Heartless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Fourth (39 page)

Lady Maccon noted with relief that Quesnel had been transferred to Dr. Caedes’s care. It was clearly not safe for a mortal to be near the queen. Alexia caught the young scamp’s violet eye under his floppy thatch of yellow hair. He looked terrified. She gave him a wink and he brightened almost instantly. Theirs was not a long acquaintance, but she had once supported him in the matter of an exploding boiler, and he had trusted her implicitly ever since.

Alexia moved forward, only to pause, finding herself alone and Lord Akeldama left standing in a dramatic pose on the stoop behind her. Frankly, she had been surprised he even considered walking through the kitchen. He’d probably never even seen that part of his house before.

She turned back. “You aren’t facilitating this conversation?” Never had she known Lord Akeldama to step aside when something significant was afoot.

The rove vampire chuckled. “My little
dumpling,
the countess would not tolerate my presence in her current condition. And I could hardly stand to endure such waistcoats as Dr. Caedes seems to favor these days. Not to mention the universal lack of headgear.”

Alexia looked over the vampires with new eyes. It was true; the gentlemen seemed to have misplaced their top hats during the kerfuffle.

“No, no, my
cream puff,
this is
yours
to play now.” He spared her a worried glance. She had not stopped clutching her protruding belly since she first reappeared in his drawing room. “If you are certain you can handle it with sufficient dexterity.”

Lady Maccon took a fortifying breath, almost overbalancing. Responsibility was responsibility and no baby was going to prevent her from seeing everything right. Her world, currently, was in disarray. If Alexia Maccon was good at nothing else, she was good at putting things to rights and bringing order to the universe. Right now the Westminster Hive needed her managerial talents. She could hardly shirk her duty for so mere a trifle as pregnancy.

Without a backward glance at Lord Akeldama, she strode forward into the midst of the panicking hive. Or she would like to say she strode; it was more a gimpy kind of shuffle.

“Wait, Alexia! Where is your parasol?” Lord Akeldama sounded more concerned than she had ever heard him, devoid of both italics and pet names.

Lady Maccon gesticulated in an expressive way and yelled back to him, “Underneath what’s left of the hive house, I suspect.” Then she faced her muhjah duties full-on. “Right, you lot. I’ve had about enough of this waggish behavior.”

Countess Nadasdy turned and hissed at her. Actually hissed.

“Oh, really.” Lady Maccon was revolted. She looked at
the Duke of Hematol. “Would you like me to sober her up?” She twiddled her naked fingers at him.

Lord Ambrose snarled and leaped, in one of those fantastic supernatural feats of athleticism, to place himself between Lady Maccon and his queen.

“Apparently not. Have you a better solution?”

The duke said, “We could not have her mortal and vulnerable, not in such an unprotected state.”

Behind them, clattering through the alley behind the long row of town houses, the Woolsey carriage drew to a stop, the chestnut travelers hitched up rather than the parade bays. The countess leaped toward it as though it were some fearsome foe. Lord Ambrose held her back by snaking both arms around her from behind in an embarrassingly intimate gesture. It was only an old-fashioned gingerbread coach with a massive crest on its side and just that kind of superfluous decadence that would appeal to Lord Akeldama but that Lady Maccon had always felt was ever so slightly embarrassing for Woolsey. It was built to make an impression, not for speed or nimbleness. But Alexia hardly thought even such grandiose ugliness warranted a vampire attack.

“Well, then, as Lord Akeldama will not invite you in for tea and a sit-down, I was thinking I might suggest we retreat to Woolsey for the time being. Take refuge there.”

All the assembled vampires, even the countess, who seemed to have only a limited ability to follow what was going on around her, paused to look at Lady Maccon as though she had just donned Grecian robes and begun hurling peeled grapes at them.

“Are you certain, Lady Maccon?” asked one of them, almost timidly for a vampire.

The doctor stepped forward, elongated and frail-looking, for all he held the struggling Quesnel as though the boy weighed no more than one of Madame Lefoux’s automated feather dusters. “You are inviting us to stay, Lady Maccon? At Woolsey?”

Alexia did not see the source of their persistent confusion. “Well, yes. But I’ve only the one carriage, so you and the boy and the countess had best come with me. The others can run behind. Try to keep up.”

Lord Ambrose looked at Dr. Caedes. “It is unprecedented.”

Dr. Caedes looked at the Duke of Hematol. “There is no edict for this.”

The duke looked at Lady Maccon, rolling his head from one side to the other. “The marriage was unprecedented, and so is the forthcoming child. She but maintains her brand of tradition.” The duke moved toward his mistress. Cautiously, careful not to make any sudden movements.

“My Queen, we have an option.” He spoke precisely, careful to enunciate each and every word.

Countess Nadasdy shook herself. “We have?” Her voice sounded hollow and very far away, as though emanating from the bottom of a mine. It reminded Alexia of something, but with the child inside her creating a fuss and the prospect of a long drive ahead, she couldn’t remember what.

The countess looked to Lord Ambrose. “Who must we kill?”

“It is an offer freely given. An
invitation.
”

For a moment, Countess Nadasdy seemed to return to herself, focusing completely on the faces of her three most treasured hive members. Her supports. Her tentacles. “Well, let us take it, then. No time to spare.” She looked around, cornflower-blue eyes suddenly sharp. “Is that
laundry?
Where
have
you brought me?”

With a nod to Lady Maccon, Lord Ambrose hustled his queen into the Woolsey carriage. Quicker than the mortal eye could follow, he ducked back out again, his movements made smoother without the need to monitor a hat. He leaped to the driver’s box, unceremoniously dismissing the perfectly respectable coachman who sat there and taking up the reins himself. Lady Maccon arched a brow at him.

“Pardon me?”

“I once raced chariots,” he explained with a grin that showed off his fangs to perfection.

“I do not think it is quite the same thing, Lord Ambrose,” remonstrated Alexia.

Dr. Caedes and Quesnel climbed inside next. And then, reluctantly, Lady Maccon. She struggled a bit with the steps, and no vampire was willing to offer her any kind of assistance, no touching, not even for politeness’ sake. Once inside, she was unsurprised to find that the vampires were seated together on one bench so that she must sit alone on the other.

Lord Ambrose whipped the horses up and they took off at a canter, far too fast for the crowded streets of London. The clattering on the cobbles was awfully loud, and the carriage seemed to gyrate around the turns far more than Alexia had noticed before. Her belly protested the swaying.

It ordinarily took just under two hours to reach Woolsey from central London, less time for a werewolf in full fur, of course. The Count of Trizdale once claimed to have run it in his highflyer coach in only an hour and a quarter. Lord Ambrose, it seemed, was intent on trying to break that record.

Within London, the streets were worn enough into ruts for relatively smooth travel, and even though he had been tethered to Mayfair for hundreds of years, Lord Ambrose knew the way. Plenty of time to study maps, Alexia supposed. They took the lesser used road toward West Ham. However, upon exiting the city, everything went awry.

Not that the evening’s events prior to that moment had been all sugared violet petals. But still.

First, and worst, so far as Lady Maccon was concerned, they hit the dirt road of the countryside. It had never bothered her overmuch before, and the carriage was well sprung and padded inside. But the fast pace combined with more-than-was-normal jiggling did not amuse the infant-inconvenience. Fifteen minutes of that and Alexia felt a new bodily sensation commence—a dull ache in the small of her back. She wondered if she had damaged herself during one of the evening’s many bustle-crushing dismounts.

Then they heard Lord Ambrose yell and smelled acrid smoke. Here, away from looming shadows of the city buildings and under the full moon’s light, everything was much easier to see. Alexia watched through the window as one of their vampire escorts put on a burst of speed, drew alongside the carriage, and leaped. The coach lurched but did not slow, and there came the sound of the roof above them being beaten viciously.

“Are we on fire?” Lady Maccon shifted herself into a better position, drew down the window sash, and stuck her head out into the rushing air, trying to see behind them.

It might have been difficult for her to make out their enemy, had there been a man on horseback or another carriage behind them, but the thing skittering after them over the fields and between the hedgerows was doing so on eight massive tentacles. Well, seven massive tentacles—it had the eighth in front of it spurting fire at the carriage. It was also several stories high.

Alexia pulled her head back inside. “Dr. Caedes, I suggest you have your charge there show himself. It might prevent Genevieve from actually killing us.”

The carriage lurched again and picked up speed. The vampire on the roof, having succeeded in beating out the flames, had jumped off. But they were moving nowhere near as fast as they had initially—the horses were tiring, if not becoming winded and destroyed by such cruel speed.

The octomaton was gaining on them, and Woolsey still a good distance away.

Dr. Caedes changed his grip on the boy and tried to force Quesnel to stick his head out of the carriage window. Quesnel was not at all inclined to do anything any of the vampires wanted. Alexia gave her friend’s son an almost imperceptible nod, at which point he did as directed. He stuck not only his head but also one skinny arm outside, waving madly at the creature behind them.

The ache in Lady Maccon’s back intensified and she felt her stomach lurch, wavelike. She’d never experienced such a sensation before. She let out a squeak of alarm and
fell back against the padded wall of the coach. Then it was gone.

Alexia poked at her stomach with a finger. “Don’t you dare. Now is most inopportune! Besides, arriving early to a party is disrespectful.”

The octomaton fell back just far enough to allow the carriage to slow, but if Alexia knew Madame Lefoux, this was only giving the inventor time to come up with a new plan of attack. Genevieve must realize Alexia was also in the carriage and that they were headed to Woolsey. There was no other reason to be on that road at that time, for aside from everything else, no one traveled to Barking at night and no one
ever
traveled to Barking
at speed.

“Oh, my goodness.” Lady Maccon had the most uncomfortable feeling that she had lost some of her legendary control, over the physical, if not the mental. A wet sensation in her lower area indicated that her bustle, and quite possibly the rest of her dress, really was not going to survive this night. Then came that wavelike feeling again, starting at the top of her stomach and working its way down.

Dr. Caedes, who wasn’t a real doctor, was nevertheless perceptive enough to see that the tenor of Lady Maccon’s distress had changed.

“Lady Maccon, have you commenced? That would be most unfortunate timing.”

Alexia frowned. “No, I absolutely forbid it. I will not—Oooh.” She ended on a groan.

“I believe you have.”

Quesnel perked up at this. “Bully! I’ve never seen a birth before.” He turned big lavender eyes onto the now-sweating Lady Maccon.

“You’re not going to tonight, either, young man,” Alexia reprimanded between puffs of breath.

The countess, who was still twitchy as all get out and only partly paying attention to any conversation, looked with bright suspicious eyes at Alexia. “You can’t. Not while I am here with you. What if
it
comes out and we have to touch it? Dr. Caedes, throw her out of the carriage at once.”

Even with the strange wave sensation and a burgeoning pain, Alexia was quick enough to reach into her reticule and pull out Ethel before Dr. Caedes could stop her.

Not that he tried. Instead, he attempted to reason with the countess. “We can’t, my queen. We need her to get us inside the house. She is our invitation.”

Lady Maccon felt compelled to add, “And this is
my
carriage! If anyone is getting out, it’s you!” She felt an additional downward pressure from the child inside her. “No, not
you
!” Then she looked wildly around. “This is not allowed,” she said in a blanket kind of way, including both the imminent baby, the vampires, Quesnel, and the octomaton. She looked down at her belly. “I will not begin our relationship with disobedience. I get enough of
that
from your father.”

The countess looked like she had eaten something foul, like a piece of fresh fruit. “I cannot be in proximity to an abomination! Do you know what might transpire?”

Now, this form of panic could be useful. “No, why don’t you enlighten me?”

Too late. A crushing, grinding noise came from behind them. Alexia had no idea what the octomaton was up to, but when she stuck her head out of the window, she saw it was no longer following them. The carriage had turned
off the main track, into the long weaving roadway that wended through Woolsey’s grounds.