Page 2 of Rules for a Bastard Lord
“Not yet. But I’ve sent my son to find her—the woman I told you about—”
“Oh, I am so wretched!” gasped Clarissa as she pressed a limp hand to her brow, her sapphire earbobs waving wildly on their gold chains.
“A hot towel, milady? Perhaps a blanket?” The innkeeper was doing his best to please.
“I won’t put you to the bother,” she said, her voice fading.
“But milady, if it would ease your suffering—”
“Tut tut,” Dicky interrupted, oblivious to his wife’s need to be cosseted. “She said no. Get on with you. I was in the middle of my story.”
Bram sighed. “Bring her hot stew.”
“I couldn’t eat a thing,” Clarissa protested.
“You will,” he said, keeping his voice stern. She liked it when he was bold. Yes, her legs shifted restlessly, and she shot him another coy glance.
The innkeeper’s head bobbled yes as he rushed out the door. Meanwhile, Dicky was annoyed that the attention had shifted offhim. “Pay attention,” he ordered. “I was about to get to the good part.”
Pay attention to his own tale of derring-do? “Please, I adore this part,” he lied as he looked back out the window.
He saw a mob of boys—four of them—barely into their first beards. They were calling raucous comments aimed at the woman in blue. Really, why was she walking alone—moving from one house to the next to the next—seemingly unprotected by a husband, father, or brother?
“The bear attacked!” Dicky cried dramatically. He roared again, and Clarissa squealed. “Bram pulled out his father’s dueling pistol and shot it right in the muzzle! Bang!”
“Bang,” Clarissa echoed as she rubbed her thumb over and across the smallest sapphire in her necklace.
“And that, my dear, is the tale of how Bram became the man he is today. He will protect us, you see.” Dicky returned to his seat and curled his arm around the treasure chest. “If he could protect tiny children—”
“And their kittens! Don’t forget the kittens!”
“And their kittens from a rabid bear, then…”
“Then we are safe with him.” Clarissa’s gaze turned languid. “I feel so safe.”
“That’s why I hired him, Clary,” Dicky said as he patted her hand. “To make you feel safe.”
“Thank you, my love,” his wife cooed, her eyes on Bram.
Bram headed for the door. “I need to check around the inn.”
“But—” cried Clarissa.
Bram cut her off. “That story isn’t true. It’s grown too much over the years.”
“Tut tut,” Dicky said. “We know it’s true. Or most of it.”
Or none of it. When had his life become so absurd that he protected people like these two? That he contemplated cuckolding a man—his employer—simply because he was bored?He despised Dicky and Clarissa, and by extension he despised himself.
“Please stay close!” Clarissa wailed.
Bram paused, his hand on the doorknob. “There’s no danger. No one will chase you up here. Your enemies will ruin your reputation in London, destroy your financials, and you will never be invited to atonparty again. But there won’t be a soul who offers you bodily harm here.”
“Course not!” cried Dicky as he patted his treasure again. “That’s because you’re here. That’s because I had the foresight to befriend you as a child. I knew then that you would protect me. I knew then that you were a man who could save me from blackguards…”
Bram stopped listening and headed out the door. He made it through the kitchen and out the back, to the garden behind with two lazy hounds dozing in the sun. And once outside, he took a deep breath of the summer air and a greedy look at the green land around him.
This was the life he wanted: stretched out in the sun like those hounds, with his eyes drooping shut, while a pup or three gamboled nearby. He saw no puppies, but he imagined them, and they made him smile.
