Chapter 7
Jensen
It’s been ten days since I arrived at Beaumont Craven House, and while I’ve made fantastic progress in the library, the same can’t be said for my relationship with Lord Augustus.
It appears that despite being fully recovered from my jet lag, I’ve made a habit of waking early in the morning to visit the stables.
My early-morning excursions have achieved nothing but thoroughly confusing me.
Lord Augustus is so different at dawn, so animated and alive, that every day, I manage to convince myself he’ll be different at breakfast, but he isn’t.
He’s the same. Dull, deathly quiet, and only dimly aware of my presence.
Oh, he throws me a kind word or holds the door for me, now and again, but that’s only because he was brought up to have impeccable manners.
He’s asked after my family once and about the quality of my sleep twice.
I suppose I should be grateful for those breadcrumbs, but really, all they do is make the awkward silences we share most of the time much worse.
I’m at my wits’ end, and I can tell I’m teetering on the brink of giving him a piece of my mind. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out how badly that would go for everyone concerned. Mainly for me.
Lord Augustus has done less than nothing to give me the impression he’d appreciate being spoken down to.
The trouble is, I’m finding it harder and harder to separate the man who dotes on his horse from the blank, belligerent parchment that greets me a couple of hours later.
There’s something off about him, and I think I might have worked out what it is. I’ve noticed the lord adds an excessive amount of salt to his food, and when the meal calls for it, he squeezes so much lemon on his smoked salmon or avocado that it pools on his plate.
It occurred to me this morning, after a particularly tense silence, that he may be suffering from more than having no scent himself.
I don’t think he has any sense of smell at all.
And I’m not sure he can taste anything either. If he can, he can’t taste much.
I’ve never heard of such an affliction before.
Alphas are known to have an overdeveloped sense of smell.
They’re famed for it. I can’t imagine how an alpha could function without a sense of smell.
It doesn’t make sense, but this theory is the only way I can explain how I’m able to creep up on him so easily.
It’s incredibly odd. So odd, I simply have to talk to someone about it.
Lucien’s annoying face pops into my mind every time I think of telling someone about my theory.
I hate it because now when I think of him, he seems different.
His face isn’t a face that belongs to me anymore, or even to him. It’s a face that belongs to my brother.
Sadly, despite his stupid face, Lucien is the only one who knows me well enough for me to run this harebrained idea past without incurring harsh judgment.
I’ve spent the morning cataloging books and organizing them by subject matter and genre.
While it’s slow going, it’s pleasant, easy work.
There’s a physicality to it because of the size of the library and the sheer volume of books, but it doesn’t tax me mentally.
I go into a happy place in my mind as I work, lulled into a calm sort of trance by the predictable, repetitive actions.
I inspect each book for damage, and if I find none, I log the details in the new ledger I’ve started—the old one has yet to turn up—and find the book a place on a shelf in an appropriate section of the library.
Thankfully, I’ve managed to plead extreme busyness during the day, so Mrs. Thompson has agreed to serve my lunch in the orangerie, which is on this side of the house.
It’s lovely because it’s far from the dining room, and thus offers the great advantage of keeping me well out of a difficult man’s way.
Typically, I give myself half an hour or so to let my food settle before getting back to work. Most days, I use that time to think unpleasant thoughts about certain members of the nobility, older alpha brothers, and former lovers turned brothers-in-law.
I can’t stop being annoyed with Lucien, though I know rationally there was no other way for him and Branson to deal with his heat.
I mean, it would have been nice if he’d checked his messages before heading up to the cabin for a trip that had been canceled, or if he’d packed his fucking suppressant.
Or at the very least, hadn’t asked Branson to bite him.
Unfortunately, all that does nothing to stop me from missing him. I know it’s a damning state of affairs, but he truly has been the voice of reason in my life for years, and I hate not being able to talk to him about the minute details of my life.
Take this rude lord situation for example.
Before he and Branson mated, Lucien would have been happy to spend hours dissecting every interaction I’ve had with the man.
He’d have analyzed every word I have to say about his royal rudeness and would have undoubtably issued me with more advice than the average human could ever conceive of.
I mean, yes, most of Lucien’s advice would be terrible, but sometimes getting terrible advice is helpful because it shows you the right thing to do in a roundabout way.
I have twenty more minutes before I need to get back to work, and since I’m all out of unpleasant thoughts about him, I spend a while holding my phone in my hand, looking at Lucien’s name on my screen.
I’ve almost decided not to call him when I realize it’s only five a.m. in Seattle and he’ll still be sleeping. He hates being woken early. Absolutely hates it.
I hit dial immediately.
“Jensen,” croaks a sleepy voice, “are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I hear the muffled sound of an alpha stirring. “Is Jensen okay? What does he need?”
“I need to talk to you without my brother listening in,” I tell Lucien pointedly. “That’s what I need.”
“’Kay, give me a sec, I’ll go to the living room,” he says to me. Then he whispers, “He doesn’t want to talk with you listening in,” to Branson.
It’s insanely annoying that he feels it necessary to update Branson on this level of detail, but I guess that’s what being mated will do to you.
There was a time, a long time, in fact, when I longed to be mated.
Now I’m not so sure I’d like it. It seems like it turns you into someone very pathetic, almost overnight.
A couple of minutes later, Lucien switches the call to video and a pretty blond head pops into view. He’s in his living room, feet curled up under himself, with the side-table lamp providing the only light in the room.
“What’s up, Jens? Are you okay?” His eyes are wide, concern shining out of them so brightly that it’s impossible to miss.
Call me an asshole, but seeing him like this makes me feel a little better. Still, I can’t resist toying with him a little. “I have so much to tell you. But before I do, you have to swear you won’t tell Branson what I say.”
It’s a test. I know he’s going to tell Branson, no matter what he says. I just want to know how much, if any, honesty is left between us.
He shifts in his seat, his mouth pulling into a tight line.
“I-I don’t think I can do that.” He shrugs sheepishly.
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I’d love it if I didn’t tell him everything, but, but, I just can’t seem to help it.
I blurt shit out to him whether I mean to or not.
It’s terrible, Jens. I can’t stop myself. I keep banging on about random things…”
That piques my interest. “What kind of random things?” I ask.
“Oh God. You name it, I’ve bent his ear about it. Take The Odyssey, for example… I literally cannot stop talking to him about that fucking poem.”
“But you don’t even like it? You think it’s a completely overrated piece of literature.”
He raises a palm, spreading his fingers wide.
“Right? It’s terrible. It goes on and on.
One terrible thing happens after another, until the reader gradually loses their will to live…
” His eyes flit up and to the left. “But, do you know what? I did read somewhere recently that Homer’s original text has been translated by a woman for the first time, and she’s stripped away all the bullshit inserted by male translators who tried to sanitize characters and storylines to make them more acceptable to the patriarchal structures in place at the time of each translation.
It’s so interesting to see how purposeful inaccuracies in translation have affected the story. ”
I can tell Lucien is about to launch himself into a major TED Talk about The Odyssey, and while I’m incredibly interested in the difference removing patriarchal language would make to the translation, I’m really not here to discuss the classics.
Luckily, Lucien realizes I’m drifting and catches himself. “You,” he says firmly, “tell me all about you. Tell me every single thing that’s happened since you left home.”
“Well, the village nearby really is called Hutton-le-Hole.” When I first mentioned where I’d be moving, Lucien and I were convinced the name was a prank.
His face lights up, eyes and mouth stretching impossibly wide. “No!”
I bob my head. “Yep, it’s totally a real name. No one here even laughs when they say it. They act like it’s completely normal.”
Lucien clamps his hand over his mouth and starts to giggle. As always, his laughter is infectious, and it isn’t long before I’m laughing too.
“But that’s not the weirdest thing,” I continue. “There’s something up with this noble alpha asshole.”
Lucien sits bolt upright. “Has he done something to you? Because if he has, Branson will kick his ass. He said so. He said if that guy hurts you or upsets you in any way, he’ll be on the next plane out there, and he’ll kick his ass six ways from Sunday.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lu. Lord Augustus is a very big man…”
“Branson is much bigger.”
I sigh and roll my eyes. “You’ve never seen Lord Augustus, Lucien.”