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Everyversipellianear perked at the sound of a carriage in the distance.
“Expected?” Bates looked ready to Change at a moment’s notice.
Lowell scented the air then smiled. “No, but not unwelcome.”
Leaving the footmen to their work and MacCafferty to his brooding, and lacking anything better to do, Alwyn followed the trio down to the coach house. If only he could scent the air himself and know not only who had arrived but also where Miss Barrington—dare he thinkTabitha—was.
An array of coaches lined the square, all emblazoned with the escutcheon of the Osborn duchy. The bearer of those arms—Ha, ha, bearer,Alwyn said to himself—erupted from the first vehicle and swept his duchess down in a showy swirl. She beamed up at him, and look at that: they must be in harmony, unwilling marriage notwithstanding.
Alwyn held back as Lowell rushed forward and embraced Arthur.
“Lowell!” Osborn thumped his peer heartily on the back; as an Alpha bear Shifter, it was not a love tap. “I hear you have given our players shelter in their difficulties.”
“Your players?” Lowell made a show of neatening his ruffled cravat. “We knew you had a love of the theatrical but no idea you had a troupe at your disposal.”
“We? Have you been elevated equally to the highest among us?” Osborn rolled his eyes. “Yes, our dear mother loved a play above all else and had long supported the Peaselys.”
“Where is your duchess, Your Grace?” Beatrice asked. She was half the size of her husband, yet her demeanor gave the impression of a much larger figure, helped in some way by the extraordinary height of the ostentatious bonnet she wore. It was covered in bows and feathers and ribbons, and to his manly eye, distracted from her lovely face. Or was that the point?
The men bowed to the lady, Alwyn one beat behind. “Hard at work in her premises, Your Grace,” Lowell answered her.
“All this Gracing, we cannot go on with it,” the little duchess pronounced. “At the very least, not in private.”
Osborn smiled down at her and toyed with one of her ribbons. “My Second’s word is law.”
Ah, yes, she was his Beta: Alwyn hardly recalled herinitiatio, though he had been present. It had been early days, and his unwilling attendance at the ceremony following Osborn’s confrontation with Hallbjorn had been a blur. All he remembered was eluding the lady apothecary—dare he say,hislady apothecary—before he fled the scene.
The Duchess of Osborn seemed more than equal for the challenge of her role; Alwyn could not think of a better outcome for the little firework. He felt immensely proud of her, for no good reason at all.
“Is that you, Llewellyn? Lurking as only your kind can?” At Arthur’s words, Alwyn revealed himself, and Osborn started. “Oh. How well you look. Bloody Georgie, right again, was he?” Osborn and Lowell shared a long-suffering grimace.
“Children, come greet His Grace as you have been taught,” said the little duchess. Three smallish creatures lined up in front of Alwyn. “Your Grace, here are Bernadette, Tarben, and Ursella Humphries.” The cubs’ parents were otherwise occupied: Lord Swinburn, Osborn’s brother Ben, and Gambon were off discussing Gamma matters, while Charlotte, Lady Swinburn, was gossiping with the publican’s wife. After the children’s introduction, their aunt had been approached, as though she were a wild beast, by Bates, who had never seen a human female Second in all his days.
The children gave an obeisance so elaborate, their tutor could only have been Lady Frost. The girls’ curtsies wobbled but held, noses nearly touching the ground, while the boy bowed and twirled a handkerchief near the size of a bedsheet, profuse with lace.
Alwyn laughed. “Rise, children.” They beamed up at him and he down at them, and he laughed again, rich, deep, full, from his belly—from his heart.
He looked around the suddenly silent square, the cynosure of every astonished eye; before he could inquire as to the cause, the littlest one came up to him and leaned on his leg.
“Hello there,” he said. Ursella looked up at him and canted her head, considering, bunching the excess fabric of his coat in her little fist. “I perceive the influence of Lady Frost in your tribute.”
“I do not know who that is.” Tarben scowled. How like his mother; Alwyn remembered her as a child from days spent in Court with Georgie. She forever wanted to know everything.
“Our Aunt Beezy taught us,” said Bernadette, her composure rivaling that of a seasoned dowager.
He crouched to their level. “Your Aunt Beezy is known asLady Frostand is famous throughout thetonfor her curtsies.”
Tarben bounced back and forth in front of him. “She is not frosty to us,” he declared.
Ursella transferred her grasp from the hem of his coat to his sleeve. “She was frosty because she was sad,” she whispered.
“Was she?” Alwyn did not expect such insight from a little child.
“Like you are sad,” she replied, and no, not that degree of perspicacity at all. He studied her as she did him; was she an Omega? It would be a blessing for the Osborn sleuth if she was.
“Your Grace?” Bernadette asked. “It is said you were in the circus.”
“Which sounds magnificent!” Tarben leaped once into the air. “But our papa said it was not. He said it was a crime like no other and the villain ought to be taken to the highest authority! Who is the highest authority? Is that the king or my mum?”
