Royal Bastard

by Avery Flynn

  Good thing his power-packed brain was made just for unwinding that kind of riddle. It wasn’t a brag; it was fact. He’d started taking apart things in their house as soon as he could hold a Phillips screwdriver.

  Instead of being horrified to come home and find the dishwasher disassembled in their kitchen, his mom had sat down with him, and together they’d figured out how to make the water pulsate at a higher rate to clean the dishes in half the time. That was Charity August (formerly Vane). She didn’t freak out; she didn’t lose her shit—not even when the doctor had come back with the terminal diagnosis. She figured out what to do next, and then she did it.

  After her diagnosis, his mama had reached out for help to the man who’d knocked her up and disappeared, letting him know the situation. Nick’s sperm donor had blocked his mama’s number and sent a lackey with a check. A pissed-off, already mourning Nick had wanted to burn it to ash, but his mama had a more practical nature. She put it into a savings account for him and told him he’d know when the time was right. That time had turned out to be when he needed funding to produce his first invention, which had put him on the road to millions more—both in terms of cash and ideas.

  And that old fucker in that decrepit shell of a mansion wanted him to be his heir? After that? After what the Vanes had done to his mom? To him? Yeah, he had a different idea of how he’d repay their generosity—with a giant fuck-you to the Earl of Assholery.

  So lost in his thoughts—and, frankly, because he was looking on the wrong side of the road for traffic—Nick didn’t see the little red Peugeot until it was slow rolling right next to him. The window went down, revealing a cute blonde—did they have a factory hidden in the fields of heather somewhere?—with the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen in his life sitting behind the wheel.

  “Heading to the village?” she asked, her voice a little louder than necessary.

  He laid his hand on the roof of the car and leaned down to better look in the window. “Yeah.”

  “Want a lift?”

  Okay, this was a giant nope in the United States. Picking up hitchhikers? That was a quick way to end up as a skin suit in someone’s closet. Maybe the homicidal over here were less Buffalo Bill than back home. Still, the imbalance in their sizes made him cautious on her behalf.

  “You sure?” he asked, taking a step back so she could see for herself that he wasn’t some scrawny pip-squeak.

  “Come on in, future Earl of Englefield.” She reached over and shoved open the passenger door.

  “I’m not an earl of anything.” Reflexively, he caught the door as it swung open. “How did you know who I was?”

  “In this village?” She laughed, the sound a little flat to his ears. “Good luck having a pint in Bowhaven and not having everyone know within seconds how many you had.”

  Yeah, that sounded like Salvation. It seemed that part of small-town life was universal. Shrugging off his natural doubts, he slid into the passenger seat on the left, ignoring the inner warning that he was getting into the wrong side, and closed the door behind him. And they were off with a quick shift of the manual transmission.

  The blonde looked out onto the road, not sparing him a glance even though her gaze was constantly traveling from the road in front of her to the rearview mirror and back again.

  “I’m Nick, by the way, not ‘sir’ or ‘earl’ or anything else.” He’d had enough of the “future earl” and “sir” business to last twelve lifetimes.

  His good Samaritan kept her attention focused on the road and didn’t react at all. Okay, that was weird. “And you are?” he prodded.

  The question hung in the air between them still without any kind of reaction from her.

  Okay then, if he didn’t have close to eighty pounds and half a foot advantage on the driver, he’d be worried about how weird she’d look dressed in his skin. Instead, he just shrugged and chalked the rudeness up to one more thing he hated about England as he glanced out of his passenger window at the countryside.

  The area was almost all green hilly pasture-looking land and roads so narrow, he was holding on to the door handle for dear life any time they encountered a car coming in the other direction. A few minutes down a country lane that dipped into a valley and a roundabout later and they were driving past connected townhomes with small front yards surrounded by stone fences.

  Despite the quaint look to the stores and the cobblestone parking spots along Bowhaven’s main drag, the town reminded him of Salvation. Mom-and-pop stores lined the road, and there wasn’t a big-box store in sight. His driver pulled over into a tiny parallel-parking spot tight enough to make his ass tense. However, she maneuvered into the spot with the ease of someone more than a little confident of her abilities.

  She cut the engine and turned to him, a friendly smile on her face. “Well, this is it for me.” She jerked her head at the building they were in front of. “The family pub. You should stop in for a pint before heading back to my sister.”

  “Your sister?” He was usually faster on the uptake than this, but his brain was blank.

  She held out her hand. “Daisy Chapman-Powell. Our family runs the Quick Fox Pub.”

  He shook her hand, trying to process how in the world Lady Lemons and the blond pixie with mad parking skills could be sisters. Sure, he could clock the family resemblance now, but their personalities couldn’t be more different.

  “Sorry about the silent treatment on the way here,” she went on. “I have to really concentrate when I drive, since I can’t hear a bloody thing.”

  And there went the light bulb. The slightly too loud voice, the flat tone to her laugh. “You’re deaf?”

  She nodded. “Seven years now.”

  “You read lips.” It wasn’t a question; it was just him working through the process of how it all worked.

  Daisy snorted. “Well, I’m certainly not imagining this conversation, now, am I?”

  And that was all it took to see the connection between the two women. Daisy and Brooke were definitely sisters in tart sarcasm in addition to any familial bond. “Yep, you’re Brooke’s sister, all right.”

  Nick got out of the car and took a look around downtown Bowhaven. A secondhand store down the road seemed to be getting a lot of foot traffic in and out. There was a bakery, which probably explained why he started to crave a croissant as soon as he stepped out of the car and took in a deep breath of pastry-scented air. A wiggly corgi stood in the window of a shop with a Fish and Chips sign hanging above the door. There was no way that didn’t violate health codes, but if no one else was complaining and he didn’t end up with a fur-covered fish stick, he wasn’t going to complain—not that he was going to be here long enough for that. Nope. Any minute now, he’d be on his way back to the airport and Bowhaven would be just another unpleasant memory in his past.

  Nick waited until Daisy made it around her Peugeot and they stood on the sidewalk outside the pub facing each other before continuing the conversation. “I need to rent a car or get an Uber back to the airport.”

  “When are you going?” she asked, shading her eyes against the setting sun and keeping her gaze locked on him.

  Yesterday. Now. “As soon as possible.”

  The breeze ruffled her short hair as she cocked her head and shook it from side to side. “Oh, that’s not going to happen, I’m afraid.”

  The not-so-gentle march of ants with steel cleats sharpened to pinpoints made the back of his head ache. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, Mr. High and Mighty at the big house isn’t the only one who’s got a lot riding on you becoming the next Earl of Englefield,” she answered. “So why don’t you take a look around the village and talk to some folks before you try to hire a car.” She gave him a jaunty grin. “But I’ll warn you now—no one’s going to give you a lift to the airport “

  He looked around while the ants double-timed it across his s
kull. There wasn’t a rush of foot traffic on the sidewalk, but it was lively, and everyone was staring at him as they walked by. Some tipped their hats; others just gave him a nervous grin and cast their eyes downward as they passed. He may not know them, but the people of Bowhaven definitely knew who he was. And if what Daisy said was true, well then…

  “You’re saying I’ve been town-napped?” Of all the ridiculous things to happen since that English private eye showed up on his doorstep a few months back to tell him that his grandfather the earl wanted to see him, this was the pinnacle.

  “Village-napped, but yeah.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “That’s about the sum of it.”

  Grinding his molars to fine powder, Nick took in the lay of the land. An old woman walking a cat—seriously, on a leash—smiled at him as she neared where he stood with Daisy. Southern manners pounded into him since birth kicked in, and he returned the old lady’s smile and took a step over to give her more room on the sidewalk as she passed.

  “How far is it to the airport?”

  Daisy chewed her bottom lip and looked up at the clear blue sky before answering. “Forty kilometers.”

  As if that made any more sense to him than it being one hundred and fifty bowler hats long. “How many miles is that?”

  She winked at him. “Too many to walk.”

  The Chapman-Powell women were evil. Plain and simple. But they weren’t going to get the best of him. “I can rent a car and have them drive here to get me.”

  “You could try.” She nodded and waved at a passing car. “But the roads getting out here can be confusing when the signs get turned around. And I’ll warn you now that GPS gets a little iffy in these parts.”

  This is what happens when you accept rides from strangers. “Lady Lemons set this up, didn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister,” he managed to ground out between clenched teeth.

  She laughed. “Oh, that is the best nickname for her ever, but no, she didn’t.”

  So this was just a Daisy Chapman-Powell–created hell. Good to know. “When you two work together, is there anything that could stand in your way?”

  “Nothing we’ve found yet.” She gave him an assessing up-and-down that wasn’t sexual so much as it was deciding if he was worth the trouble of befriending. “Go ahead and have a look about the high-street shops. Someone will be happy to take you back to Dallinger Park when you’re ready to go home.”

  He glanced up at the street sign clearly marking it as Yardley Road. “Where’s High Street?”

  Daisy waved her hand toward the stores lining the street they were on. “This is.”

  He looked back up at the street sign. “But it says it’s Yardley.”

  “It is.” She nodded, as if they weren’t reenacting Abbott and Costello’s classic Who’s on First routine.

  “But it’s also High Street?”

  She nodded again. “Exactly.”

  “Care to explain?” he asked, wondering if jet lag was making him hear things.

  “The high street is just where most of the shops are located.”

  So high street was downtown. Christ. Nick needed some aspirin. He must have made the observation out loud because Daisy responded.

  “At the chemist,” she said, pointing across the street to what he’d call the drugstore before saying goodbye with a wave and disappearing into the pub.

  Nick rubbed his temples. It had been a while since he’d hot-wired a car, but he wasn’t above doing it again to get out of here. For that, though, he needed some privacy and, judging by the number of people looking out at him from inside the store’s windows, he wasn’t going to be able to manage that until nightfall.

  Resigned to having to bide his time, he banished his cheerful kidnapper-in-chief from his mind and walked to the Bits and Bobs bookstore next to the pub. Maybe they had some new biographies or an urban fantasy romance—Mace had turned him on to those after he’d been the location scout on a book-turned-movie job. He’d laughed when Mace had sent him a copy signed by the author; then he’d read the first page. He hadn’t put the damn thing down until he’d finished it. Yeah, he could definitely go for an end-of-the-world, chicks-with-special-powers-kicking-demon-ass book right about now.

  Nick opened the door and took half a step forward when a small dog or a large rat, he couldn’t quite make it out, launched itself from inside the shop right at him.

  “Mr. Darcy,” a woman yelled. “No!”

  Nick grabbed the furry avenger in mid-flight and held it—a Jack Russell, it turned out—at arm’s length while the brown-and-white fur ball growled and snapped at him like fifteen pounds of fury on PCP.

  “Oh, you naughty boy, you should know better than that.” All eyes for the dog, a woman in glasses and a green V-neck T-shirt that read The Book Was Better rushed forward and scooped up the dog. “I’m so sorry about this. He’s in a snit today.”

  Only once the still-snarling creature was firmly tucked under her arm did she look up. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened a millisecond before she recovered. “It’s you.”

  Was there anyone in this asylum of a village who didn’t know who he was? Might as well own up to it.

  “It is.” He lifted his hand, palm up, and held it out so the dog could smell that he didn’t have evil intentions. “Nick Vane.”

  Mr. Darcy maintained his death stare but stopped growling long enough to give him a sniff.

  “Megan Page.” She waved her free hand, gesturing toward the bookshelves. “And this is my shop.”

  He looked down at the Jack Russell now sniffing his hand with intense interest. “Is Mr. Darcy yours, too?”

  “Yes, the little bugger has escape-artist skills,” she said as she walked behind the counter with the dog squirming to get out of her hold. “Beg your pardon about that. He has a tendency to attack first and ask questions later.”

  Interest piqued, he looked around at the bookstore/card store/knickknack emporium. There wasn’t a kennel anywhere in sight. “What did he break out of?”

  “The Houdini Three Thousand.”

  Now there was a marketing-department-developed name if he’d ever heard one. “Can I see it?”

  Keeping the dog under her arm, Megan picked up a crate off the floor that had been hidden behind the counter and handed it to him. The Houdini Three Thousand turned out to be a small wire kennel that was the perfect size for a Jack Russell. It had an automatic treat dispenser near the door and a practically decimated stuffed rabbit in the corner. After she set it down on the counter, he examined the kennel from all angles. The idea must be that the dog would entertain itself with figuring out how to get the dispenser to spit out a small treat instead of how to make a jailbreak. Like the voice-calming dog collar, it was a good idea in theory, but reality was another story.

  No doubt Mr. Darcy was insulted by the idea—and rightly so—that he could be contained. Therefore, he’d bypassed the treat option so he could pull a Shawshank Redemption. Nick had to admire the canine’s tenacity. He almost hated fucking with the dog’s prospects like this.

  “I can fix it,” he told Megan.

  So he did, all while Megan gave him the general rundown on Bowhaven and its residents. The village had been hard hit by the Pepson Factory closing, and a lot of folks were moving away to get jobs—something that didn’t help the businesses still here struggling to keep the doors open.

  “And no one has any ideas for what could be done to help the economy?” There had to be a town council, a business development agency, or something like that who could help.

  Megan stroked Mr. Darcy’s head as she chewed on her bottom lip as if she was trying to pick her words carefully. “Suggestions have been made, but let’s just say that they were made by someone known for being pushy.”

  Considering how deliberately vague her word choice had been
, he didn’t need more information to figure out who she’d been talking about. He could see his grandfather trying to run the joint as if he was still a feudal lord. Before he could comment on it, though, Megan was off on another topic—this time the upcoming market day—and he listened with half an ear as he finished modifying the kennel.

  Thirty minutes later, Mr. Darcy stood inside the tweaked Houdini Three Thousand. The dog stuck one paw through the wires and pawed at the lever for the door, but nothing happened because now someone on the outside had to press the door lever on the front at the same time as the one on top of the kennel. After a few more tries, the Jack Russell sat down, made eye contact with Nick, and bared his teeth.

  “Sorry, man, but those are the breaks.”

  Megan tsk-tsked behind him. “Poor Mr. Darcy. It stinks when life doesn’t turn out the way you plan.”

  “Amen to that,” Nick agreed and stood up.

  “I owe you a proper thank-you now. Have you made it down to the Fox?”

  He gulped. “You have more animals?”

  “No, the pub.” She laughed as she flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed. “The Quick Fox. Have you met Phillip and Angela yet?”

  “I haven’t, but I’ve met the daughters.”

  “Both of them?” she asked, opening the shop door.

  He nodded and walked through, even though he could hear his mother’s voice in his head telling him to always hold the door open for others. Megan walked through after him, took out her keys, and locked the dead bolt.

  “Well,” she said. “You’ve gotten the yin and yang of the Chapman-Powells, then.”