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“And Aherne and Bailey? Are they well and settling in?”
“Them two.” The stable master rolled his eyes. “It’s overrun, I am.”
“Are they…?” She wasn’t sure she was meant to ask.
“So ye’ve copped on, have ya?” Marshall rubbed his hands together, and they headed back to the barn. “Welcome to the menagerie.”
Alfred growled, and Felicity hushed him with a touch. She smiled at the stable master and withdrew a small journal, and a piece of graphite that looked to be wrapped in metal, from her pocket.
“How did you come to be here, Mr. Marshall?”
The stable master rocked on his heels. “Fell in love with a lady with a difference, didn’t know it at the time. Wanted to leave off working at a posting house in the arse end of Yorkshire, followed her here, had a rude little awakening when I chatted with her da.” He stopped to laugh. “Lordy, that was something shocking, I’m telling you. Agreed to abide by their ways and was recognized by the pack as one of them and got the keeping of this equine palace. Nothing bad to be had, all round.”
“I wonder at your equanimity, as I find I have it, too.”
“It’s part of their way, nothing sinister-like, but once they choose you, they make it easier for you to believe, somehow.” He shrugged. “Listen, there’s nowt so queer as folk. But if the choice was never to have met my beloved, well…”
“Then it was no choice at all.” Felicity watched the stable lads trot around the place like a herd themselves. She raised a brow at the stable master, who made a show of inspecting his fingernails as he nodded. Felicity asked Alfred, “Is it not odd for them to live amongst creatures who are like them, but not?”
“It is difficult for prey animals such as they to be in proximity to predators such as I,” Alfred said. “It is good to keep them gainfully occupied.”
“They can live amongst the smallies, like the cats and the dogs and the birds. But the big bads? No indeed,” added Marshall. “And they’ll grow up appreciating their gifts.”
“Is it a gift, Mr. Marshall?”
“Anything’s what you make of it, Your Grace.”
* * *
O’Mara awaited them at the end of the drive. They turned toward Lowell Close and walked for a time in silence. Felicity discerned a wave of whatever O’Mara manifested and said, “I do not require soothing, Miss O’Mara, if you would be so good.”
“You ought not to be able to resist my glamour,” O’Mara said. “No one can, not even—if not most especially—humans.”
“I do not understand your powers.” Felicity reveled in the swish of her skirts and the freedom of the breeches beneath. A magnificent thing, this walking habit.
“She is the Omega, the opposite of the Alpha,” Alfred said. “I, who compel through strength, and when necessary, force, am balanced through the peace and equanimity that O’Mara can summon and disperse.”
“In order that a calm state be kept within the pack,” O’Mara added, “as far as is necessary.”
“Or wanted.” Felicity paused on the road, made a new heading in her journal, and wrote a new note. “I cannot imagine that a mesmerized household or village is the plan.”
“No, indeed. But,” O’Mara said, and Felicity rolled her eyes, “there is always a but, ma’am. We are an array of excitable creatures, and there must be a subtle way of keeping equilibrium. I am that way.”
“And how does this affect your own emotions, Miss O’Mara?”
“If you will excuse me,” Alfred said, “I have something to see to in the village before we arrive.”
They watched him stride down the road and disappear around a bend. “Even our Alpha sometimes finds the finer points of what I do to be cause for discomfort.” The women resumed their walk. “My own emotions are to be acknowledged and released, as it should be. But often with a speed which is…onerous. And often it is better do I not indulge them at all.”
“It must be a great challenge.” Felicity now understood what she had perceived as coldness was monumental control.
“No greater than that of our Alpha, who holds us all safe and as one.”
“Such power,” Felicity said.
“Such discipline,” O’Mara retorted. “Such temperance. He is as a spider, weaving a web that is strong and subtle, often unseen by the naked eye, and yet a vital presence that is not a trap but a source of safety. It is his gift and his obligation to hold us together for as long as he lives.”
And I myself must play some part in that. It was as thrilling as it was daunting. She consulted her notes. “Please explain these terms to me? Alpha, Omega? Are they Italian as the myth seems to be?”
