Nevertheless, the maid seemed satisfied. Clearly, she did not share Alexia's reservations. She let go of Miss Tarabotti's arm and slipped back into the house, closing the massive door firmly behind her.
Alexia, frowning in puzzlement, marched down the stairs and into the waiting hackney. She did not notice that it was not the same hackney as the one she had originally arrived in, nor that it was driven by a different coachman.
She did, however, realize instantly that there was someone already residing inside the cab. “Oh dear, I do beg your pardon! I thought this carriage was available,” said Miss Tarabotti to the bulky individual slouched in the corner of the facing seat. “I told my driver to wait, and here you were in exactly the same spot, with the cab door open. I simply assumed. I do apologize. I...” She trailed off.
The man's face was in shadows, his features obscured by a wide coachman's hat. He did not seem to have anything to say. No greeting, no acceptance of her apologies. He did not even bother to move his gray-gloved hand to tip that horribly inappropriate hat to a strange lady blundering about in his rented transport.
“Well,” said Miss Tarabotti, disgusted by his rudeness, “I shall just be off then.”
She turned to leave, but the driver had climbed down off the box and now stood outside in the street, barring her exit. His features were not shadowed. A nearby gas lamp lit them silky gold and shiny. Alexia jerked backward in horror. That face! It was like a wax copy of something not quite human, smooth and pale with no blemish, no scar, and no hair to speak of. On the forehead four letters had been written in some sort of smudged black substance: VIXI. And those eyes! They were dark and curiously blank, so flat and expressionless it was as though nothing lived within the mind behind them. Here was a man who watched the world without blinking, yet somehow refrained from looking directly at anything.
Miss Tarabotti backed away from that smooth face in repugnance. The apparition reached forward and slammed the door to the cab, jerking the handle to lock it closed. Only then did his set expression change. He grinned a slow lazy grin that crept across his waxy face the way oil spreads over water. His mouth was full of straight white squares, not teeth. Alexia was certain that smile would haunt her dreams for years to come.
The wax man vanished from the door window, presumably to pull himself onto the driver's box, for, within the next moment, the carriage jerked and began to move. It rattled and creaked over the London street cobbles, heading toward a place Alexia was reasonably confident she had no desire to visit.
Miss Tarabotti grabbed the handle of the door, rattling it ineffectively. She braced one shoulder against it and pushed hard, putting her entire weight behind the shove. Nothing.
“Now, my dear,” said the shadowed man, “no cause to carry on like that.” His face remained obscured, although he was now leaning toward her. There was an odd smell in the air, like sweet turpentine. It was by no means a pleasant odor.
Miss Tarabotti sneezed.
“All we want to know is who you are and what you are doing visiting the Westminster hive. This will not hurt a bit.” He lunged at her. He was holding a damp handkerchief in one hand—the apparent source of the unpleasant smell.
Alexia was not given to bouts of hysterics. However, she was also not one to stay quiet when circumstances warranted volume. She screamed, loud and long. It was one of those shrill, high shrieks, the kind only terrified women or very good actresses can produce. The scream exited the hackney cab as though no walls stood in the way and rent the quiet London night, cutting through the sound of horse hooves on stone. It rattled the leaded glass of the slumbering residences. It caused more than one stray cat to look about, suitably impressed.
At the same time, Miss Tarabotti braced herself back against the locked door. Without her parasol, her best defense was a good sharp-heeled kick. She was wearing her very favorite walking boots. They had lovely hourglass heels made of wood that gave her a little too much height for fashion but were pretty enough to make her feel almost elegant. They were also the pointiest pair of shoes she owned. Her mother had considered their purchase quite shockingly French. Alexia aimed one hard heel at the shadowed man's kneecap.
“No call for that!” he said, dodging the kick.
Miss Tarabotti was not certain if he was objecting to the kick or the scream, so she issued both again— with interest. He seemed to be having a difficult time negotiating Alexia's multiple layers of skirts and ruffles, which formed a particularly efficacious barrier in the tight confines of the hackney. Unfortunately, Alexia's own defensive movements were equally restricted. She leaned back stubbornly and kicked out again. Her skirts swished.
Despite Miss Tarabotti's best efforts, the shadowed man's handkerchief was coming inexorably toward her face. She twisted her head away, feeling dizzy. The sweet fumes were almost overwhelming. Her eyes began to water slightly. Time seemed to slow. Alexia could not help wondering what she had done to offend the heavens so much they sent two attackers at her in the space of one short week.
Just when she felt there was no more hope and she was in imminent danger of succumbing to the fumes, there came an unexpected noise. One designed, Miss Tarabotti suspected, by this newfangled concept of evolution to chill the bones of mankind. It was a vast, roaring, snarling howl. It shivered the air and the blood and the flesh all up and down one's spine. It was the cry a predator made only once, when the prey was not yet dead, but the kill was assured. In this particular case, it was followed by a loud thump as something hit the front of the cab hard enough to rattle the two who struggled within.
The carriage, which had been picking up some speed, jerked to an abrupt halt. Alexia heard the screaming cry of a terrified horse. There came a snap as the animal broke free of its traces, and then the sound of galloping hooves as it took off alone through the London streets.
Another loud thump reverberated—flesh against wood. The cab shook again.
Miss Tarabotti's attacker became distracted. He left off forcing the handkerchief on her and instead pulled down the window sash and leaned out, craning his head around toward the driver's box. “What is going on out there?”
No answer was forthcoming.
Miss Tarabotti kicked the back of his knee.
He turned around, grabbed her boot, and jerked it forward.
She fell back against the door, hard enough to bruise her spine on the handle, her layers of dress and corset failing to shield her.
“You are beginning to annoy me,” the shadowed man growled. He yanked her foot sharply upward. Alexia struggled valiantly to stand upright on only one leg and screamed again, this time more of a shriek of anger and frustration than distress.
As though in response, the door she leaned against opened.
With a small squeak of alarm. Miss Tarabotti fell backward out of the cab, legs and arms flailing. She landed with an “oof” on something solid but fleshy enough to comfortably break her fall.
She took a deep breath of the stale London air and then coughed. Well, at least it was not chloroform. She had not met the chemical in person before, it being only newly circulated among the most scientifically minded of the medical profession, but she had a good idea that must be what saturated the shadowed man's ominous handkerchief.
Her landing mattress squirmed and growled. “Good God, woman! Shift off.”
Miss Tarabotti was no lightweight. She made no bones about enjoying food—on a fairly regular basis and generally of the toothsome variety. She kept her figure through regular exercise, not a tightly controlled diet. But Lord Maccon, for it was he who squirmed, was very strong and ought to have shifted her easily. Instead he seemed to be having some trouble removing her from atop of him. It took an inordinate amount of time for such a big man, even if such intimate contact with a preternatural canceled out his supernatural strength.
As a general rule, Lord Maccon appreciated a voluptuous woman. He liked a bit of meat on the female form, more to grab on to—and more to chew off. His voice, annoyed as always, belied the gentleness in his big hands as he took the excuse of removing Alexia's generous curves from his person to check for injuries.
“Are you unhurt, Miss Tarabotti?”
“You mean, aside from my dignity?” Alexia suspected Lord Maccon's handling was a tad more than was strictly called for under the circumstances, but she secretly enjoyed the sensation. After all, how often did a spinster of her shelf life get manhandled by an earl of Lord Maccon's peerage? She had better take advantage of the situation. She smiled at her own daring and wondered who could be said to be taking advantage of whom!
Eventually, the earl levered her into a sitting position. He then rolled out from under her and stood, jerking her unceremoniously to her feet.
“Lord Maccon,” said Miss Tarabotti, “why is it that around you I always end up in some variety of indelicate and prone position?”
The earl arched a debonair eyebrow at her. “The first time we met, I believe it was I who took a particularly undignified tumble.”
“As I have informed you previously”—Alexia brushed off her dress—”I did not leave the hedgehog there intentionally. How was I to know you would sit on the poor creature?” She looked up from her ministrations and gasped in shock. “There is blood all over your face!”
Lord Maccon wiped his face hurriedly on his evening jacket sleeve, like a naughty child caught covered in marmalade, but did not explain. Instead he growled at her and pointed into the hackney. “See what you have gone and done? He got away!”
Alexia did not see, because there was nothing inside the cab to see any longer. The shadowed man had taken the opportunity her unfortunate tumble afforded to escape.
“I did not do anything. You opened the door. I simply fell out of it. A man was attacking me with a wet handkerchief. What else was I supposed to do?”
Lord Maccon could not say much in response to such an outlandish defense.
So he merely repeated, “A wet handkerchief?”
Miss Tarabotti crossed her arms and nodded mutinously. Then, in typical Alexia fashion, she opted to go on the attack. She had no idea what it was about Lord Maccon that always made her so inclined, but she went with the impulse, perhaps encouraged by her Italian blood. “Wait just a moment now! How did you find me here? Have you been following me?”
Lord Maccon had the good grace to look sheepish—if a werewolf can be said to look sheepish. “I do not trust vampire hives,” he grumbled, as though that were an excuse. “I told you not to come. Didn't I tell you not to come? Well, look what happened.”
“I would have you know I was perfectly safe in that hive. It was only when I left that things went all”— she waved a hand airily—“squiffy.”
“Exactly!” said the earl. “You should go home and stay inside and never go out again.”
He sounded so serious Alexia laughed. “You were waiting for me the entire time?” She looked curiously up at the moon. It was past three-quarters in size—an easy-change moon. She remembered the blood on his mouth and put two and two together. “It is a chilly night. I take it you were in wolf form?”
Lord Maccon crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.