Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

Everything and everyone was tied together here. For better or for worse.

She just needed to convince Nick to accept his inheritance. All she had to do was find him. On a huge estate. This should be easy.

“Not bloody likely,” she mumbled to herself.

Chapter Five

Charles Vane had done this to himself. He should have stopped William from going to America. He’d been too free with his son. That was the truth he’d been telling himself for years—and that’s what it was, the truth. He’d done the hard thing for the right reason. He was more than ready to accept the vitriol, even if he did not deserve it.

What he hadn’t been ready for was Nicholas to look so much like his father.

When his grandson had walked in with that familiar half smile and cocksure attitude, Charles had gone back in time to the day William had stood looking out the same window and declared he couldn’t be forced into a life he’d never wanted because of an accident of birth. They’d fought. William had left. It had taken more than a year to track him down in that tiny house halfway across the world. And he’d had a wife and a baby? Totally unacceptable. That just wasn’t done.

For generations, the Vanes had gone to boarding school and university. They’d visited home only on holiday. They’d kept a stiff upper lip, appropriate distance, and dedicated themselves to Dallinger Park—the family’s symbol—above all else. William had bucked that. He’d run from the heavy burden of duty—at least for a while. But it always came back to duty in the end. That’s what he’d made sure his son understood before leaving America. That William thought he was doing right by his wife and son rather than to Dallinger Park made no difference. His son came home and now so had his grandson.

Charles picked up the phone sitting on his desk and rang his solicitor.

“He’s agreed?” Ansel Cahill asked.

“He will.” Charles would make sure of it.

“There is gossip already about your health and his legitimacy.”

Of course there was. “Let them talk.”

“You don’t have to do this.” His solicitor lowered his voice. “No one knows about the request William made in his will except for you.”

Request. It wasn’t the word he’d use. William had been every bit as manipulative and clever as the Vanes were known to be. The title may run through Charles’s blood, but the money came from his late wife’s side of the family. The terms of William’s will had been plain and unbreakable. The trust went to Nicholas upon his thirtieth birthday, not to the estate. If his grandson failed to fulfill his duty by becoming the next Earl of Englefield, Dallinger Park, the title, and everything else would be negated. The Vanes would fall back into history, forgotten.

“Nicholas Vane will be the next Earl of Englefield,” Charles said.

“Then he needs to agree before your condition worsens.”

“It’s not sunset for me yet, and I do not need instruction from you about how to fulfill my duties.” He’d heard nothing but that since he’d left the nursery.

“Yes, sir,” Cahill said, sounding property chastised.

“Get the paperwork in order to transfer William’s trust. I’ll be in London in a few days to sign off on it.”

“Does he have any idea about any of this?”

“That is not of your concern, Cahill.” And it was rather impertinent of him to inquire.

Charles ended the call but didn’t move from his desk. The room was too filled with old ghosts to move. So he s

at, looking out that same window his son had all those years ago and watched the heather on the moors move in the breeze like a purple wave. As far as the solicitor needed to know, this was only about ensuring Dallinger Park’s financial stability after years of stretching every pound to pay the outrageous bills. That wasn’t the only—or even the most important—reason, though, that Nicholas had to become the next earl.

Charles had failed William and his family name. Because of that, he’d been forced to take extreme measures to save both. Now there was more work to be done, and he no longer had the luxury of time in which to complete it. He had to fix what he’d wrecked. He had to bring his grandson home. He had to make it up to William.

He had to ensure that William knew—no, not William. Charles squeezed his eyes shut and willed the fog in his head to clear. William was gone. Nicholas. That’s who he’d meant. He had to make sure Nicholas understood the real reason why his father had left and that he’d never planned to stay away forever. He had to understand that family shouldn’t be hated because of one man’s horrible mistake.

Chapter Six

The walk into Bowhaven was chilly. How in the world it was in the sixties here, despite it being August, he had no idea.

Back home in Virginia, he’d have been shirtless and in shorts out on the boat, pretending to fish while he worked out the kinks in his latest project, a dog collar that picked up on a dog’s nervous energy—aka the uptick in its pulse—and played back prerecorded soothing messages from the owner. It was sort of the aural version of leaving a blanket smelling like mama dog in a puppy’s basket. The downside of the collar being that the dog drove itself nuts looking for the owner after hearing the voice, which caused more anxiety for the dog, which led to more talking from the collar, which resulted in poor Fido being on the edge of a doggie nervous breakdown. There was the nugget of a good idea inside all those layers of craziness; Nick just had to figure out how to get to it, exploit it, and mass-produce it.

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.