Lady Maccon considered this. “Good but not particularly well educated. I should say perhaps upstairs staff? Which could explain why she did not get proper preservation, burial?.?.?.?or registry with BUR.” Alexia was smart enough to carry the line of reasoning full unto its undignified potential. “So I am looking for a shopgirl or perhaps a housekeeper or cook. One who has died within the past two weeks. Few or no family members. And within a tethering radius of the potentate’s town house.”
Lord Akeldama shook his head in distress. “You have my deepest sympathies.”
Alexia knew this for the sham that it was. Lord Akeldama liked to pretend he attended only the best parties and fraternized with only the right kind of people. His drones were certainly drawn from the highest society had to offer. But Biffy, in his day, had unexpectedly turned up in more unsavory locales than a housekeeper would ever frequent, and Lord Akeldama would never make his drones go anywhere in London he had not vetted first himself.
The dewan kept the conversation on course. “But, Muhjah, that’s hundreds of houses, not to mention shops, private clubs, and other places of interest.”
Lady Maccon considered Madame Lefoux’s underground contrivance chamber, just outside the radius of inquiry. “In addition, it does not take into account cellars or attics built with subterfuge in mind. And it assumes strangers will tell me if someone within their household has recently died. Nevertheless, can you think of a better approach?”
Neither Lord Akeldama nor the dewan could.
The infant-inconvenience kicked out in apparent punctuation to this statement. Lady Maccon made an oof noise, glared down at her stomach, then cleared her throat when the others looked at her inquiringly.
“Do we inform the queen in the meantime?” Now that they had some kind of plan, the dewan seemed to feel that pacing about was no longer necessary. He came to sit at the table.
Lord Akeldama took a stand at that. He always took a stand over control of information. “Not just yet, I think, fluffy. Not until we have more concrete evidence. All we have now are the mutterings of a mad ghost.”
Lady Maccon, a mite suspicious of his motives, nevertheless had to agree with his point. “Very well, I’ll investigate those residences that look to be nighttime inclined, as soon as we have finished here. I’ll sleep tomorrow morning and continue in the afternoon with the daylight households.”
Lord Akeldama winced and then took a deep breath. “This may be distressing to hear, my flower, but I’m afraid it simply must be said. I am loathe to advocate such an onerous thing, but as you are searching for someone beneath you, you might want to dress down accordingly.”
Lady Maccon winced, thinking of Felicity and her knitwear. “Are you suggesting that I pretend to be a servant?”
“I am so very sorry, dumpling, but you might have greater success with subterfuge.” The vampire’s eyes welled with tears at the necessity of having to recommend such a horror.
Alexia took a deep breath to firm her resolve. “Oh, the actions I must undertake for my country.”
So it was that Lady Maccon, dressed in some menial rags of ill design and shapeless cut, accompanied by Biffy in the guise of husband, became far more familiar with her new neighborhood than she had previously imagined possible. Biffy looked more uncomfortable in his baggy, lower-class Sunday best than Alexia had ever seen him in evening garb, no matter how tight the breeches or how high the collar. Nevertheless, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the role of out-of-work butler with pregnant housekeeper wife. At each new door, they asked politely after places recently vacated. At each they were treated with a modicum of compassion by the respective butlers—partly due to Alexia’s condition but mostly due to the excellent references they were able to provide from one Lady Maccon of Woolsey Castle.
Still, after the eleventh cup of tea, they turned reluctantly back toward Lord Akeldama’s street, none the wiser as to any recent deaths that might have gone to ghost. Although, they had received, much to Alexia’s surprise, the offer of positions in the respectable town house of a minor baronet.
The infant-inconvenience, normally a fan of tea in any form, objected to such a quantity as was consumed upon visiting a succession of possible employers who treated prospective staff in accordance with all standards of common decency. Alexia positively sloshed as she walked. She gripped Biffy’s arm, partly from necessity and partly from the need to keep him human should the rising sun beat their return home. She was moved to ask him something that had been somewhat troubling her of late. “Lord Akeldama takes his tea with lemon?”
Biffy nodded, looking down at her, curious as to where she was going with the conversation.
“It never occurred to me until Professor Lyall brought it up, but this is rather peculiar a preference in a vampire. I was under the impression there were problems with fangs and citrus.”
Biffy smiled but said nothing.
Lady Maccon persisted. “Need I remind you where your loyalties now lie, young Biffy?”
“As if I could forget?” Biffy checked the lay of his collar in a nervous gesture. “Ah, well, it’s no particular secret of the commonwealth. He spent several decades, as I understand it, building up a tolerance.”
“Good gracious me, why?”
“Simply something to do, I suppose.”
“That sounds more like the Lord Akeldama of the fashion rags than the Lord Akeldama you and I know.”
“Of course, my lady. Truth?”
Alexia nodded.
“He likes to use lemon on his hair—says it adds brightness and shine. He’s terribly vain.” Biffy’s smile was tinged with longing.
“Oh, I know.” Alexia looked once more to her companion and then, with Lord Akeldama’s colorful town house in sight, pretended exhaustion and slowed their walk even further.
“Biffy, my dear, I am worried about you.”
“My lady?”
“I had a recent delivery of new fashion plates from Paris, and you hardly glanced at the hairstyles. My husband tells me you are still having difficulty controlling the change. And your cravat has been tied very simply of late, even for evening events.”
“I miss him, my lady.”
“Well, he is now living adjacent. You can hardly miss him all that much.”
“True. But we are no longer compatible—I am a werewolf; he is a vampire.”
“So?”
“So we cannot dance the same dance we used to.” Biffy was so sweet when he tried to be circumspect.
Alexia shook her head at him. “Biffy, and I mean this in the kindest way possible: then you should change the music.”
“Very good, my lady.”
Lady Maccon got very little sleep that day, partly due to the physical repercussions of too much tea and partly due to an unexpected visit from Ivy Tunstell early in the afternoon. Floote woke her with a gentle touch, a sincere apology, and the deeply troubling information that Miss Loontwill had taken it upon herself to entertain Mrs. Tunstell in the front parlor. They were awaiting Lady Maccon’s pleasure. Alexia half fell, half rolled out of bed, leaving her poor husband, equally disturbed by her now-chronic restlessness, to sleep.
It being daylight, Biffy was still abed, so she had to ask Floote to assist in buttoning her dress. The butler paled in horror at the very idea and went to corral one of Lord Akeldama’s drones in his stead. Boots proved willing to undertake the distasteful task. Although, it seemed to leave him unexpectedly breathless. Lady Maccon was beginning to learn that Boots was ever willing to undertake anything she asked of him.
Floote then managed to balance her, by sheer strength of will, across the short gangplank between balconies.
Downstairs, Felicity was looking more herself, having sent for her things that morning on the assumption that no objections could be found to her assuming permanent residence in her sister’s house. She wore a dress of modern cut with a shirtwaist-style top in turquoise satin trimmed in lace and complemented by matching turquoise rosettes on a white muslin skirt. A demure black bow was tied about her neck à la cravat, and black trim peeked forth between the flounces of the sleeves and at the center of the rosettes. The dress was new, expensive, and very stylish.
Mrs. Ivy Tunstell, by contrast, wore a visiting gown from two summers prior, its bustle a little too large and its design a little too bold. Unfortunate Ivy, having married a common theatrical, had to make over her existing gowns rather than order new ones.
For once, however, she did not seem to mind but was weathering Felicity’s conversation, which could be nothing but barb-tipped under the circumstances of an overbustled dress, with complacent demeanor and atypical presence of mind. Either Ivy did not realize she was being insulted, or she had some more interesting matters occupying her thoughts.
Lady Maccon took a deep breath and entered the parlor.
“Oh, sister, you do keep such peculiar hours in this household of yours,” commented Felicity, noticing her first.
Ivy hopped to her feet and tripped over to blow kisses at Alexia’s face. It was a repulsively Continental habit that she had adopted since her marriage. Lady Maccon blamed overexposure to the stage, or possibly her sometime employment in Madame Lefoux’s hat shop where the French propensity for familiar mannerisms, particularly between ladies, was encouraged beyond the pale.
“My dearest Ivy, how do you do? What an unexpected visit.”
“Oh, Alexia, how perfectly splendid of you to be in residence. I was so afraid”—Ivy lowered her voice dramatically—“that you might be in your confinement. Your silhouette is alarmingly advanced. I am not intruding, am I? No, you would be abed. Even you would not receive callers at such a time. Have you been drinking enough tea? Very good for ladies in your condition, is tea.”
Lady Maccon took a moment to allow the wash of Ivy’s chatter to cascade over her much in the manner that dandelion seeds fly on the winds of inconsequentiality. “Pray, do not trouble yourself on my behalf, Ivy. As you see, I am still ambulatory. Although, I will admit that it is a little problematic getting into motion these days. I do apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“Oh, pray, do not concern yourself. Felicity was quite proficient a substitute.”
Lady Maccon raised her eyebrows.
Ivy nodded in a conspiratorial way to indicate she was being entirely sincere. Her copious dark ringlets bobbed about. Her marriage had had little effect on her girlish preferences in hairstyles. It was probably just as well she had made a less-than-favorable match, for the wives of actors were rather expected to be eccentric in the matter of appearance.
At this juncture Felicity rose. “If you will excuse me, ladies, I have a meeting to attend.”
Lady Maccon looked after her sister in shock as she left with neither a remark as to Alexia’s corpulence nor to Ivy’s substandard attire. “I wonder if she will change her dress again.”
Ivy swished back over to the settee and collapsed onto it dramatically. “Change? Why should she? That was a perfectly splendid day gown.”
“Ivy, did you not notice something peculiar about Felicity’s demeanor?”