Biffy glanced up through his lashes, trying to keep as unthreatening a demeanor as possible.
Felicity followed Lady Kingair out into the hall. She was wearing a dress of pale blue satin with royal blue velvet trim and a smug expression. Biffy had no idea why, but that expression terrified him more than Lady Kingair’s rage. He wasn’t particularly taken with the dress, either. Blue on blue always looked damp.
Lady Kingair came close enough for his hackles to rise, even in human form. “Did you ken, pup?”
“Know what, my lady?” Biffy kept his voice mellow.
“Did you ken it was him? Did you ken what he did?”
“I’m sorry, my lady, but I have no idea to what you are referring.”
“Did you ken what he did to my pack? Stole Gramps away from us! Lyall, that jackass. Stole him! Organized everything. Played us all like we were bally puppets. Got my pack to attempt treason and Gramps to feel betrayed so he would up and run to Woolsey. Do you ken what that did to my life? A child left to clean up dross? Have you any inkling what it was like? Did he give us a single thought? Destroy one pack to save another, will he? Bollocks to that! I’ll skin him alive!”
Biffy could only shake his head, trying to understand, trying to put everything together. “This is all before my time, my lady.”
She lashed out at him, backhanding him hard across the face, all werewolf strength and Alpha rage at anyone who would threaten her pack, past or present, real or imagined. The force of the blow thrust Biffy back against the wall and down to one knee, blood spattering the perfect points of his white starched collar.
Felicity gave a little squeak of alarm.
The pain was intense but fleeting. Biffy could feel the cut on his lip healing even as he regained his feet. It had taken him a long while to become accustomed to the sensation of flesh knitting back together again, like skin darning. He pulled out his handkerchief, lilac scented, and dabbed the spatter off of his cheek. He could feel the hunger starting, the need to consume bloody flesh to compensate for the blood he had lost. Felicity, standing so still behind the vibrating Lady Kingair, smelled delicious, even through the lilac of his handkerchief and the rose of her perfume—werewolf urges were so embarrassing.
“Now, Lady Kingair, there’s no call for that kind of behavior. We are all civilized here, if you would just—”
But the Alpha was already away, ripping the dress from her own body and changing to wolf form there in the hallway. She went charging out into the night. Floote had enough presence of mind to open the front door wide or she might have crashed through it.
Biffy was frightened for Lyall and momentarily at a loss given the suddenness and violence of the preceding few minutes. He knew he should warn the Beta somehow, but first he had to ascertain the particulars. He turned to face Felicity.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Floote subtly replacing a tiny pearl-handled gun into his inner coat pocket with his free hand. The butler must have armed himself when Lady Kingair turned violent. Biffy wasn’t certain how he felt about this. Should butlers be hiding small firearms about their personage? Didn’t seem very domestic.
Felicity tried to make her way to the now-open door.
Biffy moved supernaturally fast. He would never be as quick as Lord Akeldama, but he was certainly faster than Felicity Loontwill. He signaled Floote with a sharp gesture, and the butler, understanding perfectly, closed the door firmly in the young lady’s face. In the same instant, Biffy took Felicity by one arm.
His hands—slender and fine and once so well suited to his preferred mortal pastime, playing the piano—were now more than equipped with the strength to waylay one frivolous female.
“I didn’t know you knew Lady Kingair.”
“I didn’t until I met her.”
Biffy glared.
Felicity started to prattle. “Why, Mr. Rabiffano, I’ve hardly seen you out in society at all since I returned from abroad. I’m finding private balls about town so very undiscriminating these days. They’ll let practically anyone attend. Then again, you were at the Blingchesters last night, weren’t you? Talking to Lord Hoffingstrobe about his new dirigible?”
Biffy decided, under the circumstances, it was not too rude to interrupt her. “Miss Loontwill, stop gargling, please. I think you had better tell me what, exactly, you just told Lady Kingair.”
After being warmed by multiple hot water bottles and then cleaned of brine in the plushest of the SS Custard’s bathhouses, Lady Maccon was once more able to carry on a conversation without chattering.
“Alexia,” Ivy reprimanded most severely once she was back in her friend’s presence, “you had my heart in my chest! You really did.”
Alexia disposed of Ivy’s panic and solicitude by sending her off in search of comforting and obscure foodstuffs and took to her bed merely because it seemed the safest way to keep the gossipmongers at bay. Ivy had proved resourceful under such extreme circumstances as her favorite friend and patroness falling overboard. After calling for help, she had extracted the two parts of the new parasol, coiling the grapple about the tip like yarn about a spindle. She even spent time scuttling and hopping about, managing to stomp on the instruction sheet before it flew overboard.
“You see,” said Alexia to her husband as Ivy dashed off to see about custard éclairs, “I told you she had hidden depths.”
“Do you think it’s only saltwater immersion that has this kind of effect?” Lord Maccon was far more interested in their recent revelation. Ivy’s peculiarities of character were nothing on his wife’s peculiarities of ability.
Alexia was most decided on this point. “No. I believe it is any water. Even moisture in the air narrows the scope. Did you never wonder why the Kingair mummy’s effect was so wide in London and so small when we reached Scotland? It was raining in Scotland. Also, there must be some kind of proximity and air contact as well, for I was only affected by the preternatural mummy when I was in the same room with it, unlike you, who could not change into a werewolf within a larger-ranging area.”
“We have always known preternaturals and supernaturals functioned differently. Why should we not react differently to an alien agent in our midst? Werewolves are affected by the sun and moon; preternaturals are not.”
“And it’s clear the water was not enforcing your form?”
“Absolutely. I can change in water. Have done so many times.”
“So it definitely limits preternatural touch.”
“We know your abilities are related to ambient aether. We should not be so very surprised.”
Alexia looked at her husband. “I wonder how wet I have to be.”
“Well, my darling, we will have to perform a series of scientific tests… by bathing together.” Lord Maccon waggled his eyebrows at her and leered.
“Could soap be a factor?” Alexia was willing to play his game.
“And how about underwater kisses?”
“Now you’re getting silly. Do you think that’s why our Prudence hates bath night so much?”
Conall sat up and stopped flirting. “By George, that is an idea! Perhaps she feels a limiting of her abilities, or perhaps she has a way of sensing others out of the aether that she relies upon that is shut off by water.”
“You mean she feels blinded? Goodness, bathing would be quite a torture, then. She does always seem to notice when someone new is in the room before anyone else.”
“That could simply be excellent powers of observation.”
“True. Oh, dear, I wish she would acquire complete sentences. It would be so much more efficient to ask her these questions and get a sensible answer.”
“Our curiosity will have to wait a few years.”
Alexia worried her lower lip. “It’s all to do with the aether in the end.”
“Very poetical, my dear.”
“Was it? I didn’t know I had it in me.”
“Well, do be careful, my love. Poetry can cause irreparable harm when misapplied.”
“Especially with reference to our daughter.”
Very little made Biffy lose his poise or posture, but after Felicity’s story, he was practically slouching. “Let me see if I have this quite clear: Professor Lyall was responsible for Kingair losing Lord Maccon as Alpha?”
Felicity nodded.
“But how could you possibly know a thing like that?”
Felicity flicked a curl of blond hair over one shoulder. “I overheard Alexia accusing him of it when I was staying here. He didn’t deny it and they agreed to keep the whole thing from Lord Maccon. I don’t think that’s right. Do you? Keeping secrets from one’s husband.”
Biffy was sickened, not so much by the information, as he could readily believe such a thing of Professor Lyall, who would do anything for his pack, but by Felicity’s duplicity. “You have been sitting on this information for several years, waiting to distribute it until it could do the most damage. Why, Felicity?”
Felicity huffed out a little breath of aggravation. “You know, I told Countess Nadasdy. I told her! And she did nothing! She said it was a matter of werewolf internal politics and domestic relations, and none of her concern.”
“So you waited, and when you heard Lady Kingair was in town, you decided to tell her? Why?”
“Because she will react badly and tell Lord Maccon in the worst possible way.”
“You may, quite possibly, be evil,” said Biffy in a resigned tone.
“It’s always been Alexia: better, smarter, special in that way of hers. Alexia who married an earl. Alexia who visits the queen. Alexia who lives in town. Alexia with a baby. Who am I to be left behind by my great lump of a sister? Why is she so wonderful? She’s not pretty. She’s not talented. She has none of my finer qualities.”
Biffy could hardly believe such pettiness. “You did this to destroy your sister’s marriage?”
“Alexia had me exiled to Europe for two years! Now I’m too old for the marriage mart. But what does she care for my problems? She’s well set up. Wife of an earl! She doesn’t deserve to have any of it! It should be mine!”
“Why, you horrible little creature.”
“No wife should keep a confidence from her husband like that.” Felicity struggled to find the moral high ground.
“And no thought of what this will do to Professor Lyall or this pack?”
“What do I care for a middle-class professor or a gaggle of werewolves?”
Biffy suddenly couldn’t stand to even look at the girl. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out of my house, Miss Loontwill. And I hope never to see you again.”
“What do I care for your ill opinion, either, Mr. Rabiffano? A mere hat-shop owner and a low-ranked werewolf.”
“You may not care for mine, Miss Loontwill, but I still enjoy the friendship of Lord Akeldama, and I will see he knows exactly what you have done. Lady Maccon is his very dear friend and he will see you ostracized from polite society because of this. Rest assured, Miss Loontwill, you will become a social pariah. I recommend you plan an emigration of some kind. Perhaps to the Americas. You will no longer be welcome in any parlor in London.”
“But—”
“Good evening, Miss Loontwill.”
Biffy didn’t know what good he thought it might do, but it was quarter moon—enough for him to change without difficulty and not so full he might lose control. Not that he did that much anymore. He was getting better and better at the shift, almost like adjusting to a new haircut or cravat. It still hurt like nothing else on earth, which made it less cravatlike than one would prefer, but at least now when he was a wolf, he was still himself. There had been some doubt of that once.
He had only one advantage over Lady Kingair. He already knew where Professor Lyall was supposed to be. He did not have to track him through the city. He ran straight there, a lean chocolate-colored wolf with an oxblood stomach and a certain mottling about his neck that was almost, Lady Maccon had kindly noted, cravatlike. He used the back alleys and side streets so as not to disturb anyone. Most of London knew they now boasted a werewolf pack residing in the city center, but there was a difference between knowing and meeting a wolf face-to-face when engaging in an evening constitutional. That said, he did encounter a group of sporting blunts at their cups, who all politely raised their hats to him as he passed.
The Bureau of Unnatural Registry occupied the first few stories of an unassuming Georgian near the London Times offices and generally kept itself to itself in the manner of all semisecret government operations. Tonight, however, there was clearly something afoot even from outside the building. Had not the bright lights and rapidly shifting shadows given this indication, the yells loud enough for even a normal human to hear would have. Not to mention the fact that the front door was wide open and hanging askew on its hinges.