Lady Maccon approached the contraption warily. It looked like a chubby flat-bottomed rowboat on tracks, with a fabric-covered interior and two massive parasols for protection from the elements. Major Channing helped her to step inside and then followed, settling himself opposite. At which juncture they sat, staring at the scenery so as not to look at each other, waiting for something to happen.
“I suppose they must be alerted to the fact that we have arrived.” Alexia looked about for some kind of signaling device. She noticed that off to one side of the bench sat a fat little gun. After subjecting it to close examination, she shot it up into the air.
It made a tremendous clap. Major Channing started violently, much to Alexia’s satisfaction, and the gun emitted a ball of bright white fire that floated high up and then faded out.
Alexia looked at the weapon with approval. “Ingenious. Must be one of Madame Lefoux’s. I didn’t know she dabbled in ballistics.”
Channing rolled his ice-blue eyes. “That woman is an inveterate dabbler.”
They had no further time to consider the gun, for the rowboat jolted once, causing Alexia to fall back hard against one of the parasol supports. It was Major Channing’s turn to look amused at her predicament. They rolled forward, first at quite a sedate pace and then at increasing speed, the tracks running up the long, low hill to where Woolsey Castle crouched, a confused and confusing hodgepodge of architecture.
Countess Nadasdy had done what she could to improve the Maccons’ former place of residence, but it did little good. The resulting building merely looked grumpy over the indignity of change. She’d had it painted, and planted, and primped, and festooned, and draped to within an inch of its very long life. But it was asking too much of the poor thing. The result was something akin to dressing a bulldog up like an opera dancer. Underneath the tulle, it was still a bowlegged bulldog.
Major Channing helped Alexia out of the tram, and they made their way up the wide steps to the front door. Alexia felt a little odd, pulling the bell rope at what once had been her home. She could only imagine what Major Channing felt, having lived there for goodness knew how many decades.
His face was stoic. Or she thought it was stoic; it was difficult to tell under all that handsome haughtiness.
“She certainly has made”—he paused—“adjustments.”
Lady Maccon nodded. “The door is painted with silver swirls. Silver!”
Major Channing had no opportunity to answer, for said door was opened by a beautiful young maid with glossy ebony hair, decked out in a frilled black dress with crisp white shirt and black pin-tucked apron front. Perfect in every way, as was to be expected in the countess’s household.
“Lady Maccon and Major Channing, to see Countess Nadasdy.”
“Oh, yes, you are expected, my lady. I’ll inform my mistress you are here. If you wouldn’t mind waiting one moment in the hall?”
Lady Maccon and Major Channing did not mind, for they were busy absorbing the transformation the countess had enacted upon their former abode. The carpets were now all thick and plush and blood red in color. The walls had been repapered in pale cream and gold, with a collection of fine art rescued from the wreckage of the hive’s previous abode on prominent display. These were luxurious changes that neither appealed to a werewolf’s taste nor suited his lifestyle. One simply did not live with Titian paintings and Persian rugs when one grew claws on a regular basis.
Major Channing, who hadn’t seen the place since the pack left it, arched one blond eyebrow. “Would hardly have thought it the same house.”
Lady Maccon made no answer. A vampire was oiling his way down the staircase toward them.
“Dr. Caedes, how do you do?”
“Lady Maccon.” Dr. Caedes was a thin, reedy man, with a hairline paused in the act of withdrawal and an interest in engineering, not medicinal matters, despite his title.
“You know Major Channing, of course?”
“We may have met.” The doctor inclined his head. He did not smile nor show fang.
“Oh?”
“A family matter.”
“I do hope it is nothing serious?”
Alexia tilted her head, playing the game of reveal with aplomb. She had been some time now a member of the Shadow Council and was a quick study in the fine art of conversing upon matters of great importance yet saying nothing significant. “More bedraggled, I suspect. Shall we proceed?”
Dr. Caedes backed down, having to follow the niceties of conversation that he and his kind had insinuated into society. “Of course, my lady. If you’d care to follow me? The countess is awaiting you in the Blue Room.”
The Blue Room, as it turned out, was the room formerly occupied by the Woolsey Pack’s extensive library. Alexia tried to hide her distress at the destruction of her favorite retreat. The vampires had stripped it of its mahogany shelving and leather seats and had papered it in cream and sky-blue stripes. The furniture was all cream in color with a decidedly Oriental influence and, unless Alexia was very much mistaken, Thomas Chippendale originals.
Countess Nadasdy sat in an arranged manner, draped to one side over the corner of a window seat. She wore an extremely fashionable and extraordinarily elaborate moss-green receiving dress trimmed with pale blue, the skirt tied back so narrowly that Lady Maccon wondered at the queen’s ability to walk about, and the sleeves were so tight Alexia very much doubted the vampire could lift her arms at all. Biffy had tried to foist such absurdities upon Alexia, but only once, at which juncture she insisted that mobility was not to be sacrificed for taste, especially not with a child like Prudence dashing about. Biffy hunted down daringly cut fluid styles influenced by the Far East for his mistress to wear instead and said no more about it.
The countess had the ample figure of a milkmaid who had partaken too freely of the creamy results of her labors, which did not suit the style of the dress at all. Alexia would never have said a word, but she shuddered to think of Lord Akeldama’s opinion on such a figure in such attire. She planned, of course, to describe it in detail to her dear friend as soon as possible.
“Ah, Lady Maccon, do come in.”
“Countess Nadasdy, how do you do? You are adjusting to rural life, I see.”
“For a girl with as unsullied a nature as I, the countryside is unobjectionable.”
Lady Maccon paused, verbally stymied by the countess using the words
The vampire queen glanced away from Lady Maccon’s ill-disguised discomposure. “Thank you, Dr. Caedes. You may leave us.”
“But, My Queen!”
“This is a matter for Lady Maccon and I, alone.”
Alexia said quickly, “Countess, may I present Major Channing?”
“You may. Major Channing and I are already acquainted. I’m sure he won’t mind allowing us a few moments of privacy?”
Major Channing looked like he would mind, but realizing that Dr. Caedes was about to leave his queen with a preternatural decided it was all in good faith.
“I shall be just outside the door, my lady, should you need anything.”
Alexia nodded. “Thank you, Channing. I’m convinced all will be well.”
So Alexia found herself alone in a blue room with a vampire queen.
After Felicity and Madame Lefoux departed, the shop turned into a frenzy of fashionable ladies in pursuit of hats, but Biffy’s staff of assorted shopgirls had it well under control. He did a quick lap to ensure no lady was purchasing anything that did not suit her coloring, complexion, demeanor, station, or creed. He then left his accessories to the tender mercies of Britain’s shopping public and retired down to the contrivance chamber to catch up on necessary paperwork. He was engaged at first, it must be admitted, in beautifying said paperwork by trimming the corners and adding necessary swirls and flowers to the text.
