Page 51 of Omega's Virtue: Part One (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 2)

My letter to my old friend enquiring about Stimpson was franked, and left with the express. I might not have Pax’s compulsion to control and protect those I believed in my care, but… But the way Stimpson had dragged Hero out of the room had gone against every principle an alpha lived by.

I wondered why I hadn’t said something at the time. But to what end? Hero had not seemed upset by her treatment, and left with a smile on her face.

I didn’t see Pax again until that evening when we met in the Long Gallery before dinner. “I wrote. We’ll hear soon, unless the regiment has moved on. Then I don’t know how long it might be.”

“If I see him handle Hero like a criminal again, I’ll kill him.” Pax paced back and forth like a caged tiger.

I allowed him to vent, content to watch him and know that eventually he’d come round to the real subject of his passions. At last he stopped before me. Taller but leaner than I, Pax’s alpha rode him hard. I waited, revelling in the way his scent deepened and flared. We’d reached the point where he asked me about her.

“Beatrice likes you,” he snarled like the dog, who sought to steal the bone. “She ran and wrapped her arms around you. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“We’ve known each other a long time.” I all but purred for him. “I’m surprised it took you this long to ask more questions…” And hoped he’d not press me too much.

“I thought our friendship meant enough that you would bring it up without prompting. What are you holding back?”

The admission, the truth, was on the tip of my tongue. “There is something—“

“Sirs! Such wonderful luck. Did you know? Lord Paxton, such good fortune! I was wondering if you would be interested in a venture? A friend of mine. He knows a farm in Ireland. Some of the finest blood and bone you ever did see!” The young alpha rubbed his hands together. “Now, the rub. He don’t have the blunt to bring the horses over. You’ve an eye for horseflesh and perhaps you might be willing to put forward a monkey and…”

“I don’t deal in horse peddling. Come, Soldier. The ladies await.”

“You are sure to make your money back and more!” Stimpson ran down behind us and continued in that vein, until we were called to dinner.

The duchess rose from her chair and called for the omegas and Hero to retire to the drawing room. But before they could leave, Stimpson begged them to stay with us alphas. Orley waved a hand but otherwise remained silent.

“Well?” Viola asked when the silence dragged on.

“I want to announce my engagement to Hero.” Stimpson said with the stiffness of youth. “She was gracious enough to accept my proposal this afternoon. I must seek her guardians’ permission but… I hope that you will stand my friends.”

The silence sat heavy–everyone unable to respond to the announcement.

“Please, be happy for me, Mother,” Hero’s voice was soft but clear.

“I—“ Mrs Markham had turned as white as the tucker she wore. “I knew nothing…”

“I love him. Godmother, please?” She begged, leaving me to suppose that Mrs Hartwell was one of her guardians.

“A good match.” Mrs Hartwell declared. “You’ve my blessing.”

Beatrice’s eyes grew wide at her mother’s pronouncement. The silence stretched.

At last, Orley waved at the butler. “We should celebrate such news. Uh, there should be a bottle of champagne in the cellar.”

The silence continued to stretch—and that despite the fact there was chatter about what Stimpson had said, the poetry he’d recited, the smiles Hero gave him. How silence could exist in a noisy room, I could not understand.

“You can’t support his suit.” Pax grunted at Orley. “I cannot—“

“Lord Paxton, you’ve got some nerve to think—“

“That is enough, duke.” I put out a hand between them. “You like him for that child? I didn’t think so. But there is naught we can do about it.”

Our aggression still simmered in the air. The instinct that something wasn’t right warred with our lack of legal power. Our complete helplessness, because we were not related to Hero, could not stand in. That task lay with Hero’s alpha guardians, and if they accepted Stimpson as a candidate for Hero’s hand in marriage there was nothing we could do.

Well and good to be an alpha, but there came times when we were as powerless as an unborn child.

Beatrice

I woke late,my sheets tangled about my feet, my hands cupping my breasts. My dreams had tended towards the explicit and the erotic; uncomfortable, for they crossed over to my waking moments. No matter how much my head resisted, no matter how my common sense resisted, my body craved the alphas who circled around me, coming closer by the day. My mate’s scent called to me. I wanted to strip and rub my body all over him like a cat.

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