The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  The wolves burst into the open circle like a river of fur. Under the quarter moon, there was no anger or bloodlust in their movements. Instead it was like a dance, liquid and beautiful. The fuzzy throng was comprised of not just the Woolsey Pack but also all the visiting werewolves. Almost thirty of them jumped and pranced and yipped as they coiled around the newly married couple.

  Alexia held very still and relaxed into the dizzying movement. The wolves circled closer and closer until they pressed against her skirts, all hot predator breath and soft fur. Then one wolf stopped directly next to Lord Maccon—a thin, sandy, vulpinelike creature—Professor Lyall.

  With a wink at Alexia, the Beta threw his head back and barked, once, sharply.

  The wolves stopped stock-still and then did the most organized, politely amusing thing. They lined up in a neat circle all about and one by one came forward. As each wolf stood before the newly married pair, he lowered his head between his forelegs, showing the back of his neck in a funny little bow.

  “Are they paying homage to you?” Alexia asked her husband.

  He laughed. “Lord, no. Why would they bother with me?”

  “Oh,” replied Alexia, realizing it was meant to honor her. “Should I do something?”

  Conall kissed her cheek. “You are wonderful as you are.”

  The last to come forward was Lyall. His bow was somehow more elegant and more restrained than anyone else’s.

  Once completed, he barked again, and they all leaped into action: running three times around the couple and dashing off into the night.

  After that, everything else was anticlimactic, and as soon as civility allowed, Alexia’s new husband hustled her into the waiting carriage and on the road out of London toward Woolsey Castle.

  A few of the werewolves returned then, still in wolf form, to run alongside the carriage.

  Just outside of town, Lord Maccon stuck his head out the coach window and told them unceremoniously to “shove off.”

  “I gave the pack the evening out,” he informed Alexia, retracting his head and closing the window.

  His wife issued him an arch look.

  “Oh, very well. I told them if they showed their furry faces round Woolsey Castle for the next three days, I would personally eviscerate them.”

  Alexia smiled. “Good gracious, where will they all stay?”

  “Lyall muttered something about invading Lord Akeldama’s town house.” Conall looked smugly amused.

  Alexia laughed. “Would I were a fly on that wall!”

  Her husband turned about and without further ado began unclasping the brooch that held the neck of her beautiful gown together.

  “Intriguing design, this dress,” he commented without real interest.

  “Rather say, necessary design,” replied his lady as the neck fell away to show a neat pattern of tiny love bites all about her throat. Lord Maccon traced them with proprietary pride.

  “What are you up to?” Alexia asked as he gently kissed the tiny bruises. She was distracted by the delicious tingly sensation this caused, but not enough to forgo noticing his hands were round the back of the bodice of her dress, sliding open the row of buttons there.

  “I should think that would be obvious by now,” he replied with a grin. He pushed back the top of her dress and became intent on undoing her corset. His lips moved down from her neck to delve into the region of her décolletage.

  “Conall,” Alexia murmured hazily, almost losing her objections as new and delicious sensation extended from nipples turned strangely tight and hard. “We are in a moving carriage! Why this constant preference for inappropriate locations for amorous activities?”

  “Mmm, not to worry,” he purposefully misconstrued her protestations. “I gave the coachman instructions to take the long way round.” He helped her to stand and shucked her out of her dress, skirts, and corset with consummate rapidity.

  Alexia, in only a shift, stockings, and shoes, crossed her arms over her breasts self-consciously.

  Her new husband ran large calloused hands around the hem of her chemise, stroking at the soft skin of her upper thighs. Then he lifted the material up to cup her buttocks before raising that last bastion of her admittedly deteriorated dignity over her head and discarding it.

  Until that moment, Alexia realized she had never before seen real hunger in his eyes. They were in physical contact, supernatural and preternatural, but nevertheless, his eyes had turned to pure wolf yellow. He looked at her, clad in nothing but stockings and ivory button boots, as though he wanted to eat her alive.

  “You are trying to get back at me, are you?” she said accusingly, trying to calm him a little. The intensity was scaring her. She was, after all, relatively new to this kind of activity.

  He paused and looked at her, yellow fading in genuine surprise. “For what?”

  “Back at the Hypocras Club, when you were naked and I was not.”

  He pulled her toward him. She had no idea how he managed to attend to himself as well as her, but somehow he had opened the flap at the front of his breeches. Everything else remained covered. “I’ll admit the thought had crossed my mind. Now sit.”

  “What, there?”

  “Aye, there.”

  Alexia looked dubious. However, there were destined to be some arguments in their relationship she could not hope to win. This was one of them. The carriage, rather too conveniently, pitched slightly to one side, and she stumbled forward. Conall caught her and guided her into his lap in one smooth movement.

  He did not do anything else with that particular proximity for a moment; instead he turned his attention to her generous breasts, first kissing, then nibbling, then biting, a progression that had Alexia squirming in such a way as to force the very tip of him inside her whether she willed it or no.

  “Really,” she insisted, panting, “this is a most unseemly location for such activities.”

  Just then, the carriage lurched over a rut in the road and silenced all further objections. The movement brought her flush on top of him, naked thighs pressed against the material of his breeches. Lord Maccon groaned, a rapt expression on his face.

  Alexia gasped and winced. “Ouch!” She leaned forward against her husband and bit his shoulder hard in revenge. Hard enough to draw blood. “That hurt.”

  He took the bite without complaint and looked worried. “Does it still?”

  The carriage bumped again. This time Alexia sighed. Something extremely odd and tingly was beginning to occur in her nether regions.

  “I shall take that as a no,” said her husband, and began to move, rocking with the motion of the carriage.

  What happened after that was all sweat, and moans, and pulsing sensation to which Alexia decided, after about one second of deep deliberation, she was not averse. It culminated in the most intriguing second heartbeat emerging right around the area where he had impaled himself. Shortly thereafter, her husband gave a long low groan and collapsed back on the carriage cushions, cradling her against him.

  “Ooo,” said Alexia, fascinated, “it shrinks back down again. The books didn’t detail that occurrence.”

  The earl laughed. “You must show me these books of yours.”

  She folded forward on top of him and nuzzled down into his cravat, pleased to be with a man who was strong enough to be untroubled at having her draped atop him. “Books of my father’s,” she corrected.

  “I hear he had an interesting reputation.”

  “Mmmm, so his library would suggest.” She closed her eyes, relaxing against her husband. Then she thought of something, reared back, and whacked him on the waistcoat with one balled-up fist.

  “Ouch,” said her long-suffering husband. “Now what are you upset about?”

  “Isn’t that just like you!” she said.

  “What?”

  “You took it as a challenge, didn’t you? My stopping you from seducing me back at the Hypocras Club.”

  Lord Maccon grinned wolfishly, though his eyes had gone b
ack to their human tawny brown color. “Naturally.”

  She frowned, considering how best to handle this situation. Then she shifted back toward him and began busily untying his cravat and divesting him of coat, waistcoat, and shirt.

  “Well, then,” she said.

  “Aye?”

  “I am still holding that the carriage is an entirely inappropriate place for conjugal activities. Would you like to prove me wrong a second time?”

  “Are you challenging me, Lady Maccon?” asked Lord Maccon in mock annoyance. But he was already lifting himself up to facilitate her removal of his clothing.

  Alexia smiled down at his bare chest and then looked once more into his eyes. The yellow was back. “All the time.”

  orbitbooks.net

  orbitshortfiction.com

  Acknowledgments

  With grateful thanks to the three least-appreciated and hardest-working proselytizers of the written word: independent bookstores, librarians, and teachers.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wherein Things Disappear,

  Alexia Gets Testy Over Tents,

  and Ivy Has an Announcement

  They are what?”

  Lord Conall Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, was yelling. Loudly. This was to be expected from Lord Maccon, who was generally a loud sort of gentleman—the ear-bleeding combination of lung capacity and a large barrel chest.

  Alexia Maccon, Lady Woolsey, muhjah to the queen, Britain’s secret preternatural weapon extraordinaire, blinked awake from a deep and delicious sleep.

  “Wasn’t me,” she immediately said, without having the barest hint of an idea as to what her husband was carrying on about. Of course, it usually was her, but it would not do to fess up right away, regardless of whatever it was that had his britches in a bunch this time. Alexia screwed her eyes shut and squirmed farther into the warmth of down-stuffed blankets. Couldn’t they argue about it later?

  “What do you mean gone?” The bed shook slightly with the sheer volume behind Lord Maccon’s yell. The amazing thing was that he wasn’t nearly as loud as he could be when he really put his lungs into it.

  “Well, I certainly did not tell them to go,” denied Alexia into her pillow. She wondered who “they” were. Then she came about to the realization, taking a fluffy-cottony sort of pathway to get there, that he wasn’t yelling at her but at someone else. In their bedroom.

  Oh dear.

  Unless he was yelling at himself.

  Oh dear.

  “What, all of them?”

  Alexia’s scientific side wondered idly at the power of sound waves—hadn’t she heard of a recent Royal Society pamphlet on the subject?

  “All at once?”

  Lady Maccon sighed, rolled toward the hollering, and cracked one eyelid. Her husband’s large naked back filled her field of vision. To see any more, she’d have to lever herself upright. Since that would probably expose her to more cold air, she declined to lever. She did, however, observe that the sun was barely down. What was Conall doing awake and aloud so freakishly early? For, while her husband roaring was not uncommon, its occurrence in the wee hours of late afternoon was. Inhuman decency dictated that even Woolsey Castle’s Alpha werewolf remain quiet at this time of day.

  “How wide of a radius, exactly? It canna have extended this far.”

  Oh dear, his Scottish accent had put in an appearance. That never bode well for anyone.

  “All over London? No? Just the entire Thames embankment and city center. That is simply not possible.”

  This time Lady Maccon managed to discern a mild murmuring response to her husband’s latest holler. Well, she consoled herself, at least he hadn’t gone entirely potty. But who would dare attempt to rustle up Lord Maccon in his private quarters at such an abysmal hour? She tried once more to see over his back. Why did he have to be so substantial?

  She levered.

  Alexia Maccon was known as a lady of regal bearing and not much more. Society generally considered her looks too swarthy to give much credence despite her rank. Alexia, herself, had always believed good posture was her last best hope and was proud to have acquired the “regal bearing” epithet. This morning, however, blankets and pillows thwarted her; she could only flounder gracelessly up to her elbows, her backbone as limp as a noodle.

  All that her Herculean effort revealed was a hint of wispy silver and a vaguely human form: Formerly Merriway.

  “Mummer murmur,” said Formerly Merriway, straining for full apparition in the not-quite darkness. She was a polite ghost, relatively young and well preserved, and still entirely sane.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Lord Maccon seemed to be getting only more irritated. Lady Maccon knew that particular tone of voice well—it was usually directed at her. “But there is nothing on this Earth that can do that.”

  Formerly Merriway said something else.

  “Well, have they consulted all the daylight agents?”

  Alexia strained to hear. Already gifted with a low, sweet voice, the ghost was difficult to understand when she intentionally dampened her tone. Formerly Merriway might have said, “Yes, and they have no idea either.”

  The ghost seemed frightened, which caused Alexia more concern than Lord Maccon’s irritation (which was sadly frequent). Little could frighten the already dead, with the possible exception of a preternatural. And even Alexia, soulless, was only dangerous under very specific circumstances.

  “What, no idea at all? Right.” The earl tossed his blankets aside and climbed out of bed.

  Formerly Merriway gasped and shimmered about, presenting her transparent back to the completely naked man.

  Alexia appreciated the courtesy, even if Lord Maccon did not. Polite to the core was poor little Merriway. Or what was left of her core. Lady Maccon, on the other hand, was not so reticent. Her husband had a decidedly fine backside, if she did say so herself. And she had said so, to her scandalized friend Miss Ivy Hisselpenny, on more than one occasion. It may be far too early to be awake, but it was never too early to admire something of that caliber. The artistically pleasing body part drifted out of view as her husband strode toward his dressing chamber.

  “Where is Lyall?” he barked.

  Lady Maccon tried to go back to sleep.

  “What! Lyall’s gone too? Is everyone going to disappear on me? No, I did not send him.…” A pause. “Oh yes, you are perfectly correct, I did. The pack was”—blub blub blub—“coming in at”—blub, blub—“station.” Splash. “Shouldn’t he have returned by now?”

  Her husband was obviously washing, as periodically his bellowing was interrupted by soggy noises. Alexia strained to hear Tunstell’s voice. Without his valet, her louder half was bound to look quite disastrously disheveled. It was never a good idea to let the earl dress unsupervised.

  “Right, well, send a claviger for him posthaste.”

  At which point, Formerly Merriway’s spectral form vanished from view.

  Conall reappeared in Alexia’s line of sight and gathered up his gold pocket watch from the bedside table. “Of course, they will take it as an insult, but nothing to be done about it.”

  Ha, she had been right. He was, in fact, not dressed at all but was wearing only a cloak. No Tunstell then.

  The earl seemed to remember his wife for the first time.

  Alexia counterfeited sleep.

  Conall shook Alexia gently, admiring both the tousled mound of inky hair and the artfully feigned disinterest. When his shaking became insistent, she blinked long lashes at him.

  “Ah, good evening, my dear.”

  Alexia glared at her husband out of slightly red-rimmed brown eyes. This early evening tomfoolery wouldn’t be so horrible if he had not kept her up half the day. Not that those particular exertions had been unpleasant, simply exuberant and lengthy.

  “What are you about, husband?” she inquired, her voice laced buttery-smooth with suspicion.

  “All apologies, my dear.”

  Lady Maccon absolutely hated it when her
husband called her his “dear.” It meant he was up to something but was not going to tell her about it.

  “I must run off to the office early tonight. Some important BUR business has cropped up.” From the cloak and the fact that his canines were showing, Alexia surmised that he literally meant run, in wolf form. Whatever was going on must need urgent attention, indeed. Lord Maccon usually preferred to arrive at BUR in carriage, comfort, and style, not fur.

  “Has it?” muttered Alexia.

  The earl began to tuck the blankets about his wife. His large hands were unexpectedly gentle. Touching his preternatural spouse, his canines disappeared. In that brief moment, he was mortal.

  “Are you meeting with the Shadow Council tonight?” he asked.

  Alexia considered. Was it Thursday? “Yes.”

  “You are in for an interesting conference,” advised the earl, goading her.

  Alexia sat up, undoing all of his nice tucking. “What? Why?” The blankets fell, revealing that Lady Maccon’s endowments were considerable and not fabricated through fashionable artifice such as stuffed corset or too-tight stays. Despite nightly familiarity with this fact, Lord Maccon was prone to dragging her onto secluded balconies at balls in order to check and “make certain” this remained the case.

  “I am sorry for waking you so early, my dear.” There was that dreaded phrase again. “I promise I shall make it up to you in the morning.” He waggled his eyebrows at her lasciviously and leaned down for a long and thorough kiss.

  Lady Maccon sputtered and pushed at his large chest ineffectually.

  “Conall, what is going on?”

  But her irritating werewolf of a husband was already away and out of the room.

  “Pack!” His holler resounded through the hallway. At least this time he had made a pretense of seeing to her comfort by shutting the door first.

  Alexia and Conall Maccon’s bedroom took up the whole of one of the highest towers Woolsey had to offer, which, admittedly, was more of a dignified pimple off the top of one wall. Despite this comparative isolation, the earl’s bellow could be heard throughout most of the massive building, even down to the back parlor, where his clavigers were taking their tea.