Page 1 of Rules for a Bastard Lord
Chapter One
Bitterness poisons yourself first, everyone elsesecond.
Bramwell Wesley Hallowsby,bodyguard to the rich and paranoid, did not see the girl in the blue dress. At best, he caught a flash of blond curls and the thrust of a determined chin. He dismissed them as another insignificant detail on this never-ending annoyance of a job.
Though his gaze continued to scan out the inn window, his attention remained inside the room with Dicky, his once childhood friend, as the man spouted flattering nonsense. Why Dicky thought he had to spin elaborate tales of someone else’s bravery was anybody’s guess. Dicky fawned because that’s what Dicky did.
“It was a rabid bear!” Dicky cried as he expounded to his wife Clarissa. “One escaped from the local fair and still wearing a bright ruffle around its neck. Horribly, this only made it more terrifying to the onlookers as my friend Bram stepped forward to defend a child.
“A child?” gasped Clarissa. Clarissa often gasped. “Boy or girl?”
“Both!” cried Dicky, gesturing with his cheroot. “Twins with kittens. One in each hand and completely defenseless!”
That part of the tale was new. Last time it had been piglets. Bram sighed as he idly scanned the street for villains. It was a wasted effort. Though Dicky had plenty of enemies, none wouldchase him this far north. Bram had worked hard during their midnight escape from London, but now they were in Hull, nearly to Scotland. If it hadn’t been for Clarissa’s tetchy stomach, they would be there now, and he could get paid.
That’s all he wanted. Get them to Scotland so he could get paid.
He narrowed his eyes. There was a thick brute of a man coming toward the inn, but then the man stopped to talk to the woman in blue. The man bowed only slightly, then spent his time ogling the woman’s impressive bodice. Bram labeled him the local lecher and let his attention wander back to Dicky.
“And there Bram stood, just a tiny boy at the time, against a rabid bear,” continued Dicky as he patted the small treasure chest on his lap. Dicky would not leave the heavy thing in the carriage, even to sit in an inn with his sick wife.
“Terrifying!” gasped Clarissa. “Did it attack? Did it hurt you? Are there scars?”
Bram didn’t bother rubbing his forearm. He knew the shape and the texture of the scars there. As a teen, he would show them off while Dicky created a legend from a silly mishap. As an adult, the entire tale left him feeling slimy. He hadn’t been defending any children, with or without kittens. He’d been twelve when he’d seen some young boys throw rocks at a chained bear. Bram had been so incensed that he’d run off the kids, only to have the bear attack him.
He’d survived thanks to the bear’s chains, though he’d cut his forearm on some broken glass as he’d scrambled to escape. The whole thing had taught him that no good deed goes unpunished, and he’d lived his life with that motto burned on his heart.
“Bram’s horribly disfigured,” Dicky said, clearly gleeful at the thought. “You shan’t see it, of course. He keeps it well covered.”
“Oh my!” Clarissa’s eyes grew sultry. Then she pressed her sapphire necklace to her lips at such an angle that her husbandwouldn’t see her lick it. But Bram saw—as she had intended—and he felt nauseous. It wasn’t holiness. He’d used his mystique to open a woman’s bedroom door before. And with women far less beautiful than Clarissa.
But she and Dicky were rotten to the core. And he’d rather face another bear than touch Clarissa.
He wouldn’t be with them at all now, but as the bastard son of a duke, Bram had to make his own way through the world. Thanks to the connections of an elite education, he’d been able to hang on the outskirts of the moneyedton, but it had cost him. Humiliation was the smallest price he’d had to pay as he acted as bodyguard and general strong arm for the peerage.
He’d also had to split his mind into two pieces—one half hoped for goodness and beauty in the world. He couldn’t shut it up no matter how he tried. The other half saw with clear, bitter eyes what went on and hated the world for the disappointment.
Meanwhile, Dicky continued the tale. “People were running about screaming, you understand. There was chaos everywhere, as grown men dropped to their knees in terror. But not Bram. At the tender age of ten, he stood up for those poor children.”
“Ten? I thought you said he was twelve.”
Both husband and wife looked to Bram, and he knew they would stay like that until he answered. “Eleven,” he said, choosing to split the difference.
“Eleven then. But you’d just had the birthday, right?” Dicky asked.
“Right.” Wrong, but who was he to argue? Dicky was paying him to be mythic.
Something jerked in the window, and he glanced quickly back. It was the woman in blue as she’d twitched away from a grinning man. Likely the fellow had given her a pinch as she’d passed him. Life could be terrible for those without money or title.
“The beast gave out a tremendous roar!” Dicky bellowed as he leaped to his feet, one arm holding his gold, the other waving about while his wife squealed in mock terror.
“Uh, Dicky, you really shouldn’t be so loud…” began Bram, but he needn’t have bothered.
The door to their private room burst open as the innkeeper rushed in. “My lords! My lady! What is amiss?”
Dicky let his arm drop, not even embarrassed. “I was being a bear, sir.”
The innkeeper was understandably flustered, and though Bram enjoyed a flustered innkeeper as much as the next man, he hardly thought it fair. But rather than point out Dicky’s error—a sin for any paid servant—he redirected the man. “Have you got the posset yet? For my lady’s stomach?”
