Page 78 of A Duke at the Door

“I must steal Miss Barrington from you, Your Grace.” The prince’s tone brooked no refusal.

“You have ruined a beautiful moment, Georgie,” Osborn muttered.

“We shall speak again, Miss Barrington.” The dowager opened her arms for an embrace and rocked her back and forth; once again Tabitha was grateful for her stores of composure, for it was a hug like none she’d ever known, pure maternal love and acceptance and pride.

Before she could follow His Highness, Ursella tugged on her skirt. Tabitha crouched to her level.

“He was sad, and you are afraid. If he changed”—and the girl smirked at her pun—“so can you.”

“Miss Ursella, may I give you a squish?” Tabitha asked, and the Osborn Omega threw her arms around her neck. The child exuded calm; it hovered in the air, waiting to be plucked out of it, and Tabitha took what was so kindly offered.

The prince stood near the window overlooking Lowell’s wild park; Llewellyn’s cottage, on its high hill, was framed in the panes. “You have our gratitude.” The regent did not sound very grateful, but she suspected it was his way. “It is tiresome for us to continually be called upon to intervene in such affairs that could be nipped in the bud, as it were. We require you and your mate do the nipping.” He held up a hand. “Do not think to protest, miss. Or, as I have done with your peers before you, I shall be presumptive and address you asYour Grace.” He looked down at her from his great height. “A lion Shifter only shows his belly to his mate. To do so before all is to name you before all…” Prince George’s smile was as devilish as any Timothy might raise. “You are as good as married. In an unconventional sense, if not the proper sense.”

“Not until I have consented,” Tabitha retorted. “Your Highness.”

“I would expect nothing less.” On a signal invisible to anyone but his footmen, they fell in line in such a way as created an aisle to the door. Mr. Coburn opened it, and as he took his leave, George continued, “Not from the mate of one such as he.”

***

Tabitha’s way to Alwyn’s cottage was impeded, pleasantly so, by greetings and thanks from the Lowell Pack. Each of her suitors, she was happy to see, found new loci for their attentions: the goat, the bee, and the frog were respectively walking out with a hare, a sparrow, and a trout. She made much of the three gents and the part they played in bringing down Asquith; how fortunate for Mr. Beckett and his little bird that an apian Shifter was able to survive the deployment of his stinger.

As she climbed the hill to his cottage, Alwyn was sitting on the doorstep, in trousers and a light linen shirt, his feet bare. He rose when she neared, and she stopped in the dooryard. She lifted her chin. “Georgie said we are as good as married.”

“Georgie?”

Tabitha smiled. “Beatrice said it is a rite of passage.”

He leaned in the doorway and crossed his arms. Gone was the tentative presence, the excessive vigilance, the rusty tone, the inability to meet her gaze. As casually dressed as he was, he exuded health and heartiness—and power. “I apologize for my valeting.” He indicated his rough trousers, which were still an improvement on the sartorial choices of his recent past. “I was preparing my home for you, if you choose to enter. But I must tell you, should you do so, then yes, we are as good as married.”

“I cross the threshold, and it is done?”

He shrugged. “Lions do not truck with all that lupine lighted-torch nonsense.”

“The bears did so as well.” Tabitha recalled Beatrice’s investiture as Second in the Osborn sleuth with awe and also with the thought she would hate being the center of such carryings-on.

“Nor ursine nonsense. Our bond requires you make my home your home, the acceptance of my bite, and that we tell each other every day we choose each other.” He smiled, that slow, roguish thing that threatened to destroy her presence of mind. “It’s along the lines of a daily bargain. But if you prefer a public proposal—”

“I do not.” Blessed Palu, no. “But a proper one would be welcome.”

Alwyn approached her then dropped to one knee with the grace of his kind: feline, definitely; Welsh, possibly. He reached out a hand, and she took it, her fingers trembling until they lay safe in his grasp. “I was an arrogant youth. I had all one could hope for and more, with the addition of the consequence of my station. While I did not lord myself over others, I took it for granted. It was all taken from me, in such a stunning storm of loss that if not for the strength of my lion, I would have been undone. And once I was captured, I had lost not only my past and my present but my future. I had lost the chance of finding my fated mate. I had lost the chance of ever knowing if I was worthy of theconiunctio.And then I saw you in a window at Arcadia, I saw you wandering the woods, I caught you gathering poisonous plants, I huddled beneath a coat to protect you from a threat…”

The headiness of the bergamot, the thrill of the proximity. “I had never felt safer in my life,” she admitted.

“I had never felt stronger, even at that stage, in my persisting weakness. All of that, and I suspected but did not know for certain until I knew you could see. Then I knew we were able for theconiunctio, a match beyond the strength and the power of thevera amoristhat takes the best the fated pair has to offer and elevates it for the good of all.”

“As an Alpha pair for all.”

“Only a pair who can be Alpha for all is able for this union.” His voice was as gravelly as when they first spoke those weeks ago through the window of Arcadia’s drawing room.

How much had changed, and so swiftly. “So the lost may find comfort, the isolated be embraced, the captured be freed.”

“And as one, build a family, its members as they are found along the way.”

It was overwhelming, an enormous responsibility, and well out of her sphere of knowledge.

She had never let that stop her before.

“Yes. I will be your mate, yourconiunctio.” He raised those brows of his at her faultless pronunciation. “I may have practiced that. And you will be mine. Myconiunctio,my mate, my duke.” She knelt and held their hands to her heart. “And I will be your duchess and wield the power of that position for the most imaginable good.”

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