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“Then I shall leave you to it.” Osborn took the poker back and threw it in with the andirons. He stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose, inhaled. “And we…” He dropped his hand and turned to her. “We shall convene in the morning as you have decreed.”
He opened the door and paused with his back to her. “Sweet dreams,” he bid her, grudgingly, and away he went.
Thus Beatrice’s question as to whether they would lie together again that night was answered.
Fourteen
Beatrice arrived in the Alpha’s study before the others and used that time to lay certain items on the desk. She had ensured the room was tidied, and it was reordered and pristine. With foolscap and pen to hand on her side of the gleaming expanse, she waited until she was joined by the three men.
Mr. Todd stood before the desk as Arthur took his place to sit behind it; Ben stood opposite to her, flanking the duke. Osborn slouched in his seat, his brow like thunder. He perused the assemblage on the desk and growled.
And yet…for his bristling surliness, he was content to sit. To wait? Beatrice looked at him and felt a tug at her breastbone she did not understand. She had broken her fast with but two slices of toast, so she could not blame a bad kipper, for example, for the disturbance within. Yet it was there, a nudge in her chest, rather like someone tapping her on the arm for her attention or as if a thread, an invisible thread, stretched between herself and Osborn and his brother. She looked to Ben, whose hand lay over his heart. His smile was blinding.
“Garben?” He beamed at her but shook his head.
She worried at her wedding ring, running her fingers over the topaz, and turned to the duke. “Your Grace?” she asked. “Would you like to begin?”
“Far be it from me to tread on your patch.” He glared at her as though she was the miscreant.
Beatrice addressed the prince’s factotum. “Mr. Todd, you see before you evidence proving you have sabotaged many of the tasks I have given you to the detriment of this house.” The bell pull lay there, alongside letters he had been tasked with delivering and the broken pea sticks from the garden.
“To the detriment of your health, Madam,” Osborn snarled.
“I had not intended that anyone’s health, much less that of Her Grace, be endangered.” Mr. Todd cricked his neck at Osborn, whose teeth momentarily took the form of fangs.
“What did you intend, Mr. Todd?” Beatrice asked.
“I was charged by His Highness to obey you in all things and to assist as needed in the restoration of Arcadia.” The prince’s factotum was as cool as she.
“He had no way of knowing such help would be desired,” Osborn huffed.
“I believe our prince suspected Her Grace would take command of such an undertaking.”
“His Highness had the measure of you, Madam.” Osborn’s tone belied his teasing of her.
Beatrice felt the pull again and carried on. “And what else did His Highness require of you?”
This query was met with a twinkle of sly glee. “I was exhorted to make trouble for you and His Grace where I may.”
“To what end?”
“The prince hoped that such discord would serve to unite you against a common foe.”
“Discord?” Osborn sprang to his feet. “You call it ‘discord’ when the safety of my—when the duchess is in danger? Look upon these simple objects you have transformed into lethal weapons and know had any ill come to pass it would have gone much the worse for you.”
Lethal weapons? Ben tucked his chin to his chest, failing to hide his smile, and Beatrice came as near to laughing in public as she’d ever done in her adult life. “Osborn.” She gestured to his seat, and he resumed it. “Have you been in correspondence with His Highness, Mr. Todd?”
A spark of guilt flickered across that cunning countenance. “Yes, Your Grace. As to his wishes, I have been informing him of your progress, or the lack thereof. His Highness wished the adversity to be increased, and thus the minor disturbances within the house.”
“And the unfortunate creature stuffed up the chimney?”
“Ma’am, I must say, none of the creatures were my work.” His sincerity was palpable. “Indeed, I had taken it upon myself to seek out what could be doing such a thing.”
“Took it upon yourself,” Osborn muttered.
Beatrice spoke over him. “You have been as a right hand to me over these past few weeks. My disappointment knows no bounds, not so much that you broke my trust, although there is that, of course, but that your hard work was a sham.”
“Ma’am, I beg you to believe me, it was not.” The prince’s factotum showed her his throat. “This place—to have the satisfaction of seeing it return to its former glory, nay, to transcend it—to have had a discernible hand in it…” He dropped his head and whispered, “It went far beyond what one such as I could aspire to. I beg your forgiveness.”
