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“It seems strange,” I admitted. “I was hoping to find somewhere cool.”
“Then why sneak off?”
“This heat. Why must everyone be considering that…” I had been about to say the alphas weren’t the reason I left. But thought better of it. Mrs Markham would see through my lie. “I don’t want them following me. I don’t want to deal with the alphas in my life.”
“You weren’t ever one to avoid your problems, my dear.”
“My problems never had me cornered on a ducal estate before.”
“It is a large house.”
“And like bloodhounds, they track me down wherever I might be.”
“As if they were your mates?”
“When did you figure it out?”
“Your Mama’s opinion of Colonel Fordom is unfounded and truly blind to all that alpha has to offer.”
“And what does he have to offer?”
“His fortune…”
My blood began to boil at the reminder. Jack had thought himself unworthy because of the difference in our estates. Could any who knew me truly believe material wealth mattered?
“What care I for fortune? I did not care for fortune when he mated me. I didn’t once consider fortune then. Why should I? What does fortune have to do with happiness?”
“Beatrice!” She stepped back, no doubt surprised by my sudden outburst.
“Tell me. When I chose him for my mate, Jack had nothing. The son of a printmaker who’d no more than a Parish school education. Now Lord Paxton must buy me like I was some bauble.”
“I wonder if you know your own worth.”
“What does my worth have to do with how I chose my mate? I do not hold myself cheap. I know my own value in this society and beyond the fact my dynamic makes me so rare and desirable. No. My worth has no bearing. My mate’s worth? I want an alpha who loves me. One who does not care about my fortune or who my family might be or what my connections are. Jack, I thought, was one such alpha. Then, at the first hurdle, he left.”
“And what hurdle was that?” She challenged.
“The fact he mated me.”
“That? You think that is what sent him away? The alpha who… My dear Goddess. You are a fool. Charles was my dearest friend but never did I believe that his children would be so blind to the world about them. Your sister for her prejudice, and you for choosing to believe that you are not worth the best—“
”He was my best!” I screamed, so overcome with grief that I did not care who heard me. I sucked in a shaky breath. I’d been loud enough to wake the dead. Perhaps it would be best that my secret was uncovered. “He was my everything. I would have followed him barefoot. And no, he must be friends with that arrogant ass.”
“One you are attracted to.”
Paxton’s face and form flashed before me. As handsome as they came. An alpha by any measure of the word. “What about him isn’t attractive? Yet what bearing does that have to whether I want to be in the same room as him or gouge his eyes out?”
“Faith, you are too particular. If the man had a beard you’d profess he was a slovenly lout. If clean shaven you’d declare him a dandy. Too dominant, too accommodating… Nothing will please you, my dear. Have you thought perhaps it is because you cannot admit there isn’t one you want? That the pair you want are right before you?”
“The ones I want to knot me, but as mates? A husband or two? The thought leaves me cold.”
Cold with fear, though I didn’t dare admit that to the woman who knew me better than any other.
Jack
“Again!”
My head snapped up at the sound of Trix’s voice. Like a man lost in the desert looking for water, I followed the sound to the Long Gallery. I gripped the door frame at the sight before me as the blood rushed to my cock.
