AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Brandon grinned at him. “Be glad to.”
“There you are, princeling,” Lex said, looking back over at me. “It’s as easy as that. Brandon is much nicer than I am. He can make it so you don’t ever have to see them again if that’s your wish, and yet he won’t be insulting. Well, not very.”
Holding my breath, I nodded my head vigorously—so much so I almost pulled a muscle. Lex laughed. “In that case, I’ll write to them tonight. Maybe I’ll put in a strong suggestion that Callista needs to go ahead and accept one of those many invitations from her other suitors that she told me all about. I’ll let them know that I’m not in the market for a wife, nor will I be at any point in the future. I have an omega that takes up a good deal of my time.”
He winked at me, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. When would this crazy attraction I had for him ever lessen? It seemed to grow stronger every day, until I didn’t think my heart could hold much more, though it certainly seemed willing to try.
I gave him a huge smile and he glanced up at me and blinked a few times in the face of it. We both just sat staring at each other for a little too long, with Lex’s eyes smoldering, until Wyatt elbowed his cousin.
“If you’re quite through staring at your pretty omega, Lex, perhaps you’ll pass me the salt?”
Lex flushed and elbowed Wyatt back, and I tried hard not to smile, looking back down at my plate. I could feel my face getting red though.
The four of them started insulting each other and bantering back and forth, and I was able to go back to my breakfast again.
After we ate, I was trudging upstairs to try and read another religious tract that Lex had given me, when he surprised me by asking me if I wanted to go with him on a visit to the capitol city. “I have some papers to sign for my solicitor in the city, and you’ve never seen Thalia. I think you might enjoy it. You can ride Sunshine, if you like.”
I most certainly did like the idea, so I ran upstairs and changed into one of the nice outfits Lex had bought for me—something I could ride in. He’d been spoiling me lately. I was already wearing my new boots he’d bought for me.
I’d been riding every day with Lex for about three weeks now and he was pleased with how well I was doing. Most of the credit went to Sunshine, my big, beautiful chestnut horse. Lex had given me one of his old saddles—which wasn’t old at all, and quite nice—and I clambered up onto it the way he’d taught me when the grooms brought the horses around. Lex now rode a gorgeous big black horse that seemed a little wild to me, though he responded well when I gave him apples or petted him and told him how he was as “beautiful as his daddy.” I whispered that last part to him so neither Lex nor Sunshine would hear me, of course.
I hadn’t realized we were so close to Thalia, since it only took us a couple of hours to reach the outskirts of the city. It was a busy place, and I had never been in a large city before, so I followed Lex closely, and he promised we wouldn’t be going to any high traffic areas. His solicitor’s office was near the palace, on the closest side of the city to Lex’s lodge.
We tied our horses outside an official looking building and went inside. Lex took me over to a long sofa near a window and sat me down. “I won’t be long. Keep your hood up and don’t talk to anyone you don’t know. If you need me, just give a shout, but you should be safe in here. Don’t draw any attention to yourself, all right?”
I nodded and he kissed me and went in the inner office door. I thought it was a shame that omegas had to be so careful about who they talked to in public, but this was my life, and just the way of the world. No sense in crying about it. I was glad I had such a protective Alpha like Lex.
True to his word, it was only a few minutes until he returned. “I thought that while we’re here you might like to go to the Royal Gallery,” he told me. “It’s just next door. The only existing portraits of your mother are there.”
I’d never seen a portrait of my mother, so I was excited to go. The building was huge, with tall white columns in front, but Lex walked right up to the front doors like he owned the place, and as a member of the royal family, I guess in a way he did. We spent the next half hour walking through room after room of portraits of important looking people, mostly former kings and queens of Morovia.
He pointed out his father’s portrait and his mother’s. The former King was a dignified, stately man, who was very handsome, though stern looking. His queen, Lex’s mother, Diana, had dark brown hair and eyes and a sweet expression. Lex told me she had died in childbirth when he was only a little boy. Both she and the babe, so he had few memories of her, but he’d choked up a little when he gazed at her portrait, and I thought he remembered more than he was saying. We saw portraits of the current king and his queen—Harrison was a handsome man, like Lex, but his queen was cold looking and not all that pretty, in my opinion. I made admiring comments about all of them though, and he took me down another long corridor to the place my mother’s portraits were hanging, surrounded by various minor noblewomen I never heard of.
Vesper was undoubtedly the most beautiful of any of the women I’d seen, but like the current Morovian queen, she looked cold and unapproachable. It was my mother, though, so I spent long minutes gazing at her and trying to find my own features in her face.
We did look surprisingly alike, which was a little embarrassing since she had been a seventeen-year-old girl in most of those paintings.
“Would you like to see the infamous singing watch fob?” Lex asked and I nodded enthusiastically. He took me over to a small iron chest on a low shelf near the floor and opened the lid. Inside, surrounded by salt, was a small, rounded piece, made from ceramics with a tiny portrait painted on its front. It was my mother, but in this image, she looked young and happy, and she was looking up at someone like she was just about to be kissed.
I clutched it to me, instantly in love with it. “It’s sobeautiful. Oh gods, why are they hiding it away?”
“They’re afraid of it. They say it sings to itself, and they think your mother’s ghost is haunting it. Maybe we should just take it off their hands,” he said, and plucked it out of my hand to slip it into my pocket.
I gaped at him, and he laughed again and closed the lid back up.
“Seen enough?” he asked and took my hand to whisk me down the hall and out a side door.
“Lex,” I whispered fiercely at him. “You can’t just take it and give it to me.”
“Apparently, I can,” he said, smiling at me. “Come on, princeling. It’s time I took you for lunch. Oh, don’t give me that look. It was originally a locket that Vesper’s lover made as a gift for her. His parents made it into a watch fob after his death and may even have meant to sell it before they realized it was haunted. You are Vesper’s son and only heir. We’re just liberating the piece and restoring it to its rightful owner. Now come on and let’s find you something to eat. Considering your huge appetite most days, I’m surprised you’re not already wasting away.”
He took me across the street to a tavern and ordered a small roasted chicken and some fresh buns. I was famished, and the chicken was hot with some kind of spices on it, so it was delicious. I fell on it like a starving man. When we had eaten our fill, we went back out to retrieve the horses.
“Don’t you want to stop by and see your brother, since you’re so close by?”
“He’s a busy man, and I have things to do at home. Besides, he knows where I am if he wants to see me.”
We rode home, stopping once to rest along the way by a pretty little stream, off the main road and behind a little copse of trees. Lex spread out a blanket that he kept in his packs, and we ate some of the chicken and buns we’d had left over from our luncheon, along with some bottles of ale. He told me when I exclaimed over it all that he’d asked the innkeeper to wrap some up because we might be getting home a bit late.
