Chapter 21
BECKETT
You could get to Sevennis from Avendene in two days if you changed horses at every posting house, and a little under that if the moon was on your side and you chanced it on the dark roads, as Jack had done to reach Arden.
It was a lot slower in crap weather when you were riding one horse, and that horse had to be dried, stabled, fed, and rested overnight.
Beckett didn’t mind. He appreciated the opportunity to think.
He also appreciated Tib knowing his own way and not needing any input from Beckett beyond the initial giddy-up, since Beckett’s thoughts were very much not on the road.
They were fixed at all times on one of three things—Jack, Arden, and Jack-and-Arden-and-him.
Maybe now and then thoughts of the future that Marl had hinted at crept in.
Estate manager. He sat up taller in the saddle, shoulders back.
Him, an estate manager.
He’d never have aimed that high himself. Thought shooting for butler was chancing it a bit, to be honest.
Estate manager, though?
Yeah. He’d do a great job of it.
After the first day of riding, Beckett’s muscles were screaming. He had to use the mounting block in the inn’s yard the next morning. Couldn’t get his wobbly thighs to cooperate.
The second day was a trudge.
It was shitting down with rain, making Beckett more than grateful for his long coat, which covered him from neck to ankles. Thick mud sucked noisily at Tib’s big hooves, and he was splashed with it well over his hocks and nigh up to the girth.
Beckett turned up his collar, pulled his battered old tricorn hat low, and hunkered in for the slog.
Bright thoughts of an exciting future were harder to conjure when the sky was the colour of pewter and the branches of the trees lining the road were black and dripping.
The clouds didn’t let up, neither did the rain, and in the end Beckett called it done a good two hours before dusk.
The visibility was so bad it may as well have been night anyway, and Beckett was more than ready to be out of the saddle and in the dry.
As he had the night before, Beckett took care of Tib himself rather than leaving him to one of the ostlers.
He gave the horse a thorough rubdown, followed by two of Narin’s apples, a fresh bucket of water and a manger full of hay.
Tib leaned against him affectionately when Beckett finished up with a quick bit of fuss.
“You are a good lad, aren’t you, eh?” he said.
Tib huffed in soft agreement.
Beckett left him dozing in his stall, sat and drank a couple of pints in the taproom along with two helpings of stew, and took himself up to bed early. He could be sociable when the need arose. On the whole, though, he preferred his own company.
Or Jack’s company.
And now…yeah. Arden’s company. Add that to the list.
He could do with some of Arden’s company.
He stripped, cleaned up with cold water at the tiny washstand in his tiny room—the perks of traveling on Jack’s penny meant that, unlike most, he could afford a room of his own rather than bunk with a bunch of strangers in a communal room—and climbed onto the bed.
He fluffed the flat pillows and stretched out under the worn-thin quilt, pulling it up to his chin. The fire in the small grate was little more than a sullen heap of coals and didn’t do much to warm the room.
He’d got spoiled living at Avendene, hadn’t he? Hah. Once upon a time, any fire at all would have been a luxury. Now, he was used to as big a fire as he cared for, every night, in his own private bedchamber that could swallow this poky cubby whole.
A bedchamber where he’d like to see the little duch one day.
Beckett shuffled about, getting comfortable.
Yeah.
Arden would fit in his bedchamber right nicely, dainty thing that he was.
Jack, now, he looked as out of place in there as a wolf stuffed in a kennel.
But Arden…mhm.
Arden would like it.
It was a small room. Plain, and quiet. Beckett could get him on the bed and spread him out. It was cosy, so Arden wouldn’t feel exposed and do any of that hiding-behind-pillows nonsense he did in the ducal apartments.
He’d unfurl for Beckett. Shyly, but happily.
And, gods, how Beckett would tend to him there.
Beckett let a hand drift down to cup his balls. He traced a casual knuckle along his thickening shaft.
He’d had a long hard day in the saddle, and with the roads as deep with mud as they were, he faced another two at least. You wouldn’t think he’d be up for a wank.
And yet, though everything from the waist down was more tender than usual, he continued to play with himself. Let his mind drift. Stroked idly.
He thought of Arden. It didn’t feel as if he was wronging Jack, because if Jack were here…mmm. Yeah.
If Jack were here right this moment, he’d be crammed in the narrow bed alongside Beckett, even though the pair of them would be hard-pressed to fit their big bodies on the narrow mattress, and someone—that’d be Jack—would be hogging the covers, leaving bits of Beckett exposed to the chill air of the room.
He snuggled deeper under the quilt.
Jack would brace himself up on an elbow and rest his head on his hand, hot black eyes on Beckett’s as he demanded Beckett tell him exactly what he was thinking about. What he wanted to do to Jack’s husband.
What he wanted to watch Jack doing to his husband.
What he wanted the pair of them to do to Arden.
Or—oh. Beckett caught his breath and stroked faster.
Or what he and Arden could do to Jack.
Beckett grinned fiercely into the darkness of the room as he worked himself. That was going to happen one day. Him and Arden, teamed up and driving Jack out of his mind. He’d make sure of it.
He wanted to watch Jack’s face as he got pleasured by his men. He wanted to boss Arden about. Tell him what to do with his hands and where to put his pretty mouth. Watch the little omega blush and squirm but do it anyway because Beckett told him to, and because…
Because he trusted Beckett.
That’s what he really wanted.
To have Arden trust Beckett as he trusted Jack.
It would take time, he knew that. It had taken long enough for Beckett to trust Jack, after all.
His forceful strokes slowed and he backed himself away from the edge.
When he’d first come to Avendene, he’d admit it right here and now, he’d had a right chip on his shoulder.
He’d jumped down from the carrier’s cart that he’d wheedled a ride on in town, taken a shortcut through the parkland that the carrier had pointed out, and half an hour later, he laid eyes on the huge, sprawling house in the distance and thought, yeah.
This would do.
He was going to be the best godsdamned footman this fancy duke had ever seen.
He marched up to the back entrance and asked for the butler.
A wary footman, Garvey, showed him into Marl’s office, where he presented Lady Dahli’s letter of recommendation, endured Marl’s nosy and irritated questions, and was told to go and ask Cook for some refreshments while Marl consulted with the housekeeper.
It probably helped sway them toward keeping him that Dunn, who was fifteen then and had surprised everyone by presenting as an alpha not two weeks ago, chose the moment Beckett walked into the kitchen to have his first tantrum.
It happened. Sometimes when you were young, your hormones got the better of you and no matter how hard you tried to ride the wave of it, you got dragged under.
Dunn was all the way under, and then some.
The lad’s face was red, neck and forearms stark and corded with painfully tight tendons and blood-fat veins.
He kicked back the chair he’d been sitting on, flipped the table and sent every last dish on it flying, and went after Hapton, who’d made the mistake of being a beta and taking the biggest piece of pie right in front of Dunn’s face.
Hap tried to calm him down and avoid getting smacked about for his troubles, Magda was yelling, “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!” to both of them, and Cook was all set to clobber him with a pan.
Beckett scruffed the lad and ran him out to the paved kitchen courtyard.
There, he indulged Dunn in the kind of knockdown, drag-out fight that he knew from personal experience was the only way Dunn would be able to burn through the rapid-onset rage.
He even let Dunn get a couple of hits in.
The lad was a decent fighter, or he would be once he got control of his gangly limbs. He couldn’t hope to match an older, coordinated alpha like Beckett. And Beckett was a big one, too.
He always, always had the advantage.
It made him careful. So as not to shame the lad, he let Dunn put him on the ground. Just the once. It didn’t seem fair to give him a total drubbing, not with folk standing around watching and taking bets like arseholes.
By the time Dunn was tiring and starting to listen to Beckett’s soothing talk about how he’d be fine, he’d be fine, it wouldn’t hurt much longer, what must have been half the staff and all the stable lads were there for the show.
Dunn went down hard, the rage dropping from him like a stone tossed down a well. Beckett caught him when his legs went out, and eased him to the flagstones. He sat there with the lad’s head on his thigh as Dunn gasped through the last of it.
He paid no attention to the wide-eyed crowd. They scarpered as soon as Marl showed up, anyway.
And maybe Beckett getting hired in the end was partly down to Lady Dahli’s recommendation and partly because Marl knew he needed someone around to help manage Dunn’s unpredictable transition, since Vickers was in his fifties and not likely to be able to hold his own against a new alpha.
Beckett made damn sure that when the probation period was up, Marl kept him there for him.
As the months passed, Beckett’s former life faded easily behind him, like morning fog lifting, and all he knew was this place, these people. He was, for the first time in his life, happy.
He hadn’t even known he’d been unhappy.
But he was happy now, and he knew it.
And then Jack came home.