Cook was about as impressed with him as Mrs Foley and Marl were: not very.
It must be difficult, he thought, to take seriously the man who was once a boy you’d had to chase around to get him to eat, get out of your kitchen, stop picking his nose, stop stealing your apple turnovers, leave the dried fruit alone,putthat potdown, anddo not touch the stove!
He stripped off his gloves and stuffed them in his greatcoat pocket. “My duch?” he said.
“This time o’ night? Library. Be ringing for the supper tray for him and the lad any minute.”
The lad. Beckett.
“Would you add an extra cup for me, please?”
“As if he needs to ask.” Cook sniffed.
Jack took it as an affirmative.
He shrugged out of his coat and lifted his brows at the small, gawking maid he’d nearly bowled over on his way in.
She stood staring at him, her eyes running up and down his body as if she’d never seen a man in shirtsleeves before.
“His coat, girl,” Cook snapped.
The maid darted over.
“Thank you.” Jack passed over the voluminous coat which all but engulfed her, snitched an apple from the bowl on the table, and winked at Cook as he bit into it.
She flapped her hands at him, shooing him away.
He strode out of the kitchen and wended his way through the maze of the servants’ passages. It was the quickest route to the library, after all. He should probably go to his room and refresh himself after his journey first, but he couldn’t wait. He needed to see them. He’d thought of nothing else from the moment…well.
From the moment he’d watched Beckett ride away from Sevennis, leaving Jack behind.
He kept his steps deliberately light over the marble floor of the Great Hall as he approached the tall double doors of the library. He slipped inside, easing the door shut soundlessly behind him.
He wasn’t trying to sneak up on them. That behaviour was no more befitting a sober and mature alpha duke than swinging off his horse or coming into the house through the kitchen. He wanted to catch an unguarded moment, that was all. To see how they were together without him.
He pressed his back to the solid door and looked his fill.
It was full night outside, and Beckett was in the process of drawing the long, forest-green curtains. Arden lay before the fire on his stomach, his lower legs cocked, ankles crossed, and his chin resting on his hands as he watched Beckett admiringly.
From here, no one would think Beckett the younger man. He looked what he was—a large, powerful alpha on the very cusp of his prime.
Jack tilted his head. No. Beckett was in his prime, now.
Arden, on the other hand, looked like a sweet, innocent young omega. The exact sort of man who had never once drawn Jack’s attention or interest. Perhaps because Arden himself had always held it, so completely.
Even sprawled on the rich hearthrug, there was an arousing, loose-limbed grace to the way he disposed of his body. It suggested flexibility, a quicksilver potential. It gave him an air of skittishness, even when he was most settled; the suggestion that he’d run through your fingers like water, no matter how tightly you tried to hold onto him.
Jack took a deep breath, hungrily watching the two men who owned his heart. Who owned him. Completely.
At the thought, Beckett turned and looked directly over at Jack. He wasn’t surprised to see him. He’d probably sensed him standing there in the shadows. Beckett’s mere presence had often enough lifted the hairs on Jack’s body, after all, awareness shivering over his skin like a warning breeze rippling through summer-long grass before a storm.
Their eyes locked and for a long, charged moment, they stared at each other.
Beckett’s expression slowly changed. The naked flare of love that Jack would never cease to be humbled by was taken over by something mischievous, which was in turn taken over by a heavy sultriness.
Beckett continued to stare at him boldly. Invitingly.
Come and get it.
