Heartless

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.

Countess Nadasdy was there with Dr. Caedes, Lord Ambrose, the Duke of Hematol, and two other vampires Alexia did not know by name. The hive queen was not in any condition to converse on any topic, mundane or otherwise. She was in obvious mental distress, her movements frenzied and her nerves overset. She paced to and fro, muttering and jerking at any noise. A startled vampire can leap to amazing heights and move at incredible speeds; this ability made the soft, round queen grasshopper-like. Sometimes she fought against one of her male counterparts as though trying to escape from the loose circle they formed around her. Occasionally, she would lash out at one of them, clawing at his face or biting hard into an exposed body part. The male vampire would only gentle her back into the center of the group, his wounds healed by the time she resumed her twitching.

Lady Maccon noted with relief that Quesnel had been transferred to Dr. Caedes’s care. It was clearly not safe for a mortal to be near the queen. Alexia caught the young scamp’s violet eye under his floppy thatch of yellow hair. He looked terrified. She gave him a wink and he brightened almost instantly. Theirs was not a long acquaintance, but she had once supported him in the matter of an exploding boiler, and he had trusted her implicitly ever since.

Alexia moved forward, only to pause, finding herself alone and Lord Akeldama left standing in a dramatic pose on the stoop behind her. Frankly, she had been surprised he even considered walking through the kitchen. He’d probably never even seen that part of his house before.

She turned back. “You aren’t facilitating this conversation?” Never had she known Lord Akeldama to step aside when something significant was afoot.

The rove vampire chuckled. “My little dumpling, the countess would not tolerate my presence in her current condition. And I could hardly stand to endure such waistcoats as Dr. Caedes seems to favor these days. Not to mention the universal lack of headgear.”

Alexia looked over the vampires with new eyes. It was true; the gentlemen seemed to have misplaced their