“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 scone from the tea tray and plopped a dollop of cream and marmalade on top of it. “Did you side with the pack when they betrayed my husband?” she asked in forced casualness.
“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 Felicity’s wickedness. Lady Maccon felt that the presence of both women would provide a better defense than anything else. It was hard to get up to serious shenanigans under the enthusiastic interest of two perennially bored, unmarried ladies.