Miss Tarabotti placed a sympathetic hand on his arm. “My dear sir, I did not intend to be nosy! You are of a mind to think of my question as officious?”
The gentleman blushed and pushed at his spectacles nervously. “Oh no, of course not! No such thing. It's just that my brother was turned. Vampire you see. My older brother.”
Alexia's response was characteristically British. “Felicitations on a successful metamorphosis. May he make his mark on history.”
The American shook his head sadly. “Here, as your comment implies, it is generally thought a good thing. In this country, I mean to say.”
“Immortality is immortality.” Alexia did not mean to be unsympathetic, but there it was.
“Not when it comes at the price of the soul.”
“Your family keeps the old faith?” Alexia was surprised. Mr. MacDougall, after all, was a scientist. Scientists were generally not given to overly religious backgrounds.
The scientist nodded. “Puritans to the very core. Not a progressive bone among them: so supernatural means 'undead' to them. John survived the bite, but they repudiated and disinherited him anyway. The family gave him three days' grace and then hunted him down like a rabid dog.”
Miss Tarabotti shook her head in sorrow. The narrow-mindedness of it all! She knew her history. The puritans left Queen Elizabeth's England for the New World because the queen sanctioned the supernatural presence in the British Isle. The Colonies had been entirely backward ever since: religious fingers in all their dealings with vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. It made America into a deeply superstitious place. Fates only knew what they'd think of someone like her!
Curious that any man from a conservative family might opt to try for metamorphosis, she asked, “Why on earth did your brother turn in the first place?”
“It was against his will. I think the hive queen did it to prove a point. We MacDougalls have always voted against change—antiprogressive to the last breath and influential in government where it counts most.”
Miss Tarabotti nodded. She had surmised his family's influence from the money he obviously possessed. She touched the fine leather of the buggy seat with one hand. Here was a scientist who needed no patronage. Strange place, that overseas land, where religion and wealth did the talking and history and age held so little sway.
Mr. MacDougall continued. “I think the hive thought that turning the eldest might make us MacDougalls all think differently.”
“Did it?”
“None except me. I loved my older brother, you see? I saw him once after he'd changed. He was still the same person: stronger, paler, night-born, yes, but essentially the same. He probably still would have voted conservative, if they'd let him vote.” He smiled slightly, and then his face fell back to round pudding blandness. “So I switched from banking to biology and have been studying the supernatural ever since.”
Miss Tarabotti shook her head unhappily. Such a sad beginning. She contemplated the sunny day: the lovely green of Hyde Park, the bright hats and dresses of ladies walking arm in arm across the grass, the two plump dirigibles gliding sedately overhead. “BUR would never allow such behavior from any vampire —to bite without permission! Let alone for a hive queen to bite the unwilling with the intent to metamorphose! Such shocking behavior.”
Mr. MacDougall sighed. “Yours is a very different world, my dear Miss Tarabotti. Very different. Mine is a land still at war with itself. The fact that the vampires sided with the Confederates still has not been forgiven.”
Alexia did not wish to insult her new friend, so she refrained from criticizing his government. But what did the Americans expect if they refused to integrate the supernatural set into their society in any way? When they forced vampires and werewolves to hide and skulk about in a shoddy imitation of the European Dark Ages?
“Have you rejected your family's puritanical tenets?” Miss Tarabotti looked inquiringly at her companion. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of tan trench coat. It must be tough on Professor Lyall to be outside in all this sun, especially when full moon was soon due. She felt a moment's pity but was pleased to know that it was he who had relieved the night watch guard. It meant Lord Maccon was still thinking of her. Of course, he was thinking of her as a problem... but that was better than not thinking of her at all, was it not? Alexia touched her lips softly with one hand and then forcibly stopped all ruminations on the mental state of the Earl of Woolsey.
Mr. MacDougall answered her question. “You mean, have I abandoned the belief that supernatural folk have sold their souls to Satan?”
Miss Tarabotti nodded.