Page 49 of Rules for a Bastard Lord
“A talented one. But she’d chosen the wrong protector, and he’d beaten her because she was pregnant.”
“My God,” she whispered, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“I don’t think it was true,” he said gently.
“But she’d been beaten.”
He nodded. “She cried in my arms. She whispered that she’d heard stories of who I was. She called me such heroic names.” He felt his lips twist in a mockery of a smile. “She had read the tales of King Arthur too. Or at least knew I had.”
“Did she call you Gawain and ask you to avenge her?”
He shook his head. “Lancelot. She cast herself as Guinevere, tied to another, when her heart belonged to me.”
She frowned. “You knew her well?”
“Not at all,” he said, “though she had a way that made even an hour in her company feel like we had been the closest of lovers since childhood.”
She leaned forward, her brows drawn tight. “I cannot believe you are that romantic.”
“I wasn’t. I didn’t think I was. But…” How to explain? “She said everything I wanted to believe about myself. That I was righteous despite being born a bastard.”
“Were you a fanciful man?”
Why didn’t she understand? “It was Cara. The way she spoke to me, the way she clung to me, the way…” He cut off his words. The way she had stroked his cock and begged him to use it. To satisfy her yearning, just that once. Then again and again…
He cut off those thoughts, not wanting to bring that filth into this place.
“Do you know,” he said, “that in the Bible there is a tradition of washing feet? When one enters a household, the lady washes the guest’s feet—”
“With her hair. A woman washed Jesus’s feet and dried them with her hair.” She tilted her head as she studied him. “Are you asking me to wash your—”
“I never thought that, Miss Bluebell. But have you ever had it done for you? Has anyone ever bathed your feet?”
She blinked at him, obviously bemused by the question. “Is this something Cara did for you?”
He shuddered in true revulsion. Though why that act would horrify him, he hadn’t the foggiest idea. “My mother used to do it for her gentlemen. She said it took away the dirt and left everything clean for both her and the man.” He shrugged. “She found it soothing, she said.”
Miss Bluebell stared, clearly not understanding.
“Let me show you,” he said.
“Wot?”
He laughed at her shocked face. “Have you never put your bare feet in the stream and let it wash your cares away?”
“Of course, but—”
“Let me please, Miss Bluebell. It eases me as well.” He smiled, making sure he looked as innocuous as possible. “My mother taught me, and I assure you, it’s a wonder for both man and woman.”
“Washing feet?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. There was sacredness to the act. “And it’s in the Bible, so you know it is holy.”
“I doubt the vicar would agree.”
“He would if he had a beautiful woman washing his feet.”
“But I’m not—”
