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Soulless(23)

By:Gail Carriger


Lord Maccon slowed her with a question. “Why are you so curious about this matter? Why do you insist on involving yourself?”

“Because someone is dead and it was by my own hand,” she replied, looking gloomy. “Well, by my own parasol,” she amended.

Lord Maccon sighed. He figured someday he might win an argument with this extraordinary woman, but clearly today was not that day.

“Did you bring your own carriage?” he asked, admitting defeat with the question. “I shall hire a hackney, not to worry.”

The Earl of Woolsey reached for his hat and coat in a very decisive manner. “I have the Woolsey coach and four here. At least let me drive you home.”

Miss Tarabotti felt she had rung enough concessions out of Lord Maccon for one morning. “If you insist, my lord,” she acquiesced. “But I must ask you to drop me a little ways from the house. My mama, you see, is wholly unaware of my interest in this matter. “

“Not to mention her shock at seeing you alight from my carriage without a chaperone. We would not want to compromise your reputation in any way, now, would we?” Lord Maccon actually sounded riled by the idea.

Miss Tarabotti thought she understood the reasoning behind his tone. She laughed. “My lord, you could not possibly think I have set my cap for you?”

“And why is that such a laughable idea?”

Alexia's eyes sparkled in merriment. “I am a spinster, long on the shelf, and you are a catch of the first water. The very notion!”

Lord Maccon marched out the door, dragging her behind him. “Don't ken why you should find it so devilish funny,” he muttered under his breath. “Leastways you are nearer my age than most of those so-called incomparables the society matrons persist in hurling at me.”

Miss Tarabotti let out another trill of mirth. “Oh, my lord, you are too droll. You are nearing what? Two hundred? As if my being eight or ten years older than the average marriage-market chit should matter under such circumstances. What delightful nonsense.” She patted him approvingly on the arm.

Lord Maccon paused, annoyed at her belittling of herself and him. Then he realized what a ridiculous conversation they were having and how nearing dangerous it had become. Some of his hard-won London social acumen returned, and he held his tongue determinedly. But he was thinking that by “nearer his age” he had not meant nearer in years but in understanding. Then he wondered at his own recklessness in thinking any such thing. What was wrong with him today? He could not stand Alexia Tarabotti, even if her lovely brown eyes twinkled when she laughed, and she smelled good, and she had a particularly splendid figure.

He hustled his lady guest down the passageway, intent upon getting her into the carriage and out of his presence as quickly as possible.

***

Professor Randolph Lyall was a professor of nothing in particular and several subjects in broad detail. One of those generalities was a long running study on the typical human behavioral response when faced with werewolf transformation. His research on the subject had taught him it was best to change out of wolf shape away from polite company, preferably in a corner of a very dark alley where the only person likely to see him was equally likely to be crazy or drunk.

While the population of the greater London area, in specific, and the British Isle, in general, had learned well enough to accept werewolves on principle, to be faced with one engaging in the act of conversion was an entirely different matter. Professor Lyall considered himself rather good at the change—elegant and graceful despite the pain. Youngsters of the pack were prone to excessive writhing and spinal gyrations and sometimes a whimper or two. Professor Lyall simply melted smoothly from one form to the next. But the change was, at its root, not natural. Mind you, there was no glow, no mist, no magic about it. Skin, bone, and fur simply rearranged itself, but that was usually enough to give most daylight folk a large dose of the screaming heebie-jeebies. Screaming being the operative word.

Professor Lyall reached the Canterbury BUR offices just before dawn still in wolf shape. His animal form was nondescript but tidy, rather like his favorite waistcoat: his pelt the same sandy color as his hair

but with a sheen of black about the face and neck. He was not very big, mostly because he was not a very big human, and the basic principles of conservation of mass still applied whether supernatural or not. Werewolves had to obey the laws of physics just like everyone else.

The change took only moments: his fur crawling away from his body and moving up to become hair, hiss bones breaking and reforming from quadruped to biped, and his eyes going from pale yellow to gentle hazel. He had carried a cloak in his mouth during his run, and he threw it on as soon as he was back to human form. He left the alleyway with no one the wiser to the arrival of a werewolf in Canterbury.