Chapter 18
JACK
Jack felt like shit.
Good.
It was an improvement. Last thing he remembered before he passed out in his study, he’d felt like death.
Someone had obviously found him and put him to bed, because he was flat on his back on a comfortable mattress, not slumped in a chair in his study. Or drooling on the floor.
He blinked open bleary eyes and stared across the room at a pair of unfamiliar gauzy curtains. The faintest hint of pre-dawn light glowed behind them. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the room, wherever he was.
He levered himself awkwardly up to his elbows, paused to take a few slow, deep breaths as he waited to see how his stomach felt about it—amenable—before shuffling up to sit with his back to the mound of pillows behind him.
Queasiness still hummed faintly in the background but, like the headache that throbbed behind his gritty eyes, it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
He’d had worse hangovers.
His pulse had returned to its usual steady beat and his heart was no longer racing. He wasn’t burning with fever or shaking with cold. He blinked a few more times and his blurry vision cleared.
He climbed out of bed and poured a glass of water from the carafe waiting on the small table in the deep bay window embrasure. He sipped it slowly at first, then gulped it. Never been so dry in his damn life.
Obliging himself to slow down, he drank a second glass. He drew back the curtains and leaned a shoulder against the cold wall, gazing out across the dark parkland.
The sun wasn’t yet up and mist was rolling its quiet way down from the distant hills. The woods were a shadowed smudge in the distance, a dense and velvety night green. Ahead of him lay Avendene. A few lights shone in the building. A few only.
Going on the view from here, which was the front of the impressive, sprawling, honey-coloured house, he concluded that he was in the Lodge down by the gatehouse.
As he watched, another light flared to life in the dark bulk of the house ahead. Closer, a small, dark shape moved hesitantly onto the lawn directly beneath his window. It was a deer; delicate ears twitching, slender body poised to flee.
It reminded him of Arden, in ways he wished it didn’t.
If Jack dug deep into his memories, he could just about remember Arden when he hadn’t been quite so timid.
He’d always been a quiet boy, but he was also, once, lively and sweet.
He hadn’t grown hesitant until Lassit had presented.
Once Aloys followed, that hesitance turned wary.
After he’d presented as an omega, he’d simply faded into the background.
Helped along, of course, by his well-meaning parents, who had kept him confined to his own wing under the guise of protecting him.
There would be no more fading. Jack wanted him to blossom.
Arden had Jack and Beckett to protect him now, and they wouldn’t do it by containing him, or making him feel as if he’d done something wrong in being born an omega.
He’d never have to know loneliness again, and he’d only ever be alone when he wanted to be.
When Jack was in Sevennis fulfilling his obligations, Beckett would still be here for him.
And Beckett?
Jack smiled, thinking of how Beckett had brought Arden to his study yesterday morning, had kissed him, and instructed him how to kiss Jack.
Oh, his brash young alpha lover had taken to Arden better than Jack had hoped, despite the way Jack had fumbled their beginning. Jack had never seen him so tender or protective.
He wanted Beckett to blossom, too.
He drained the remaining water in his glass and threw open the window to let in the crisp dawn air. He took in a few deep, bracing lungfuls to chase away the last of the lingering nausea, and strode to the bell pull to call for a pot of coffee.
Perhaps two pots.
Lost in thoughts of his loves, he was startled when the door crashed open and Marl ran in.
Marl tripped to a stop when he saw Jack standing at the window, pressed a hand to his chest, and held up a finger. Jack waited while Marl ran out, bellowed, “He’s fine! All is well!” and re-entered the room the way Jack was used to him entering a room: at a sedate, unflappable walk.
“Good morning,” Jack said.
“Your Grace. I trust you are feeling better?”
Jack tipped his head from one side to the other in consideration and opened his mouth to speak.
Before he could, Marl burst out, “Fuck’s sake, Jack! What were you thinking? Suppressants? I should spank you.”
“I’d advise against it,” Jack said, brows flying up.
“Do you have any idea how sick you were?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Do you have any idea how worried everyone was about you?”
“You were worried?”
Marl gave him a scathing look.
Marl had been the first footman when Jack was a child. In other words, Marl was the one who always ended up having to drag Jack out of fights, the duckpond, the stable muck heap and, on the numerous occasions that Jack had overestimated his abilities and got stuck, more than one tree.
He was also a dignified and private man. He’d indulged Jack as a child, but from the day Jack had inherited the title and his responsibilities, he’d drawn and kept a firm boundary between them.
The scolding made Jack feel quite nostalgic. “Don’t give me that look. I had to take them, for Arden’s sake. I won’t need to do it again.”
“You’d better not. I am far too old to train a new duke, and your heir is almost as bad as you were. Almost. Stop smiling at me.”
Jack did his best. “Would you be so kind as to have some coffee sent up? And some hot water for washing? I’m keen to get back to my husband.”
Marl’s expression blanked. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and whisked himself out of the room.
Jack drank two cups of coffee, freshened up at the washstand, and headed down the stairs. The moment his boots hit the bottom step, Mrs Foley appeared in the doorway of the morning parlour. “Good morning,” he said.
Mrs Foley stalked across the hall, small hands bunched into fists, and glared up at him. She had to crane her neck to do it, especially standing as close as she was.
“No?” Jack said. “Not a good morning?”
“You horrible, awful man,” she said shrilly, grabbed hold of him and shook him, and then stalked off in a brisk swish of skirts.
Marl came to stand beside him and they watched her disappear through the door to the servants’ quarters, closing it behind her with not quite a slam.
Jack looked down at Marl. “I must have been even sicker than I thought.”
Marl pressed his lips together and said nothing, but his nostrils flared.
Jack was itching to go up to the main house and see how Arden and Beckett were faring after their second night together.
He was sad to have missed it. Unfortunately, Mrs Foley refused to let him leave until he sat at the table in the breakfast parlour and ate every last bite of the enormous bowl of porridge she’d made him.
She’d smothered the gelatinous mound of beige in brown sugar and cream.
It was exactly how he used to eat it in the nursery.
And so even though it was the last thing Jack felt like doing, he manfully picked up his spoon and choked it down under her angry supervision.
In an effort to clear the lingering headache and to burn off some of the heavy porridge that had landed like a stone, he elected to walk up to the house, and it was still quiet when he let himself in through one of the side doors.
He took the narrow servants’ stairs two at a time to the second floor, and strode through the corridors that led to the ducal apartments.
Setting a hand on the door, he paused. There were no sounds coming from inside the room. Jack quietly turned the handle and opened the door.
As before, the covers and pillows had been thrown off. They lay in a wild spill of silk and linen on the floor beside the enormous bed, like fallen petals. Jack’s heart swelled at the glorious sight before him.
As did other parts of him.
Arden and Beckett lay together, a picture of everything Jack had ever wanted.
Beckett was behind Arden, with one arm tucked beneath Arden’s head and the other curled around his waist, holding him close.
One of Beckett’s thighs was between Arden’s legs, and Arden was clutching the thick arm around his waist with both hands.
Jack’s appreciative gaze traveled lingeringly over them, cataloguing the evidence of the night they’d had while he was unconscious in the Lodge.
Arden’s fair skin held a light flush; even from the doorway, Jack saw small patches of red on Arden’s thighs and high up on his arms, where Beckett had held him tight, or had perhaps dragged his stubbled jaw over the soft skin as he strung ravenous kisses over Arden’s body.
Arden’s chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths, and it was that which made Jack finally look up into his face.
Arden was watching him with wide eyes. Jack smiled, and was hit with a disconcerting sensation of vertigo, as if he’d missed a step on the way down the staircase, when Arden tried to smile back.
It was an awful thing—wobbly, on bitten-red lips, and utterly, unmistakably insincere. He blinked rapidly, and tears spilled over onto wet, sore-looking cheeks.
Jack didn’t stop to think. He crossed the room, reaching out.
Arden shook his head, a tiny gesture that said he didn’t want to wake Beckett. Jack fought hard to hold himself back. From demanding what was wrong. From snatching Arden from the cage of Beckett’s embrace.
The big arms holding him so tightly took on a whole other cast, now that Arden was crying.
Jack crouched beside his bed, gaze locked on Arden’s, and said in a low, desperate voice, “Arden.”
Arden caught his breath. “J-Jack,” he whispered. The profound relief in it made Jack feel even worse. “Shh. I don’t want to wake him.”
Jack spared Beckett a quick, assessing glance.
“He won’t wake. He’ll be out for hours. As should you be.
” He reached out again and, when Arden didn’t shake his head, rested his fingers lightly on the back of Arden’s hands.
Hands which were clutching Beckett’s forearm.
He stroked gently over the icy cold skin. “You have to let go,” he said.
Arden’s breath hitched again. “I know,” he said, sounding desolate.
What in the seven hells had gone wrong?
Arden’s hands flexed on Beckett, tightening before he finally let go. The very second he did, Jack rose from his crouch and scooped him to the edge of the bed.
Beckett didn’t wake.
Not when the mattress shifted, not when Jack wrapped Arden in the coverlet he swept up from the floor, and not when Jack closed the door behind them as he carried Arden out.
He took Arden to Arden’s own bedchamber.
Instead of carrying him to his bed, Jack strode over to the small sofa in the cosy area by the bay window.
He collapsed, legs shaky, and gathered Arden close.
Arden had been stiff as Jack carried him away from Beckett.
In the quiet of his own chamber, his body softened and he curled into Jack, tucking his head under Jack’s chin.
Jack smoothed his hair back and stared blankly ahead.
He didn’t know where to start.
He didn’t want to start.
What…? Beckett wouldn’t hurt Arden. Not ever. He knew that. He knew it, down to his very bones.
Not on purpose.
“Sweetheart,” he said after they’d sat together in silence for as long as he could stand. “What can I do? What do you want? Whatever it is, tell me. I’ll give it to you, I swear.”
Arden sighed and snuggled closer. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and what he did say was hardly reassuring. “I want to go away.”