Changeless

“We have come to help, Sidheag.”

“Who’s been saying we need help? You’re na wanted here. Hie yourself off Kingair territory, the lot of ye.”

Lord Maccon sighed heavily. “This is BUR business, and your pack’s behavior has called me down on you, willing or nae. I’m not here as Woolsey Alpha. I am not even here as mediator for your Alpha gap. I am here as sundowner. What did you expect?”

The woman flinched away, but she also put down the gun. “Aye. I see it now to rights. ’Tis na that you care what happens to the pack—your old pack. You’re simply here touting queen’s will. Turn- tail coward, that’s what you are, Conall Maccon, and naught more.”

Lord Maccon had almost reached her by now. Only Lady Maccon still trailed behind him. The rest had stopped at the sight of the woman’s gun. Alexia glanced back over her shoulder to see Ivy and Felicity huddled near Tunstell, who had a small pistol pointed steadily at the woman. Madame Lefoux stood next to him, her wrist held at just such an angle to suggest some more exotic form of firearm was concealed but enabled just inside the sleeve of her greatcoat.

Lady Maccon, parasol at the ready, moved toward her husband and the strange woman. He was speaking in a low voice so that the party behind them could not hear through the rain. “What did they get up to overseas, Sidheag? What mess did you get into over there after Niall died?”

“What do you care? You up and abandoned us.”

“I had no choice.” Conall’s voice was weary with remembered arguments.

“Bollix to that, Conall Maccon. ’Tis a cop-out, well and truly, and we both be knowing it. You fixing the mess you left behind these twenty years gone, now that you’re back?”

Alexia looked at her husband, curious. Perhaps she would get the answer to something she’d always wondered about. Why would an Alpha abdicate one pack, only to seek out and fight to rule another?

The earl remained silent.

The woman pushed the worn old hat back off her head to look up at Lord Maccon. She was tall, almost as tall as he, so she did not have to look up far. She was no slight thing either. There was muscle rolling about noticeably under that massive cloak. Alexia was suitably impressed.

The woman’s eyes were a terribly familiar tawny brown color.

Lord Maccon said, “Let us inside out of this muck and I will think about it.”

“Pah!” spat the woman. Then she marched up the beaten stone path toward the keep.

Lady Maccon looked to her husband. “Interesting lady.”

“Dinna you start,” he growled at her. He turned back to the rest of their party. “That is about as much of an invitation as we’re likely to receive around these parts. Come on inside. Leave the luggage. Sidheag will send a man out to get it.”

“And you are convinced she will not simply toss it all into the lake, Lord Maccon?” wondered Felicity, clutching her reticule protectively.

Lord Maccon snorted. “No guarantees.”

Lady Maccon immediately left his side and retrieved her dispatch case from the mound of luggage.

“Does this thing work as an umbrella?” she asked Madame Lefoux on her way back, waving the parasol.

The inventor looked sheepish. “I forgot that part.”

Alexia sighed and squinted up into the rain. “Capital. Here I stand, about to meet the dreaded in-laws looking like nothing so much as a drowned rat.”

“Be fair, sister,” contradicted Felicity. “You look like a drowned toucan.”

And with that, the little band entered Castle Kingair.

It was just as drafty and old-fashioned on the inside as its appearance would suggest from the outside. Neglected was too fine a term for it. The carpets were gray-green, threadbare relics from the time of King George; the chandelier in the entranceway supported candles, of all ridiculous forms of lighting; and there were actual medieval tapestries hanging against the walls. Alexia, who was fastidious, ran one gloved finger along the banister railing and tutted at the dust.

The Sidheag woman caught her at it.

“Na up to yon high-falutin’ London standards, young miss?”

“Uh-oh,” said Ivy.

“Not up to standards of common household decency,” shot back Alexia. “I heard the Scots were barbarians, but this”—she brushed her fingers together, releasing a small cloud of gray powder—“is ridiculous.”

“I’m na stopping you from heading back out into the rain.”

Lady Maccon cocked her head to one side. “Yes, but would you stop me from dusting? Or do you have a particular attachment to grime?”

The woman chuckled at that.

Lord Maccon said, “Sidheag, this is my wife, Alexia Maccon. Wife, this is Sidheag Maccon, Lady Kingair. My great-great-great-granddaughter.”

Alexia was surprised. Her guess would have been a grand-niece of some kind, not a direct descendent. Her husband had been married before he changed? Now why hadn’t he told her that?

“But,” objected Miss Hisselpenny, “she looks older than Alexia.” A pause. “She looks older than you, Lord Maccon.”

“I would not try to understand, if I were you, dear,” consoled Madame Lefoux with a slight dimpling at Ivy’s distress.

“I am just about forty,” replied Lady Kingair, unabashed at stating her age before strangers and in polite company. Really, this part of the country was just as primitive as Floote had said. Lady Maccon shuddered delicately and adjusted her grip on her parasol, prepared for anything.

Sidheag Maccon looked pointedly at the earl. “Nigh on too old.”

Felicity wrinkled her nose. “Ew, this is simply too revoltingly peculiar. Why did you have to involve yourself in the supernatural set, Alexia?”

Lady Maccon merely gave her sister an arch look.

Felicity answered her own question. “Oh yes, I remember now—no one else would have you.”

Alexia ignored that and looked with interest at her husband. “You never told me you had a family before you became a werewolf.”

Lord Maccon shrugged. “You never asked.” He turned to introduce the rest of the party. “Miss Hisselpenny, my wife’s companion. Miss Loontwill, my wife’s sister. Tunstell, my primary claviger. And Madame Lefoux, who would be happy to examine your broken aethographor.”

Lady Kingair started. “How did you ken that we…? Never mind. You always were uncanny with the knowing. You being BUR has na improved that to anyone else’s comfort. Weel, that’s one welcome guest. Delighted to meet ye, Madame Lefoux. I have, of course, heard of your work. We’ve a claviger who’s familiar with your theories, a bit o’ an amateur inventor himself.”

Then the Scotswoman looked at her great-great-great-grandfather. “I’m supposing you’d as lief see the rest o’ the pack?”

Lord Maccon inclined his head.

The Lady of Kingair reached off to the side of the darkened stairwell and clanged a bell hidden there. It made a noise halfway between a moo and a steam engine coming to an abrupt halt, and suddenly the hallway was filled with large men, most of them in skirts.

“Good heavens,” exclaimed Felicity, “what are they wearing?”

“Kilts,” explained Alexia, amused at her sister’s discomfort.

“Skirts,” replied Felicity, deeply offended, “and short ones at that, as though they were opera dancers.”

Alexia swallowed a giggle. Now there was a funny image.

Miss Hisselpenny did not seem to know where to look. Finally she settled on staring up at the candelabra in abject terror. “Alexia,” she hissed to her friend, “there are knees positively everywhere. What do I do?”

Alexia’s attention was on the faces of the men around her, not their unmentionable leg areas. There seemed to be an equal mix of disgust and delight at seeing Lord Maccon.

The earl introduced her to those he knew. The Kingair Pack Beta, nominally in charge, was one of the unhappy ones, while the Gamma was one of those pleased to see Conall. The remaining four members fell two for