Alexia trotted down the staircase until they were nose to nose. She had to stand one step up from him for it to be so. She kissed him softly. “I know. But I am so very good at it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Great Unwrapping
They decided the mummy would be unwrapped, for the titillation of the ladies, just after dinner. Alexia was not convinced as to the cleverness of this plan. Knowing Miss Hisselpenny’s constitution, if the mummy were gruesome enough, dinner might just be revisited. But it was believed that darkness and candlelight best suited such an illustrious event.
None of the ladies present had ever before been to a mummy-unwrapping party. Lady Maccon expressed some distress that Madame Lefoux and Tunstell would be missing the fun. Lord Maccon suggested that as he had little interest and he would go relieve Tunstell, thus allowing the claviger at least to participate. Tunstell, everyone knew, enjoyed drama.
Alexia looked sharply at Miss Hisselpenny, but Ivy held herself composed and untroubled by the possibility of a redheaded thespian and naked mummy in the same room. Felicity licked her lips in anticipation, and Lady Maccon prepared herself for inevitable histrionics. But it was she, not Felicity or Ivy, who felt most uncomfortable in the presence of the ancient creature.
Truth be told, it was a rather sad-looking mummy. It resided in a not-very-big boxlike coffin that had only minimal hieroglyphic decorations upon it. Once removed from the coffin, the wrappings on the mummy were revealed to be minimally painted with one repeated motif: what looked to be an ankh, broken. The dead thing did not disgust or frighten Alexia in any way, and she had seen mummies before in museums without desultory effects. But there was something about this particular mummy that, simply put, repulsed her.
Lady Maccon was not given to bouts of sentimentality, so she did not think her reaction an emotional one. No, she was being literally repulsed, in the scientific definition of the word. It was as though she and the mummy both had some kind of magnetic field, and they were the same charge, with forces violently repelling one another.
The actual unwrapping seemed to take an exceptionally long time. Who knew there would be so dreadfully many bandages? They also kept breaking. Every time an amulet was uncovered, the whole operation stopped and people gasped in delight. As more and more of the mummy was revealed, Alexia found herself instinctively backing toward the door of the room, until she was at the fringe of the crowd, standing on tiptoe to witness the proceedings.
Being soulless, Alexia had never given death much consideration. After all, for preternaturals like her, death was the end—she had nothing whatsoever to look forward to. In BUR’s special documentation vaults, an inquisition pamphlet lamented the fact that preternaturals, the church’s last best weapon against the supernatural threat, were also the only human beings who could never be saved. What Alexia felt, most of the time, was indifference to her own mortality. This was the result of an ingrained practicality that was also due to her soullessness. But there was something about this mummy that troubled her even as it repulsed: the poor, sad, wrinkled thing.
Finally they worked their way up to his head, exposing a perfectly preserved skull with dark brown skin and some small portion of hair still adhered to it. Amulets were removed from ears, nose, throat, and eyes, revealing the empty eye sockets and slightly gaping mouth. Several scarab beetles crawled out of the exposed orifices, plopped to the floor, and skittered about. At which both Felicity and Ivy, who had until that moment remained only mildly hysterical, fainted.
Tunstell caught Miss Hisselpenny, clutching her close to his breast and murmuring her given name in tones of marked distress. Lachlan caught Miss Loontwill and was nowhere near as affectionate about it. Two sets of expensive skirts draped themselves artistically in ruffled disarray. Two sets of bosoms heaved in heart-palpitating distress.
The evening’s entertainment was pronounced a definitive success.
The gentlemen, marshaled into action by Lady Kingair’s barked commands, carried the two young ladies into a sitting room down the hall. There the ladies were duly revived with smelling salts, and rosewater was patted across the brow.
Alexia was left alone with the unfortunate mummy, unwitting cause of all the excitement. Even the scarab beetles had scuttled off. She cocked her head to one side, resisting the insistent push, which seemed even worse now that there was only the two of them. It was as though the very air were trying to drive her from the room. Alexia narrowed her eyes at the mummy, something niggling the back of her brain. Whatever it was, she could not recall it. Turning away, still thinking hard, she made her way into the other room.
Only to find Tunstell kissing Miss Hisselpenny, who was apparently wide awake and participating with gusto. Right there in front of everyone.
“Well, I say!” said Alexia. She had not thought Ivy possessed that degree of gumption. Apparently, she was finding Tunstell’s kisses less damp than she had previously.
Felicity blinked awake, probably desirous to see what had pulled everyone’s attention so thoroughly away from her own prostrate form. She caught sight of the embrace and gasped, joining Alexia in amazement. “Why, Mr. Tunstell, what
“That should be perfectly clear, even to you, Miss Loontwill,” Lady Kingair snapped, not nearly so scandalized as she ought.
“Well,” said Alexia, “I take it you are feeling more the thing?”
No one answered her. Ivy was still occupied with kissing Tunstell. It appeared there might even be tongue involved at this juncture. And Felicity was still occupied watching them with all the good-humored interest of an irritated chicken.
The touching scene was broken by Lord Maccon’s fantastically loud yell, which welled suddenly forth from the downstairs front parlor. It was not one of his angry yells either. Lady Maccon would hardly have bestirred herself for one of those. No, this yell sounded like pain.
Alexia was out the door and galloping pell-mell down the staircase, heedless of the very real danger to her delicate apparel, waving her parasol about madly.
She crashed into the parlor door, which refused to budge. Something heavy was blocking it. She heaved against it desperately, finally shoving it open far enough to find that it was her husband’s fallen body that blocked her entrance.
She bent over him, checking for injuries. She could find none on his back, so with prodigious effort, she rolled him over, checking his front. He was breathing slowly and laboriously, as though drugged.
Alexia paused, frowning suspiciously at her parasol, lying near her at the ready.
Lady Kingair, Dubh, and Lachlan appeared at the door. Lady Maccon held up a hand indicating she was not to be disturbed and stripped her husband bare to the waist, examining him more closely, not for injuries but for… aha!
“There it is.” A small puncture wound just below his left shoulder.
She pushed her way through the crowd at the door and yelled up the stairs, “Tunstell, you revolting blighter!” In Woolsey Castle, such affectionate terminology for the claviger meant for him to come quickly, and come armed. Lord Maccon’s idea.
She turned back into the room and marched over to the prone form of Madame Lefoux. “If this is your fault,” she hissed to the still-apparently-comatose woman, “I shall see you hanged as a spy; you see if I don’t.” Heedless of the others listening and watching in avid interest, she added, “And you know very well I have the power to do so.”
Madame Lefoux lay as still as death.
Tunstell muscled his way into the room and immediately bent over his fallen master, reaching to check his breath.
