To Beguile a Beast (Legend of the Four Soldiers #3)(21)

He raised his glass but didn’t comment, his eye watching her.

“I want to see the book,” Jamie said.

Abigail had stopped eating. She didn’t echo Jamie’s plea, but it was quite obvious she was curious as well.

Sir Alistair inclined his head. “I suppose there must be a copy about somewhere in the library. Shall we go see?”

“Huzzah!” yelled Jamie again, this time fortunately having swallowed the food in his mouth.

Sir Alistair looked across the table at Helen, cocking the eyebrow over his eye patch at her. It looked very much like a challenge.

ALISTAIR ROSE FROM his newly polished dining room table and walked around it to help Mrs. Halifax from her chair. She stared up at him, suspicious at his courtesy, so he held out his arm just to flummox her.

She laid her fingertips on his sleeve as if touching a hot pot. “We don’t wish to take your time. I know you’re busy.”

He cocked his head to better see her. She wasn’t getting away that easily. “Alas, I have no pressing matters at the moment, ma’am. Take a candle.”

She didn’t reply but merely nodded, though a small frown played about her mouth. She picked up one of the candles from a sideboard. Alistair led her toward the library, the children trailing behind. He was conscious of her fingers so lightly pressed against his arm and of her warmth as she walked beside him. Women, especially beautiful ones, didn’t often venture so near to him. He could smell the soap she’d used to wash her hair—a light lemon scent.

“Here we are,” he said as they made the library door.

He opened the door and went in. Mrs. Halifax immediately separated herself from him, not surprisingly really, but he felt the loss. Maudlin idiocy, that. He should be used by now to women running from him. He didn’t comment but took her candle and began lighting the ones in the room.

This had been his father’s library and his grandfather’s before him. Unlike many great house libraries, this one was actually used and the books read and reread. It was a rectangular room on an outside wall with some of the largest windows in the castle. The windows were hidden behind long, dusty curtains that hadn’t been drawn for years. All except the one curtain that had fallen, letting in Lady Grey’s afternoon ray of sunlight. The remaining walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves, each crammed to overflowing with volumes. At one end of the library was a small fireplace. Two decrepit chairs and a small table sat before it.

He finished lighting the candles and turned back. The children and Mrs. Halifax were still clustered by the door. A corner of his mouth kicked up. “Come in. I know it isn’t as beautifully clean as the dining room now is, but I don’t think you’ll come to actual harm.”

Mrs. Halifax muttered something under her breath and frowned at one of the chairs by the fireplace. The chair was lopsided; it had a broken leg and was propped up by two books. Abigail was running her finger along a bookshelf and inspecting the dust collected on her fingertip.

But Jamie ran to a globe of the world and peered at it. “I can’t see England.”

The globe was nearly obscured by dust.

“Ah.” Sir Alistair took out his handkerchief and wiped off the globe. “There. Now England’s revealed, and so is Scotland. Here we are.” He pointed to the area north of the Firth of Forth.

Jamie squinted at the globe and then looked up. “Where’s your book?”

Alistair glanced about the library, frowning. He hadn’t had occasion to look at his own writing in quite some time. “Over here, I think.”

He led the way to a corner in which several oversized volumes were piled on the floor.

“These ought to be put on a shelf,” Mrs. Halifax muttered. “I can’t believe you keep your own book on the floor.”

Alistair grunted before rummaging in the pile with Jamie. “Ah, here it is.”

He laid the book out on the floor and opened it. Jamie promptly threw himself down on his stomach to peer closely at the pages, and Abigail sat by his side to look.

“You must have spent many years in New England.” Mrs. Halifax was standing behind her children, looking at the book over their shoulders. “Mind the pages when you turn them, Jamie.”

Alistair strolled to her side. “Three years.”

She looked up at him, her blue eyes startlingly bright in the candlelit room. “What?”

“Three years.” He cleared his throat. “I spent three years in New England recording the information in that book.”

“That’s a very long time. Did not the war interfere with your work?”

“On the contrary. I was attached to regiments in His Majesty’s army the entire time.”

“But wasn’t that dangerous?” Her brows were drawn together in concern.

For him.

He looked away. Her eyes were too beautiful for this dingy room, and he regretted the impulse to bring her and the children in here. Why lay himself open like this, let them see into his life, his past? This was a mistake.

“Sir Alistair?”

He didn’t know what to say. Yes, it’d been dangerous—so dangerous that he’d left behind an eye, two fingers, and his pride in the woods of North America—but he couldn’t tell her that. She was merely making conversation.

He was saved from having to reply by Jamie looking up suddenly from the book. “Where’s Lady Grey?”