Alexia tried to look nonchalant. “But as a minister of BUR's secrets, he is also the least likely to relay any cogent details,” she countered.
Lord Akeldama laughed in a tinkling manner that indicated more artifice than real amusement. “Then there is nothing for it, sweetest of Alexias, but to use your plethora of feminine wiles upon him. Werewolves have been susceptible to the gentler sex for as long as I can remember, and that is a very long time, indeed.” He wiggled his eyebrows, knowing he did not look a day over twenty-three, his original age at metamorphosis. He continued. “Favorable toward women, those darling beaslies, even if they are a tad brutish.” He shivered lasciviously. “Particularly Lord Maccon. So big and rough.” He made a little growling noise.
Miss Tarabotti giggled. Nothing was funnier than watching a vampire try to emulate a werewolf.
“I advise you most strongly to visit him tomorrow before you see the Westminster queen.” Lord Akeldama reached forward and grasped her wrist. His fangs vanished, and his eyes suddenly looked as old as he really was. He had never told Alexia quite how old. “La, darling,” he always said, “a vampire, like a lady, never reveals his true age.” But he had described to her in detail the dark days before the supernatural was revealed to daylight folk. Before the hives and packs made themselves known on the British Isle. Before that prestigious revolution in philosophy and science that their emergence triggered, known to some as the Renaissance but to vampires as the Age of Enlightenment. Supernatural folk called the time before the Dark Ages, for obvious reasons. For them it had been an age spent skulking through the night. Several bottles of champagne were usually required to get Lord Akeldama to talk of it at all. Still, it meant, by Alexia's calculations, that he was at least over four hundred years old.
She looked more closely at her friend. Was that fear?
His face was honestly serious, and he said, “My dove, I do not know what is transpiring here. Me, ignorant! Please take the gravest of care in this matter.”
Miss Tarabotti now knew the real source of her friend's trepidation. Lord Akeldama had no idea what was going on. For years, he had held the trump card in every major London political situation. He was accustomed to having possession of all pertinent facts before anybody else. Yet at this moment, he was as mystified as she.
“Promise me,” he said earnestly, “you will see what information you can extract from Lord Maccon on this matter before you go into that hive.”
Alexia smiled. “To better your understanding?”
He shook his blond head. “No, sweetheart, to better yours.”
CHAPTER THREE
Our Heroine Heeds Some Good Advice
Bollocks,” said Lord Maccon upon seeing who stood before him. “Miss Tarabotti. What did I do to merit a visit from you first thing in the morning? I have not even had my second cup of tea yet.” He loomed at the entrance to his office.
Alexia ignored his unfortunate choice of greeting and swept past him into the room. The act of sweeping, and the fact that the doorway was quite narrow while Alexia's bosoms (even corseted) were not, brought her into intimate contact with the earl. Alexia was embarrassed to note she tingled a little bit, clearly a reaction to the repulsive state of the man's office.
There were papers everywhere, piled in corners and spread out over what might have been a desk—it was difficult to tell underneath all the muddle. There were also rolls of etched metal and stacks of tubes she suspected contained more of the same. Alexia wondered why he needed metal record-keeping; from the sheer quantity, she suspected it must be a cogent one. She counted at least six used cups and saucers and a platter covered in the remains of a large joint of raw meat. Miss Tarabotti had been in Lord Maccon's office once or twice before. It had always appeared a tad masculine for her taste but never so unsightly as this.
“Good gracious me!” she said, shaking off the tingles. Then she asked the obvious question. “Where is Professor Lyall, then?”
Lord Maccon scrubbed his face with his hand, reached desperately for a nearby teapot, and drained it through the spout.
Miss Tarabotti looked away from the horrible sight. Who was it that had said “only just civilized”? She closed her eyes and considered, realizing it must have been she. She fluttered one hand to her throat. “Please, Lord Maccon, use one of the cups. My delicate sensibilities.”
The earl actually snorted. “My dear Miss Tarabotti, if you possessed any such things, you certainly have never shown them to me.” But he did put down the teapot.
Alexia looked more closely at Lord Maccon. He did not seem entirely well. Her heart moved with a funny little flipping motion in her chest. His mahogany-colored hair was standing up at the front, as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly. Everything about his appearance seemed even more unkempt than usual. In the dim light, it also looked as though his canines were showing—a certain sign of distress. Alexia squinted to make certain. She wondered how close they were to full moon. The worry in her dark eyes, expressive even in their soullessness, softened her teapot-inspired disapproving expression.
“BUR business.” Lord Maccon endeavored to explain away Professor's Lyall's absence and the state of his office in one curt phrase. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
Alexia nodded. “I did not really expect to find you here, my lord, in the daytime. Shouldn't you be sleeping at this hour?”
The werewolf shook his head. “I can take the full sun for a few days running, especially when there's such a mystery as this. Alpha's not simply a meaningless title, you know? We can do things regular werewolves cannot. Besides which, Queen Victoria is curious.” In addition to being BUR's supernatural liaison and Alpha of the Woolsey Castle pack, Lord Maccon was an agent of Queen Victoria's Shadow Parliament.
“Well, never mind that; you look positively ghastly,” said Alexia baldly.
“Gee, thank you very much for your concern, Miss Tarabotti,” replied the earl, straightening up and widening his eyes in an attempt to look more alert.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” asked his lady guest with all her customary bluntness. “I have not slept since you were attacked,” said Lord Maccon.
Alexia blushed slightly. “Concerned for my well-being? Why, Lord Maccon, now it is I who am touched.”
“Hardly,” he replied ungallantly. “Overseeing investigations, for the most part. Any concern you may note is over the idea that someone else may be attacked. You can obviously see to yourself.”
Miss Tarabotti was torn between being crushed that he did not care one fig for her safety and pleased that he trusted in her competence.
She gathered up a small pile of metal slates from a side chair and sat down. Lifting one roll of thin metal, she held it open to examine with interest. She had to tilt it away from the shadows in order to make out the etched notations. “Rove vampire registration permits,” she remarked. “You think the man who attacked me last night might have had a permit?”
Lord Maccon looked exasperated, marched over and snatched the stack of rolls away. They fell to the floor with a clatter and he cursed his sun-born clumsiness. But for all his sham annoyance at her presence, the earl was secretly pleased to have someone with whom to talk out his theories. Usually he used his Beta in that capacity, but with Lyall out of town, he'd been pacing about muttering to himself. “If he does have a permit, it is not in the London registry.”
“Could he have come from outside the capital?” suggested Alexia.