Heartless

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