Major Channing clasped it elegantly in both of his, bowing with evident interest, even daring to brush his lips across her wrist. “You are a picture, Miss Loontwill. A picture.”
Felicity blushed and took back her hand more slowly than was proper. “I should never have thought you a werewolf, Major.”
“Ah, Miss Loontwill, it was eternal life as a gallant soldier that called to me.”
Felicity’s eyelids fluttered. “Oh, a soldiering man through and through, are you, sir? How romantic.”
“To the bone, Miss Loontwill.”
Alexia felt she was about to be sick, and it had nothing to do with her pregnancy. “Really, Felicity, it is the middle of the night. Don’t you have one of your meetings tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes, Alexia, but I should never wish to be rude in fine company.”
Major Channing practically clicked his heels. “Miss Loontwill, I cannot deny you your beauty rest, however unnecessary I might feel it. Such loveliness as yours is already so near to perfection it can require no further assistance in that regard.”
Alexia tilted her head, trying to determine if there was an insult buried in all that flowery talk.
Felicity tittered again. “Oh, really, Major Channing, we hardly know one another.”
“Your meeting, Felicity. Rest.” Alexia tapped her parasol pointedly.
“Oh, la, yes, I suppose I should.”
Lady Maccon was tired and out of temper. She decided she had a right, under such circumstances, to be difficult. “My sister is an active member of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage,” she explained sweetly to Major Channing.
The Gamma was taken aback by this information. No doubt in all his long years he had never encountered a woman of Felicity’s ilk—and her ilk was in very little doubt after even a few seconds of acquaintance—who would be involved in such a thing as politics.
“Really, Miss Loontwill? You must tell me more about this little club of yours. I can hardly believe a woman of your elegance need dabble in such trifles. Find yourself a nice gentleman to marry and he can do such fiddling things as voting for you.”
Rather suddenly, Alexia felt like she might want to join the movement herself. Imagine such a man as Major Channing thinking he had any inkling of what a woman might want. So condescending.
Felicity’s eyelashes fluttered as though doing battle with a very fierce wind. “No one has asked me yet.”
Lady Maccon marshaled her displeasure. “Felicity, bed, now. I don’t care one jot for your finer feelings, but I need my rest. Channing, help me up the stairs and we shall have our little confidence.”
Felicity reluctantly undertook to do her sister’s bidding.
Major Channing, even more reluctantly, took Alexia’s arm. “So, my lady, I wanted to—”
“No, Major, wait until she is well away,” cautioned Lady Maccon.
They waited, making their way slowly up to the next floor.
Alexia finally deemed it safe, but still she spoke in a very low voice. “Yes?”
“I wanted to say, about that business with our Beta. Randolph is different from the rest of us wolves, you do realize? Your father was the love of his life, and we immortals don’t say such a thing lightly. Oh, there were others before Sandy—mostly women, I’ll have you know.” Channing seemed to be one of the few immortals Alexia had met who was concerned with such things. “But Sandy was the last. I worry. It was a quarter of a century ago.”
Lady Maccon frowned. “I have other pressing concerns at the moment, Major, but I will give the matter my due attention as soon as possible.”
Channing panicked. “Oh, now, I’m not asking you to matchmake, my lady. I’m simply pleading for leniency. I could not confide such fears to Lord Maccon, and you are also our Alpha.”
Alexia pinched at the bridge of her nose. “Could we talk about this tomorrow evening, perhaps? I really am quite done in.”
“No, my lady. Have you forgotten? Tomorrow is full moon.”
“Oh, blast it, it is. What a mess. Later, then. I promise not to take any rash action with regards to the good professor without due consideration as to the consequences.”
Channing clearly knew when to retreat from a battle. “Thank you very much, my lady. As to your sister, she is quite a peach, is she not? You have been hiding her from me.”
Lady Maccon would not be goaded. “Really, Channing, she is practically”—she paused to do some calculations—“one-twentieth your age. Or worse. Don’t you want some maturity in your life?”
“Good God, no!”
“Well, how about some human decency?”
“Now you’re just being insulting.”
Alexia huffed in amusement.
Channing raised blond eyebrows at her, handsome devil that he was. “Ah, but this is what I enjoy so much about immortality. The decades may pass for me, but the ladies, well, they will keep coming along all young and beautiful, now, won’t they?”
“Channing, someone should lock you away.”
“Now, Lady Maccon, that transpires tomorrow night, remember?”
Alexia did not bother to warn him off her sister. Such a man as Channing would only see that as a challenge. Best to pretend not to care. Felicity was on her own with this one. Lady Maccon was exhausted.
So exhausted, in fact, that she didn’t awaken when her husband later crawled in next to her in their bed. Her big, strong husband who had spent the night holding on to a boy afraid of change. Who had coached that boy through a pain Conall could no longer remember. Who had forced Biffy to realize he must give up his love or he would lose all of his remaining choices. Her big, strong husband who curled up close against her back and cried, not because of what Biffy suffered but because he, Conall Maccon, had caused that suffering.
Alexia awoke early the next evening to an unfamiliar sense of peace. She was not, by and large, a restful person. This did not trouble her overmuch. But it did mean that peace was, ironically, a slightly uncomfortable sensation. It drove her fully awake, sharp and sudden, once she had recognized and identified it. Her husband had slept pressed against her the whole day through, and she had been so very tired even the inconvenience of pregnancy had awakened her only a few times. She luxuriated in the pleasure of Conall’s broad, comforting presence. His scent was of open fields, even here in town. She reflected whimsically that he was the incarnation of a grassy hill. His face was rough with a full day’s growth. It was a good thing they were now encamped in Lord Akeldama’s house. If any household were to employ the services of an excellent barber, it was this one.
Alexia pushed aside the bedding, the better to examine her personal territory with greater thoroughness. She smoothed her hands along her husband’s massive shoulders and chest, resting fingertips at the notch in the base of his throat. She petted him as though he were in wolf form. She rarely got to indulge in such a luxury; usually her preternatural touch turned him back to human before she even got in one good scratch. Sometimes, though, and no one had ever been able to tell her why, she could put on her gloves and pet his thick brindled coat, even tug on his velvety ears with no shifting. Yet another mystery of my state, she thought. It had happened once in Scotland, and then a few other times during the winter months. These days, however, her preternatural abilities seemed to be amplified. He went human simply by being close to her. I wonder if it has something to do with the pregnancy. I should do some experiments and see if I can isolate the conditions. Before her marriage, she’d never spent much time in the company of supernaturals, apart from Lord Akeldama, and she had never had the opportunity to really study her own abilities.
But in the interim, she would continue petting whatever form he presented her with. She trailed her hands back over his chest, threading fingers through the hair there, tugging slightly, and then down along his sides.
A rumbling snuffle of amusement met this action.
“That tickles.” But Conall did not make any move to prevent her continued explorations. Instead, he picked up his own hand and began smoothing it over her protruding belly.
The infant-inconvenience kicked in response, and Conall twitched at the sensation.
“Active little pup, isn’t he?”
“She,” corrected his wife. “As if any child of mine would dare be a boy.”
It was a long-standing argument.
“Boy,” replied Conall. “Any child as difficult as this one has been from the start must, perforce, be male.”
Alexia snorted. “As if my daughter would be calm and biddable.”
Conall grinned, catching one of her hands and bringing it in for a kiss, all prickly whiskers and soft lips. “Very good point, wife. Very good point.”
Alexia snuggled against him. “Did you manage to settle Biffy?”
Conall shrugged, an up and down of muscle under her ear. “I spent the remainder of last night with him. I think that helped mitigate the trauma. It is hard to tell. Regardless, by this point, I should be able to sense him.”
“Sense, what do you mean, sense?”
“Difficult to articulate. Do you know that sensation you get when there is someone else in the room, even if you cannot see them? For us Alphas, pack members are a little like that. Whether we are in the same room or not, we simply know the pack is there. Biffy, he isn’t a part of that yet. So he isn’t part of my pack.”
Alexia was struck with a moment of inspiration. “You should encourage him and Lyall to spend more time together.”
“Now, Alexia, are you trying to matchmake?”
“Maybe.”
“I thought you said Biffy did not need to be in love, he needed to find his place.”
“Perhaps, in this matter, Biffy is not the half of the equation who needs to be in love.”
“Ah. How did you know Randolph might favor?.?.?.?? Never mind, I don’t want to know. It would never work. Not those two.”
Alexia took mild offense. Biffy and Lyall were both such good men, so personable and kindly. “Oh, I don’t know about that. They seem eminently suited.”
Lord Maccon looked up at the ceiling. Clearly he was trying to come up with a delicate way to phrase this. “They are both, uh, too much the Beta, if you take my meaning.”
Alexia didn’t. “I don’t see how that can be an objection.”
Lord Maccon obviously felt he could not go into the matter any further without spoiling what little was left of his wife’s feminine delicacy, so he grappled for a means of changing the subject. Only to recall exactly what night this was.
“Oh, bugger it. It’s full moon, isna it?”
“Indeed it is. Good thing we’re all cozied up together, isn’t it, my dear?”
Lord Maccon pursed his lips, trying to decide what to do. He had not intended to sleep the whole day through but had wanted to be on his way back to the dungeons before moonrise. “I left orders for Lyall and Channing to transport Biffy back to Woolsey before sunset, but I really should get there myself.”
“Too late now—the moon is up.”
He grunted, annoyed with himself. “Would you mind terribly taking the journey with me? The wine cellar here might hold a new pup, but it won’t hold me. And I should be with him, tonight of all nights. Even moonstruck myself, my presence will soothe him. Besides, I can’t imagine you want to stay attached to me all night.”
Alexia blinked at him flirtatiously. “You know, under more slender circumstances, I wouldn’t mind spending an evening thus occupied, but I really must be getting on with this investigation. I need to return some paperwork to Madame Lefoux, and I’m back to square one questioning the ghosts. I do wish this pregnancy didn’t make me so abstracted. I keep missing things, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be so easily sidetracked by history.”
Lord Maccon didn’t bother trying to argue. Given her ankle and her pregnancy, his wife was in no condition to do any such thing as continue an active inquiry. It was full moon. What could he do to see her safe except have her tailed? Which, naturally, he’d been doing for the past five weeks. For one moment, he did consider coming up with some kind of excuse to keep her at Woolsey even while he, himself, was incapacitated.
Instead, he growled out, “Very well. But, please, take some precautionary measures?”
Lady Maccon grinned. “Oh, my love, but that is so very boring.”
Lord Maccon growled again.
Alexia kissed the tip of his nose. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
“Why is it that I am always at my most terrified when you say that?”
* * *
Above the ghost, under a full moon, the living celebrated being alive.
Mortals trotted about in shoes and corsets made to limit movement, fashion for prey. They drank (becoming pickled as any gherkin) and puffed at cigars (becoming smoked as any kipper), behaving like the food they were. Silly, thought the ghost, that they couldn’t see such simple comparisons.