He nodded. He did not withdraw his hand from her tentative touch but turned it to curl about hers. “They reported the incident to me just before dawn.”
Alexia shivered. “Do you know who he is?”
“He who?” asked the earl, sounding like a donkey. Absentmindedly, he ran his thumb over her wrist in a reassuring caress.
“The wax-faced man,” said Miss Tarabotti, eyes glazed with memory and fear.
“No. Not human, not supernatural, not preternatural,” he said. “A medical experiment gone astray, perhaps? He is filled with blood.”
She was startled. “How would you know such a thing?”
He explained. “The fight, at the carriage? When they tried to abduct you. I bit him; do you not recall?” She nodded, remembering the way the earl had only changed his head into wolf form and how he had wiped the blood from his face onto his sleeve.
One shapely male lip curled in disgust. “That meat was not fresh.”
Alexia shuddered. No, not fresh. She did not like to think of the wax man and his compatriots having her personal information. She knew Lord Maccon would do his best to see her protected. And, of course, last night had proved that these mysterious enemies knew where to find her, so nothing had fundamentally changed with the theft of the BUR papers. But now that the wax-faced man and the shadowed man with his chloroform handkerchief knew she was soulless, Miss Tarabotti felt somehow terribly exposed.
“I know this will not please you,” she said, “but I have decided to call on Lord Akeldama this evening while my family is out. Do not worry. I will make certain your guards can follow me. I am convinced LordAkeldama's residence is extremely secure.”
The Alpha grunted. “If you must.”
“He knows things,” she tried to reassure him.
Lord Maccon could not argue with that. “He generally knows too many things, if you ask me.”
Miss Tarabotti tried to make her position clear. “He is not interested in me, as anything, well... significant”
“Why would he be?” wondered Lord Maccon. “You are a preternatural, soulless.”
Alexia winced but strode doggedly onward. “However, you are?”
A pause.
Lord Maccon looked most put upon. His caressing thumb movement stopped, but he did not withdraw his hand from hers.
Alexia wondered if she should force the issue. He was acting as though he had not given the matter much thought. Perhaps he had not: Professor Lyall said the Alpha was acting entirely on instinct. And this was full moon, a notoriously bad time for werewolves and their instincts. Was it appropriate to inquire as to his feelings on the matter of her good self at this particular time of the month? Then again, wasn't this the time when she was most likely to get an honest answer?
“I am what?” The earl was not making this easy for her.
Alexia swallowed her pride, sat up very straight, and said, “Interested in me?”
Lord Maccon was quiet for a few long minutes. He examined his emotions. While admitting that at that moment—her small hands in his, the smell of vanilla and cinnamon in the air, the neckline of that damnable dress—his mind possessed all the clarity of pea soup full of ham-hock-sized chunks of need, there was something else lurking in said soup. Whatever it was, it made him angry, for it would desperately complicate everything in his well-ordered life, and now was not the time to tackle it.
“I have spent a good deal of time and energy during the course of our association trying not to like you,” he admitted finally. It was not an answer to her question.
“And yet I find not liking you comparatively easy, especially when you say things such as that!” Miss Tarabotti replied, trying desperately to extract her hand from his odious caress.
The action backfired. Lord Maccon tugged and lifted her forward as if she weighed no more than thistle down.
Miss Tarabotti found herself sitting flush against him on the small couch. The day was suddenly as warm as she had previously implied. She was scorched from shoulder to thigh by intimate contact with his lordship's prodigious muscles. What is it, she wondered, about werewolves and muscles?
“Oh my,” said Alexia.
“I am finding,” said the earl, turning toward her and caressing her face with one hand, “it very difficult to imagine not not disliking you on a regular and intimate basis for a very long time to come.”
Miss Tarabotti smiled. The smell of open fields was all about her, that breezy scent only the earl produced.
He did not kiss her, simply touched her face, as though he were waiting for something.
“You have not apologized for your behavior,” Miss Tarabotti said, leaning into his hand with her cheek. Best not to let him get the upper hand, so to speak, in this conversation by getting her all flustered. She wondered if she dared turn her face to kiss his fingertips.