CHAPTER THREE
RUE’S PROBLEM WITH REDHEADS
P
rofessor Percival Tunstell moved out of his mother’s hive in Wimbledon and accepted a post as Oxford don the moment he came into his majority. After being summarily dismissed from Oxford for his radical theories on the transcendental sprout-shaped nature of the aetherosphere, he rented a decrepit bedsit behind the British Museum, off Rustle Square. “The better to facilitate my studies,” he explained to his aggrieved mother.
Nor would he tolerate vampire guards. Primrose, his dearly beloved and barely countenanced twin, might secretly enjoy the status conferred by a persistent supernatural escort but Percy spent the lion’s share of his days cooped up in his library researching the breeding habits of sand fleas. He did not require a vampire nanny. Nor, for that matter, did the fleas. After the third of his mother’s minions returned to the Wimbledon Hive with slashes from a wooden letter opener, Baroness Tunstell stopped sending them. Percival Tunstell was nothing if not a great fan of learning. If that education involved sharp pointy sticks, he applied himself just as diligently as to other forms of research and with far more uncomfortable results to those around him. In the end, Queen Ivy gave up mothering her son, and Percy stopped poking her vampires with letter openers.
Rue knocked loudly on the door to his apartments.
Nothing.
She knocked again.
She waited.
She knocked a third time.
Eventually, Percival Tunstell himself answered. The gentleman was wearing a smoking jacket and tweed trousers and carrying a heavy Latin tome. He glanced up at Rue, his skin pale as any vampire’s, spectacles perched at the tip of his nose. Percy, it must be acknowledged, was quite good-looking for a bluestocking ginger fellow, but terribly peaky about it.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Where’s your footman?”
“Dismissed him, kept interrupting my reading.”
“With something sensible like food, I suspect. May I come in?”
“At least you don’t have my ghastly sister with you.”
Rue took that as permission to enter.
Percy resumed reading his book, walking slowly down the hallway away from her.
Rue followed. “You’ll be happy to know she’s doing well.”
“Who is?”
“Your sister.”
“Oh, is she? How unfortunate. It would do her some good to be in ill health for once.”
“Percy, how can you be so tiresome?”
“Rue, I’m terribly busy at the moment. What do you want?”
“Why, what are you busy doing?”
“Agricultural research. I think it might be good for the great British jam industry to move from quinces to crab-apples for pectin production.”
“Oh, indeed? Is there a jam industry of any note?”
Percy continued on as if he hadn’t heard. “But the relative ratios of storage to fruit gelatine are proving difficult to calculate. Plus if crab-apple trees require more water, then things may tip back in the quince’s favour. Do you know?”
“Do I know what?”
“If they need more water.”
“No, I don’t. You might ask a farmer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There must be a book on the subject.”
Rue decided this conversation could go on for hours. “Percy, your country needs you.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Very well then – I need you.”
“Don’t tell fibs, Rue, it doesn’t suit.”
Rue took the book away from Percy and said, “I’m flying an airship to India and I require you to be my ship’s researcher, librarian, and navigator.”
“You’re sotted. Have you been drinking? I think you’ve been drinking.” Percy looked mildly concerned. “Do you need to sit? Should I ring for tea? I believe that I still employ a valet.” He made room for her on an armchair by removing the enormous pile of scientific pamphlets occupying it.
“Percy, I am entirely sober and in earnest. What I’ve said is all true. Don’t you think you would enjoy leaving London for a while?”
“No, I do not.”
“You could bring your books along,” she wheedled, wondering if The Spotted Custard could take the extra weight.
“My books are quite fine where they are, thank you very much.”
“It would get you entirely away from your mother.”
Percy’s eyes sparked slightly. “But not my sister, I assume. Since you two have been joined at the hip since we were knee-high to a biscuit.”
“Prim will stay out of your way, I promise. The ship will be swarming with handsome young men to distract her.”
Percy snorted.