AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your Grace! Wherever did you find him?” She reached out for the horse, and Alwyn stood between her and the animal.
“Madam. How dare you.” The duchess took a step back, and he found he did not want to frighten her, only totellher. “Knowing what you know about your husband and his people? Your people?”
“I do not understand—” She stepped forward again, and the duke turned his back to shield the horse with his body.
“To keep a man in his essential self against his will is deplorable. I thought better of you. His Highness thought better of you. Had he known you were keeping a creature like this, would he have sent me here?”
“A creature like—” Lowell’s duchess was the picture of confusion, but Alwyn did not let her continue; he would say his piece.
“Every day that passes leaves less and less humanity behind. The struggle to remain balanced and in one’s right mind becomes more and more arduous. The days I woke and wished I’d never risen at all, the days when I did not know how I would find the strength to keep my poor lion from wreaking havoc on all around him out of fear and rage and the loss of his agency. I will not see it visited upon another.”
“Llewellyn.” Miss Barrington stood between him and the duchess and lay a hand on his arm. “This being is not suffering the way you did.”
He glared at her. “How can you say that, you of all people, who can see?”
“I say as one who sees and knows.” Her voice swept over him like a cool hand, soothing a fever. “You would not be able to discern his essence if this horse were being held by way of gold. It blocks all sense of the essential self to otherversipelles.”
“That cannot be so.” His hands were shaking, and his body would soon follow; he shut his eyes against this weakness, against being seen in all his feebleness. The horse braced his hooves, and shouldering into the duke’s side, took Alwyn’s weight.
“It is.” Her hand gripped his forearm, lightly, enough to let him know she was there. “Mr. Bates said as much.”
The rage flashed, once, and left him. “Oh, well, if Bates said so, it must be true.” He took one breath, another; the horse lowered his head to rub his nose on Alwyn’s knee. Miss Barrington did nothing more than hold his arm and stand in front of him, and yet her presence was like a balm for his senses.
“I don’t believe it is well-known,” she said.
“It cannot be, if none have come back from it to tell their tale.” A communal intake of breath soughed around him. It was an unimaginable horror; he thought of his lost ones and trembled.
Miss Barrington ran a finger over Alwyn’s knuckles, tense from clutching the strap on the horse’s rug. Nothing wrong with his grip in this instance. He relaxed his fingers one by one and let go. The horse did not budge an inch until he moved, then the stallion nudged him on the side with his nose once he stood on his own. “My apologies, ma’am…” he began.
“Not at all, think nothing of it.” Lowell’s duchess came to stand beside the lady apothecary. “We honor you, Your Grace, and I regret most heartily if this brought forth the memories of your terrible trial.” The duchess cast her eye around the gathered crowd, and they all cricked their necks, signaled their vulnerability to him, and gave him obeisance.
He kept his eyes on Miss Barrington, on her fine eyes, the only still point in his tilting, lurching world, until interrupted by the thunder of running feet.
***
His Grace of Lowell, followed by Mr. Bates and Mr. Gambon, pelted into the square. Tabitha had never seen the duke with a hair out of place; he looked as if he’d dragged himself through a hedge backward. His typically perfect cravat was all out of order, and he held a hand over his heart as though to prevent it bursting out of his chest.
She stood with Llewellyn at her back, as if she would shield him as he had tried to protect the horse. There was nothing to fear from the Alpha wolf, however; his eyes were wide with shock and a glimmer of…humor?
“What in the world?” he demanded. His pack offered him obeisance but no explanations.
Felicity raised her hands to stroke them down the horse’s neck; he shied away, eyes rolling back in his head. “Is anything amiss? What’s wrong, darling? Oh, please tell me you haven’t had a terrible time of it, do.”
The duke covered his face and made a noise like a snort, or a groan, or a snorting groan. It was undignified and not suited to his status as a peer of the realm.
“Alfr—Alpha?” Felicity looked over her shoulder at her husband. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.” His tone was as high and squeaky as Mary Mossett’s.
“Well.” Felicity braced her fists on her hips. “If not, then allow me to make known to you Himself, my stud.”
His Grace scrubbed his hands over his face; Tabitha caught sight of a grin he immediately snuffed out. A snicker escaped, however, which served to relax everyone who had witnessed the spectacle of Llewellyn shouting at their duchess and borne witness to his brutal honesty. Tabitha guessed Lowell’s humor ran along thesentio.
She could also, for the first time, discern the moment Llewellyn chose to slip away.
Felicity reached up to smooth her husband’s hair back in place. “I am delighted for you to make his acquaintance, but Llewellyn alluded to something not quite right. I do hope he has not been injured in his time away—”
O’Mara erupted onto the scene and pointed an accusing finger at the chestnut. “Aiden MacCafferty! You misbegotten bastard of a gobshite!”
