Heartless

by Gail Carriger

Page 26

 

  Alexia looked at Lyall.

  Channing cocked his head. “Is this about the past? I told you no good could come of your meddling. ”

  Lyall raised his head, smelling the air. Then he turned to look at Channing.

  For the first time, Alexia realized the two men were probably old friends. Sometime enemies, of course, but only in the manner of those who have been too long in each other’s company, possibly centuries. These two had known each other far longer than either had known Lord Maccon.

  “You know?” Lyall said to the Gamma.

  Channing nodded, all patrician beauty and aristocratic superiority as compared to Professor Lyall’s studied middle-class inoffensiveness.

  The Beta looked at his hands. “Did you know all along?”

  Channing sighed, his fine face becoming suffused with a brief paroxysm of agony. So brief Alexia thought she had imagined it. “What kind of Gamma do you take me for?”

  Lyall laughed, a huff of pain. “A mostly absentee one. ” There was no bitterness to the statement, simply fact. Channing was often away fighting Queen Victoria’s little wars. “I didn’t think you realized. ”

  “Realized what, exactly? That it was occurring? Or that you were taking the brunt of it so he’d stay off the rest of us? Who do you think kept the others from finding out what was really going on? I didn’t approve of you and Sandy—you know I didn’t—but that doesn’t mean I approved of what the Alpha was doing either. ”

  Alexia’s previous self-righteousness disintegrated under the implication of Channing’s comments. There was more to Lyall’s manipulations than she had realized. “Sandy? Who is Sandy?”

  Professor Lyall twisted his lips into a little smile. Then he reached into his waistcoat—he always seemed to have everything he needed in that waistcoat of his—and pulled out a tiny leather-covered journal, navy blue with a very plain cover dated 1848 to 1850 in the upper left corner. It looked achingly familiar.

  He walked softly across the room and handed it to Alexia. “I have the rest as well, from 1845 on. He left them to me on purpose. I wasn’t keeping them intentionally away from you. ”

  Alexia could think of nothing whatsoever to say. The silence stretched until finally she asked, “The ones from after he abandoned my mother?”

  “And from when you were born. ” The Beta’s face was a study in impassivity. “But this one was his last. I like to keep it with me. A reminder. ” A whisper of a smile crossed that deadpan face, the kind of smile one sees at funerals. “He didn’t have an opportunity to finish it. ”

  Alexia flipped the journal open, glancing over the scribbled text within. The little book was barely half full. Lines jumped out at her, details of a love affair that had altered everyone involved. Only as she read did the full scope of the ramifications come into focus. It was rather like being broadsided by a Christmas ham.

  Winter 1848—for a while he walked with a limp but would not tell me why,

  said one entry. Another, from the following spring, read:

  There is talk of a theater trip on the morrow. He will not be permitted to attend, of that I am convinced. Yet we both pretended he would accompany me and that we should laugh together at the follies of society.

  For all the tight control of the penmanship, Alexia could read the tension and the fear behind her father’s words. As the entries progressed, some of his sentences turned her stomach with their brutal honesty.

  The bruises are on his face now and so deep sometimes I wonder if they will ever heal, even with all his supernatural abilities.

  She looked up at Lyall, attempting to appreciate all the implications. Trying to see bruises almost twenty-five years gone. From the stillness in his face, she supposed they might be there—well hidden, but there.

  “Read the last entry,” he suggested gently. “Go on. ”

  June 23, 1850

  It is full moon tonight. He is not going to come. Tonight all his wounds will be self-inflicted. Time was once, he would spend such nights with me. Now there is no surety left for any of them except in his presence. He is holding his whole world together by merely enduring. He has asked me to wait. Yet I do not have the patience of an immortal, and I will do anything to stop his suffering. Anything. In the end it comes to one thing. I hunt. It is what I am best at. I am better at hunting than I am at loving.

  Alexia closed the book. Her face was wet. “You’re the one he’s writing about. The one who was maltreated. ”

  Professor Lyall said nothing. He didn’t need to respond. Alexia was not asking a question.

  She looked away from him, finding the brocade of a nearby curtain quite fascinating. “The previous Alpha really was insane. ”

  Channing strode over to Professor Lyall and placed a hand on his arm. No more sympathy than that. It seemed sufficient. “Randolph didn’t even tell Sandy the worst of it. ”

  Professor Lyall said softly, “He was so old. Things go fuzzy with Alphas when they get old. ”

  “Yes, but he—”

  Lyall looked up. “Unnecessary, Channing. Lady Maccon is still a lady. Remember your manners. ”

  Alexia turned the small slim volume over in her hand—the end of her father’s life. “What really happened to him, at the last?”

  “He went after our Alpha. ” Professor Lyall removed his spectacles as though to clean them, but then seemed to forget he had done so. The glasses dangled from his fingers, glinting in the gas lamplight.

  Channing seemed to feel further explanation was necessary. “He was good, your father, very good. He’d been trained by the Templars for one purpose and one purpose only—to hunt down and kill supernatural creatures. But even he couldn’t take on an Alpha. Even an insane, sadistic bastard like Lord Woolsey was still an Alpha with a pack at his back. ”

  Professor Lyall put his spectacles down on a side table and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I told him not to, of course. Such a waste. But he was always one to pick and choose listening to me. Sandy was too much an Alpha himself. ”

  Alexia thought for the first time that Professor Lyall and Lord Akeldama shared some mannerisms. They were both good at hiding their emotions. To a certain extent, this was to be expected in vampires, but in werewolves?. ?. ?. ?Lyall’s reserve was practically flawless. Then she wondered if his very quiet stillness were not like that of a child climbing into hot water, afraid that every little movement would only make things hotter and more painful.

  Professor Lyall said, “Your father’s death taught me one thing. That something needed to be done about our Alpha. That if I had to bring down another pack to do it, so be it. At the time, there were only two wolves in England capable of killing Lord Woolsey. The dewan and—”

  Alexia filled in the rest of his sentence. “Conall Maccon, Lord Kingair. So it wasn’t simply a change of leadership you were after; it was self-preservation. ”

  One corner of Lyall’s mouth quirked upward. “It was revenge. Never forget, my lady, I’m still a werewolf. It took me nearly four years to plan. I’ll admit that’s a vampire’s style. But it worked. ”

  “You loved my father, didn’t you, Professor?”

  “He was not a very good man. ”

  A pause. Alexia thumbed through the little journal. It was worn about the edges from countless readings and rereadings.

  Professor Lyall let out a little sigh. “Do you know how old I am, my lady?”

  Alexia shook her head.

  “Old enough to know better. Things are never good when immortals fall in love. Mortals end up dead, one way or another, and we are left alone again. Why do you think the pack is so important? Or the hive, for that matter. It is not simply a vehicle for safety; it is a vehicle for sanity, to stave off the loneliness. Our mistrust of loners and roves is not only custom, it is based on this fact. ”

  Alexia’s brain buzzed with all these new revelations, but finally the whirling settled
on one thing. “Oh, lordy, Floote. Floote knew. ”

  “Some, yes. He was Sandy’s valet at the time. ”

  “Is it you who are keeping him quiet?”

  Professor Lyall shook his head. “Your butler has never taken his orders from me. ”

  Alexia looked at the little journal again, stroking the cover, and then offered it back to Lyall. “Perhaps you will let me read it in its entirety sometime?”

  The Beta’s eyes crinkled up, wincing as though he might cry. Then he swallowed, nodded, and placed the book inside his waistcoat pocket.

  Alexia took a deep breath. “So, back to the crisis at hand. I suppose neither of you is currently planning to kill Queen Victoria, even in jest?”

  Two almost simultaneous head shakes met that question.

  “Are you telling me I’ve been on the wrong track all this time?”

  The werewolves looked at each other, neither of them willing to risk her wrath.

  Alexia sighed and extracted the sheaf of paper Madame Lefoux had given her from her reticule. “So this is entirely useless? No connection between the last attempt and this one. Pure coincidence that the poisoner you were going to use, Professor, happened to die in service to the OBO. And that she possibly then became a ghost who delivered a warning to me. ”

  “Looks like it must be, my lady. ”

  “I don’t like coincidences. ”

  “Now that, my lady, I can’t help you with. ”

  Alexia sighed and stood, using her parasol as a crutch. “Back to the beginning, I suppose. Nothing for it. I shall have to return these papers to Madame Lefoux. ” The child inside her kicked mightily at the very idea. “Perhaps tomorrow night. Bed first. ”

  “A very sensible idea, my lady. ”

  “None of that from you, Professor, thank you very much. I’m still miffed. I understand why you did it, but I am miffed. ” Alexia began making her way painstakingly to the door, prepared to climb upstairs and across the balcony bridge into her closet boudoir.

  Neither werewolf tried to help her. She was clearly not in the mood to be coddled. Lyall did touch her arm as she passed. The action turned him mortal for a moment. Alexia had never had an opportunity to see him mortal before. He looked much the same as he did when immortal—perhaps there were more lines about his mouth and at the corners of his eyes—but he was still a pale vulpine man with sandy hair—utterly unremarkable.

  “Are you going to tell Conall?”

  Alexia turned around slowly and leveled a decided glare in his direction. It told him, in no uncertain terms, exactly how she felt about this state of affairs. “No, no, I’m not. Damn you. ”

  And then, with as much dignity as was possible given her condition, she waddled from the room, like some unbalanced galleon under full sail.

  Only to run into Felicity in the hallway. It was like trundling full tilt into a pillar of molasses, the conversation likely to be sticky and the individual attractive only to creepy-crawlies. Alexia was never prepared to run into her sister, but on such a night as this when the chit should be fast asleep, it really was beyond.

  Felicity, for her part, was bleary-eyed and wearing nothing but a highly ornamented nightgown, the excess material of which she clutched, with artful trembling hands, to her breast. Her hair was a tousle of golden curls that cascaded over one shoulder, a ridiculous pink bed cap perched precariously atop her head. The nightgown, too, was pink, a foulard with printed magenta flowers, replete with ruching, frillings, a quantity of lace trim, and a particularly large ruff about the neck. Alexia thought Felicity looked like a big pink Christmas tree.

  “Sister,” said the tree, “there is a most impressive rumpus emanating from the wine cellar. ”

  “Oh, go back to bed, Felicity. It’s only a werewolf. Really. You’d think people never had monsters in their cellars. ”

  Felicity blinked.

  Channing came up behind Alexia. “Lady Maccon, might I have a private word, before you seek your rest?”

  Felicity’s eyes widened and her breath caught.

  Alexia turned around. “Yes, well, if you insist, Major Channing. ”

  A sharp elbow met her protruding belly. “Introduce us,” hissed Felicity. Her sister was looking at the Gamma with much the same expression as that which entered Ivy Tunstell’s eyes when faced with a particularly hideous hat, which is to say, covetous and lacking in all elements of good judgment.

  Alexia was taken well aback. “But you are in your night attire!” Felicity only gave her a big-eyed head shake. “Oh, very well, Felicity. This is Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings. He is a werewolf and my husband’s Gamma. Major Channing, do please meet my sister, Felicity Loontwill. She is human, if you can believe such a thing after ten minutes’ conversation. ”

  Felicity tittered in a manner she probably thought was musical. “Oh, Alexia, you so like to have your little jokes. ” She offered her hand to the handsome man before her. “I do apologize for my informal state, Major. ”