Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  There were some who, faced with this belief, had sought their own deaths—not directly, not hardly ever, for the instincts of self-preservation were much greater in his kind than in humans. But he’d lost many friends to the fortunes of war and many more to stormy voyages of exploration and trade, hazards undertaken with the willing knowledge that they might prove fatal.

  Not Jean. Not ever. It was not in his constitution to wish for death. Instead, what he wished for was far more impossible for him now—to truly feel alive.

  But when the two stewards left, leaving Jean alone with Beaufort, he felt an unaccustomed energy sizzling through him, one greater than the thrill of dice or cards or the buzz of alcohol in his veins. He felt it even as he submitted to his valet’s barbering skills, the razor flicking around his throat with flawless skill before Beaufort trimmed three stray hairs and waxed the ends of his moustache. And he felt it when he dressed himself in his immaculate tailcoat and tied his white tie, regarding his own strong jaw and dark eyes in the mirror with satisfaction as he pinned his orchid boutonniere in place.

  He could not name the feeling as he bid his valet farewell and climbed the ladder to the deck of his ketchor when he walked down the gangway and onto the pier. In fact, it was only while sauntering down the promenade, after he caught himself whistling a tune no mortal ear had heard in five centuries, that he thought he might identify it.

  Jean was very much afraid that this strange and unaccustomed feeling might be hope.

  Chapter Three

  Hattie felt unaccustomedly nervous as the family carriage bore the Buchannans toward the Henley house, and her nervousness only increased her irritation at being confined in the small space with her family.

  “Hattie, darling, whom do you expect to meet, pinching your cheeks like that?” Mrs. Buchanan was, as always, a picture of composed grace. Even the gray wings of hair at her temples only served to distinguish her without reducing her striking handsomeness.

  Hattie dropped her hands guiltily. She had never before pinched her cheeks in anticipation of meeting anyone, and for her to engage in such vanity indicated a farther departure from her faculties than she had feared. “No one of importance, Mama. They just feel a bit tender, is all.”

  “That’s what happens when you go running about like a hoyden with no hat and no parasol,” her mother said without rancor. At that point, whatever scolding she gave her daughter seemed to be from a perfunctory sense of duty since it never did the least bit of good. “You will be as brown as an Indian by July if you keep this up.”

  “Oh, Mama, I only burn. You know that,” Hattie said, glad to redirect the conversation from the topic of possible infatuations.

  “And freckle,” he mother said.

  Yes, Hattie certainly did freckle. And there was hardly anything less fashionable than a nose and cheeks sprinkled with spots. But the only way to keep them at bay was to hide away from the sun, and that would simply be intolerable.

  “You know I’m not looking for a match this season,” Hattie said reproachfully.

  Mrs. Buchanan sighed. “Yes, because of that tedious university of yours.”

  Hattie stopped herself before beginning an argument, yet again, as to whether university was tedious for young ladies. She had, eventually, wrested the agreement from both her mother and father that college could be, if not most desirable, at least not entirely improper, especially a university like Vassar. When they discovered that she was studying chemistry rather than literature or art history, an entirely different battle had ensued.

  “I’m looking for a match,” Leticia said smugly, leaning adoringly against their mother’s shoulder.

  Hattie judged that she should be awarded a Medal of Honor for refraining from rolling her eyes at her younger sister. It was her considered opinion the Leticia should not have been released from the nursery for another two years. Sixteen was entirely too young to throw oneself into the marriage market, even if some girls still occasionally did so. But of course, if her parents had possessed the constitution to resist her sister’s pleas for an early debutante season, they would have proved only more intractable to Hattie’s own desire for higher education.

  And it looked very much like Leticia might be married before eighteen, as she desired, if the swathe of broken hearts and panting suitors she was leaving in her perfumed wake were any indication of her expected level of success. All the hours of simpering before the nursery room mirror and practicing pretty movements of hands and fan had already won her a bouquet of hearts.

  “It really is bad form to marry daughters off out of order,” Mrs. Buchanan fretted, turning her lovely, limpid eyes upon her husband.

  Mr. Buchanan only harrumphed. “Children will bloom in their own time.”

  It was, perhaps, not the most flattering assessment of Hattie’s situation, but it was as close as either her parents could come to understanding.

  “Thank you, Papa,” Hattie said, kissing him on one bushy cheek.

  He grunted again, but he looked pleased beneath his bristling beard.

  It wasn’t that Hattie didn’t have her own admirers. She knew she was generally regarded to be every bit as attractive as her sister, and there was something about her wall of indifference that invited a certain type of man to challenge himself to climb it. And it wasn’t that Hattie was uninterested in men, as such. But she knew that marriage meant an end to her studies and the beginning of motherhood, and while she thought babies were a fine thing for other women, she had no desire now or possibly ever to risk her life for one.

  And even the man on the beach, however interesting, was not going to change her mind.

  The carriage stopped in front of Belle View, as the Henleys had named their house. The servants had erected the awning in the Henley house color, a dark forest green, and a matching carpet had been rolled all the way out to the curb. The Buchanans’ footmen leaped from the corners of the carriage and opened the doors, and Hattie stepped out behind her mother. Leticia joined them, twitching the soft dotted swiss and tulle of her skirts straight, and finally Horton, their ladies’ maid, came out last. Hattie had to stop herself from copying her sister’s fussy motions out of sheer nervousness, closing her gloved hand around her fan that dangled from its wrist strap instead.

  Mr. Buchanan held his arm out to his wife, who took it graciously, and the sisters linked arms and followed them up the walk. Hattie wished that George or Edward were there. Her brothers had always understood her better than either her parents or her sister. But George had gone to California, and Edward was too enmeshed in their father’s business in the city, seeing after the finances while their father saw to his daughters’ futures.

  The Henleys’ front door was opened by more footmen, with a flock of parlor maids behind who relieved them of their outer garments, and Mrs. Buchanan immediately herded the girls into the powder room, where Horton busied herself with correcting the invisible ravages of the short carriage ride. Finally, Mrs. Buchanan declared them all fit to be seen, and they emerged to be met by Mr. Buchanan and whisked into the double parlor, where the butler announced them in his subdued but penetrating voice.

  The heads of the young men pivoted as if on casters at Letty’s entrance. Hattie hid her undignified smile behind a hastily unfurled fan, because the adoration of the bachelors was matched only by the outrage of the young ladies with whom they had been engaged.

  Letty sailed in, and the room rearranged itself at her passage, men shifting to make openings that hadn’t been there before she had suddenly appeared.

  Hattie was practically invisible in Letty’s wake, but she had eyes only for one man, and she scanned the assemblage rapidly only to realize that Jean Morel wasn’t there, after all.

  Despite his confidence and her illogical belief in him, he must have been unable to secure an invitation. Hattie suppressed her disappointment. After all, she had nothing rational to be disappointed about. However interesting the man was, nothing could ever come of it. She cared too
much about the life she already had.

  The company quickly fell back into conversation, which became even more animated than before as the other girls threw themselves into the fray of competing for male attention by outshining Letty’s dazzling appearance with clever wit and pretty conversation. Which was, Hattie acknowledged, not very difficult, since Letty’s conversational technique mostly consisted of looking absolutely riveted by everything the young men said. Hattie knew the look well, and she also knew that it meant that Letty’s thoughts were likely a world away from the enthusiastic account of a rowing match with which she was currently being regaled—perhaps thinking about a hat she intended to buy, or maybe the arrangement of the flowers.

  Dinner was announced, and Hattie gave up any lingering hope that Mr. Morel might make an appearance. She was seated next to the second of the Randall sons—a happy choice, in her mind, because he had a serious, intellectual turn that his brothers lacked, and Hattie always enjoyed his conversation. But tonight, she was so distracted that she could hardly focus on his words or the food.

  “And that is why a raven is like a writing desk,” Bertie Randall concluded.

  The words cut through Hattie’s inattention, and she laughed in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Bertie. Is it that obvious?”

  “You’ve shredded your dinner roll into about a thousand pieces, and you haven’t made a single comment except to give me the occasional thoughtful hmm since the fish.”

  Hattie blinked and looked at her bread plate amid the glittering silver and porcelain of the table. Indeed, instead of having buttered and eaten each piece as she tore it from the hard roll, she had set it on the plate and ripped another, so that there was nothing but a dozen bite-sized pieces of bread scattered across the pastel roses and family monograph.

  “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would say that you were lovelorn.”

  Hattie didn’t miss the note of jealousy in Bertie Randall’s voice. He had been among those to try the first, most vigorous assaults upon her indifference—with no discernable results. He had stopped trying two seasons before, and they had settled into a kind of friendship, but Bertie had never failed to make it clear that all it would take to become something more was an acknowledgment on Hattie’s behalf—one that she was determined not to give.

  “No, dearest Bertie, I am a confirmed old maid, if ever there was such a thing,” Hattie said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Old? Scarcely.”

  Hattie shook her head. “I apologize for my inattention. I was just thinking about what a lovely time I had at the beach this afternoon.”

  He clutched his heart. “Ah! A mortal wound, that I should be so dull as to be outshone by the mere memory of a swim!” He dropped his hands and looked at her shrewdly. “Come, now. I know you better than that. The day you cease to be interested in German journals on natural philosophy.…”

  But Hattie had no intentions of telling Bertie anything. After all, what had there been to tell? She had seen a man on the beach under the cover of a pavilion. He had been forward but not quite rude and had said he would attend a party to which she knew he was not invited and to which he had not, after all, come. There was nothing more to be said about it.

  So she just smiled and murmured something entirely insincere—and unbelievable—about feminine inconstancy and turned her attention a little more assiduously to her meal.

  After the women had retired for a time to the drawing room for coffee and gossip, the evening entertainment was finally announced, and the ladies pulled back on their gloves to return to the parlor as the guest artist, a pianist from Prague, thanked his hostess for the dinner and her hospitality and sat at the grand piano.

  As the first notes began in a great crash of sound, Hattie was suddenly aware of a presence behind her shoulder. She turned, and there he was, the handsome man with the thin moustache and the glittering eyes, standing only a few feet away behind all the chairs.

  Chapter Four

  Sitting at her father’s side, Hattie could do no more than blink at him, all thoughts suddenly scattered from her brain like a flock of birds exploding away from a stone thrown into their midst.

  She shifted, then murmured an excuse and rose quietly. No one took any notice of her as she left the room—no one except for the peculiar Mr. Morel, to whom she gave a burning glance as she passed.

  He caught up to her in the front hall, where the strains of music echoed and bounced against the high ceiling. He was every bit as handsome as he had been on the beach, with dark brown hair under the massacar oil and a fashionable thin moustache. He had features that were perhaps a trifle refined for her tastes, giving him an almost pretty attractiveness, but they were strangely compelling, and his dark eyes cut straight through into her soul.

  “What are you doing here?” Hattie asked—perhaps rudely, but the burning question spilled out of her before she could judge it for its social grace.

  “I told you I would come,” he said. “Did you not believe me?”

  “If you belonged here, you would have arrived before dinner,” Hattie said. “How did you get in? Does Mrs. Henley know?”

  “She invited me herself,” he said.

  And Hattie believed him. Why did she believe him, when what he said was contrary to everything she knew about Mrs. Henley and New York summer society?

  “Are you a French nobleman?” she asked, grasping at the only straw she had. He had no discernible accent, but his name was French.

  He bowed slightly. “If you wish me to be.”

  “You’re a fraud, then.” Hattie was unaccountably disappointed. “A huckster.”

  “Oh, no, I assure you that all of my titles are quite real, though I’ve allowed no small number to fall into abeyance,” Mr. Morel said.

  Which really made no sense at all. Hattie was growing impatient—impatient of him and of the strange effect he had over her. “Why are you here, Mr. Morel?”

  He smiled slowly, and something deep inside her went liquid. “You.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Everything.”

  Hattie blinked, deciding whether she should pretend insulted outrage. If she were honest, she’d admit that she felt more intrigued than anything. He seemed to have some air about him that was deeply, impossibly attractive, and it roused thoughts and feelings inside her that she did not care to examine too closely.

  Hoyden, indeed.

  “It’s a curious kind of courting that you’re doing, then,” she said. “I suppose you are interested in my father’s money.”

  He shrugged. “Money. It comes and it goes. No, I am not interested in you for your father’s money.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because you were the only woman who was swimming.”

  Hattie was taken aback again. Of all the answers he might have given, that was the one she would have expected the least.

  And, she realized, liked the most. Which had to be the reason that she continued to speak to him after his outrageous liberties.

  “That seems like a poor reason to me to wrestle an invitation from a society matron,” Hattie said.

  “That is because you are not as bored as I.”

  That startled a laugh from her. “Is that supposed to charm me? That I’m a bit less boring than the other girls on the beach? Mr. Morel, if that is how you make love to a woman, one can hardly wonder that you are still a bachelor.”

  “Truly, my dear? Is that what you think?” Mr. Morel stepped forward then, and Hattie stood, frozen, for something about him made even the thought of escape impossible.

  He brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and Hattie knew that she should slap his hand away and put his impudence in its place.

  But she couldn’t move, for an electric kind of sensation ran through her at his touch, making her skin feel hot and cold at once and almost unbearably tender. His face was getting closer and closer, and she knew what he was going to do. She shoul
d truly strike him and call for a footman to toss him out on his ear.

  Instead, her head tilted back as his mouth came down on hers, the shock of contact going straight through her body like a lance. Instead of jerking away in outrage, she made a kind of sigh and she was overcome with a peculiar lassitude, and she found herself leaning into him, against his solid chest as he kissed her deeply, his tongue pushing into her mouth as her head swam with it.

  And he was the one who finally broke away, leaving her half-stunned and gasping.

  Mr. Morel smiled down at her, a delicious, wicked kind of smile. And he said, “I think I’m perfectly capable of charming whomever I please.”

  At that, she did strike him—or at least, she meant to, because his hand moved, so fast she hardly saw it, and caught her wrist. Holding her in his gaze, he tugged her glove loose, one finger as at time, then pulled it off and dropped it disdainfully on the floor. Then he took her wrist and turned it inward, bringing it to his lips and planting a slow, deliberate kiss against the tender flesh there as she was in his grasp.

  “Mr. Morel,” she said. She had meant to remonstrate, but she breathed his name instead.

  And she felt his lips against her wrist form a smile before he lowered her hand, slowly.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Hattie shook her head. “Where?”

  He appeared to think for a moment. “My ketch. Why not? Let’s go sailing.”

  “My mother most certainly would not approve.” She tried to sound stern, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Every urge inside her wanted to say yes—foolish, ridiculous idea that it was.

  “Do you care? You don’t strike me as a girl who puts much weight into what Mrs. Buchanan thinks about anything.”

  Hattie laughed then despite herself, despite his hand still on her wrist doing unmentionable things to her head and other, lower parts of her body. “Is it so obvious?”

  “You were swimming,” he said flatly. “You were the only girl on that entire beach who was truly swimming.”