Royal Bastard (Instantly Royal 1)

He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because that’s how it’s properly done.” Really, what other explanation did he need? Not everything needed to be taken apart and examined. Some things just were. “When it comes to handling the cutlery, your fork should be held in your left hand.” She picked up the fork next to the place set out for the earl so she could demonstrate. “And the knife in your right. You keep the fork tongs pointed down and push the food onto the back of it with your knife, as opposed to scooping it up as if you were eating with a shovel.”

“That’s very specific.”

“We’re English—good table manners are essential.” Good Lord, when had she started to sound so much like her mother?

Looking a bit like a man solving a puzzle, Nick swapped the hand he was holding his fork with and picked up his knife before cutting a single bite-size piece from his tomato. “What else is deemed essential?”

Now that was a good question. She wasn’t a peer, but both of her parents had drilled the importance of good manners into her and her sister from the day they were old enough to talk.

“Courteousness—saying please and thank you, forming an orderly queue, and always being punctual. Not being overly familiar with people—kisses and hugs hello are reserved for close friends only, no personal questions should be asked, and handshakes are always preferred.”

“My mama would have broken the no-kissing-and-hugging rule. That woman never met a stranger in her life,” he said, a genuine smile erasing the cautious seriousness with which he’d taken to the task of eating. “She would have been totally down with the table-manners part, though. She was a fiend about those.”

“No elbows on the table growing up?”

He chuckled. “Only if I wanted to get the look. You know the look?”

“I believe that look from a mother is universal,” she said, the commonality between them helping to loosen some of the tension that had seeped into her shoulders since the earl had revealed all that was on the line if she failed.

“I remember one time—” His gaze shifted toward the dining room door, and he stopped talking, his look darkening. “Never mind. No personal chitchat, right? You English like it cold and formal.” He shoved his chair from the table and got up. “I’m going for a walk.”

Confusion had her scrambling to figure out what had just changed. “We’ve only begun.”

He didn’t even pause to answer, “Later.”

Then he walked out into the manicured gardens without ever looking back. Getting up, she glanced toward the dining room door behind her. The earl stood there, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Sir—”

That was as far as she got before he, too, walked away, disappearing down the hallway.

The two men may not have set eyes on each other before Nick had arrived, but they obviously shared a stubborn streak as wide as the English Channel. That was just going to do wonders when it came to accomplishing her mission.

“How bloody lovely,” she muttered in the empty room.

…

Two days later, Nick was getting antsy trapped inside his DNA donor’s family estate in the middle of rainy (and chilly despite it being August) England. He couldn’t take another moment under the watchful gaze of Earl Powder Wig’s portrait as he got lessons from Brooke about the Vanes of Dallinger Park. The only thing that made it even slightly bearable was that his teacher was hot—if he was into tightly wound women who droned on and on about family responsibility and the duty he had to Bowhaven that she’d been hammering home since his breakfast of black pudding, beans, and slightly runny eggs. Strangely enough, his dick was completely into it, which explained why he couldn’t get to sleep with her on the other side of that damn door without jerking off last night like a teenager.

Standing in front of the large fireplace bracketed on both sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Brooke paused long enough in her lecture to give him the full Lady Lemons icy glare that only made his dick twitch before continuing with local geography facts. Lucky for him, the information went in one ear and out the other while he put his brain to better use trying to determine what kind of panties she was wearing under today’s knee-length skirt. He couldn’t see panty lines and God knew he’d looked every time she turned around—what could he say, red-blooded American man with a pulse and a working dick here—but she didn’t seem the kind to go thong or commando. Lady Lemons liked to keep her stuff wrapped up tight. Granny panties? He pictured her in black satin that fully covered the curve of her ass and went all the way up to her belly button. His dick grew heavy, and he couldn’t argue with the smaller head’s logic because Brooke would make even granny panties look hot.

“Mr. Vane,” she said with a snotty little sigh that kinda turned him on more.

He needed to get out of here before he lost his mind during what was already turning into the longest week of his life. Shoving a hand through his hair, he bolted up from the uncomfortable chair he was sitting in.

“I can’t do it,” he said, striding across what he would have called a big-ass living room but Brooke called the hall to the windows overlooking the stone patio that ran the length of the mansion. “Let’s get out of here.”

“But I was just getting to the part about the moors.”

“Those moors.” He looked out at the hills covered in purple heather visible from the windows.

“Exactly.”

He opened the french doors leading out onto the patio. “Let’s go take a closer look.”

She picked up a book that was one of many stacked on a table. “But I have the tenth earl’s diaries about his grouse-hunting exploits right here.”