“Madame Lefoux and I are traveling to Italy, for my low spirits, you understand.”
“Oh, dear, but, Alexia, you do realize”—Ivy lowered her voice to a whisper—“that Italy is where they keep Italians. Are you quite certain you are adequately prepared to cope?”
Lady Maccon suppressed a smile. “I think I might just be able to muddle along.”
“I am certain I heard the most horrible thing about Italy recently. I am failing to recal quite what it was, but it cannot possibly be a healthy place to visit, Alexia. I understand that Italy is the place vegetables come from—al that weather. Terribly bad for the digestion—vegetables.”
Lady Maccon could think of nothing to say in response to that, so she continued packing.
Ivy returned to perusing the hats, final y settling on a flowerpot style covered in striped purple and black tweed, with large purple rosettes, gray ostrich plumes, and a smal feathered pouf at the end of a long piece of wire that stuck straight out of the crown. It looked, when Ivy proudly donned said hat, as though she were being stalked by an enraptured jel yfish.
“I shal have a new carriage dress made to match,” she announced proudly while poor Tunstel paid for the atrocity.
Lady Maccon remarked, under her breath, “Wouldn’t it be more sensible to, for example, simply throw yourself off a dirigible?”
Ivy pretended not to hear, but Tunstel shot his wife’s friend a wide smile.
Madame Lefoux cleared her throat, looking up from the transaction.
“I was wondering, Mrs. Tunstel , if you might do me a very great favor.”
Ivy was never one to let down a friend in need. “Delighted, Madame Lefoux. How may I be of assistance?”
“Wel , as you may have surmised”—never a good phrase when applied to Ivy—“I wil be accompanying Lady Maccon to Italy.”
“Oh, real y? How noble of you. But I suppose you are French, which can’t possibly be al that different from Italian.”
Madame Lefoux paused in stunned silence before recovering her powers of speech.
She cleared her throat. “Yes, well , I was wondering if you might consider overseeing the day-to-day running of the hat shop while I am away.”
“Me? Engage in trade? well , I don’t know.” Ivy looked about at the dangling hats, undeniably tempting in al their feathered and flowered glory. But stil , she had not been raised for commerce.
“You could, of course, borrow from the stock at your leisure and discretion.”
Mrs. Tunstel ’s eyes took on a distinctly covetous sheen. “Wel , if you put it like that, Madame Lefoux, how can I possibly refuse? I would be absolutely delighted to take on the task. What do I need to know? Oh, wait just a moment, before we start, if you please.
Ormond.” Ivy summoned her husband with a little flap of her hand.
Dutiful y, Tunstel trotted over, and Ivy issued him a complex set of whispered instructions. In a flash, he had doffed his hat to the ladies, let himself out the front door, and was off down the street about some errand at his wife’s behest.
Alexia approved. At least Ivy had him well trained.
Madame Lefoux led Mrs. Tunstel behind the smal counter and spent the next half hour showing her how to cook the books.
“No need to place any new orders, and no need to open the shop for business al that frequently while I am away. I have listed the important appointments here. I understand you are a busy lady.”
Ivy displayed surprising aptitude for the accounting. She always had been good with sums and figures, and she was obviously capable of being serious, at least about hats.
Just as they were finishing up, Tunstel reappeared, clutching a smal brown paper package.
Alexia joined them to make her good-byes. Directly before leaving, Ivy handed Alexia the package that Tunstel had just acquired.
“For you, my dearest Alexia.”
Curiously, Alexia turned it about in her hands before unwrapping it careful y. It turned out to be a whole pound of tea inside a decorative little wooden box.
“I remembered that awful thing I had heard about Italy.” Ivy dabbed at the corner of one eye with her handkerchief in an excess of sentiment. “What I heard… Oh, I can hardly speak of it… I heard that in Italy they drink”—she paused—“coffee. ” She shuddered delicately. “So horribly bad for the stomach.” She pressed Alexia’s hand fervently with both of hers and the damp handkerchief. “Good luck.”
“Why, thank you, Ivy, Tunstel , very thoughtful and kind of you both.”
It was good-quality tea, large-leaf Assam, a particular favorite of Alexia’s. She tucked it careful y into her dispatch case to carry with her on board the trans-channel dirigible.
As she was no longer muhjah and the dispatch case could not serve its intended purpose of carrying secret and highly significant documents and gadgets belonging to queen and country, it might as well carry an item of equal value and importance.
Ivy might be a tad preposterous at times, but she was a kind and thoughtful friend.
Much to both of their surprise, Alexia kissed Ivy on the cheek in gratitude. Ivy’s eyes well ed with tears.
Tunstel gave them yet another cheerful grin and shepherded his stil -emotive spouse from the shop. Madame Lefoux had to dash after them to give Ivy the spare key and a few last instructions.
Professor Lyal had endured a long and trying day. Ordinarily, he was well equipped to cope with such tribulation, being a self-assured gentleman possessed of both mental acumen and physical prowess accompanied by the economy of thought required to choose quickly which best suited any given situation. That afternoon, however, with the ful moon rapidly approaching, an Alpha out of commission, and Lady Maccon heading to Italy, it must be admitted that he nearly, on two occasions, lost his temper. The vampire drones were being unresponsive, only admitting to the fact that their respective masters “might not be available” for BUR duty that evening. There were three vampires on staff, and BUR was not designed to cope with a sudden loss of these supernatural agents al at once. Especial y not when the four BUR-affiliated werewolves were al young enough to already be out of commission on their monthly bone-bender. To compound the staffing issue, certain supplies hadn’t arrived as scheduled, two suspicious dirigible accidents needed to be investigated, and there was an exorcism to perform just after sunset. While dealing with al of this, Professor Lyal had to foil no less than eight reporters hoping to interview Lord Maccon, ostensibly about the dirigibles but undoubtedly about Lady Maccon. Needless to say, Lyal was in no mood to find, upon returning home just prior to sunset, his Alpha singing opera—or what might have been considered opera by a tribe of tone-deaf orangutans—in the bathtub.
“You managed to break back into my specimen col ection, didn’t you? Real y, my lord, those were the last of my samples.”
“Ish good stuff, fermaldathdie.”
“I thought I set Major Channing to keep watch over you. He hasn’t gone to sleep, has he? He should be able to hold for one ful day. He can take direct sunlight—I have seen him do it—and you are not so difficult to track, not in this condition at least.” Professor Lyal looked accusingly around the bathing chamber, as though the Woolsey Gamma’s blond head might just pop up from behind the clothing rack.
“He canna poshibly do tha.”
“Oh, no, why not?” Professor Lyal tested the water in which Lord Maccon splashed and wal owed like some bewildered water buffalo. It was quite cold. With a sigh, the Beta retrieved his Alpha’s robe. “Come on, my lord. Let’s get you out of there, shal we?”
Lord Maccon grabbed his washrag and began conducting the opening sequence of The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, flicking water al about the room as he did so.
“Maidens, never mind us,” sang the earl, “twirling ’round and ’round.”
“Where has Major Channing gone off to, then?” Professor Lyal was irritated, but it didn’t show in his voice. It seemed he had spent a lifetime being irritated with Channing, and given the day so far, this was nothing more than what was to be expected. “I gave him a direct order. Nothing should have superseded that. I am stil Beta of this pack, and Major Channing is under my command.”
“Under mine firsh,” objected Lord Maccon mildly. Then he warbled out, “For you’l be left behind us, you’l be safe and sound.”
Professor Lyal attempted to part pul , part lift his Alpha out of the bathtub. But he lost his grip and Lord Maccon slipped and went fal ing back into it with a tremendous splash.
The massive tub, with its smal steam-heating attachment, was extremely well constructed and had been imported from the Americas at great expense because there they knew steel. But it stil wobbled dangerously on its four clawed feet under Lord Maccon’s weight.
“If a bul et’s bil et, you are doomed to fal ,” sang out the drenched werewolf, skipping several of the words.
“You gave Channing a direct order? In this state?” Professor Lyal tried once more to extract the earl from the tub. “And he obeyed you?”
For one brief second, Lord Maccon’s eyes sharpened and he looked quite sober. “I am stil his Alpha; he had better obey me.”
Professor Lyal final y managed to get his Alpha out of the water and into the robe in a desultory kind of way. The thin material stuck indecently close in places, but the earl, never one to suffer the strain of modesty under any circumstances, clearly didn’t give a fig, or a fig leaf.
Professor Lyal was used to it.
Lord Maccon began swaying back and forth in time with his singing. “Take your glass and fil it, laugh and drink with al !”
“Where did you send him?” Professor Lyal , supporting the brunt of his Alpha’s weight, blessed his own supernatural strength, which made the massive man merely awkward rather than hopeless to maneuver. Lord Maccon was built like a brick outhouse, with opinions twice as unmoving and often equal y ful of crap.
“Aha, wouldna you like ta know tha?” The Alpha did not do coy well , and Professor Lyal was not amused at the lack of a direct answer.
“Did you send him after Lord Akeldama?”
Lord Maccon came over slightly sober once more. “That pansy. Missing, is he?
Good. He reminds me of limp custard fil ing, al cream and no crust. Never could understand what Alexia saw in that pointy-toothed ninnyhammer. My wife! Cavorting about with a crustless vampire. Least I know he isna the father.” The Alpha’s yel ow eyes squinted, as if he were trying to keep from thinking about that.
Suddenly, he flopped downward with al his weight, slipped out of Professor Lyal ’s hold, and landed in a cross-legged heap in the middle of the floor. His eyes were starting to go completely yel ow, and he was looking altogether too hairy for Professor Lyal ’s liking. Ful moon wasn’t for a couple more nights, and Lord Maccon, by Alpha rights and strength, ought to be able to resist the change easily. Apparently, he wasn’t bothering to try.
The earl continued to sing even as his slurring from the drink gave way to slurring from his jawbones breaking and re-forming into those of a wolf’s muzzle. “Drink and sing a ditty, good-bye to the past, al the more’s the pity, if this cup’s our last!”
Professor Lyal was Woolsey Pack Beta for many reasons, one of them being that he knew perfectly well when he needed to ask for assistance. A quick run to the door and one loud yel had four of Woolsey’s strongest clavigers in to help him navigate his lordship, now a very drunken wolf, down into the cel ar lockup. Four legs offered no improvement in the matter of the earl’s wobbling, and instead of singing, he merely took to letting forth with a mournful howl or two. An aggravating day was looking to become an equal y aggravating night. With Major Channing vanished, Professor Lyal real y had only one recourse left to him: he cal ed for a pack meeting.
CHAPTER SIX
Under the Name Tarabotti
It was early evening, the sun just setting, when three unlikely-looking companions boarded the last dirigible for Calais, leaving from its mooring atop the white cliffs of Dover. No reporters managed to capture the departure of the notorious Lady Maccon.
This may have had something to do with the swiftness of her response to the publication of her al eged indiscretion, or it may have been the fact that the lady in question was traveling incognito by means of being outrageous in entirely new ways. Instead of her fashionable but severely practical garb, Alexia sported a black floating dress with chiffon ruffles, yel ow modesty straps dangling about the skirt, and a hideous yel ow hat. She bore, as a result, some passing resemblance to a self-important bumblebee. It was a truly ingenious disguise, for it made the dignified Lady Maccon look and act rather more like an aging opera singer than a societal grande dame. She was accompanied by a well -dressed young gentleman and his valet. Only one conclusion might be drawn from such a party—that it was an impropriety in action.