Soulless(56)

Lyall continued. “When he would not admit his interest even to himself, his instincts took over.”

Miss Tarabotti, who had a brief but scandalous vision of Lord Maccon's instincts urging him to do things such as throw her bodily over one shoulder and drag her off into the night, returned to reality with a start. “So?”

Miss Hisselpenny said to her friend, looking at Lyall for support, “It is an issue of control?”

“Very perceptive, Miss Hisselpenny.” The professor looked with warm approval at Ivy, who blushed with pleasure.

Miss Tarabotti felt as though she was beginning to understand. “At the dinner party, he was waiting for me to make overtures?” She almost squeaked in shock. “But he was flirting! With a... a... Wibbley!”

Professor Lyall nodded. “Thereby trying to increase your interest—force you to stake a claim, indicate pursuit, or assert possession. Preferably all three.”

Both Miss Tarabotti and Miss Hisselpenny were quite properly shocked into silence at the very idea. Though Alexia was less appalled than perturbed. After all, had she not just discovered, in this very room, the depth of her own interest in equalizing the male-female dynamic? She supposed if she could bite Lord Maccon on the neck and regret that she left no lasting mark, she might be able to claim him publicly.

“In pack protocol, we call it the Bitch's Dance,” Professor Lyall explained. “You are, you will forgive my saying so, Miss Tarabotti, simply too much Alpha.”

“I am not an Alpha,” protested Miss Tarabotti, standing up and pacing about. Clearly, her father's library had failed her entirely on the niceties and mating habits of werewolves.

Lyall looked at her—hands on hips, full-figured, assertive. He smiled. “There are not many female werewolves. Miss Tarabotti. The Bitch's Dance refers to liaisons among the pack: the female's choice.”

Miss Hisselpenny maintained an appalled silence. The very idea was utterly alien to her upbringing.

Miss Tarabotti mulled it over. She found she liked the idea. She had always secretly admired the vampire queens their superior position in hive structure. She did not know werewolves had something similar. Did Alpha females, she wondered, trump males outside the romantic arena as well? “Why?” she asked.

Lyall explained. “It has to be up to the female, with so few of them and so many of us. There is no battling over a female allowed. Werewolves rarely live more than a century or two because of all the infighting. The laws are strict and enforced by the dewan himself. It is entirely the bitch's choice every step of the dance.”

“So, Lord Maccon was waiting for me to go to him.” Miss Tarabotti realized for the first time how strange it must be for the older supernatural folk to adjust to the changing social norms of Queen Victoria's daylight world. Lord Maccon always seemed to have such things well in hand. It had not even occurred to Alexia that he had made a mistake in his behavior toward her. “Then what of his conduct today?”

Miss Hisselpenny sucked in a gasp. “What did he do?” She shivered in delighted horror.

Miss Tarabotti promised to tell her the particulars later. Although this time, she suspected, she would not be able to reveal every detail. Things had progressed a little too far for someone of Ivy's delicate sensibilities. If merely looking at that wingback chair could make Alexia blush, it would certainly be too much for her dear friend.

Professor Lyall coughed. Miss Tarabotti believed he was doing so to hide amusement. “That may have been my fault. I spoke to him most severely, reminding him to treat you as a modern British lady, not a werewolf.”

“Mmm,” said Miss Tarabotti, still contemplating the wingback chair, “perhaps a little too modern?”

Professor Lyall's eyebrows went all the way up, and he leaned a little out of the shadows toward her.

“Alexia,” said Miss Hisselpenny most severely, “you must force him to make his intentions clear. Persisting in this kind of behavior could cause quite the scandal.”

Miss Tarabotti thought of her preternatural state and her father, who was reputed to have been quite the philanderer before his marriage. You have no idea, she almost said.

Miss Hisselpenny continued. “I mean to say, not that one could bear to think such a thing, but it must be said, it really must...” She looked most distressed. “What if he only intends to offer you carte blanche?” Her eyes were big and sympathetic. Ivy was intelligent enough to know, whether she liked to acknowledge it or not, what Alexia's prospects really were. Practically speaking, they could not include marriage to someone of Lord Maccon's standing, no matter how romantic her imagination.