Chapter 14 #2
In a moment of weakness, Beckett clutched at Marl’s strong wrists. “He’ll be all right,” he stated, even though it came out sounding like a question.
Marl nodded once. Firmly. “Yes.”
Beckett believed him. He had to. “We need to get him up to his chamber. Call Hapton, will you?”
“Absolutely not,” Marl said at once. “Not upstairs. We’ve got to get him out of the house.”
“What? Why?”
“Beckett, his body is trying to do two things at once. His omega’s in heat and he’s being called to tend to it, and the suppressants are doing what they’re designed to do, which is hurt him enough to stop the impulse.” He paused. “He must want the duch very much.”
Beckett thought of Jack, there on the bed and watching them fiercely while Beckett fucked the duch. His expression had been pure possession. It wasn’t just for the duch, either. When he made eye contact with Beckett, the possessiveness remained.
He’d looked proud.
Happy.
“It’s easier, ain’t it, to get the omega out of the house?” Beckett said. “He can walk.”
Marl gave him a sympathetic look. “Beckett, you’re in rut and the duch is in heat. You’re going to be busy for another twelve hours, starting any minute. Mrs Foley and I are more than capable of taking care of His Grace.”
“Sod that. It’s my job.” Beckett loomed over the smaller man, fists clenched. He didn’t mean to, he just…it was his job to take care of Jack.
Jack was his.
“It’s your job to take care of the duch. Unless you’d like me to send Dunn to him after all?”
Beckett growled with frustration. It was low and nasty, trickling from his throat and laden with threat. Marl didn’t even blink.
No.
Beckett did not want Dunn going anywhere near his omega.
“We don’t have a choice here, lad. As long as His Grace can sense the duch, his body will try to reach him, whether or not he’s unconscious. The more his body fights, the more the suppressants fight his body. He’ll get sicker and sicker.”
“Enough. I get it. Where are we taking him?”
“The Lodge will do perfectly well. He won’t sense the duch from there.”
Beckett gave a sharp nod. He ran to the open door, leaned out, and bellowed for Hapton. The other footman had been lurking close by, and appeared almost immediately.
“Help me get His Grace up,” Beckett said. “And, Hap? You’re going to have to ignore me if I growl.”
The rut shimmered at the edges of his vision like the distant ripple of summer heat. He didn’t have long. Jack wasn’t the only one with competing needs here. Beckett’s body needed an omega, his heart needed to protect Jack, and with all that going on, his manners wouldn’t get a look in.
Gods, this was a mess.
This was all such a mess.
“Don’t go for my throat,” Hapton said. “I got no designs on His Grace or your om—” he choked himself off when Beckett glared at him. “Anything,” he finished. “On your anything.”
Beckett kneed his way between Jack’s legs and bent down, shoving his hands under Jack’s arms and hefting him forward.
Like a sack of potatoes. If only Jack were an inch or five shorter, Beckett would have been able to carry him alone.
But he wasn’t, and Beckett couldn’t. So. He’d have to deal with it.
Hapton moved into place.
“Wait,” Marl said. Beckett cut him an impatient look. “This will be easier on a hurdle.”
“I ain’t carryin’ him out on no fuckin’ hurdle like he’s dead,” Beckett said. He jerked his chin at Hapton. “Get your shoulder under his other arm and we’ll keep him upright between the two o’ us.”
Marl was talking to someone else in the room and Beckett caught the whisk of Mrs Foley’s long grey skirts in the corner of his eye.
He heard light, running steps. Presumably someone was sent off to start preparing a room in the Lodge, a well-appointed little dower house down by the main gates where visitors on estate business often stayed.
Of course, it was a solid fifteen-minute walk down to the Lodge, and while Hapton and Beckett were sturdy and fit, as all footmen were, he didn’t think they’d be able to drag Jack between them like this all the way.
He mentioned it to Marl as they heaved him through the Great Hall, and reminded him that a hurdle wasn’t a godsdamned option.
“The carriage will pull around the front as soon as the horses are in harness.”
They wrangled Jack out onto the front step. Beckett kept his face stoic as they waited. He tightened the arm he had around Jack’s waist, hauling him in bruisingly close and loathing the feel of Hapton’s arm wrapping around Jack from the other side even as he was grateful for it.
His legs were shaking.
“Are you sure we can’t keep—” he burst out for the fifth time, as the brisk clop of hooves and the scrunch of gravel came from the side of the house.
“Yes,” Marl said before he could finish. “He will begin to improve the very second we get him away from the duch’s pheromones. I promise you.”
Beckett scowled, and gripped Jack tighter.
Jack groaned quietly. “Shh,” Beckett said.
He turned and pressed a hard kiss to the side of Jack’s head, not giving a damn even when he realised what he’d done.
Everyone knew what they were to each other.
And if they hadn’t known, they did now. “You’re all right,” he said, and rested his cheek against Jack’s hair for a long moment. “You’re going to be all right.”
Jack shivered in the cool breeze, even though his big body was pouring with heat. Any hotter, and he’d be smoking.
The carriage came into view, and Beckett and Hapton started heaving Jack down the steps even before it had come to a full stop. It was a small, neat little vehicle done up in black lacquer with gold-painted trim that Beckett vaguely recognised as Mrs Foley’s brougham.
Marl took the steps two at time and beat them to the bottom.
He climbed in and stuck out a hand to help.
Somehow, they heaved Jack up and into the carriage, the ladylike little vehicle pitching and swaying as four large men thrashed about in it.
They got Jack propped up on the seat, and Beckett said, “Drive.”
“Hold,” Marl said immediately.
“For what?” Beckett snapped. “Get going!”
Marl’s face was pinched. “You’ve got to get out first, lad,” he said.
Beckett snarled.
“Don’t you give me any of that,” Marl said calmly. “We’ve been through this. Out.”
“No.”
Marl did something stupid then, that could have ended in him getting his wrist broken. Or worse. The faith he showed in Beckett was perhaps the only thing that prevented it. Because everyone knew you didn’t touch an alpha with his hackles up unless you were willing to take the consequences.
Least, they did where Beckett came from.
Marl leaned across the short distance and gripped Beckett’s shoulder, catching and holding his gaze. “Beckett. Tobias. You have to let go. You have other responsibilities now.”
Beckett didn’t snap at him, not even for using the name no one had spoken out loud since his mam died.
He didn’t obey him, either.
“His Grace would order you to let us handle this and help the duch. You know this. Anyone can help His Grace.” Marl squeezed lightly, and nodded. “Only you can help the duch.”
The fight didn’t go out of Beckett. The fight wouldn’t go out of Beckett until he was dead and cold. But he did as Marl said.
He wasn’t the feral street urchin he’d been once his mam had died and left him to finish raising himself. He knew sense when he heard it.
More importantly, when he heard it, he listened.
Ignoring the fact others were there to witness another of those precious, private moments that he guarded and hoarded so fiercely, he shifted on the seat and took Jack’s face between hands that trembled. He held Jack’s hot cheeks, leaned in, and kissed him hard. Right on the lips.
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he forced himself out of the carriage.
The door slammed shut behind him, the horses threw themselves into the harness, and gravel pinged and sprayed as the brougham drove away.