Lady Maccon placed her parasol carefully to one side, pretending her husband had not just given her due warning. “Ah, yes, show her into the front parlor, would you, please, Floote? I’ll be in shortly. We simply can’t have company in this room yet—it’s not decent.”
“Very good, madam.”
Alexia turned back to her husband, beckoning with one hand to get him to come help her stand. He did, bracing himself.
“Oomph,” she said, attaining her feet. “Very well, I shall add Lord Woolsey to our ever-growing list of suspects who are now dead and thus useless. Death can be jolly well inconvenient, if you ask me. We can’t possibly prove his involvement.”
“Or what bearing it might have on this new threat to the queen.” The earl placed a casual arm about his wife, assistance couched in a more Alexia-acceptable act of affection. Nearly a year of marriage and he was finally learning.
“True, true.” His wife leaned against him.
Another knock sounded at the back parlor door.
“What now!” growled Lord Maccon.
Professor Lyall’s sandy head popped in this time. “You’re wanted, my lord, on a matter of pack business.”
“Oh, very well.” The earl helped his wife waddle down the hallway. He abandoned her at the door to the front parlor and then followed his Beta out into the night.
“Hat, my lord,” came Professor Lyall’s mild rebuke, a disembodied voice from the darkness.
Conall came back inside, scooped a convenient top hat off of the hall stand, and disappeared outside again.
Alexia paused at the door to the front parlor. Floote had left it slightly ajar, and she overheard conversation drifting from within, Madame Lefoux’s mellow voice and that of another, clear and erudite, confident with age and authority.
“Mr. Tarabotti had significant romantic success. I often wondered if the soulless weren’t dangerously attractive to those with too much soul. You, for example, probably have excess. You like her, don’t you?”
“Oh, really, Mr. Floote, why this sudden interest in my romantic inclinations?”
Lady Maccon started at that. She might have recognized Floote’s voice, of course, except that she had never heard him string so many words together at once. It must be admitted, she had privately doubted his ability to formulate a complete sentence. Or at least his willingness to do so.
“Be careful, madam.” The butler’s voice was stiff with rebuke.
Alexia flushed slightly at the very idea of her staff taking such a tone with a guest!
“Is it my care you are concerned with or Alexia’s?” Madame Lefoux seemed well able to withstand such a grave breach in domestic protocol.
“Both.”
“Very well. Now, would you be so kind as to check up on Her Highness? I am in a bit of a rush and the evening isn’t getting any longer.”
At this juncture, Lady Maccon made a great blundering noise and entered the room.
Floote, unflappable, backed away from his intimate proximity to the French inventor as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Madame Lefoux, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company? I seem to have just left you.” Alexia made her way laboriously across the room.
“I have that information you were looking for. About the teapots.” The inventor handed over a sheaf of old parchment paper, yellowed about the edges, thick and ridged, marked by hand and the assistance of a straight edge into some sort of ledger. “It’s in my aunt’s code, which I am certain you could decipher if you wished. But essentially it indicates that she had only one order for the teapot invention that year, but it was a big one. It didn’t come through any suspicious channels. That’s the intriguing part. It was a government order, out of London, with funds originating in the Bureau of Unnatural Registry.”
Lady Maccon’s mouth opened slightly, then snapped shut. “Ivy’s Agent Doom was at BUR?” She sighed. “Well, I suppose that puts Lord Woolsey to the top of my suspect list. He would have held my husband’s position at the time.”
Floote, in the act of shutting the door behind himself, paused on the threshold. “Lord Woolsey, madam?”
Alexia looked at him, all big-eyed and innocuous. “Yes. I’m beginning to think he must have had a hand in the Kingair assassination attempt.”
Madame Lefoux looked entirely uninterested at this. Her present concerns must be outweighing any curiosity over the past. “I do hope the information will be of some use, Alexia. When you’re finished, could I please have those records back? I like to keep these things in proper order. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And now, I hate to be so abrupt, but I must get back to it.”
“Of course, of course. Do try to get some rest, please, Genevieve?”
“I’ll rest when the souls do,” quipped the inventor with a shrug. Then she left the room, only to return a moment later. “Have you seen my top hat?”
“The gray one out in the hall?” Lady Maccon’s stomach fell in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with the child.
“Yes.”
“I believe my husband may have accidentally absconded with it. Was it special?”
“Only in that it was my favorite hat. I can’t imagine it fit him. Must be several sizes too small.”
Lady Maccon closed her eyes at the very idea. “Oh, he must look quite a picture. I do apologize, Genevieve. He is so very bad about these things. I’ll have it sent over as soon as he returns.”