At which he hurried out.
Immediately, Alexia lurched upright, an exercise that made up in efficiency what it lacked in dignity, and began searching the room. She found very little memorabilia with regards to the occupant’s personality, but there were even more notebooks and mysterious bottles tucked away in the bedside drawer and the wardrobe. She tucked anything that looked to be secret or significant into the stealth pockets of her parasol. Then, knowing she must limit herself, she took what seemed to be the most recent notebook and one that looked to be the oldest and most dusty, along with a neatly printed ledger and bundled them up in Felicity’s shawl. The parasol was clanking slightly and drooping from its excess load, and she thought the knitwear bundle must look very suspicious, but when the butler returned, he was so overjoyed to find her recovered he didn’t notice either.
Alexia decided to make good her escape. Saying she felt weak and had best hurry home before nightfall, she moved toward the door. The butler led her downstairs, declining to offer her the position, despite her calf’s-foot jelly, but suggesting she call round in several months when she had recovered from her inconvenience, jelly apparently being quite the alluring prospect.
He was just letting her out when a voice stopped them both in their tracks. “Well, gracious me. Miss Tarabotti?”
Alexia clutched her loot closer to her breast, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then she looked upward.
The gentleman walking slowly down the staircase toward her was an iconic example of the scientific species. His gray muttonchops were untended, his eyes bespectacled, and his attire too far into tweed for midsummer and midtown. Unfortunately, Alexia was all too familiar with that face.
“Why, Dr. Neebs! I thought you were dead.”
“Ah, not quite. Although Lord Maccon did do his level best.” The man continued down the steps, moving with a pronounced limp probably sustained during that last battle in the Hypocras Club’s exsanguination chamber. As he closed in upon her, Alexia noted his eyes were very hard behind those spectacles.
“In which case, shouldn’t you be serving a sentence for intellectual misconduct?”
“I assure you, it has been served. Now, I think perhaps you should come with me, Miss Tarabotti.”
“Oh, but I was just leaving.”
“Yes, I am certain you were.”
The butler, at a bit of a loss, was looking back and forth between them.
Alexia backed toward the open door, lifting up her parasol in a defensive position and pressing her thumb against the appropriate lotus petal in the handle, arming the tip with one of the numbing darts. She wished she had not left Ethel behind; guns, by and large, were far more threatening than parasols.
Nevertheless, Dr. Neebs looked at it with wary respect. “Madame Lefoux’s work, isn’t that?”
“You know Madame Lefoux?”
Dr. Neebs looked at her as though she were an idiot. Of course, thought Alexia, this is a chapter of the Order of the Brass Octopus. Madame Lefoux is also a member. I did not realize the Order was reabsorbing the Hypocras Club. I must tell Conall.
The scientist tilted his head to one side. “What are you about, Miss Tarabotti?”
Alexia faltered. Dr. Neebs was not to be trusted, of that she was certain. Apparently, he felt much the same about her, for he issued a sharp instruction to the butler.
“Grab her!”
Luckily, the butler was confused by the proceedings and did not understand how his role had suddenly become one of ruffian. He was also holding a glass of water in one hand and a jar of calf’s-foot jelly in the other.
“What? Sir?”
At which juncture Alexia shot the scientist with a numbing dart. Madame Lefoux had armed the darts with a high-quality, fast-acting poison that had some affiliation with laudanum. Dr. Neebs pitched forward with an expression of shock on his face and collapsed at the base of the staircase.
The butler recovered from his inertia and lunged at Alexia. Lady Maccon, clumsy at the best of times, lurched to the side, waving her parasol wildly in a wide arc and managing to strike the butler a glancing blow to the side of the head.
It was not a very accurate hit but it was violent, and the man, clearly unused to anything of the kind, reeled away looking at her with an expression of such disgruntlement that Alexia was moved to grin.
“Why, Mrs. Floote, such indecorous behavior!”
Alexia armed her parasol and shot him with a second numbing dart. His knees gave out and he crumpled to the floor of the foyer. “Yes, I know. I do apologize. It is a personal failing of mine.”
With that, she let herself out into the street and lumbered off, clutching her plunder and feeling very furtive and rather proud of her afternoon’s achievement.
Unfortunately for Lady Maccon, there was absolutely no one to appreciate her endeavors when she returned home. Any werewolves in town were abed, Felicity was still out (not that Alexia could confide in her), and Floote was off tending to some domestic duty or another. Disgruntled, Alexia set herself up in the back parlor to examine her misappropriated loot.
The back parlor was already her favorite room. It had been made over with quiet card parties in mind: cream and pale gold walls, ornate dark cherry furniture, and royal blue curtains and coverings. The several small tables were marble topped, and the large chandelier boasted the very latest in gas lighting. It was just that kind of soulful elegance that soulless Alexia could never hope to achieve on her own.
She set the bottles aside to give to BUR for analysis and picked up the ledger and journals with interest. Two hours later, stomach growling and tea cold and forgotten at her elbow, she put them back down again. They had been as absorbing as only the highly private musings of a complete stranger can be. They were illuminating as well, in their way, although not with regards to the current threat to the queen’s life. Of that there was no mention at all, nor was there any concrete evidence to implicate the OBO.