“I am very effective,” Alexia insisted, breathing into his ear. “You should put me to good use. Otherwise, I will have to come up with other ways to entertain myself.” He groaned. “Fine, right. You can help with the paperwork.”
She sat back. “Was that so hard?”
He raised both eyebrows and shifted his protective hand so she could partly see the result of her teasing.
Miss Tarabotti cleared her throat. “Was that so difficult?” She rephrased her question.
“I suspect you are much better at paperwork than I am anyway,” he admitted grudgingly.
Miss Tarabotti had a brief horrific flashback to the state of his office last she had visited. “I am certainly more organized.”
“You and Lyall are going to run me ragged, aren't you?” grumbled the earl, sounding most put-upon.
After that, cleanup proceeded with remarkable rapidity. Miss Tarabotti was beginning to understand how Lord Akeldama always seemed to know so much. His young men were amazingly efficacious. They managed to be everywhere at once. She wondered how many occasions in her past had contained some young fop, apparently too silly or too drunk, watching everything.
By the time the five BUR agents—two vampires, two humans, and a ghost—arrived, everything was basically in order. The premises had been searched thoroughly, vampire statements taken, prisoners and werewolves secured, and someone had even managed to find Lord Maccon a pair of ill-fitting knickerbockers. Above and beyond the call of duty, Biffy, utilizing a few stray metal coils from one of Dr. Neebs's machines, had twisted Miss Tarabotti's hair into a beautiful rendition of the latest updo out of Paris.
Lord Akeldama, now sitting on one of the platforms, watching, with the eyes of a proud parent, his boys work, said approvingly to Biffy, “Lovely job, my dear.” Then to Alexia, “Do you see, my little marshmallow, you simply must get yourself a nice French maid.”
Mr. Siemons was carted off to prison by two of the BUR agents. Miss Tarabotti had to speak most severely to Lord Maccon about not paying him a call when she was no longer around.
“Justice must take its course,” she insisted. “If you are going to work for BUR and support the system, you must do so all the time, not simply when you find it convenient.”
Eyes riveted on the line of congealed blood across the lower part of her neck, he wheedled, “Just a short visit, enough for a mild dismemberment?”
She gave him a dour look. “No.”
The rest of the BUR agents and a competent-looking sweeps crew bustled about, scribbling notations and passing things to the earl to sign. At first they had been entirely shocked to find him in human form, but the sheer mountain of cleanup to be done at the Hypocras Club made them quickly more grateful than surprised to have him available and competent.
Miss Tarabotti tried to be helpful, but her eyes were becoming scratchy, and she was leaning more and more heavily against Lord Maccon's broad side. Eventually, the earl shifted his operation to the entry room of the club and sat them both down on the red couch there. Someone made tea. Lord Akeldama enthroned himself in the brown leather studded armchair. Despite the indignity, Miss Tarabotti soon found herself curled up on the couch, head pillowed on Lord Maccon's hard thigh, snoring softly.
The earl, issuing orders and signing forms, stroked her hair with one hand, in defiance of Biffy's protestations that this would mess up her new hairdo.
***
Miss Tarabotti, dreaming of brass octopuses, slept through the remains of the night. She did not awaken upon the arrival or the departure of the potentate and his argument with Lord Maccon, whose growls of annoyance at the politician's obtuseness only seemed to lull her further into dreamland. Nor was she awake to see Lord Maccon square off against Dr. Caedes over the disposition of the Hypocras Club's gadgetry and research notes. She slept through Lord Akeldama and his young men leaving, the sunrise, the release of the werewolves—now back in human form—and Lord Maccon's explanation of events to his pack.
She even slept through the earl gently transferring her into Professor Lyall's arms and the Beta carrying her rapidly past the arriving press, her head, and thus identity, covered by one of Lord Akeldama's ever-present lace handkerchiefs.
She did not, however, sleep through her mother's shrieks upon her arrival back at the Loontwill town house. Mrs. Loontwill was waiting up for them in the front parlor. And she was not pleased.
“Where have you been all night, young lady?” said her mother in the sepulchral tones of the deeply put-upon.
Felicity and Evylin appeared in the doorway of the parlor, wearing nightdresses and draped in heavy pelisses and shocked expressions. Upon noticing Professor Lyall, they squeaked in alarm and dashed back up to their rooms to dress as quickly as possible, horrified that decorum dictate they miss any part of the undoubted drama occurring downstairs.