She whirled on him, all set to give him a great (and familiar) scolding…only she didn’t.
Instead, she astonished him by reaching up and touching his cheek fleetingly with a worn hand.
He blinked.
It must have been two decades, and a few more years besides, since Cook had shown him any tenderness. She was a practical woman, not given to expressing her emotions unless she was yelling them at her staff.
Jack didn’t know what this uncharacteristic tenderness was for, until she turned her back to him with a shake of her grey head, saying, “Your men are out in my garden, and you’ll be telling your little duch that if him and the lad want to go digging around in it and making changes, he’ll have to come and take tea with me first to discuss it.”
“Very well,” Jack said.
She made an impatient noise and shooed him away. “Off with you.”
Because he could, and because he was filled withsomethingtoday—hope, energy, love, love,love—he leaned over her rounded shoulder, snitched a tart from under her nose, and rushed out.
Not at all in a manner befitting a duke, which she screeched after him as he slid out the back door, catching Marl’s amused expression as he did.
He set off down the gravelled path that wound through the kitchen garden and on into the orchard beyond, which was where he assumed they were, since he’d found Beckett there often enough.
And, yes.
There they were indeed.
For all the mockery he’d got from Beckett and, he thought indignantly, from Arden, he hadn’t been far off in his dreams for Arden being centred around a garden, with flowers and bees.
The scale had been somewhat off, admittedly, since Avendene wasn’t a cottage, but he’d been correct in thinking it would make Arden happy.
Then again, Arden had only ever needed one thing to be happy.
Love.
He had it now, and you couldseeit.
Jack stopped before they noticed him, taking a moment to appreciate them together. And to appreciate his stolen tart.
Beckett was lounging on the small stone bench—a curved, backless thing that was tucked away between a pair of ancient apple trees. His thighs were spread and his upper body was canted back at an angle as he leaned his weight into the hand braced behind him.
The other hand was resting, light but possessive, on Arden’s hip.
He’d drawn their omega between his legs and was holding him there, trapped.
Arden had no idea he was caught, of course, and Jack could tell that Beckett was doing his best not to grab, to pin, to dominate. To Arden, it probably felt like nothing more than an affectionate, casual touch, and yet Jack saw the fine tension there in his alpha lover. Once again, he was struck by how protective it was.
Beckett had been this way from the moment Jack had come upon them in Arden’s bedchamber months ago, and had seen Beckett inside Arden, moving over him, tending to him and bringing relief from his first, brutal heat.
His immediate response when he’d sensed Jack was to curl around Arden protectively.
Not one in a hundred thousand alphas would have responded like that.
Arden chattered away, hands sketching things in the air. Beckett’s eyes were steady on his face. Arden dropped his gaze shyly again and again. But again and again, it returned to Beckett. Soaking in the attention.
Oh, he was going to bloom under them, Jack knew. Everything that he’d wanted for Arden was going to come true.
And, because of Arden, everything that he’d wanted for Beckett would also come true.
Jack had worried that he’d never be able to convince Beckett to claim his place at Jack’s side. He’d meant it when he said to Arden once that Beckett wouldn’t have agreed to be his duch if Jack had held him at sword’s point.
But this…oh, this. It was better than anything.
