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Twenty-three
Bedclothes rustled, a glass touched her cheek, and she opened her eyes. She had dozed, sated and spent, as the evening closed in. Her duke, her husband, her mate held out a glass of spring water.
“Why are you wearing that dressing gown?” She accepted the refreshment with pleasure.
“I cannot think what came over me.” He slid it off his shoulders and left it where it fell. He pulled down the covers, and she lay there, wanton. “Only fair,” he said as he set a tray of dainties down between them. He fed her part of a buttered scone. Then the rest. Then a slice of cheese and bread.
“We shall be rather rustic,” he said. “There is no bathing chamber here, I am afraid, only a copper tub. Food and drink will be left us over the next few days.”
“Whatever shall the footmen do in our absence?”
“About the footmen.” Alfred took extreme care in preparing another scone with butter and jam. “It is not from excessive pride that Lowell Hall is attended by so many. In many packs or clowders or flocks, the weakest of the litters are often not allowed a chance to…”
“To thrive?”
“To live. It is the males of the Shifter species, the so-called stronger sex, who are the likeliest to be the runts. Did I not take them in, due to their perceived lack in strength or hardiness, they would be put down. We cannot afford to lose even one Shapeshifting soul, and so…”
“And so you have created a place for them to find their way.” Felicity’s eyes welled with tears, and her duke looked chagrined, as he did when he was caught out in a good deed. “However do you find them to bring them—oh, allow me to hazard a guess. Mr. Bates.”
Alfred nodded. “He has many connections that surveil many things. This is one of them. And thus the myriad footmen of Lowell Hall. Despite taking in the weakest, the Lowell Pack is the strongest in the British Isles. And possibly Europe.”
“I believe that several may find employment in the newest business concern in Lowell Close.” She wished to make much of him, sensed he would find it discomfiting, and fed him a tea sandwich of ham instead. “Is this bed a usual feature of this place?”
“It is not. I arranged it.” He looked delighted with himself. “Had the lads carry it up and install it in good time.”
“And the clothes in the other cottages? I presume they are for those who have shifted and are in need of covering?”
“So clever,” he murmured, holding out another tasty morsel.
“I could not even think what they were for only days ago,” she said. “How all has changed.”
His eyes flickered away, and she held up a petit four. He nipped it whole out of her hand and grinned, but she grabbed his chin. “Changed for the better,” she said. “Changed for the best.”
“I have another apology,” he said.
“Would this be my bridal gift?” She brushed his hair out of his eyes again. She could become accustomed to touching him whenever she desired.
He lay down, head on one hand, the other warm on her belly. “I regret I was more brusque than was wanted, when we first met,” he said. “I’ve realized I had forgotten what little say women have in their lives.”
“How radical, Your Grace.”
He smiled, an expression that was gone almost before it turned his lips. “I would tell what I know of such things, if it does not bring down the tone.”
“Alfred.” She moved the food and curled into his side. “I seek to know your heart as well as your body. And your mind, of course.”
“Vixen.” He ran his nose around her face, and she laughed, to please him. He sighed, and she rested a hand over his heart.
“I was seven in human years when I was sent off to foster with Matthias. My sister had been born one year after I. We were at loggerheads much of the time, not that our parents were aware. The nursery was very much separate from the Hall. It was how I thought things were until I arrived at Matthias’s family home. The place was stuffed to the rafters with pups, rambling all over the place at will. His parents were as loving toward me as they were with their own, and I perceived the lack Phoebe and I had experienced. Matthias’s mother and father werevera amorumand I didn’t understand until then that my parents were not.”
“How could they mate if they were not?”
“Choice.” He pulled her closer, his hand straying to his new favorite place—her bottom. “Because they both embraced it, and because they both declared themselves in front of witnesses in much the usual way, it was accepted. It was atonmarriage in every sense, with the addition of Shapeshifting.”
“Knowing the little I do of your kind,” she said, “I cannot imagine how it succeeded.”
“It ultimately did not. They did not cherish us as pups, and so their ability to multiply ceased. I was unseen but for my status as heir, and Phoebe was a chess piece to be put on the board when it was time for her marriage.” He reached up and twined a lock of Felicity’s hair around his fingers. “My sister had no idea I was more than someone to torment until I was gone. I had no idea how much I loved her until I was parted from her, and she was all I looked forward to on my visits home.”
“A bright spot. She was well named.”
