He needed to see Jack.
Jack first, and then Beckett could get the lie of the land with regards to Arden. He wasn’t going to just barge in on the duch without warning. He had to honour the space that Arden had put between them by running away. It would drive him mad, knowing his omega was close but not going after him. Still.
He’d honour it.
And if Jack told Beckett that Arden didn’t want to see him?
It would make fixing things a hell of a lot harder, but Beckett would come up with something.
He was good on his feet.
It would be fine.
It all wenttits up almost as soon as he made it to Greylag.
He’d had the right intentions. That had to count for something.
He arrived a couple of hours past dawn, trotting up a back lane to the rear of the stable block and hollering for a stable lad. Taking his bags with him, Beckett found his way to the kitchen and charmed a big breakfast out of the cook, even though the man was already working on lunch.
Beckett didn’t have to try too hard. Just like the stable lad, who’d given Beckett a knowing grin the moment he heard Beckett’s name, the cook knew who he was.
Servants gossiped, even between estates. Maybe a few years ago, Beckett would have cared. He didn’t anymore. He had more important things to worry about. Besides, he’d take the sly looks all day long if it got him served food of this portion size and quality—and so he told the cook, which got him a second plate.
Once he’d eaten his fill, he sat back to drink his mug of tea, and inquired as to where His Grace was this morning.
“Far as I know, His Grace the duke is stuffing his face in the breakfast parlour,” the cook said, spooning dark red jam into the small, daintily crimped pastry cases lined up the length of the kitchen table. “His Grace the duch,” he continued with pinched disapproval, “is no doubt picking at hisonecoddled egg and piece of toast.”
Beckett cocked a brow.
The cook leaned in. “Been pining the whole time he’s been here,” he said with a knowing nod. “For his alpha.”
His alphas. Beckett didn’t correct the man.
And if Arden wasn’t pining for him, Beckett, along with Jack, then he’d just have to make sure he did, next time they were separated.
“He’s a picky eater,” Beckett said. He’d driven Cook at Avendene into fits, too. She was always trying to tempt him to eat more, while Arden had insisted politely on nothing but the simplest of food.
“Nursery food!” Cook had bellowed, banging her pots and pans around and scowling. “I can make him meals worthy of a duch! And he wants toast and honey! Apple crumble and custard! Rice pudding with nutmeg! A coddled egg!”
Beckett had been dismissive at the time, thinking that the little mouse was most likely too scared to ask for what he wanted. He wasn’t wrong. But Arden did like things simple, and if Beckett had to wager on it, he’d lay his savings on Arden genuinely wanting toast and honey for his supper, rather than a roasted stuffed peacock with all the trimmings, or whatever it was duches were supposed to eat.
“You need directions to the breakfast parlour?” Greylag’s cook said, once Beckett had finished his tea and caught the man up on all the gossip from Avendene. “Oi, Cabot, take Beckett up to Their Graces!”
“Nah,” Beckett said easily. “I’ll find ‘em myself. He can take me up to the dormitory to drop my bags.”
“Suit yourself.” The cook handed him over to Cabot, who chattered up at Beckett the whole way up to the dormitory, the whole way back down, and would have followed him out into the walled kitchen garden, still chattering, had Beckett not suggested he get on with his usual duties.
The flirty little beta pouted but scampered off, leaving Beckett to his thoughts.
His head was always clearest when he was outside and surrounded by growing things. Even though he’d spent his formative years in the slums, he’d had an affinity for gardens since he was a toddler playing in his mam’s tiny courtyard, picking slugs and snails out of the old barrels she’d stuffed full of plants.
She was a right treasure, was his mam.
She’d turned a miserable little patch of grey into a sanctuary of herbs and flowers, packed in around the more practical vegetables. Made a tidy sum selling any spare to folk on their street, too.
It struck him that she was the kind of beta Jack had wanted for Arden.
Well. Arden got her son. Beckett reckoned it was close enough.
