Read Online Bookworm by Christopher Nuttall - Free Book Online

have gone to Howarth to beg favours, not the other way around. He certainly wouldn’t have had the influence to make a noble lord assume a responsibility he didn’t wish to assume.
    And yet she had the strange feeling that Lord Howarth was telling the truth.
    “That was good of him,” she said. Part of her was astonished that she’d pushed it so far, but there was one more question to ask. “I assume you read my file at the orphanage?”
    “Well, of course,” Lord Howarth said. He seemed to be relieved that they’d moved away from Councillor Travis. Elaine made a mental note to go back to that issue at a later date. Even if her Guardian was telling the truth, there was something about it that didn’t make sense. “I had to be sure that I wasn’t assuming the Guardianship of a thief.”
    “Of course not,” Elaine muttered. Never mind the fact that an orphan would have better reason than most to steal. She cleared her throat. “Do you know who my parents were?”
    “I was told that you’d been passed to the orphanage as a baby,” Lord Howarth said. He shrugged. “The orphanage never bothered to investigate your parentage. You could be the last surviving heir to the Empire for all I know, or the daughter of a scullery maid and a noble-born son. The gods know that such births are rarely treated as important to the families...”
    Elaine nodded. Bastard children were a problem for any noble family, particularly when their sons were raised in a world where lower-class female servants literally couldn’t say no. Very few families would consider such a child an equal, no matter the circumstances of his – or her – birth. Farming the child out to an orphanage was one of the kinder ways to deal with the situation. Elaine had always considered such families to be heartless. She wondered, absently, if she was actually related to Lord Howarth, before dismissing the thought. If that were true, she would have preferred to forever remain Elaine No-Kin.
    “I suppose they do,” Elaine said. Lord Howarth shrugged, again. He really didn’t care very much about her, she realised, but that was no surprise. She’d never been given any reason to assume he cared. “Could you ask if they kept some records they never showed you...?”
    “They would have shown me everything,” Lord Howarth said. He looked up at her, sharply. “Why do you care, all of a sudden? You might not like what you find out.”
    “I don’t know,” Elaine admitted. She honestly didn’t know where the desire to know the truth behind her birth had come from. It had always been part of her, but it hadn’t been important...not until she’d been hit by a powerful curse. And then she’d dared to ask an Inquisitor about her birth. There had been a time when she would have preferred to die rather than speak to one of the Inquisitors. “I think...”
    Something clicked in her mind. “You don’t have any money left, do you?” she asked. It seemed impossible, and yet Councillor Travis had been in a position to influence her Guardian. And he’d seemed to worry about the cost of her medical treatment. “You’ve finally spent your inheritance...”
    “Throw her out,” Lord Howarth ordered, so sharply that she knew that she was right. “Now.”
    Judd grabbed Elaine’s arm and dragged her out of the room, back down the corridor towards the door. A dozen spells rose up in Elaine’s mind for breaking his grip and freeing herself, or banishing the demon back to hell, but she pushed them down. There was no need.
    She was still chuckling when Judd threw her out of the gate and onto the street.

 

    Chapter Six
    “He’s got no money left?”
    Daria started to chuckle. “No money...and he owes money to every loan shark in the city!”
    “I don’t think it’s quite so funny for him,” Elaine said, before she started giggling herself. It was funny, damn it. “He might have to start watching what he spends money on now.”
    “Drink and whores,”