“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.