Heartless

seeing to Felicity, so neither witnessed the excessive display of affection.

“I suppose that makes Felicity the least of our concerns.”

The sun had just set, and the Maccons were awake, across the temporary gangplank from Lord Akeldama’s house, and downstairs in their own dining room. The conversation had not changed from that of the night before; it had only paused for Conall to conduct some slapdash investigations and then catch half a day’s sleep.

Lord Maccon glanced up from his repast. “We must take any threat against the queen seriously, my dear. Even if my efforts so far have proved unproductive, that does not mean we can treat the ravings of a ghost with flippancy.”

“You believe I am not concerned? I’ve alerted the Shadow Council. We have a special meeting called for this very evening.”

Lord Maccon looked disgruntled. “Now, Alexia, should you be involving yourself in this matter at such a late stage?”

“What? The rumor has only just been reported! I understand you and Lyall got lengths ahead yesterday after I went to bed, but I hardly think—”

“No, wife. I mean to say, you are not exactly up to your usual galavanting about London with parasol at the ready, now, are you?”

Alexia glanced down at her overstuffed belly and then got that look on her face. “I am entirely capable.”

“Of what, waddling up to someone and ruthlessly bumping into them?”

Lady Maccon glared. “I assure you, husband, that while the rest of me may be moving more slowly than has previously been my custom, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with my mental capacities. I can manage!”

“Now, Alexia, please be reasonable.”

Lady Maccon was willing to concede somewhat due to the nature of her state. “I promise that I will not take any unnecessary risks.”

Her husband did not miss the fact that this statement would have to bow to his wife’s definition of the term necessary. He was, therefore, not at all reassured. “At least take one of the pups with you on your investigations.”

Lady Maccon narrowed her eyes.

The earl wheedled. “I should feel much better knowing someone had care of your physical safety. Even if the vampires are abstaining—and we’ve no guarantee yet that they are—you do tend to get yourself into certain predicaments. Now, it’s not that I think you are incapable, my dear, simply that you are currently much less mobile.”

Alexia did have to admit his reasoning. “Very well. But if I am to troll about with a companion, I want it to be Biffy.”

The earl did not approve this selection at all. “Biffy! He’s a new pup. He can’t even control the change. What good could he possibly be?”

“It’s Biffy or nobody.” Typical of my husband to see only Biffy’s limitations as a werewolf and not his admirable abilities as a human.

For the young dandy was, indeed, quite accomplished. Much to Lord Maccon’s disgust, he had taken over many of the duties of lady’s maid to his new mistress. Alexia had never bothered to hire a replacement for Angelique. Biffy’s taste was impeccable, and he had a real eye for which hairstyles and fabrics would suit her best —better than Angelique, who had been good but rather more daringly French than Lady Maccon liked. Biffy, for all his audacious inclinations when it came to his own apparel, knew how to be sensible when it came to a lady who scurried around whacking at automatons and climbing into ornithopters.

“It isn’t a wise choice.” Lord Maccon’s jaw was set.

No one else had yet joined them at the dining table. It was a rare thing in a pack to enjoy any privacy outside the bedroom. Alexia took advantage of their seclusion. She scooted toward her husband and rested her hand atop his on the fine lace tablecloth.

“Biffy has had Lord Akeldama’s training. That is a skill set that branches away from being merely a dab hand with the curling tongs.”

The earl snorted.

“I am not only thinking of my own comfort in this matter. He needs some kind of distraction, Conall. Haven’t you noticed? Five months and he’s still not settled.”

The earl twisted his lips slightly to one side. He had noticed. Of course he had. He noticed everything about his wolves. It was part of his most essential being, to hold the pack together as a single cohesive entity. Alexia had read the papers; scientists called it the soul’s intrinsic cross-linking of the essential humors, the enmatterment of aether. But she could also guess the truth of it: that just as vampires and ghosts became tethered to a place, so werewolves became tethered to a pack. Biffy’s all too frequent melancholy must hurt Conall terribly.

“How will allowing him to accompany you help?”

“Am I not also part of this pack?”

“Ah.” The earl turned his hand over to grip his wife’s in a compliant caress.

“If you ask me, it is not so much Biffy who cannot find his place as Woolsey not giving him the right place to find. You are all thinking of him as you would any new werewolf. He’s not, you understand? He’s different.”

Conall, remarkably, did not jump immediately to the defensive. “Yes, I’m aware. Randolph and I were recently discussing this very thing. But it cannot simply be a matter of Biffy’s preferences. We werewolves are as experimental in our tastes as the vampires, if a little more reserved about the expression of them. And there’s always Adelphus. He’s willing.”

Alexia made a disgusted noise. “Adelphus is always willing. Biffy does not need a lover, husband—he needs a purpose. This is a matter of culture. Biffy has come to you out of vampire culture. Lord Akeldama’s vampire culture.”

“So what do you recommend?”

“Woolsey has managed to accept me into its midst and I am by no means standard werewolf fare.” Alexia played with her husband’s fingers, threading and unthreading them with her own.

“But you are female.”

“Exactly!”

“You are suggesting we treat Biffy as if he were a woman?”

“I am suggesting that you think about him as if he had married in from the outside.”

Lord Maccon gave this due consideration and then nodded slowly.

Lady Maccon realized he must be very troubled by Biffy’s unhappiness to listen to her suggestions with so few protestations.

Alexia squeezed his hand once more and then let go, returning to her meal of apple fritter and boiled arrowroot pudding with melted butter and currant jelly. Of late, her taste in comestibles had leaned ever more in the saccharine direction. Now she ate almost exclusively of the pudding course at any meal. “You think there’s a chance you might lose him, don’t you?”

Her husband did not answer her, which was an admission in and of itself. Instead he busily began tackling a veritable heap of fried veal cutlets.

Lady Maccon chose her next words with care. “How quickly can loner status be established?” She did not want to be perceived as doubting her husband’s Alpha abilities. Men, even immortal ones, had fragile egos on certain subjects. Such egos could be as delicate and as messy as puff pastry. Though rather less palatable with tea. Ooh, tea.

“Wolves can go solitary at any time, but it is usually for a specific reason and occurs within the first few years of metamorphosis. Howlers say it has something to do with early bonding to the Alpha. Often it means the unbonded is too much Alpha himself. I don’t believe Biffy falls into this category, but that is the only thing currently in our favor.”

Alexia thought she spotted the real source of her husband’s concern. “If Biffy becomes a loner, you don’t believe he would survive. Do you?”

“Loners are unstable. They brawl constantly. Our new pup is not a fighter, not like that.” Her husband’s lovely