Blameless(10)

“Dinna wanna,” objected his lordship at the entrance to his sleeping chamber. “Reminds me.”

There was no trace of Alexia left in the room. She’d cleared out all of her personal possessions as soon as she returned from Scotland. But the three men in the doorway were werewolves; they merely needed to sniff the air and her scent was there—vanilla with a trace of cinnamon.

“This is going to be a long week,” said Channing in exasperation.

“Just help me get him into bed.”

The two werewolves managed, through dint of cajoling and brute force, to get Lord Maccon into his large four-poster bed. Once there, he flopped facedown, and almost immediately began snoring.

“Something simply must be done about him.” Channing’s accent was that of the privileged elite. It irritated Professor Lyall that the Gamma had never bothered to modify it over the decades. In the modern age, only elderly dowagers with too many teeth still spoke English that way.

Lyall refrained from comment.

“What if we have a challenger or a bid for metamorphosis? We should be getting more of both now that he has successfully changed a female into a werewolf. You cannot keep Lady Kingair a secret in Scotland forever.” Channing’s tone was full of both pride and annoyance. “Claviger petitions have already escalated; our Alpha should be handling those, not spending his days falling down drunk. This behavior is weakening the pack.”

“I can hold the challengers off,” said Professor Lyall with no shame, no modesty, and no boasting. Randolph Lyall might not be as large, nor as overtly masculine, as most werewolves but he had earned the right to be Beta in London’s strongest pack. Earned it so many times over and in so many ways that few questioned his right anymore.

“But you have no Anubis Form. You cannot cover for our Alpha in every way.”

“Just you mind your Gamma responsibilities, Channing, and leave me to see to the rest.”

Major Channing gave both Lord Maccon and Professor Lyall disgusted looks and then strode from the room, the tail of his long, blond hair swaying in annoyance.

Professor Lyall had intended to do the same, minus the long, blond hair, but he heard a whispered, “Randolph,” come from the wide bed. He made his way along the side of the big feather mattress to where the earl’s tawny eyes were once more open and unfocused.

“Yes, my lord?”

“If”—the earl swallowed nervously—“if I am wrong, and I’m na saying I am, but if I am, well, I’ll have to grovel again, won’t I?”

Professor Lyall had seen Lady Maccon’s face when she returned home to pack up her clothing and quit Woolsey Castle. She wasn’t big on crying—practical minded, tough, and unemotional even at the worst of times, like most preternaturals—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t utterly gutted by her husband’s rejection. Professor Lyall had seen a number of things in his lifetime he hoped never to see again; that look of hopelessness in Alexia’s dark eyes was definitely one of them.

“I am not convinced groveling will be quite sufficient in this instance, my lord.” He was not disposed to allow his Alpha any quarter.

“Ah. Well, bollocks,” said his lordship eloquently.

“That is the least of it. If my deductions are correct, she is also in very grave danger, my lord. Very grave.”

But Lord Maccon had already gone back to sleep.

Professor Lyall went off to hunt down the earl’s source of inebriation. Much to his distress, he found it. Lord Maccon hadn’t lied. It was, in fact, not alcohol at all.

Alexia Maccon’s parasol had been designed at prodigious expense, with considerable imagination and much attention to detail. It could emit a dart equipped with a numbing agent, a wooden spike for vampires, a silver spike for werewolves, a magnetic disruption field, and two kinds of toxic mist, and, of course, it possessed a plethora of hidden pockets. It had recently been entirely overhauled and refurbished with new ammunition, which, unfortunately, did little to improve its appearance. It was not a very prepossessing accessory, for all its serviceability, being both outlandish in design and indifferent in shape. It was a drab slate-gray color with cream ruffle trim, and it had a shaft in the new ancient Egyptian style that looked rather like an elongated pineapple.

Despite its many advanced attributes, Lady Maccon’s most common application of the parasol was through brute force enacted directly upon the cranium of an opponent. It was a crude and perhaps undignified modus operandi to be certain, but it had worked so well for her in the past that she was loath to rely too heavily upon any of the newfangled aspects of her parasol’s character.