“Goodness,” said an exhausted Lady Maccon, “are babies customarily that repulsive looking?”

Madame Lefoux pursed her lips and turned the infant about, as though she hadn’t quite looked closely before. “I assure you, the appearance improves with time.”

Alexia held out her arms—her dress was already ruined anyway—and received the pink wriggling thing into her embrace. She smiled up at her husband. “I told you it would be a girl.”

“Why isna she crying?” complained Lord Maccon. “Shouldna she be crying? Aren’t all bairns supposed to cry?”

“Perhaps she’s mute,” suggested Alexia. “Be a sensible thing with parents like us.”

Lord Maccon looked properly horrified at the idea.

Alexia grinned even more broadly as she came to a wonderful realization. “Look! I’m not repelled by her. No feelings of revulsion at all. She must be human, not a preternatural. How marvelous!”

A tap came at the octomaton door.

“Yes?” Lord Maccon sung out. He’d decided to stop worrying about the child and was crouched down cooing over her and making silly faces.

Professor Lyall looked in. He’d apparently found the time to change out of the improvised toga and into perfectly respectable attire. He caught sight of his Alpha, who looked up and beamed proudly.

“Randolph, I have a daughter!”

“Felicitations, my lord, my lady.”

Alexia nodded politely from her makeshift bed in the corner of the octomaton, only then noticing that she was resting against a pile of cords and springs, and there was some kind of valve digging into the small of her back. “Thank you, Professor. And it would appear that she is not a curse-breaker.”

The Beta looked over at the child with a flash of academic interest but no real surprise. “She isn’t? I thought preternaturals always breed true.”

“Apparently not.”

“Well, that is good news. However, and I do hate to interrupt the blessed event, but, my lord, we have several difficulties at the moment that could very much use your attention. Do you think we might repair to a more hospitable venue?”

Lord Maccon crouched over his wife and nuzzled her neck gently. “My dear?”

Alexia stroked his hair back from the temple with her free hand. “I’ll give it a try. I would dearly love to be in my own bed.”

Lady Maccon had to hold on to both her newborn child and Biffy as Lord Maccon carried her and Professor Lyall carried Biffy back up to the castle. At which juncture Conall declared that Woolsey smelled rotten.

Professor Lyall opened his mouth to explain but caught a sharp look from Alexia. So he refrained.

Predicting that his Alpha would find out soon enough on his own, the Beta carried Biffy down to a cell, tended to the pup’s still-angry burns with a pat of butter, and chivied him in with the Duke of Hematol as the best of a bad lot of options.

Upstairs it was decided that Madame Lefoux should also be locked up.

“Put her into the one next to the countess and Quesnel,” suggested Lady Maccon snidely to her confused husband. “Now, there will be an interesting conversation come nightfall.”