The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set Read Free Page A

perfectly tailored shirtfront and exquisitely tied cravat. His
dark hair was a bit too long and shaggy to be de mode, and his face was not entirely clean-shaven, but he possessed enough
hauteur to carry this lower-class roughness off without seeming scruffy. She was certain that his silver and black paisley
cravat must be tied under sufferance. He probably preferred to wander about bare-chested at home. The idea made her shiver
oddly. It must take a lot of effort to keep a man like him tidy. Not to mention well tailored. He was bigger than most. She
had to give credit to his valet, who must be a particularly tolerant claviger.
    Lord Maccon was normally quite patient. Like most of his kind, he had learned to be such in polite society. But Miss Tarabotti
seemed to bring out the worst of his animal urges. “Stop trying to change the subject,” he snapped, squirming under her calculated
scrutiny. “Tell me what happened.” He put on his BUR face and pulled out a small metal tube, stylus, and pot of clear liquid.
He unrolled the tube with a small cranking device, clicked the top off the liquid, and dipped the stylus into it. It sizzled
ominously.
    Alexia bristled at his autocratic tone. “Do not give me instructions in that tone of voice, you…” she searched for a particularly
insulting word, “puppy! I am jolly well not one of your pack.”
    Lord Conall Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, was Alpha of the local werewolves, and as a result, he had access to a wide array of
truly vicious methods of dealing with Miss Alexia Tarabotti. Instead of bridling at her insult (puppy, indeed!), he brought
out his best offensive weapon, the result of decades of personal experience with more than one Alpha she-wolf. Scottish he
may be by birth, but that only made him better equipped to deal with strong-willed females. “Stop playing verbal games with
me, madam, or I shall go out into that ballroom, find your mother, and bring her here.”
    Alexia wrinkled her nose. “Well, I
like
that! That is hardly playing a fair game. How unnecessarily callous,” she admonished. Her mother did not know that Alexia
was preternatural. Mrs. Loontwill, as she was Loontwill since her remarriage, leaned a little too far toward the frivolous
in any given equation. She was prone to wearing yellow and engaging in bouts of hysteria. Combining her mother with a dead
vampire and her daughter’s true identity was a recipe for disaster on all possible levels.
    The fact that Alexia was preternatural had been explained to
her
at age six by a nice gentleman from the Civil Service with silver hair and a silver cane—a were-wolf specialist. Along with
the dark hair and prominent nose, preternatural was something Miss Tarabotti had to thank her dead Italian father for. What
it really meant was that words like
I
and
me
were just excessively theoretical for Alexia. She certainly had an identity and a heart that felt emotions and all that;
she simply had no soul. Miss Alexia, age six, had nodded politely at the nice silver-haired gentleman. Then she had made certain
to read oodles of ancient Greek philosophy dealing with reason, logic, and ethics. If she had no soul, she also had no morals,
so she reckoned she had best develop some kind of alternative. Her mama thought her a bluestocking, which was soulless enough
as far as Mrs. Loontwill was concerned, and was terribly upset by her eldest daughter’s propensity for libraries. It would
be too bothersome to have to face her mama in one just now.
    Lord Maccon moved purposefully toward the door with the clear intention of acquiring Mrs. Loontwill.
    Alexia caved with ill grace. “Oh, very well!” She settled herself with a rustle of green skirts onto a peach brocade chesterfield
near the window.
    The earl was both amused and annoyed to see that she had managed to pick up her fainting pillow and place it back on the couch
without his registering any swooping movement.
    â€œI