ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories)

by Hawke, Jessa

  He was handsome by any estimation, with laughing blue eyes and deep dimples at his cheeks. He had a cleft in his chin which many a gaze snagged on, and he towered well above the other gentlemen in the room. "Who is that?" Olivia had breathed, watching him strike up a conversation with a willowy young lady in gray at the far end of the room, his eyes creasing with good humor and cheer.

  "Oh the one speaking to that mousey Mildred Kingsley?" sniffed Cynthia, not the least bit miffed to be torn away from the attentions of Duke Ellington, who on the whole looked rather put out by the intrusion. Olivia did not think the young lady mousey in the least, but was not about to say so to Cynthia, for it was she who held the information about the splendid young gentleman in her palm. "That is Ben Soothley," Cynthia continued, lowering her voice a bit, and Olivia could not help but notice how her voice colored with interest as she observed the young man in question. "Not titled, of course, but given his ranking, this is possibly forgivable."

  "His ranking?"

  Lady Cynthia's blue eyes widened in horror. "Why the ranking in Sunderly Times!" she cried. "Ten most eligible bachelors of this season?"

  "My aunt does not allow me to read the gossip column," Olivia replied, feeling as if a vast portion of her education had been neglected. In that moment, Ben Soothley must have felt her eyes on him from across the room, for he looked up and locked eyes with her. "What exactly needs to be forgiven in him?" she asked, keenly aware that the handsome young man was now making his way across the room directly to where she was standing.

  "Well, he is a self-made man, not a real gentleman," sneered Cynthia slightly, and Olivia felt her ire rise a bit at the lady's judgement. "But it looks as though it's up to you whether or not to let that bit go, because he is on his way over to you."

  "He is not," hissed Oliva back.

  "I hope that whatever he is not, he surely can make up for it,” said a friendly voice from just above her ear.

  Olivia lifted her head and forgot how to breathe for a moment as she stared up at the clear blue eyes of Ben Soothley. Somehow, she managed to recover from her embarrassment, and it was not long before Ben had her laughing and smiling as much as he had Mildred doing just a few moments before. She would have been glad to let him speak forever, seeing as he had just gotten back from a Grand Tour in the Grecian Isle and had many interesting tales to share. She felt herself nodding and smiling, held at complete attention until a female voice cut the warmth between them like a knife.

  "Why Lady Olivia, you have gone silent as a stunned beast in front of Mr. Soothley," purred Cynthia Freeworth as she positioned her curvaceous body in between the pair she was speaking of. Handing Ben Soothley her hand to kiss, Cynthia resembled a glittering queen, seeming to raise Ben from the ground with her imperious gaze. "Lady Olivia just arrived to London from Stratford and is staying with me," she told him with a light little laugh, completely ignoring the fact that the accommodations in question were less than glamorous. "Olivia, you are tired from your journey, are you not?" she asked, barely turning towards her guest.

  "I am not that--" but Olivia broke off as Lady Cynthia scooped her small arm into the crook of Ben Soothley's and smoothly led him away.

  She watched in dismay as her so-called friend led away the one interesting man in the room as deftly as she would surely pick out a fabric at the modiste's. "So now you know the real Cynthia Freeman," a quiet, musing voice said, and Olivia turned around to find the willowy Mildred Kingsley by her side.

  "The real Cynthia?" she asked. Mildred blushed and Oliva realized that the young woman had spoken out of turn and was not nearly as prone to gossip as her faux friend had been. She warmed to her immediately, and the two spent the rest of the evening talking to each other about their childhoods and favorite books. The next day, Olivia moved her trunks into a spare room at the Kingsley's, where she remained for the rest of the social season. Her conviction that this was the correct choice was only strengthened when Lady Cynthia did not even ask why she was doing so.

  It came as a great surprise, however, when Ben Soothley decided to pay her a visit at the Kingsley home on Friday afternoon. Heart pounding, Olivia slapped together an outfit in a matter of moments, hardly caring what she looked like, so excited was she that Cynthia's charms did not seem to have had the desired effect. Despite her smoothness and petite beauty, Ben had preferred Olivia's company. As Ben drove the hired carriage all around the park, Olivia was thrilled to be seen in the company of such a handsome and charming man. Even more gratified was she that not a single person they passed raised an eyebrow to see them together. All she received were gentle smiles and friendly waves.

  The weeks that passed were a whirlwind. Every time she saw Ben, she wanted to see him more. She found herself in wonderful gales of laughter every time he told her a story, and the friendly warmth she felt coming from him kept her up whispering with Mildred into the wee hours of the morning, costing them both a hefty amount of beauty sleep; but Olivia did not care. Her life was coming together, and the people who mattered—her aunt and her closest friend—could not be happier for her.

  So it was with a light heart that Olivia bounded down for breakfast that fateful morning. She did not catch sight of the stunned expression on Mildred's face until she had cheerfully spread gooseberry jam all over her toast.

  “Mildred, darling, you look as though you've seen a phantasm!” she cried, rushing to her friend's side.

  “Oh Olivia,” gasped Mildred, and only then did Olivia notice that Mildred, too, perused the Sunderley Times, and the gossip section to boot.

  “Oh my dear, did you read something that upset you?” asked Olivia, brushing away the flimsy pages. “That paper is such trash!”

  “Olivia, sit down.” Mildred's voice was very grave and Olivia sat down, fully preparing for a lecture on the value of gossip.

  “I do not know how to break this to you, but...” Mildred drew in a deep breath and Olivia felt her heart skip a beat. Whatever this was, it was far more serious than some silly gossip. “It appears as though Ben and Cynthia are engaged.”

  Olivia's stomach plummeted to the floor. She had to touch her abdomen to ensure that it was still there. “Whatever are you talking about, Mil?” she asked nervously.

  Mildred thrust forward the pages and Olivia skimmed through the column of slander and libel to the following:

  HOW CAN A CERTAIN MR. S CARRY ON WITH O, ALONE IN THE WORLD, WHEN IT IS HIGH NEWS EVERYWHERE THAT A CERTAIN C.F. WEARS HIS RING ON HER FINGER?

  There could be no doubt as to who all the characters in the riddle were. After all, had it been a different S, the paper would have at least prefaced it with a Lord or a Duke; in fact, the only reason Ben Soothley had even made it in the paper was because of his association with two gently born ladies. Olivia could hear her heart beating loudly in her ears. What was going on?

  “No, it cannot be. This is rubbish. How could he be with her when he has been calling on me?”

  Mildred was simply ashen. She rose from her seat and reluctantly fetched a cream-embossed card from the tray of letters on the end table.

  Lady Olivia (read the card inlaid in the Soothley-Freeworth wedding invitation, written by hand by none other than Cynthia Freeworth herself and address directly to a now shaking Olivia),

  However can I thank you for arranging this meeting between the love of my life and I? You simply must come to the wedding! Had it not been for you, I would not have enjoyed such a fine courtship from such a fine gentleman for these past few weeks, and we would not be getting married. I owe everything to you, my dear.

  -Lady Cynthia Soothley

  “He was courting us both at the same time?” whispered Olivia.

  Mildred hung her head, unable to meet her friend's eyes.

  The gossip hit the social scene faster than a hurricane hits a colony. It was not long before Olivia learned of the full measure of Ben Soothley's betrayal, of how he had been courting Cynthia since that first night she had led him, panther to h
er prey, away from her. Why had Ben even come back? From a distant source, perchance by a person whose idleness led their imagination astray, Olivia received the devastating news that Cynthia, for fear of her parent's disapproval of a man who did not come with a title, had asked him to court Olivia, as well. She had thought that Olivia would serve as a nice cover for their romance, and that in the end, she would be the one to reap the rewards.

  Whether this was true or if more blame lay in Ben Soothley's corner than she knew about, Olivia spiraled into a deep, dark hole. While in public she held her head up high, there was no more pounding of her feet on the stairs of the Kingsley home, no more bright and merry laughter. When she emerged from her quarters with her bags packed two weeks later, her gentle waves of brown hair were scraped tightly into a bun and she had traded her low-cut gown in for one that buttoned to the neck. She had written and informed her aunt of her decision; she held her welcome letter to Worchester Abbey in her gloved right hand.

  * * *

  It came as no surprise to the eccentric aunt of Lady Olivia that her niece had applied for a position as a governess at Worchester Abbey. In fact, in light of the scandal that had descended upon her life, the maiden aunt liked that Olivia was taking charge and holding her head up high.

  “But darling, why Worchester Abbey?”

  Perhaps it was the fact that the dilapidated old mansion was located in the neighboring town, or perhaps it was because Lady Margolis, the proprietor of Sootherly's who had warmed to the devastated young lady, told her that three motherless children lived there, but Olivia had decided to take the proffered position with as much alacrity as possible. She had written the Duke of Worchester of her unusual education, and he had replied, in a very terse fashion, that it would be sufficient for his daughters to learn the basics of geography and the finishing arts, which he assumed, her being a lady of gentle breeding, she possessed herself. Of his son he said only that he would be receiving supplemental lessons in the maths from a tutor. And although her private opinion was that the duke's daughters should be receiving similar supplemental lessons, she knew that she would be able to provide those, as well, with none the wiser. Ladies of her day should not be reliant on a man to manage the affairs of a household, and that included the ledgers of money.

  There were so many moments on the lengthy coach ride to Worchester Abbey that Olivia pondered her own lunacy in embarking on so bold a venture. Yes, her education was superb and unusual, but what on Earth did she know about children? Nothing, that was what, and the duke had a full three. Three! Merciful heavens, what was she thinking? When the coachman finally announced her stop, she gathered up her bags and approached the imposing home of the Worchesters. Dark and shabby, it loomed over her delicate frame like a hulking Nordic god, causing her to swallow hard. She raised the heavy knocker at the door and brought it down in two loud bangs on the door.

  It was a few moments before an older woman with graying black hair and an air so imposing it was almost comical. “I am Mrs. Huxting, the housekeeper,” she said, leading Lady Olivia and her slew of bags into the grand foyer. “The duke and his children will be down shortly.” With that, the formidable lady looked the younger one up and down and her expression softened. “Is this your first post as governess, Lady Knightbridge?”

  “It is, Mrs. Huxting.”

  Mrs. Huxting took a moment and then nodded decisively. “You will need to draw upon all your resources for these children” was all she said before she went up the marble-railed winding staircase, the marble aged and cracked in multiple places, to fetch the aforementioned group for whom all those resources would be so necessary. Not a good sign.

  Olivia took in the inside of Worchester Abbey like she was reading a book, noting each and every detail. The vast multitude of rooms had a dank air about them, as if they had just been aired out in preparation for her arrival, but had otherwise been unoccupied for years. By far her favorite room, the one where she saw more potential than darkness, was one that was clearly a study and clearly far more often inhabited than the others. The ashes in the grate left her white fingertips sooty and books lined the extensive library waist to ceiling. Pulling back the dark burgundy-colored drapes revealed a set of enormous French windows through which Olivia could see the brambles of an overgrown garden, like something out of Paradise; in fact, the entire house reminded her of a Paradise lost, a place where joy once ruled supreme and now Darkness was Master.

  “And have you found exactly what you were looking for, Lady Knightbridge?” a deep male voice interrupted her musings, nearly startling her out of her skin. She turned, expecting and finding none other than the illustrious duke of Worchester. Her ready smile was wiped clean off her face at the unexpected sight she encountered there.

  They say that some people have an objective beauty appreciated by all almost instantaneously. Ben Soothley—she was loathe to even remember the name in that moment—was one such person, but the man who stood before her now had an entirely different, far more interesting quality to his person. His dark hair rose up in curls that would have been very dyspraxic had the duke not tamed it down with extensive visits to his barber. His cheeks were drawn and pale, his eyes deep and dark, very arresting. And his lips—Olivia stopped herself there, aware that her study of her new employer was tapping into a dangerous part of herself. He stood almost an entire half meter taller than she did, and his shoulders were quite broad; he was tastefully dressed in a dark suit with a cream cravat, impeccably tied. Under other circumstances, he might have been every inch the dandy, but the whole raison d'etre about his appearance was that he was at least ten years older than Lady Olivia, and the years lent him a maturity and self-possession the likes of which his new governess had not encountered before. How unusual, how peculiar, to meet a man so much older who sparked such an immediate interest in his person.

  “My apologies, Duke,” she replied smoothly, gathering up all her breeding in that moment. “It was a long journey and I simply wanted to start getting accustomed to my new surroundings as quickly as possible.”

  “Your disclaimers are not necessary here, Lady Knightbridge,” replied the duke, holding open the door so she could exit the study. As she passed, she caught a whiff of his scent, musky and masculine, and felt blood rush to a host of unexpected places. She shook it off as the duke began rattling off a litany of rules and regulations for the education of his children. There were periods of time, a schedule for their walks outside—“No child of mine is going to be a layabout lazybones,” he declared authoritatively—their meals, their studies, the books she would use; it seemed that everything had been planned within an inch of its life. Her head was reeling from all the rules, and she had not even met the children yet.

  “Duke, forgive me, but when is it that I make the acquaintance of the children?”

  The duke looked at her oddly. “They have been here all along, Lady Knightbridge.”

  Olivia shook her head. “Please, Lady Olivia is fine—what do you mean they have been here all along?”

  It was then that she noticed the three curious faces peeking out from behind the staircase in the grand foyer. The children, it seemed, had been silently watching her exploration of their home from the minute she stepped in.

  “File out, children,” said the duke and snapped his fingers in an altogether military fashion. The metaphor held true as the children arranged themselves from tallest to smallest by the staircase and held their heads straight up as the duke made the rounds, so to speak.

  “This is Katherine Worchester, my eldest. The spitting image of her late mother, if you can believe it,” said the duke, pointing to his tallest and slimmest child, who seemed to shrink into the bones of her own body as surely as if she were a turtle determined to hide from the world.

  “Not that father ever lets us talk about her,” interrupted the boy snidely. There was a note of pain in his voice, cleverly masked by a raging bitterness; Olivia recognized it so precisely because it was often how she had fe
lt when the members of the ton who did not yet know who she was asked her about whom her parents were. Immediately following was a widening of the eyes and a well-recognized look of pity would enter their expressions, pity that Olivia did not want or need.

  The duke sighed heavily, and Lady Olivia realized where the few strands of gray that were making their way through his curly locks came from. “And now you have met my heir, little Lord Mischief himself,” he told her.

  “Otherwise known as Buxley,” said the mop-topped little prince and executed a more perfect mock curtsey than Lady Olivia had ever managed to execute herself.

  “There is a reason this house is run with ship-shape efficiency, Lady Olivia,” continued a duke, reaching out a hand to ruffle the boy's blonde hair with affection. “Buxley here has managed to scare off the last four governesses, and I do hope you are made of far stronger stuff.”

  Olivia was surprised. It seemed that all of the rules the duke was so set on enforcing came from a misguided desire to provide his children with structure, rather than to be tyrannical. He truly cared for his children, and that simply endeared him to her even more. And then it was impossible not to notice the bright little face peeking out from behind Duchess Katherine's skirt. Olivia knelt down and was met by a pair of eyes so merry that she had to swallow a laugh as the Duke of Worchester's youngest daughter stepped out shyly to meet her.