. Probably looking for the dispatch case. Shoes and slippers were everywhere, and the bed had been torn apart; even the mattress was slashed open. Feathers coated flat surfaces like so much snow. Hatboxes lay broken, hats disemboweled, and the contents of Alexia’s wardrobe lay strewn across the floor (a condition familiar to only the nightgowns).
Alexia propped her parasol safely to one side and took stock of the situation. The chaos was greater than it had been on board the dirigible, and the crisis was compounded shortly thereafter when Lord Maccon discovered the carnage.
“This is a gross outrage! First we are shot at, and now our rooms are ransacked,” he roared.
“Does this kind of thing always happen around a pack without an Alpha?” wondered his wife, nosing about, trying to determine if anything significant was missing.
The earl grunted at her. “A terrible bother, leaderless packs.”
“And messy.” Lady Maccon picked her way delicately about the room. “I wonder if this was the information Madame Lefoux had to impart before she was shot. She said something about trying to find me regarding the aethographor. Perhaps she disturbed the culprits in action when she came looking for me here.” Alexia began to form three piles: things beyond salvation, items for Angelique to repair, and the undamaged.
“But why would someone shoot at her?”
“Perhaps she saw their faces?”
The earl pursed his well-formed lips. “It is possible. Come here, woman; stop your fussing. The dinner bell is about to go, and I’m hungry. We shall tidy later.”
“Bossy britches,” said his wife, but she did as she was bid. It wouldn’t do to get into an argument with him on an empty stomach.