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

Her mother had eyes the same color, he saw as he finally, reluctantly, looked at her. She was beautiful. Of course. It would be a blazing beauty who appeared on his doorstep in a thunderstorm. She had eyes the exact color of newly opened harebells, shining gold hair, and a magnificent bosom that any man, even a scarred, misanthropic recluse such as himself, would find arousing. It was, after all, the natural reaction of a human male to a human female of obvious reproductive capability, however much he resented it.

“What do you want?” he repeated to the woman.

Perhaps the entire family was mentally deficient, because they simply stared at him, mute. The woman’s stare was fixated on his eye socket. Naturally. He’d left off his patch again—the damned thing was a nuisance—and his face was no doubt going to inspire nightmares in her sleep tonight.

He sighed. He’d been about to sit down to a dinner of porridge and boiled sausages when he’d heard the knocking. Wretched as his meal was, it would be even less appetizing cold.

“Carlyle Manor is a good two miles thataway.” Alistair tilted his head in a westerly direction. No doubt they were guests of his neighbors gone astray. He shut the door.

Or rather, he tried to shut the door.

The woman inserted her foot in the crack, preventing him. For a moment, he actually considered shutting her foot in the door, but a remnant of civility asserted itself and he stopped. He looked at the woman, his eye narrowed, and waited for an explanation.

The woman’s chin tilted. “I’m your housekeeper.”

Definitely a case of mental deficiency. Probably the result of aristocratic overbreeding, for despite her lack of mental prowess, she and the children were richly dressed.

Which only made her statement even more absurd.

He sighed. “I don’t have a housekeeper. Really, ma’am, Carlyle Manor is just over the hill—”

She actually had the temerity to interrupt him. “No, you misunderstand. I’m your new housekeeper.”

“I repeat. I. Don’t. Have. A. Housekeeper.” He spoke slowly so perhaps her confused brain could understand the words. “Nor do I wish for a housekeeper. I—”

“This is Castle Greaves?”

“Aye.”

“And you are Sir Alistair Munroe?”

He scowled. “Aye, but—”

She wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, she had stooped to rummage in one of the bags at her feet. He stared at her, irritated and perplexed and vaguely aroused, because her position gave him a spectacular view down the bodice of her gown. If he was a religious man, he might think this a vision.

She made a satisfied sound and straightened again, smiling quite gloriously. “Here. It’s a letter from the Viscountess Vale. She’s sent me here to be your housekeeper.”

She was proffering a rather crumpled piece of paper.

He stared at the paper a moment before snatching it from her hand. He raised the candle to provide some light to read the scrawling missive. Beside him, Lady Grey, his deerhound, evidently decided that she wasn’t getting sausages for dinner any time soon. She sighed gustily and lay down on the hall flagstones.

Alistair finished reading the missive to the sound of the rain pounding steadily on his drive. Then he looked up. He’d met Lady Vale only once. She and her husband, Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale, had visited his home uninvited a little over a month ago. She hadn’t struck him at the time as an interfering female, but the letter did indeed inform him that he had a new housekeeper. Madness. What had Vale’s wife been thinking? But then it was near impossible to fathom the workings of the female mind. He’d have to send the too-beautiful, too-richly-dressed housekeeper and her offspring away in the morning. Unfortunately, if nothing else, they were protégés of Lady Vale, and he couldn’t very well send them off into the dark of night.

Alistair met the woman’s blue eyes. “What did you say your name was?”

She blushed as prettily as the sun rising in spring on the heath. “I didn’t. My name is Helen Halifax. Mrs. Halifax. We are becoming quite wet out here, you realize.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up at the starch in her tone. Not a mental deficient after all. “Well, then, you and your children had better come in, Mrs. Halifax.”

THE TINY SMILE curving one side of Sir Alistair’s lips startled Helen. It drew attention to a mouth both wide and firm, supple and masculine. The smile revealed him as not the gargoyle she’d been thinking him, but a man.

It was gone at once, of course, as soon as he caught her looking at him. In an instant, his expression turned stony and faintly cynical. “You’ll continue to get wet until you come in, madam.”

“Thank you.” She swallowed and stepped into the dim hall. “You’re most kind, I’m sure, Sir Alistair.”

He shrugged and turned away. “If you say so.”

Beastly man! He hadn’t even offered to carry their bags. Of course, most gentlemen didn’t carry the belongings of their housekeepers. Even so, it would’ve been nice to at least offer.

Helen grasped a bag in each hand. “Come, children.”

They had to walk quickly, almost jogging, to keep up with Sir Alistair and what appeared to be the only light in the castle—his candle. The gigantic dog padded along at his side, lean, dark, and tall. In fact, she was very like her master. They passed out of a great hall and into a dim passage. The candlelight bobbed ahead, casting eerie shadows on grimy walls and high, cobwebbed ceilings. Jamie and Abigail trailed on either side of her. Jamie was so tired that he merely trudged along, but Abigail was looking curiously from side to side as she hurried.