Lady Maccon was far less reticent. She let out a scream that might have raised the dead, and in this case did.
Her husband was no pup who, required by recent metamorphosis and weak control, must sleep solid the entire day through. Oh, no, he could be awakened. It was simply that when he was very tired, it took a mighty loud noise. Not much of a screamer as a general rule, Alexia’s lung capacity was nevertheless sufficient to the task and produced a trumpeting kind of yell. Once emitted, however, it did not, as one might expect, bring domestic staff and clavigers running. It had taken only one or two highly embarrassing incidents for the denizens of Woolsey Castle to ignore any and all strange noises produced by Lord and Lady Maccon during their slumbering hours.
Still, one angry husband was sufficient to meet Lady Maccon’s needs.
The burglar darted to one side of the room, running for Alexia’s armoire. There he opened several drawers, finally extracting a sheaf of papers. These he stuffed into a sack. Alexia rolled from the bed, cursing her own lack of mobility, and charged toward him at the same time as her husband. Conall, made clumsy by the full sun, deep sleep, and the unexpectedness of the event, got his feet caught in the bedclothes and pinwheeled widely in a circle like some large and eccentric ballet dancer, before righting himself and lurching at the intruder. That’ll teach him to steal the coverlet, thought his wife in satisfaction.
Choosing wisely, the burglar went for Alexia, the weaker link, pushing her aside. She kicked out. Her foot met flesh, but not hard enough. All that resulted was Alexia losing her balance and tumbling backward onto the floor, twisting her ankle in the process.
The intruder dove for the open window. Literally dove right through, for he managed to unfold some kind of metal reinforced cape that became a parachute. This carried him gently down the five stories to the ground. Without registering his wife’s predicament, floundering about on the floor, Lord Maccon leaped after.
“Oh, no, Conall, don’t you dare—” But Alexia’s admonishment met only empty air, for he had already jumped out of the window. A werewolf could take such a fall and survive, of course, but not without substantial damage, especially during daylight.
Greatly concerned, Alexia crawled and squirmed her way across the floor, then used a stool and the windowsill to haul herself upright, balancing precariously on her good foot. Her husband had angled his leap to land on the rooftop of the castle keep; he then lowered himself some three stories to the ground and dashed after the culprit. Naked. The wrongdoer, however, was equipped to escape at speed. He had a mono-wheel cycle, rigged up with a small steam propeller, that carried him away across the landscape at a remarkably rapid pace.
The sun was full in the sky, so Lord Maccon was unable to change into his wolf form, and even as fast as a werewolf could be after sunset, it was probably not sufficient to catch up to that wheel. Alexia watched Conall run a goodly distance before coming to this realization and stopping. Sometimes his hunter instinct took a while to defuse.
She tsked in annoyance and turned to glare at her armoire, a mile away and impossible to get at without crawling, trying to determine what exactly had been stolen. What on earth had she stashed in that drawer? She certainly hadn’t looked at whatever it was since she unpacked after her wedding. So far as she could remember, it had been full of old letters, personal correspondences, party invitations, and visiting cards. Why on earth would anyone want to steal that?
“Really, husband,” she said from her post by the window when he got around to climbing back up the many flights of stairs to their sleeping chamber, “how you manage to jump about like some deranged jackrabbit without any permanent damage is a mystery to me.”
Lord Maccon snorted at her and went to sniff suspiciously at her armoire. “So, what was in that drawer?”
“I can’t readily recall. Some society missives from before we were married, I believe. Can’t imagine what anyone would want with those.” She frowned, trying to dig her way through the mire of pregnancy-addled wits.
“You’d think they’d be after your dispatch case if it was classified paperwork they wanted.”
“Exactly so. What did you smell?”
“A bit of grease, probably from that parachute contraption. Nothing else significant. And you, of course—the whole armoire smells of you.”
“Mmm, and how do I smell?”
“Vanilla and cinnamon baked puff pastry,” he answered promptly. “Always. Delicious.”
Alexia grinned.
“But not of child. I’ve never been able to smell the bairn. Neither has Randolph. Odd that.”
Alexia’s grin faded.
Her husband returned to his examination of the drawer. “I suppose the constabulary will have to be called.”
“I don’t see why. It was only the odd bit of paperwork.”
“But you kept them.” The earl was confused.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean they were important.”
“Ah.” He nodded his understanding. “Like all your many pairs of shoes.”
Alexia chose to ignore this. “It must be someone I know who stole it. Or arranged for the theft.”
“Hmm?” Lord Maccon slumped thoughtfully onto the bed.
“I saw him enter. He was after that drawer in particular. I don’t think he was expecting us to be here—he seemed more than usually startled to see me. He must be intimate with our family, or acquainted with some member of Woolsey staff, to know where our room is located and that we were not supposed to be in residence.”