Page 19 of Royals
Seb shoots a look at me and gives me an easy smile. “Of course not, love,” he says, and even though I might be an unwitting accomplice to a crime, I still feel my stomach flutter at that endearment.
“Ye damn sure are!” the man bellows, and okay, maybe I’m actually getting better at the accent because I understood him perfectly.
Sebastian is still all charm as he approaches McDougal, who is now incandescent with rage. I’m not sure how this went from “super-charming welcome party” to “property theft” in just a few minutes, but here we are, and I look up at that rude guy, Miles.
He’s still standing by the window, champagne undrunk, his expression somewhere between irritated and bored. Or maybe his face just always looks like that, hard to say.
“If you had accepted my offer last week, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Seb says to Mr. McDougal. Then he turns to look over his shoulder at Ellie and Alex.
“I found this place last time I went to Sherbourne, and the view was too good to pass up. But Mr. McDougal here wouldn’t sell, so...” He shrugs, and I glance over at Ellie, my eyebrows somewhere in my hairline, probably.
“Holy crap,” I say in a low voice, but she just hisses, “Not now, Daisy.”
“I’m not selling my house to ye, ye smug bastard,” McDougal says, poking Seb in the chest, “just because ye like the look a’tha land. Ye canna steal things just because ye take a fancy to ’em!”
“It’s like we’re inOutlander,” I whisper to El. “This is really a lot more than I bargained for.”
“Daisy!” El says again, giving me a glare before walking forward with her best princess smile, Alex coming to stand next to her.
“Mr. McDougal, we areterriblysorry for this misunderstanding,” she says, her voice so soothing it’s like an auditory head pat. “You do have a lovely home, and—”
“This is breaking and entering!” Mr. McDougal continues, and Seb sighs, rolling his shoulders.
“I did not break, although Ididenter.”
“And who let ye in?” Mr. McDougal is practically panting now, his barrel chest heaving, and I glance over my shoulder to see Spiffy and Dons edging close to the wall, choking back giggles. What are they—
“Bloody hell,” Miles mutters next to me, and I look up to see he’s watching Spiffy and Dons, too.
My eyes land on the crossed swords affixed to the wall just as Seb grins at Mr. McDougal and drawls, “Lovely lass who lives here gave me a key.” Making an exaggeratedly innocent expression, he adds, “I believe she said she was your granddaughter?”
If I’d thought that Mr. McDougal seemed rage-y before, it’s nothing to how he looks now. Face purple, he gives this huge shout and lunges for Seb just as Spiffy and Dons pull the swords from the wall, metal scraping along stone as the points of the swords drag on the floor.
“Duel!” Spiffy shouts, and for the first time, I realize just how drunk he and his brother are. Like,crazydrunk.
And now they’re armed with swords that look like they were last used about three hundred years ago.
“Stephen!” Alex says, stepping forward to snatch the sword away from him, but before he can, Dons rushes forward with his own sword.
Straight at the farmer and Seb.
Chapter 9
Some good things that happened this afternoon:
1) Mr. McDougal did not press charges and accepted both Alex’s sincere apologies and his offer to meet the queen upon her return from Canada.
2) We managed to get to Sherbourne Castle just as a huge rainstorm swept in, literally walking up the front steps as the bottom seemed to fall out of the sky, drenching everything.
3) No one actually got stabbed. Dons had been trying to toss the sword to Seb in some sort of cool maneuver, but it ended up just clattering to the floor before it could do any damage.
4)...
No, that’s it. Those were the good things that happened today, and the rest was a complete disaster.
The castle, however, is gorgeous. Well, parts of it are. The entire back end of it appears to be a ruin, but the main building is exactly what I would’ve dreamed of as a kid had I been into the whole princess-and-castle thing. There’s even a turret with a flag flapping in the wind, and it’s easy to imagine standingthere, watching, like, Braveheart come riding in from battle, all blue-faced and yelling about freedom.
As Ellie and I step through the big double doors of the castle, I scoot closer to her and whisper, “So is there a reason you failed to mention that Alex’s brother and all his friends are basically human dumpster fires?”
