Royal Bastard

by Avery Flynn

  “You wouldn’t understand; you’re American,” Brooke said dismissively before she slapped her hand over her mouth, then sighed and lowered it. “I’m sorry. Again.”

  “Why do you keep apologizing for things that are true? I am American, but if you talk slowly again, I might be able to follow along when you explain why in the world everyone wants me to stay.”

  Brooke clasped her hands together, squeezing hard enough that her knuckles on one hand turned white. “You’re the earl’s heir whether you want to be or not, and I’ve been tasked with teaching you how to be a proper earl. And the way to do that is not by acting improperly myself.”

  How he managed not to burst out laughing, he wasn’t sure. “That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to be the next earl.”

  He’d be back out on his lake within forty-eight hours figuring out how to fix the nervous doggie collar and prototyping an escape-proof kennel that would leave the Houdini Three Thousand in the dust where it belonged. What could he say, he ground a few millimeters off his molars every time he saw shoddy workmanship. He was lazy about a lot, but not that.

  “Why not?” Brooke asked, yanking him away from thoughts of home and work, his two favorite things.

  “Because like you said”—he held up a finger—”I’m an American.” He held up a second finger. “And we both agree that I’m not earl material.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  “But it’s true, though, isn’t it, Lady Lemons?”

  Her eyes narrowed at the nickname, but it seemed she wouldn’t be distracted by a little teasing even if it got a giggle from Daisy and a concerned look from Phillip. “It’s not true. You are earl material.”

  “Really?” He leaned in closer and invaded her personal bubble that happened to smell like the tease of lilacs in the spring.

  “Well, you will be.” An unspoken dare burned in her blue eyes, turning them a darker hue, as she refused to give in—or even to retreat from his advance. “There’s too much riding on you becoming a success for me to allow you to fail.”

  Allow him to fail? As if she could will him into submission. Lots had tried. No one had succeeded.

  “Just because the earl says so?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral so he wouldn’t give away the excitement starting to tweak that part of him that loved to prove everyone wrong. “Is that why you’d take me on as your own special project?”

  He didn’t want to, but—damn it—his blood was warming to the idea of the challenge and, if he acknowledged the voice of his mama in his head, helping out the village, which obviously needed his help whether the inhabitants realized it or not. Why Lady Lemons hadn’t spilled all, he had no idea, but it was one more riddle involving her that he needed to unravel. Or maybe it was being this close to this woman after so many nights of wondering about her during all the email and text exchanges. She didn’t quit easily, and he admired that, identified with it.

  “The why doesn’t matter,” she said with prim dismissal.

  “Darling, the why always matters.” His fingers itched to reach out to her to see if the jump in the pulse point on her neck was from annoyance or something more. It was such an out-of-the-blue feeling that he almost glanced down at his hand to see what was going on, but he couldn’t look away from Brooke. There was something about the way she looked all full of spit and vinegar that made him wonder what she’d be like when she was fired up in different circumstances—the kind that didn’t require clothes and, in fact, strongly discouraged them. And damn his curiosity, but it had to be sated. That was the only explanation for what came out of his mouth next. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll prove it to you.”

  Now it was her turn to ask for clarification. “What do you mean?”

  “You do your best to teach me to be an earl, and I’ll do my best to show you that I’m not made for that line of work. I won’t sandbag your efforts, but I’m not going to go along with anything just because you say so.” It was a dare of a bet that gave him more than a little wiggle room, not that he’d need it, because there was no way he’d ever lose. “You’ll have to stay in that drafty pile of rocks with me. I’m not getting trapped alone with that man.” Sure, Dallinger Park was huge, but the last thing he wanted was to get stuck alone with Charles Vane, Earl of Englefield, and his twisted-up notions of familial duty. Nick held out his hand to Brooke. “Bet on it?”

  She looked down at his outstretched hand with a mix of excitement and disbelief clear on her face. “This is ridiculous. As it is, the earl limits the parts of the house that are open because of the immense cost of running a house this size,” she said in a tense whisper that didn’t go beyond the two of them. “The only option for my sleeping quarters was the room that connected to the one the limited staff has made up for you.”

  His pulse picked up when she mentioned being next door to him. He wasn’t proud of that fact, but he was honest with himself about it. That he’d keep that reaction in check wasn’t even a question.

  “Anyway,” she continued in a ferocious whisper. “I’m the earl’s personal secretary, not a miracle worker or a sacrificial lamb to be put between the two of you.”

  “Those sound like excuses to me, Lady Lemons.” Not realizing until that moment that they were standing so close together that if either of them took a deep breath, they’d be touching. The realization sent him into some sort of hyperawareness mode as he took in the flush to her pale skin, the spark in her blue eyes, and sensual curve to her bottom lip that she kept tugging between her teeth. “Do we have a bet or not?”

  In the few moments that she glared at him and considered his offer, he swore everyone in the pub—including the two old guys sitting at a table nearby—was holding their breath waiting for her answer. They weren’t the only ones. His lungs were squeezed tight. What in the hell had he been thinking? This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to flip off the Earl of Jerkwads and go back home. This was obviously jet leg–induced insanity with a dash of lust thrown in for good measure.

  Finally, Brooke reached out and shook his hand, her long fingers sending a jolt of hello hotness straight to his totally-down-with-it cock. “You have yourself a wager.”

  One he was going to win. “You’ve got a week.”

  That’s all it would take to show her and the rest of Bowhaven that he wasn’t the earl they were looking for. One way or another, he’d Jedi Master mind trick that fact into a reality neither the village nor Brooke could ignore.

  Chapter Eight

  An hour later, after Lady Lemons had packed a bag and sent it on to the earl’s house with a local who had been heading in that direction, Nick was once again stuffed into a too-tiny car for a short drive on the wrong side of the road and fighting to keep his eyes open. It was a sad testament to how trying to sleep on the flight over hadn’t done diddly-shit to alleviate his jet lag. He’d had three-alarm hangovers that left him more lively than he felt now. Even when Brooke slid into a busy roundabout with barely a tap on the brakes and zipped off at the second exit, his heart rate barely jumped.

  “Home again,” Brooke announced as she drove between the iron gates denoting the back entrance to Dallinger Park.

  “It’s someone’s home, but not mine,” he grumbled.

  She parked the car on the gravel driveway near the barely maintained rose garden and turned off the engine before pivoting in her seat to give him an exasperated stare. “I don’t mean to be telling your grandmother how to suck eggs, but that doesn’t seem to be the best attitude to take when you voluntarily agreed to our little wager.”

  “Grandmother to suck eggs?” His brain couldn’t translate it.

  She let out an irritated huff. “It means tell you what you already know.”

  “I would have figured that out if there’d been context clues.”

  He never would have figured that out. The whole idiom brought up too many questions that h
is sleep-deprived brain couldn’t fight off. Why would anyone suck eggs? Could someone even fit an entire egg in their mouth? Were the eggs hard-boiled first? Was the grandmother supposed to eat the egg after or spit it out? The whole thing made his head ache as the beginnings of a migraine started to scratch at the backs of his eyeballs.

  Brooke must have noticed the sour look on his face, because instead of continuing with her lecture, she set the parking brake and opened the driver’s door. “Come on—you look knackered. Let’s get you a bed.”

  Even if the bed happened to be in the poisoned family homestead, he wasn’t about to turn it down. He got out of the car and followed Brooke into the musty old pile of bricks his grandfather called home.

  Luckily, Earl Go Suck On an Egg was nowhere to be found, which was the first stroke of good luck he’d experienced since landing in this gloomy country. Nick was too tired for more family bullshit right now. All he wanted was a bed. His gaze wandered down to Brooke’s cute butt as she led him up the back stairs. If it looked that good in loose-fitting pants, there was no doubt it would be phenomenal out of them. What he wouldn’t give— He shook his head to knock that train of thought off the tracks. She was the enemy. Well, not the enemy, but definitely the antagonist and a no-go zone.

  They turned right at the top of the staircase—decorated with the moth-eaten stuffed stag’s head that had probably seen better days about half a century ago—and walked to a door at the end of the hall with a knob that sat far enough down that he had to lean down just a bit to open it.

  The door swung open with a quiet squeak, revealing a large bedroom. Maybe it was because of the last of the sunset coming through the huge bay window with six panes of individual beveled glass or it could be the fact that he was running on fumes, but the bedroom was the first part of the meandering mansion that didn’t make him want to take a hammer to it. A carved walnut four-poster bed with a canopy took up the wall to the right of the windows. On the opposite wall, there was a fireplace with a love seat, coffee table, and two chairs arranged in front of it. Smack in front of the window, which had ivy climbing up some of the panes, was a large, sturdy desk.

  “The bathroom is right here,” Brooke said, gesturing toward a door near the sitting area.

  Curious despite how tired he was, he opened it and peeked in. It had a shower, a clawfoot tub, and all the rest of the normal bathroom things, plus the addition of a wall-mounted towel warmer with two fluffy white towels placed onto it. It screamed out fire hazard to him, but judging by Brooke’s expression, everything was just the way it should be.

  “There aren’t any outlets in the bathroom,” she said as she gave the room a cursory once-over. “So if you brought an electric razor, you’ll have to use it out here.”

  Nick glanced around the bedroom. There was a narrow full-length, standing mirror near the fireplace, but shaving outside of the bathroom seemed weird. “Why aren’t there any plug-ins?”

  A teacher once told him that there weren’t any dumb questions. Judging by the look on Lady Lemons’s face, she didn’t agree with that assessment.

  “It’s against code because it’s a hazard,” she said.

  That made absolutely no sense. “Wait, you have an electric towel warmer hanging from the wall that you purposefully put cotton towels on, but a plug-in is too much?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  His brain hurt. Not just from the migraine getting ready to kick his ass but also because the riddle of that logic was too twisted for him to untangle. And judging by the just-try-me expression, he wasn’t going to get to win a debate in his current condition anyway. Some days, it was better to concede the battle.

  “Is that the closet?” he asked as he strode to the door by the bed.

  “No, you have an armoire over here for your clothes,” she said, her voice a little more strained than before. “Mr. Harleson already put your bag in there.”

  Ignoring the armoire, he grasped the knob. “So what’s in here?”

  “It should be locked.” Her words were clipped, in full Lady Lemons mode.

  Even as dead-ass tired and achy as he was, he couldn’t stop himself from pushing the issue. The knob turned. “Not locked.”

  “Bloody hell.” Brooke let out a strangled groan. “You know curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But satisfaction brought it back.”

  He opened the door, and the scent of stale air, dust, and abandonment wafted in from the connected bedroom. The same golden sunlight came in through the matching bay window in the other room, but after that, the similarities ended. There were cobwebs hanging from the light fixture. The four-poster bed was unmade, with a stack of sheets and a comforter in the middle of the bare mattress along with a medium-size suitcase. He took a few steps into the room. The view didn’t get any better upon closer inspection.

  “Whose room is this?” His money was on the house’s resident ghost.

  “Mine,” she said, sounding about as thrilled as someone preparing to get six root canals without pain meds.

  It wasn’t clean, but it was nice—a more feminine version of his own room with a pale-pink color scheme instead of the navy blue.

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Lady Lemons?” he asked, turning to face her.

  “Yes.” She screwed up her mouth and narrowed her blue eyes at him. “Stop calling me that.”

  “Not gonna happen.” But the deflection was first-rate. Too bad he wasn’t the type to fall for it. “Spill.”

  She let out a sigh as she stood in the doorway, looking a little more dejected than she had when they were driving back to the manor house. “I told you at the pub that this was the only room available for me, since you insisted I stay. There wasn’t time to get it cleaned up before we arrived, so that’s what I’ll be doing while you sleep off your jet lag.”

  Damn, he really was tired if he’d already forgotten that they’d be sharing a door. He glanced back at the shine and clean of his room and then out at the dust-covered sheets on top of the furniture in her room. “There isn’t another room?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” she said. “The earl is the lone inhabitant of the east wing and the other rooms haven’t been open to guests for decades.”

  Her lips pressed into a firm line as she walked past him into her room. It took all of about half a second before she started sneezing and her eyes got watery and red rimmed.

  “Allergies?” he asked, being the keen observer of the obvious.

  “Nothing major.” Covering her mouth, she let out four tiny squeaks of a sneeze in a row.

  The woman looked miserable and stubborn enough to make him realize that she wasn’t going to ask for another room or go back on her promise to stay at Dallinger Park. Instead, she’d suffer with a stiff upper lip in as much silence as her allergies would allow. That wasn’t gonna happen.

  Crossing his arms, he stepped directly into her presumably blurry line of vision. “You can’t stay in here.”

  Up with that chin. “There aren’t any other options.”

  “Think again.” He wasn’t backing down. Not on this one. His mama would come back from the dead to skin him alive if he did.

  “Mr. Vane, this is highly irregular and I don’t—” Whatever else she would have said was canceled out by a rash of sneezing.

  The woman needed a Benadryl blast just to walk within four feet of the door; she’d never make it all night no matter how stubborn she was. Arguing the point with her, though, wasn’t going to get him anywhere. So he went at the puzzle of Lady Lemons another way. Curling his upper lip just slightly, he looked down at her with what he imagined was a close approximation to the snarl the earl had tried to use on him earlier.

  “Even though I’m half dead on my feet, you’ll keep me up with that sneezing racket. You’re staying in my room and I’ll sleep in here,” he said, his voice gruff
, continuing even as she began to voice her objections. “As much as I’m sure someone like you would rather think that I’m doing this to be nice, I’m not. I don’t want to listen to that all night when what I need is to be dead to the world. I need my sleep more than you need to be proper.”

  Pivoting, he encroached on her space. As expected, her eyes flared wide and she began to backpedal until she was on the opposite side of the door in his room. She wet her bottom lip with that teasing pink tongue of hers—a move that drew his attention like a question mark.

  He grasped the door before she could reach it. “Night, Lady Lemons. We’ll battle more in the morning.”

  Knowing she’d only gear up for an argument if he waited any longer, he shut the door on her as she stood there gaping openmouthed at him. Another rash of squeaky sneezes sounded from the other side of the closed door. He waited a minute, half expecting her to charge the door. But she didn’t. She also didn’t sneeze again.

  Allowing himself a self-satisfied smile, he grabbed the sheets and began to do the tug-and-pull war of putting the fitted sheet on the mattress. It was a pain in the ass but worth it. Brooke would get some decent shut-eye tonight. But him? He hoped like hell that the jet lag would kick his ass as soon as his head hit the pillow, because otherwise he was going to spend the night imagining what Lady Lemons looked like in his bed.

  …

  Brooke could sleep in her clothes. In her contact lenses? Only if she wanted to spend the next day feeling like her eyelids were glued shut or blinking madly in an attempt to wet her dried-out contacts so she could focus.

  She needed her contact stuff.

  Which was in her suitcase.

  Which was next to the dust-covered bed where Nick was sleeping.

  Which was a problem.

  In the middle of her oh-so-professional allergy attack, she hadn’t thought about retrieving it before he’d shut the door in her sneezing face two hours ago. After that, she’d been busy tracking down Kate, the only full-time household servant at Dallinger Park, to work out the logistics of her stay and had gotten waylaid by the earl, who’d informed her he needed her help tying up a few loose ends on his behalf before he left for London to meet with his solicitor in the morning. So she’d gotten the earl sorted and had gotten back to her room—really Nick’s room—as soon as humanly possible. Now she just had to get her suitcase.