Beckman: Lord of Sins

lock of Sara’s hair to brush against Beck’s nose.

North looked diabolically dark and unhappy—darker and unhappier than usual. He gestured silently with his thumb toward the sitting room, waiting until Beck nodded before he turned to go. Beck shrugged into his dressing gown and mentally catalogued the list of emergencies that could merit this unprecedented intrusion—Allie falling ill, Ulysses coming down with colic, Polly going missing?—then paused by the bed and tucked the covers up over Sara’s shoulders.

Beck closed the door between the bedroom and the sitting room, ready to offer North a whispered tongue- lashing, but the expression on North’s face stopped him.

“Allie? Polly?”

“No, lad.” North’s eyes, usually so guarded and mocking, held regret. “Your dear papa has gone to his reward, and I fear it is my sad duty to be the first to address you as Reston.”

“Papa?”

“I am so sorry, Beckman.”

“It isn’t… unexpected.” But Beck’s lungs were fighting to draw breath, and his hands had a sudden sensation of emptiness. His guts felt empty; his life felt empty.

“The rider from Linden is in the kitchen,” North went on, gaze on a carrying candle flickering on the low table. “He said your brother Ethan and your sister Nita were with the earl, but the old fellow just slipped away quietly in his sleep. The funeral will be on Friday.”

“I want…”

“Anything you need,” North replied. “Name it.”

He wanted his papa. Wanted another acerbic lecture assuring him his father loved him, forgave him his many shortcomings, would be there to forgive him again when he stumbled, because Beck always, eventually, stumbled. And the earl always found some way for him to redeem himself, to allow them both the fiction that someday, the stumbling would be over.

“Beck.” North laid a hand on Beck’s arm, and it was enough—one simple gesture of caring from a man who lived a study of indifference was enough—to make the earl’s death more real.

Beck shook his head at nothing in particular, but when he felt North draw him closer, he leaned on his friend.

“I’m having Soldier and Ulysses saddled,” North said. “You can be at Linden before dawn, and the baron’s stables will provide remounts. You can make that funeral if you leave now and the clouds don’t obscure the moon.”

Beck pulled away, though he wanted to cling, curse, or possibly put out North’s lights. “Gabriel, I don’t want to go.”

North nodded, a world of sympathy in his expression. “You don’t want to, but you need to. I’ll pack your clothes. Polly is putting you together some food. You might want to say something to Sara.”

Beck glanced at his bedroom door. What would he say?

“Let’s get you dressed,” North suggested. North did most of the dressing, while Beck stood there, silent and passive. “You know the roads between here and Kent?”

“I do.”

“You going to wake Sara up?” North tied a simple knot in Beck’s neckcloth. “I can wake her, if you’d rather.”

“Let her sleep.”

“At least leave the woman a note, Beckman.” North passed him his riding boots. “She’s in your bed, for pity’s sake, and you won’t be here in the morning with any explanations.”

North wasn’t judging Sara’s location, but by his tone he was mightily definite on the obligation Beck had to leave a note. Beck wouldn’t be here in the morning. In all likelihood, he would never be here again.

“A note, then.” Beck pulled on his boots, wishing for all he was worth he could stay in that bed beside Sara until morning, wishing she could make this journey with him. What an odd reaction to a very expected death.

He wanted—he needed—to at least see her before he left his rooms, because for all he knew—and quite possibly for all Sara cared—he wouldn’t be coming back.

“I’ll be down directly.” Beck stood and glanced around his room, as if he’d find answers by inventorying his surroundings.

“Get your shaving gear,” North said. “I’ll fetch clean clothes for you from the laundry.” Beck nodded his acquiescence then didn’t want North to go—to leave him alone.

“My thanks, Gabriel.”

“Beck?”

“Hmm?” Beck left off eyeing the door to the bedroom again, torn between wanting to wake Sara up and the greater kindness of letting her sleep.

“The rider in the kitchen,” North said. “He’ll call you my lord, and Lord Reston, and he’ll be wearing a black armband.” He didn’t have to add, because Beck understood clearly, those small ritual courtesies were going to hurt like hell.

“I know that.” Beck let out a breath. “And so it begins.”

“You’ll manage, because you have to, and because your papa expected you would—also because you’ve no bloody choice.” The last was offered with a hint of the typical North dissatisfaction with life, but it gave Beck a ghost of a reason to smile.

North left him alone, without further reassurances, but the warning had been needed and kind. Beck was the Bellefonte heir now, complete with courtesy title, and Nicholas, God help him, was the earl.

Beck stayed in his sitting room for maybe five minutes, trying to gather his wits, then gave up. There was no way to go from making love to Sara, sleeping with his arms wrapped around her, to dealing with the earl’s… passing.

His death.

“Papa is dead.” Beck said the words experimentally. “Papa is at peace.”

That was true too, he realized, gathering up his shaving kit. “Papa is at peace, and he’s gone. And I never said I was sorry for all the times I let him down.”

He grimaced, because these soliloquies were not fortifying him in the least. He gave one last look at his bedroom door, squared his shoulders, and left the privacy of his chambers. He stopped in the library, thinking to pen Sara a note, but when his candlelight fell over the surface of the desk, he saw somebody had set out the writing paraphernalia already.

Sara, he recalled, when he’d come down here looking for a pot of ink.

“Dear Tremaine?”

Who in the bloody hell was Tremaine, and what did he mean to Sara?

Voices drifted up from the kitchen, Polly and North speaking in the quiet tones of people who didn’t want to wake the rest of the household. Beck wanted to crumple up the paper but left it, thinking he’d pass a message to Sara through Polly rather than alert anyone to what he’d seen. Still feeling a sense of unreality, he directed his steps to the kitchen where the buttery, domestic scent of breakfast cooking hit his nose.

“My lord.” The rider, looking haggard and windblown, stood.

“Jamie.” Beck recognized the old groom he’d worked with for two years at the Linden stables in Sussex. When the grizzled former jockey would have bowed, Beck pushed at his shoulder and wrapped him in a hug. “You’re too old to hare across the shires like this.”

Jamie smiled up at him. “Not too old to bring you the good news as well as the bad, Becky, me lad.”

Becky, me lad. The grief and shock eased minutely. “What good news could there possibly be?” Beck eyed the black armband on Jamie’s jacket.

Jamie grinned from ear to ear. “Your wee brother has hisself a countess, Beck. Married a few days past and got word of the deed to your papa before the old earl cocked up his toes.”

Beck rubbed his jaw in wonder. “Nick is married?”

“At your granddame’s town house. Wee Nick wanted it done proper, so the lady’s father couldn’t cry foul.”