“Don’t you give me any of that,” Marl said calmly. “We’ve been through this. Out.”
“No.”
Marl did something stupid then, that could have ended in him getting his wrist broken. Or worse. The faith he showed in Beckett was perhaps the only thing that prevented it. Because everyone knew you didn’t touch an alpha with his hackles up unless you were willing to take the consequences.
Least, they did where Beckett came from.
Marl leaned across the short distance and gripped Beckett’s shoulder, catching and holding his gaze. “Beckett.Tobias. You have to let go. You have other responsibilities now.”
Beckett didn’t snap at him, not even for using the name no one had spoken out loud since his mam died.
He didn’t obey him, either.
“His Grace would order you to let us handle this and help the duch. You know this. Anyone can help His Grace.” Marl squeezed lightly, and nodded. “Only you can help the duch.”
The fight didn’t go out of Beckett. The fight wouldn’t go out of Beckett until he was dead and cold. But he did as Marl said.
He wasn’t the feral street urchin he’d been once his mam had died and left him to finish raising himself. He knew sense when he heard it.
More importantly, when he heard it, he listened.
Ignoring the fact others were there to witness another of those precious, private moments that he guarded and hoarded so fiercely, he shifted on the seat and took Jack’s face between hands that trembled. He held Jack’s hot cheeks, leaned in, and kissed him hard. Right on the lips.
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he forced himself out of the carriage.
The door slammed shut behind him, the horses threw themselves into the harness, and gravel pinged and sprayed as the brougham drove away.
CHAPTER 15
BECKETT
Beckett stalked up the sweeping marble steps and through the massive arched doorway. He’d expected the Great Hall to be filled with a crowd of gossiping servants, all trying to catch a glimpse of their dying master. The only thing it was full of was its usual calm, settled peace and some motes of dust twinkling as they fell in shafts of sunlight.
He shut the ornate door behind him, and since there was no one to see, he helped it along with a vicious backward kick.
Beckett had first come to Avendene when he was twenty-four years old, sent here by a grateful lady he’d helped out of a tight spot.
After his mam had died, he’d done his best to stay out of trouble on the streets. He had some of his mam’s old friends looking out for him at first, and as soon as he presented, he shot right up and out. He was a big lad with a bad attitude. It wasn’t hard to get himself a job where looming around being big was most of his job description.
He was working as door muscle in a low-rent fancyhouse run by the gambling lords in Sevennis when he met Lady Dahli Dalbryn, and fuck knows what the woman had been thinking,taking herself to a dive place like that without the proper protection, alpha or not.
It was clear from the second he let Lady Dahli in that she was out of her depth. She was bright, vivacious, up for a good time, and apparently cursed by the gods themselves. The woman couldn’t win a roll of the dice to save her life.
Literally.
Someone floated a comment about taking it out of her hide when she lost for the ninth time straight, and even her strength and rank wouldn’t have been much help if the drunken fools got carried away.
The upshot of it was, Beckett left his post at the door and stepped up beside her. The itchy regulars might have chanced a takedown on an unknown alpha. They knew him, though. Not a soul among them dared try.
He got her out of trouble, and himself out of a job. It was no hardship. He’d been there long enough, he reckoned. He’d grown restless. He wanted more from his life than keeping the peace between idiots who had nothing better to do with their time and their coin than throw it on the gaming table, pour it their down their throats, or buy themselves a hole for the night.
As he didn’t have anything better to do, he saw the lady safely across town to her noble home, where he turned down her offer to see her all the way up to her bedchamber.
He did accept a hot meal and a bed in the servants’ dormitory, though.
He knew better than to go back to the fancyhouse, where he’d had a tiny bed tucked up under the eaves as a perk of the job. His bed and belongings were long gone. The only thing he owned that he gave a damn about was his mam’s old brooch, anyway. He kept that on his person.
The next morning before he headed out, the lady summoned him to her parlour and offered him a replacement job as her own personal footman.
