At which juncture, and without any warning whatsoever, Lord Akeldama wafted into the room smelling of lemon and peppermint candy and sporting a playbill of some risqué comedy from the West End.
“Alexia, pudding, how are you faring this fine evening? Is moving house tragically unsettling? A relocation can be such a trial on one’s finer feelings, I always find.” He paused artfully on the threshold to put down his opera glasses, gloves, and top hat on a convenient sideboard. Then he raised his silver and sapphire monocle to one eye and regarded Felicity through it.
“Oh, dear me, pardon the intrusion.” His keen eyes took in the dated dress and the effusive curls of Alexia’s visitor. “Alexia, my dove, you have some sort of company?”
“Lord Akeldama. You remember my sister?”
The quizzing glass did not lower. “I do?”
“I believe you may have met one another at my wedding festivities?” Alexia was in no doubt that her esteemed host knew exactly who Felicity was from the very moment he entered the room—possibly before—but he did dearly love a performance, even if he had to put one on himself.
“I did?” The vampire was dressed to the height of fashion for an evening out. He wore a midnight-blue tailcoat and matched trousers, quite subdued for Lord Akeldama, or so it would seem at first glance. The careful observer soon noted that his satin waistcoat was silver, blue, and purple paisley in an excessively bold print, and he wore gloves and spats of the same material. Alexia had no idea how he thought to carry off such an outrageous ensemble. Whoever heard of patterned gloves, let alone spats? Then again, no ensemble had ever yet gotten the better of Lord Akeldama, nor was one likely to.
He certainly had the right to look askance at Felicity. “I did! Miss Loontwill? But you are so very much altered from when we last met. How has such a transformation been effected?”
Even Felicity had not the gumption to stand up to Lord Akeldama armed with a monocle. She crumbled in the face of the majestic authority of his perfectly tied and still fluffy—despite an evening’s activities—cravat with its ostentatiously large sapphire pin. “Oh, well, you see, my lord, I’ve had a, ur, meeting and simply didn’t have the time to change. I thought to catch my sister before she retired, on a matter of some delicacy.”
Lord Akeldama did not take the hint. “Oh, yes?”
“Felicity has joined the National Society for Women’s Suffrage,” Alexia said placidly.
The vampire proved instantly helpful. “Oh, yes? I understand Lord Ambrose is a frequent contributor.”
Alexia nodded her understanding at last. “Lord Ambrose, is it? Oh, Felicity, you do realize he is a vampire?”
Miss Loontwill tossed her curls. “Well, yes, but an eligible vampire.” She glanced at Lord Akeldama from under her lashes. “And I am getting ever so old!”
He was instantly sympathetic. “Of course you are. You are already what? All of eighteen?”
Miss Loontwill sallied on. “But then I was quite taken with the rhetoric.”
Alexia supposed a young lady so swayed by the Parisian fashion papers might be persuaded by a decent oratory display.
Felicity continued. “Why shouldn’t we women vote? After all, it’s not as though the gentlemen have done so wondrous a job of things with their stewardship. I do not intend to offend, my lord.”
“No offense taken, my little buttercup.”
Uh-oh, thought Alexia, Felicity has been given an epithet. Lord Akeldama likes her.
The vampire continued. “I find such struggles adorably commendable.”
Felicity began pacing about in a manner Alexia had to admit not unlike her own good self when seized with a particularly inspired argument. “My point precisely. Don’t you want the vote, Alexia? You cannot be content to allow that buffoonish husband of yours to speak for you in matters political. Not after the way he has behaved in the past.”
Alexia declined to mention at this juncture that she already had the vote, and it was one of only three on Queen Victoria’s Shadow Council. Such a vote as this counted a good deal more than any popular ballot might. Instead, she spoke a different truth. “I have never given the matter much thought. But this still does not explain how you have ended up on Lord Akeldama’s doorstep.”
“Yes, little snowdrop.” Lord Akeldama took up a perch on the arm of the settee, watching Felicity as a parrot might watch a drab little sparrow that had strayed into his domain.
Miss Loontwill took a deep breath. “It is really not my fault. Mama did not endorse my endeavors with regards to Lord Ambrose. So I have been liberating myself from the house after bedtime by means of the servant’s entrance. You used to have some success with this approach, Alexia. Don’t think I didn’t know. I believed I could accomplish such a thing undetected.”
Alexia was beginning to understand. “But you miscalculated. I had help. Floote’s help. I cannot imagine Swilkins being sympathetic to the Ambrose cause.”
Felicity grimaced in agreement. “No, you are perfectly correct. I did not realize how vital the approbation of one’s butler is in allowing for nocturnal autonomy.”
“So let us get to the crux of the matter. Has Mama tossed you out?”
Felicity got that look on her face that said whoever was at fault in this scenario it was probably Felicity. “Not exactly.”
“Oh, Felicity, you didn’t. You walked out?”
“I thought, since you were taking a house in town, perhaps I might come to stay with you for a little while. I understand the company will not be nearly so refined or elegant as that to which I am accustomed, but?.?.?.”