Both men paused to look at her in confusion. “Do what, Miss Tarabotti?” asked the professor.
“Dismiss me as though I were a child. Do you realize I could be useful to you?”
Lord Maccon grunted. “You mean you could go around legally getting into trouble instead of just bothering us all the time?”
Alexia tried to keep from feeling hurt. “BUR employs women, and I hear you even have a preternatural on the payroll up north, for ghost control and exorcism purposes.”
Lord Maccon's caramel-colored eyes instantly narrowed. “From whom, exactly, did you hear that?”
Miss Tarabotti raised her eyebrows. As if she would ever betray the source of information told to her in confidence!
The earl understood her look perfectly. “Very well, never you mind that question.”
“I shall not,” replied Alexia primly.
Professor Lyall, still holding the body slung over one shoulder, took pity on her. “We do have both at BUR,” he admitted.
Lord Maccon elbowed him in the side, but he stepped out of range with a casual grace that bespoke much practice. “But what we do not have is any female preternaturals, and certainly not any gentlewomen. All women employed by BUR are good working-class stock.”
“You are simply still bitter about the hedgehogs,” muttered Miss Tarabotti, but she also bowed her head in acknowledgment. She'd had this conversation before, with Lord Maccon's superior at BUR, to be precise. A man her brain still referred to as that Nice Silver-Haired Gentleman. The very idea that a lady of breeding such as herself might want to work was simply too shocking. “My dearest girl,” he had said, “what if your mother found out?”
“Isn't BUR supposed to be covert? I could be covert.”
Miss Tarabotti could not help trying again. Professor Lyall, at least, liked her a little bit. Perhaps he might put in a good word.
Lord Maccon actually laughed. “You are about as covert as a sledgehammer.” Then he cursed himself silently, as she seemed suddenly forlorn. She hid it quickly, but she had definitely been saddened.
His Beta grabbed him by the arm with his free hand. “Really, sir, manners.”
The earl cleared his throat and looked contrite. “No offense meant, Miss Tarabotti.” The Scottish lilt was back in his voice.
Alexia nodded, not looking up. She plucked at one of the pansies on her parasol. “It's simply, gentlemen”—and when she raised her dark eyes they had a slight sheen in them—“I would so like something useful to do.”
Lord Maccon waited until he and the professor were out in the hallway, having bid polite, on Professor Lyall's part at least, farewells to the young lady, to ask the question that really bothered him. “For goodness' sake, Randolph, why doesn't she just get married?” His voice was full of frustration.
Randolph Lyall looked at his Alpha in genuine confusion. The earl was usually a very perceptive man, for all his bluster and Scottish grumbling. “She is a bit old, sir.”
“Balderdash,” said Lord Maccon. “She cannot possibly have more than a quarter century or so.”
“And she is very”—the professor looked for a gentlemanly way of putting it—“assertive.”
“Pah.” The nobleman waved one large paw dismissively. “Simply got a jot more backbone than most females this century. There must be plenty of discerning gentlemen who'd cop to her value.”
Professor Lyall had a well-developed sense of self-preservation and the distinct feeling that if he said anything desultory about the young lady's appearance, he might actually get his head bitten off. He, and the rest of polite society, might believe Miss Tarabotti's skin a little too dark and her nose a little too prominent, but he did not think Lord Maccon felt the same. Lyall had been Beta to the fourth Earl of Woolsey since Conall Maccon first descended upon them all. With barely twenty years gone and the bloody memory still strong, no werewolf was yet ready to question why Conall had wanted the bother of the London territory, not even Professor Lyall. The earl was a confusing man, his taste in females equally mystifying. For all Professor Lyall knew, his Alpha might actually like Roman noses, tan skin, and an assertive disposition. So instead he said, “Perhaps it's the Italian last name, sir, that keeps her unwed.”
“Mmm,” agreed Lord Maccon, “probably so.” He did not sound convinced.
The two werewolves exited the duke's town house into the black London night, one bearing the body of a dead vampire, the other, a puzzled expression.
CHAPTER TWO
An Unexpected Invitation
Miss Tarabotti generally kept her soulless state quite hush-hush, even from her own family. She was not undead, mind you; she was a living, breathing human but was simply... lacking. Neither her family nor the members of the social circles she frequented ever noticed she was missing anything. Miss Tarabotti seemed to them only a spinster, whose unfortunate condition was clearly the result of a combination of domineering personality, dark complexion, and overly strong facial features. Alexia thought it too much of a bother to go around explaining soullessness to the ill-informed masses. It was almost, though not quite, as embarrassing as having it known that her father was both Italian and dead.
The ill-informed masses included her own family among their ranks, a family that specialized in being both inconvenient and asinine.
“Would you look at this!” Felicity Loontwill waved a copy of the Morning Post at the assembled breakfast table. Her father, the Right Honorable Squire Loontwill, did not divert his concentrated attention from the consumption of an eight-minute egg and toast. But her sister, Evylin, glanced up inquiringly, and her mama said, “What is it, my dear?” pausing in midsip of her medicinal barley water.
Felicity pointed to a passage in the society section of the paper. “It says here that there was a particularly gruesome incident at the ball last night! Did you know there was an incident? I do not remember any incident!”
Alexia frowned at her own egg in annoyance. She had been under the impression Lord Maccon was going to keep everything respectfully quiet and out of the society papers. She refused to acknowledge the fact that the sheer number of people who had seen her with the dead vampire meant that any such endeavor was practically impossible. After all, the earl's purported specialty was accomplishing several impossible things before dawn.
Felicity elaborated, “Apparently someone died. No name has been released, but a genuine death, and I missed it entirely! A young lady discovered him in the library and fainted from the shock. Poor lamb, how horrific for her.”
Evylin, the youngest, clucked her tongue sympathetically and reached for the pot of gooseberry jelly. “Does it say who the young lady is?”
Felicity rubbed her nose delicately and read on. “Unfortunately, no.”
Alexia raised both eyebrows and sipped her tea in uncharacteristic silence. She winced at the flavor, looked with narrowed eyes at her cup, and then reached for the creamer.
Evylin spread jelly with great attention to applying a precisely even layer over the top of the toast. “How very tiresome! I should love to know all the relevant details. It is like something out of a gothic novel. Anything else interesting?”
“Well, the article continues on with a more extensive review of the ball. Goodness, the writer even criticizes the Duchess of Snodgrove for not providing refreshments.”
“Well, really,” said Evylin in heartfelt agreement, “even Almack's has those bland little sandwiches. It is not as if the duke could not see to the expense.”
“Too true, my dear,” agreed Mrs. Loontwill.