Page 52 of Rules for a Bastard Lord
“He was a strong man, that’s for sure. When I said I was Cara’s friend, he sneered at me.”
“Did you become too angry to think?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I am always controlled.”
She shook her head. “A man who is always controlled has lost that control sometime in his past. Was this the time?”
He nodded slowly, realizing now how correct she was. He’d lost his temper other times, but never in such a violent fury. Cara had painted the man as the blackest villain possible and he’d been too stupid to realize his mistake.
“He called me vile names,” he said. “When I said I was her friend.” His words cut off as he choked back a laugh. “I have called her much worse since then.”
“You avenged her. She’d been beaten by this man. She might be a whore, but she didn’t deserve—”
“She lied. She was blackmailing him. Everything she’d said was a lie.”
“Oh.”
“I was too besotted to investigate.”
“I’ll wager you never made that mistake again.”
He looked up sharply, seeing the sympathy in her eyes, but also a kind of worldly humor. She was a virgin, for God’s sake, an innocent. And yet in this, she saw deeper than he did. Clearer.
“I—” he began, but he had no words.
“You were a besotted young man, and you got it wrong. That is how young men learn to be wise.”
“How can you understand this?”
She shrugged. “You know I worked with the witch-woman. She taught me about possets, yes. But mostly, she showed me how to speak with the hurt and grieving. And one of the things she said was that the young are always stupid. That is how they become wise.”
He nodded, trying to see his past as a mishap of the young.
It didn’t work. He’d been a man grown, though still stupid. And whereas the wealthy and the protected could make idiotic mistakes, he was neither. But rather than say that, he focused on her feet. He had been washing off the summer dust, but now he lifted a foot, rubbed it with soap, then began to knead.
She was clearly a woman who walked. Her callouses were thick, as was the strength in her muscles. That made it easy to use his full strength as he rubbed into the spaces between her bones, the hollows of arch and ankle.
He heard her breath catch as he dug his thumb into tight places. And he heard her sigh in delight as the knots began to release.
“Don’t stop talking,” she said, her words breathless.
“There isn’t much more to tell. I beat the man to avenge something that wasn’t true. I walked away and proudly told her what I had done and received my reward.”
The memory of that night of debauchery made him nauseous. He’d spent his last coin to buy them a feast of wine and meat. She’d eaten those sure enough, but what she’d adored were the sweets he’d purchased for dessert. And while she’d licked cream off her fingers, he had feasted on her.
“The next night Cara told me about an earl who had hurt her more than once. And the next night, another lord had insulted her. She was thirsty for revenge, and I was enamored of being her knight avenger.”
“Did you do it? Did you hurt them in her name?”
Bluebell’s voice was strong, though hushed. Which meant she was not seduced yet. So he applied himself to her other foot, bringing it forward into his lap, though he avoided the thickest, most insistent part of him.
“I would have, though not the earl. He was nearly eighty years old.”
“Definitely too old.” She might have said more, but at that moment, he pressed into the arch of her foot. Hard and sharp, as his mother had taught him, and he felt a tremor go through her body before she moaned in relief.
“I never got the chance,” he said. “Thankfully. I was coming home one evening when the son of the first man I’d beaten found me. Him and four of his friends.”
“Oh no.”
