“What d’you want?” he rasped, his voice low and husky as if from disuse or strain. His accent was cultured, but the tone was far from welcoming.
Helen opened her mouth, scrambling for words. This was not at all what she’d expected. Dear God, what was that thing by his side?
At that moment, lightning forked across the sky, close and amazingly bright. It lit the man and his familiar as if he was on a stage. The beast was tall and gray and lean with gleaming black eyes. The man was even worse. Black, lank hair fell tangling to his shoulders. He wore old breeches, gaiters, and a rough coat better suited for the rubbish heap. One side of his face was twisted with red angry scars. A single light brown eye reflected the lightning at them diabolically.
Most horrible of all, there was only a sunken pit where his left eye should have been.
Abigail screamed.
THEY ALWAYS SCREAMED.
Sir Alistair Munroe scowled at the woman and children on his step. Behind them the rain suddenly let down in a wall of water, making the children crowd against their mother’s skirts. Children, particularly small ones, nearly always screamed and cried and ran away from him. Sometimes even grown women did. Just last year, a rather melodramatic young lady on Princess Street in Edinburgh had fainted at the sight of him.
Alistair had wanted to slap the silly chit.
Instead, he’d scurried away like a diseased rat, hiding the maimed side of his face as best he could in his lowered tricorne and pulled-up cloak. He expected the reaction in cities and towns. It was the reason he didn’t like to frequent areas where people congregated. What he didn’t expect was a female child screaming on his very doorstep.
“Stop that,” he growled at her, and the lass snapped her mouth shut.
There were two of them, a male and a female. The lad was a brown birdlike thing that could’ve been anywhere from three to eight. Alistair had no basis to judge since he avoided children when he could. The female was the elder. She was pale and blond and staring up at him with blue eyes that looked much too large for her thin face. Perhaps it was a fault of her bloodline—such abnormalities often denoted mental deficiency.
Her mother had eyes the same color, he noted as he finally, reluctantly, looked at her. She was beautiful. Of course. It would be a blazing beauty who appeared upon 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 d’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 aristocrats 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.”
He remembered that one was supposed to be kind to mental deficients. Why? He wasn’t sure.
“I repeat, I don’t have a housekeeper.” He spoke slowly so perhaps her confused brain could understand the words. “Nor do I wish 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 two soft 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 it 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 only 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 getting quite wet out here, you know.”
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 wide and firm, supple and masculine. The smile revealed him as human. Not the gargoyle she’d been thinking him, but a man.
It was gone at once, of course, that smile. He caught her looking at him, and his expression turned stony and faintly cynical again. “You’ll continue to get wet unless you come in, madam.”
“Thank you.” She could feel the blush heating her cheeks again as she stepped into the dim hall. “You’re most kind, I’m sure.”
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. But 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. The gigantic dog loped at his side, lean, dark, and tall, very like her master. They passed out of a great hall into a dim passage. The candlelight bobbed ahead, casting weird 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 avidly from side to side as she hurried.
“It’s terribly dirty, isn’t it?” Abigail whispered.
Sir Alistair turned as she spoke, and at first Helen thought he’d heard. “Have you eaten?”
Helen ne
arly trod on his toes, he’d halted so suddenly. As it was, she ended up standing much too close to him. She had to crane her neck to look him in the eye, and he held the candle near his chest, casting the light diabolically up his face.
“We had tea at the inn, but—” she began breathlessly.
“Good,” he said, and turned away. He called back over his shoulder as he disappeared around a corner, “You can stay the night in one of the guest rooms. I’ll hire a carriage to send you back to London in the morning.”
Helen gripped the bags higher and hurried to catch up. “But, I really don’t—”
He’d already started up a narrow stone stair. “You needn’t worry about the expense.”
For a second, Helen paused at the bottom of the stair, glaring at the firm backside steadily receding. Unfortunately, the light was receding as well.
“Hurry, Mama,” Abigail urged her. She’d taken her brother’s hand like a good older sister and had already mounted the steps with Jamie.
The horrid man turned at a landing up the stairs. “Coming, Mrs. Halifax?”
“Yes, Sir Alistair,” Helen said through gritted teeth. “I just think that if you’ll only try Lady Vale’s idea of having a—”
“I don’t want a housekeeper,” he rasped, and turned to the stairs again.
“I find that hard to believe,” Helen panted behind him, “considering the state of the castle I’ve seen so far.”
“And yet, I enjoy my home the way it is.”
Helen narrowed her eyes. She refused to believe anyone, even this beast of a man, actually enjoyed dirt. “Lady Vale specifically instructed me—”
“Lady Vale is mistaken in her belief that I desire a housekeeper.”
They’d reached the top of the stairs—finally!—and he paused to open a narrow door. He entered the room and lit a candle.
Helen stopped and watched him from the hall. When he came back out, she met his gaze determinedly. “You may not want a housekeeper, but it is patently obvious that you need a housekeeper.”
That corner of his mouth quirked again. “You may argue all you wish, madam, but the fact remains that I neither need nor wish to have you here.”
He gestured to the room with one hand. The children ran in ahead. He hadn’t bothered moving from the doorway, so Helen was forced to sidle in sideways, her bosom nearly brushing his chest.
She looked up at him as she passed. “I warn you, I shall make it my purpose to change your mind, Sir Alistair.”
He inclined his head, his one good eye glittering in the light of the candle. “Good night, Mrs. Halifax.”
And then he shut the door gently behind him.
THE DISH
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Elizabeth Hoyt
Gentle Reader,
The hero of my book TO SEDUCE A SINNER (on sale now) Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale, had quite a rocky road on his way to the altar. In fact, TO SEDUCE A SINNER opens with Vale being rejected by his fiancée—the second fiancée he’s had in six months. Thus, it should be no surprise that once married Vale endeavored to pass on some of his marital wisdom to other gentlemen. I’ll reprint his advice below.
A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO MARRIAGE AND MANAGING THE LADY WIFE
1Chose carefully when selecting a bride. A lady with a sweet disposition, engaging smile, and full bosom is a boon to any man.
2However, should a gentleman find that he has been left at the altar yet again, he may find himself accepting the proposal of a lady of less than a full bosom and rather too much intelligence.
3Surprisingly, he may also find himself attracted to said lady.
4The marriage bed should be approached with delicacy and tenderness. Remember, your lady wife is a virgin of good family, and thus may be shocked or even repulsed by the activities of the marriage bed. Best to keep them short.
5However, try not to be too shocked if your lady wife turns out not to be shocked by the marriage bed.
6Or, even if she is wildly enthusiastic about her marital duties.
7If such is your case, you are a fortunate man indeed.
8The lady wife can be a mysterious creature, passionate, yet oddly secretive about her feelings toward you, her lord and husband.
9The gentleman may find his thoughts returning again and again to the subject of his lady wife’s feeling for him. “Does she love me?” you may wonder as you consume your morning toast. Try not to let these thoughts become too obsessive.
10Whatever you do, do not fall in love with your lady wife, no matter how alluring her lips or seductive her replies to your banter are. That way lies folly.
Yours Very Sincerely,
www.elizabethhoyt.com
From the desk of Marliss Melton
Dear Reader,
Sean Harlan, the hero of my latest book TOO FAR GONE (on sale now) is a killer. Surprised? I thought you might be. How could such a charming, sexy, fun-loving man with a sunny disposition and a special way with children be a sniper for his SEAL team? How could he be so ruthless and merciless, taking lives without remorse?
Oddly enough, this all began with one of my kids. I wanted to create a hero with the same relaxed and irrepressible charm as my son. So Sean was born. But I did a little research into that “relaxed” personality type and learned something that blew me away: it’s the one and only personality type that makes up a natural born killer! Did you know that in battles, only 15 to 25 percent of infantrymen ever fire their weapons? And most fire over the heads of the enemy! Those who actually shoot to kill comprise less than 4 percent of those in battle yet they do half the killing!
When I discovered this, I knew exactly who Sean was, dark side and all. He was a man that was indispensable to the military. After all, without men like Sean, armies would crumble and decisive battles would be lost. But I wanted Sean to be indispensable to a woman who needed him, too; so, I created Ellie Stuart as the perfect foil. As hesitant as she is about Sean’s killer instinct, she soon realizes that without Sean, she stands little chance of reclaiming her kidnapped sons. She also comes to see that her mother’s instinct makes killing a viable option and that she and Sean are not so different after all.
It is my hope that you’ll love Sean as much as I do. Oh, and by the way, my son is a perfectly nice young man . . . so far.
To learn more about Sean and Ellie’s personalities, visit the FUN STUFF page at www.marlissmelton.com.
Thanks for reading,
From the desk of Lani Diane Rich
Dear Reader,
Most often, when you write a book, people ask you why you chose that particular setting. All I can say about northern Idaho, the setting for my latest book, WISH YOU WERE HERE (on sale now), is that I drove through it once while moving with my family from Anchorage, Alaska to Syracuse, New York, and I was absolutely entranced. Given the hard-nosed business woman Freya was, I figured there would be no greater fish-out-of-water situation for her than being stuck in the middle of all those trees.
One of the challenges of Freya’s story was where I’d left her at the end of CRAZY IN LOVE—on a road toward something of a mental breakdown. Like her sister Flynn, I felt it was high time for Freya’s life to buck her off like a mechanical dive bar bronco; and so, it was with great relish that I saddled her with a rare “condition” and placed her in an impossible situation. While I was writing CRAZY IN LOVE, Freya was one of those magical secondary characters who just begged for her own book, and it was so much fun to spend this time with her and watch her grow into her own person.
As for Nate, he was a lot of fun to write as well. Where Freya was hardened and tough, Nate was open, sensitive, and honorable. His relationship with Piper was especially fun for me to write, especially against the backdrop of Freya’s relationship with her own father. Nate’s a classic cleft-chin hero, but there was a lot of depth under those still waters, which made him a pleasure to write.
I hope you enjoy reading the story as much
as I did writing it. Thanks so much!
www.lanidianerich.com
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