He didn’t feel like laughing now.
Jack slanted him a rueful look. “Would you care to give me a hint as to what you’re thinking?”
“Let you know as soon as I do,” Beckett muttered.
“Fair enough.”
Ah, fuck it. Beckett turned and pushed his body against Jack’s, wrapping his arms around him.
If Jack had trotted that one out—you’re mine for all time—before Beckett had seen him sick as a pig, who knows what he’d have said in response? Probably got uppity about it. On his high horse, ego all flared up and the like.
Having thought he’d lost Jack for good…
“I’m yours,” he said gruffly, and forced himself to meet Jack’s eyes, forced himself to be as open as he’d ever been. “Long as you want me, Jack. I’m yours.”
CHAPTER 20
BECKETT
Being a duke wasn’t all shits and giggles. Two days after Arden had scurried away to the coast like the sensitive little mouse he was, Jack was dragged back to Sevennis by more of those endless Council obligations and business concerns that demanded his every waking moment, it seemed to Beckett, and Beckett was left to kick his heels in the countryside and brood about the whole mess.
Oh, did he brood about it.
Jack shouldn’t ever have let Arden go, if you asked him.
He got why Jack did it. Jack was all about giving Arden choices, and Beckett agreed with that. He did.
Just not when Arden made the wrong choice.
Not when Arden made a choice that put Beckett’s needs above his.
Didn’t seem right that he had to start over again somewhere new, when he’d barely even settled at Avendene. There wasn’t any point in it, anyway, seeing as sooner rather than later he’d be right back here, where he belonged.
Beckett wasn’t sure how that was going to happen, only that it would.
Jack wanted it. He wanted it. Arden wanted it. The duch was just scared of it—scared of Beckett—and on top of that, he was trying to be nobleforBeckett, by taking himself away.
Luckily for everyone, Beckett didn’t have a noble bone in his body.
He’d push all three of them through this, see if he didn’t.
Of course,that was a bit hard to do when the three of them weren’t ever in the same place.
Weeks later, Beckett decided that enough was enough. He wasn’t going to get anything fixed by staying at Avendene on his own, was he, so best he take himself off to town, collect Jack, and together they’d go and collect Arden.
First things first, though: he had to tell Marl he was leaving.
He dreaded that almost as much as he dreaded facing Arden after what he’d done.
Marl had been freezing him out.
He wasn’t unkind or anything. It was worse. He was polite. He was distant.
He was disappointed.
Beckett was starting to think that he’d lost the man’s respect for good. He tried to pretend it didn’t matter to him. No one else’s opinion did, after all, except perhaps Mrs Foley’s, and she’d got over it once she’d given him a right scolding.
He marched to Marl’s office, knocked quietly and, when he was called in, he turned the handle and opened the door as whisper-soft as any posh butler could demand.
