Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [3]
After she had gone, Sebastian sat up and took from his bedstand the small picture of the Blessed Virgin and the Baby Jesus his mother had given him. Hugging it to his chest, he prayed.
He had been taught all the proper prayers of his father's faith, but this night he uttered the one he'd heard his mother say, holding the long strand of beads in her hand. He'd heard it so many times that he knew it by heart, though he hadn't yet learned enough Latin to understand all the words.
"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus," he began.
He did not know that his father stood outside the door listening.
He did not know that the popish prayer was, to Lord Dain, the very last straw.
* * *
A fortnight later, Sebastian was bundled into a carriage and taken to Eton.
After a brief interview with the headmaster, he was abandoned to the immense dormitory and the tender mercies of his schoolmates.
Lord Wardell, the oldest and largest in the immediate vicinity, stared at Sebastian for a very long time, then burst into laughter. The others promptly followed suit. Sebastian stood frozen listening to what seemed like thousands of howling hyenas.
"No wonder his mama ran away," Wardell told the company when he found his breath again. "Did she scream when you were born, Black-a-moor?" he asked Sebastian.
"It's Blackmoor," Sebastian said, clenching his fists.
"It's what I say it is, insect," Wardell informed him. "And I say your mama bolted because she couldn't stomach the sight of you another minute. Because you look precisely like a filthy little earwig." Clasping his hands behind his back, he slowly circled the bewildered Sebastian. "What do you say to that, Black-a-moor?"
Sebastian gazed at the faces sneering down at him. Phelps, the groom, had said he would find friends at school. Sebastian, who'd never had anyone to play with, had clung to that hope through the long, lonely journey.
He saw no friends now, only mocking faces— and all well above his head. Every single boy in the vast Long Chamber was older and bigger than he was.
"I asked a question, earwig," Wardell said. "When your betters ask a question, you'd best answer."
Sebastian stared hard into his tormentor's blue eyes. "Stronzo," he said.
Wardell lightly cuffed his head. "None of that macaroni gibberish, Black-a-moor."
"Stronzo," Sebastian repeated boldly. "Bumhole turd."
Wardell lifted his pale eyebrows and gazed at his assembled comrades. "Did you hear that?" he asked them. "It isn't enough he's ugly as Beelzebub, but he's got a filthy mouth besides. What's to be done, my lads?"
"Toss him," said one.
"Dunk him," said another.
"In the crapping case," another added. "Looking for turds, ain't he?"
This suggestion met with howling enthusiasm. In an instant, they were upon him.
* * *
Several times en route to his doom, they gave Sebastian a chance to recant. He had only to lick Wardell's boots and beg forgiveness and he would be spared.
But the monster had taken hold of him, and Sebastian answered defiantly with a string of all the wicked English and Italian words he'd ever heard.
Defiance didn't help him much at the moment. What helped was certain laws of physics. Small as he was, he was awkwardly formed. His bony shoulders, for instance, were too wide to fit into the privy. All Wardell could do was stuff Sebastian's head into the hole and hold it there until he threw up.
The incident, to Wardell and his comrades' irritation, did not teach the earwig respect. Though they devoted the better part of their free time thereafter to educating him, Sebastian wouldn't learn. They mocked his looks and his mixed blood and made up filthy songs about his mother. They dangled him by his feet from windows, tossed him in blankets, and hid dead rodents in his bed. Privately— though there was precious little privacy at Eton— he wept with misery, rage, and loneliness. Publicly, he cursed and fought, though he always lost.
Between constant abuse outside of the classroom and regular