“Sister, really, this is uncalled for. Is it the tooth marks? Is that what has you overset? There are only a few.”
“Miss Felicity,” Alexia heard Floote say, “do try to behave.”
Boots, finished mooring down the dirigible, came up next to Alexia and offered her his arm. “Lady Maccon?”
She took it gratefully. The infant-inconvenience really was being quite troublesome at the moment. She felt as though she’d swallowed a fighting ferret.
“Perhaps you could take me to the, uh, closet, Mr. Bootbottle-Fipps? I feel I ought to lie down. Just for a moment, mind you. There is still a loose hive to deal with. I suppose I should try to determine where Countess Nadasdy has gone. And Madame Lefoux, of course. She should not be allowed to rampage.”
“Certainly not, my lady,” agreed Boots. Who clearly felt, as Alexia did, that rampaging under any circumstances was uncalled for.
They had barely made it off the roof and down the staircases toward Lord Akeldama’s second best closet when a panting drone appeared before them. He was a tall and comely fellow with an affable face, a mop of curly hair, and a loose, floppy way of walking. He also had the most poorly tied cravat Alexia had ever seen within walking distance of Lord Akeldama. She looked with shock at Boots.
“New drone,” Boots explained to Lady Maccon before turning amicably to face the young man.
“What ho, Boots!”
“Chip chip, Shabumpkin. Looking for me?”
“Rather!”
“Ah! Need a mo’ to see her ladyship squared away properly.”
“Oh, no, not just you, my dear chap. Looking for Lady Maccon as well. Care to follow?”
Alexia looked at the young man as though he had crawled from somewhere smelly. “Must I?”
“?’Fraid so, your ladyship. Himself has called an emergency meeting of the Shadow Council,” explained the drone.
“But it’s full moon??the dewan can’t attend.”
“Several of us pointed this out to him. Niggling detail, said he.”
“Oh, dear. Not at Buckingham, I hope?” Alexia clutched at her stomach, appalled at the very idea of any further travel.
The dandy grinned. “In his drawing room, madam. Where else?”
“Oh, thank goodness. Have Floote follow me there, would you, please? Once he’s finished with his current line of business.”
“?’Course, Lady Maccon. My pleasure.”
“Thank you, Mr., uh, Shabumpkin.”
At which Boots straightened his spine, took a firmer grip on Alexia’s arm, and guided her carefully down the next few sets of stairs and into Lord Akeldama’s infamous drawing room. Once there, Shabumpkin nodded to them amiably and gangled off.
Lord Akeldama was waiting for her. Alexia was unsurprised to note that while she’d been dashing about London tracking an octomaton, the vampire had engaged in nothing more stressful than a change of clothing. He was wearing the most remarkable suit of tails and britches she had ever seen, candy-striped satin in cream and wine. This he had paired with a pink waistcoat of watered silk, pink hose, and pink top hat. His cravat, a waterfall of wine satin, was pinned with a gold and ruby pin, and matching rubies glittered about his fingers, monocle, and boutonniere.
“Can I get you anything, Lady Maccon?” offered Boots after seeing her safely ensconced in a chair, obviously concerned over her evident physical discomfort.
“Tea?” Alexia named the only thing she could think of that universally cured all ills.
“Of course.” He vanished after a quick exchange of glances with his master.
However, when the tea was brought in some five minutes later, it was Floote who brought it, not Boots. The butler left quickly but Alexia was in no doubt he’d taken up residence very close to the outside of the door.
Lord Akeldama, in some distress, did not produce his harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, and Alexia did not remind him. She figured she might need Floote’s advice on whatever occured next.
“So, my lord?” said she to the vampire, not at all up for dillydallying.
Lord Akeldama got straight to the point. Which was, in and of itself, a marker of his distress.
“My precious plum blossom, do you have any idea who is sitting in the back alleyway behind the kitchen right this very moment?”
Since Alexia was pretty darned convinced she would have spotted the octomaton from the roof, she took her second best guess.
“Countess Nadasdy?”
“Behind the kitchen! By my longest fang! I—” He interrupted himself. “Gracious me, buttercup, but how did you know?”
Even coping with the violent kicking and squirming in her tummy, Alexia couldn’t help but smile. “Now you know how I always feel.”
“She swarmed.”
“Yes, finally. You wouldn’t believe what it took to chivy her out of that place. You’d think she was a ghost, so tightly tethered as to never be separated from her fixing point.”
Lord Akeldama sat down, took a deep breath, and composed himself. “Darling marigold, please don’t tell me you’re responsible for?.?.?.?you know.” He fluttered one perfectly white hand in the air, like a dying handkerchief.
“Oh, no, silly. Not me. Madame Lefoux.”
“Oh. Of course. Madame Lefoux.” The vampire’s expression was arrested, deadpan at this latest bit of information.
Lady Maccon swore she could see the cogs and wheels of his massive intellect whirring away behind that effete painted face.
“Because of the little French maid?” He finally hazarded a guess.
Lady Maccon was enjoying having the upper hand for once. She had never dared to hope that someday she would have more information in a crisis than Lord Akeldama.
“Ah, no—Quesnel.”
“Her son?”
“Not exactly hers.”
Lord Akeldama stood up from his casual lounging posture. “The little towheaded lad the countess has with her? The one who ripped my jacket?”
“That sounds like Quesnel.”
“What’s the hive queen doing with a French inventor’s son?”
“Ah, apparently, Angelique left a will.”
Lord Akeldama tapped one fang with the edge of his gold and ruby monocle, pulling all the threads together right before Alexia’s eyes. “Angelique is the boy’s real mother, and she left him to the tender care of the hive? Silly bint.”
“And the countess stole him from Genevieve. So Genevieve built an octomaton and destroyed the hive house trying to get him back.”
“Upon my word, that’s escalating things rather much.”
“I daresay it is.”
Lord Akeldama stopped tapping and began swinging his monocle back and forth while he took up a slow pace about the room. His white brow creased in one perfect line between the eyebrows.
Lady Maccon rubbed her protesting belly with one hand and sipped tea with the other. For once, the magic liquid was unable to disseminate any beneficial effects. The child was not happy, and tea was not going to pacify the beast.
The monocle stilled.
Alexia straightened up in her chair expectantly.
“The question remains, what is to be done with an entire hive skulking in my back alley?”
“Have them in for tea?” suggested Lady Maccon.
“No, no, not possible, little cream puff. They can’t come in here.”
Vampires were peculiar about etiquette. “Buckingham Palace? That should be relatively secure.”
“No, no. Political nightmare. Vampire queen in the palace? Trust me, darling, it is never a good idea to have too many queens in one place, let alone one palace.”
“To be really safe and buy us some extra time, we really ought to get her out of London.”
“She won’t like that at all, but there is sense to the suggestion, bluebell.”
“How long do we have? I mean to say, how long does a swarming usually last?”
Lord Akeldama frowned. Concerned over whether he should give her this information, she suspected, rather than over any possibility of his not having it. “A newly made queen has months to settle, but an old queen has only a few hours.”
Lady Maccon shrugged. Only one solution readily presented itself. It was the safest place she knew of—defensible and secure.
“I will have to take her to Woolsey.”
Lord Akeldama sat down. “If you say so, Lady Alpha.”
There was something in his tone that gave Alexia pause. He sounded like that when he had recently purchased a particularly nice waistcoat. She couldn’t understand why he should be so self-satisfied with this predicament. As her benighted husband would say, vampires!
Someone had to do something. They couldn’t let the Westminster queen simply cool her heels in an alleyway behind Lord Akeldama’s and Lord Maccon’s respective houses. What a scandal if the papers ever found that out! Alexia very much hoped Felicity was locked away. “It will only be until we can determine what’s to be done with her. And how to resolve this situation with Quesnel. Hopefully without destroying any other perfectly innocent buildings.” Lady Maccon tilted back her head and yelled, “Floote!”
The rapidity of Floote’s appearance suggested he had, indeed, been waiting just outside the door.
“Floote, how many carriages do we have in town?”
“Just the one, madam. Just arrived back in.”
“Well, that’ll have to do. Hitch up the goers and have it brought round to the back, please. I shall meet you there.”
“A journey? But, madam, you are unwell.”
“Can’t be helped, Floote. I cannot justifiably send a hive of vampires into a den of werewolves alone and without diplomatic assistance. The clavigers would never allow it. No, someone has to go with them, and that someone has to be me. The staff at the castle won’t listen to anyone else, not on full moon.”
Floote vanished, and Lady Maccon stood and began to make her way with stilted awkwardness out of the drawing room and through Lord Akeldama’s house. The vampire followed. About halfway, however, she held up a finger at her host.
The baby inside of her had shifted. It felt a little lighter somehow. Well, who was she to question such a helpful adjustment? She patted her belly approvingly. However, she also rocked from one foot to the other. The infant-inconvenience had come to rest on a certain portion of her anatomy.
“Uh, oh, dear. How embarrassing. I really must visit your?.?.?.?uh?.?.?.?that is?.?.?.?um.”
If he could have blushed, Lord Akeldama would have. Instead, he took out a red lace fan from the inside pocket of his jacket and fanned himself vigorously with it while Alexia tottered off to see to the necessary business. She returned several long moments later, feeling better about all aspects of life.
Then she led the way onward through Lord Akeldama’s house, behind the grand staircase and past the servants’ stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Lord Akeldama minced along solicitously after her.
Behind the house, past such shockingly vulgar objects as dustbins and a clothesline, the hive waited. Much to Lady Maccon’s shock, there were gentlemen’s undergarments on that clothesline! She closed her eyes and took a deep and fortifying breath. When she opened them again, she looked past the necessities into the delivery alley where a clot of vampires paced restlessly.