He rose, joints creaking, and began dressing, but he’d only managed smallclothes before his door suddenly opened. For the second time that morning, he grabbed for the sheets. The puppy spun and yelped at the intruder.
Alistair sighed, biting back a curse, and looked into startled harebell-blue eyes. “Good morning, Mrs. Halifax. Had you thought to knock before you entered?”
Those beautiful eyes blinked and she frowned. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Attempting to find my breeches, if you must know.” He propped a fist on his hip, thanking providence that he still wore his eye patch from the night before. “If you’ll leave me in privacy, I can greet you more fully attired.”
“Humph.” Instead of leaving, she bustled past him and set her tray on the table next to his bed. “You need to get back in bed.”
“What I need,” he rasped, very aware that his cock had sprung back to life at her entrance, “is to dress and take the puppy out.”
“I’ve brought you some warm milk and bread,” she replied blithely, and then stood in front of him, arms folded, as if she actually expected him to eat pap.
He regarded the bowl on his bedside table. It was half full of milk. Soggy bits of bread floated on top, a thoroughly revolting mess.
“I’ve begun to wonder, Mrs. Halifax,” he said as he dropped the sheets and reached for the puppy, “if you’ve decided on a deliberate campaign to drive me mad.”
“What—?”
“Your insistence on disturbing my work, hiring servants I do not need, and in general disrupting my life cannot be all accident.”
“I didn’t—!”
He set the puppy in front of the bowl as she sputtered. The puppy stuck its face and one paw in the bowl and began to eat, spilling milk and bread lumps on the table. Alistair looked at his housekeeper.
Who’d found her voice. “I never—”
“And then there’s the problem of your attire.”
She looked down at herself. “What’s wrong with my attire?”
“This dress”—he flicked the lace at her bosom, brushing against warm, soft breasts as he did so—“is too fashionable for a housekeeper. Yet you persist in swanning about my castle in it, in an attempt to distract me.”
Her cheeks reddened, making her blue eyes sparkle with indignation. “I have only the two dresses, if you must know. It isn’t my fault that you find them objectionable.”
He took a step toward her, his chest nearly touching the dress in question. He wasn’t sure anymore if he was trying to drive her away or lure her closer. The scent of lemons was heady in his nostrils. “And what of your insistence on barging into my rooms without so much as a knock?”
“I—”
“The only conclusion I can come to is that you wish to see my body unclothed. Again.”
Her eyes dropped—perhaps inevitably—to where his smallclothes tented over his rampant cock. Her lush, beckoning lips parted. God! This woman drove him insane.
He couldn’t help but bend his head toward her, watching those plump red lips as she licked them nervously. “Perhaps I ought to assuage your curiosity.”
HE MEANT TO kiss her, Helen knew. The intent was in every line of his face, in the sensuous look of his eye, in the determined pose of his body. He meant to kiss her, and the awful part was that she wanted him to. She wanted to feel those sometimes sarcastic, sometimes hurting lips on hers. She wanted to taste him, to inhale his male scent as he tried her. She actually began to lean toward him, to tilt her face up, to feel the racing of her heart. Oh, yes, she longed for him to kiss her, perhaps more than she longed for her next breath.
And then the children rushed into the room. Actually, it was Jamie mainly, running as always, with his sister following more slowly behind. Sir Alistair cursed rather foully under his breath and turned to clutch the sheets about his waist. He needn’t have bothered, though, for all the attention the children paid him.
“A puppy!” Jamie cried, and lunged for the poor creature.
“Careful,” Sir Alistair said. “He hasn’t…”
But his warning came too late. Jamie lifted the dog, and at the same time, a thin stream of yellow liquid poured onto the floor. Jamie stood there, mouth open, holding the puppy in front of him.
“Ah…” Sir Alistair stared blankly, his magnificent chest still bared. Helen sympathized with the man. Half killed by cold the night before, not even dressed this morning, and already invaded by incontinent dogs and running children.
She cleared her throat. “I think—”
But she was interrupted by a giggle. A sweet, high, girlish giggle that she hadn’t heard since they’d left London. Helen turned.
Abigail was still standing by the doorway, both hands clapped over her mouth, giggles spilling forth from between her fingers. She lowered her hands.
“He peed on you!” she crowed to her poor brother. “Peed and peed and peed! We ought to call him Puddles.”
For a moment, Helen was afraid that Jamie would burst into tears, but then the puppy wriggled and he drew the little animal to his chest, grinning. “He’s still a grand puppy. But we oughtn’t to call him Puddles.”
“Definitely not Puddles,” Sir Alistair rumbled, and both children started and looked at him as if they’d forgotten him.
Abigail sobered. “It’s not our dog, Jamie. We can’t name him.”
“No, he’s not your dog,” Sir Alistair said easily, “but I need help naming him. And at the moment, I need someone to take him out on the lawn and make sure he does the rest of his business there instead of the castle. Do I have any volunteers?”
The children jumped to the task, and Sir Alistair had barely nodded before they were out of the room. Suddenly she was alone again with the master of the castle.
Helen bent to wipe at the puddle on the floor with the cloth she’d brought from the kitchen along with the pap. She avoided his eyes. “Thank you.”
“What for?” His voice was careless as he flipped the sheets back on the bed.
“You know.” She looked up at him and realized her vision had blurred with tears. “Letting Abigail and Jamie take care of the puppy. They… they needed that right now. Thank you.”
He shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. “It’s little enough.”
“Little enough?” She stood, suddenly irritated. “You almost killed yourself getting that dog. It was more than little enough!”
“Who says I got the dog for the children?” he growled.
“Didn’t you?” she demanded. He liked to act the beast, but underneath she sensed a different man entirely.
“And if I did?” He stepped closer and gently grasped her shoulders. “Perhaps I deserve a reward.”
She had no time to think or debate or even anticipate. His lips were on hers, warm and slightly rasping from the stubble on his chin, and oh, they felt good. Masculine. Yearning. She hadn’t been wanted like this in so long. Hadn’t been kissed by a man since she couldn’t remember. She leaned into him, her hands on his bare upper arms, and that was wonderful, too, the feel of his hot, smooth skin beneath her fingers. He opened his mouth over hers and probed gently with his tongue, and she opened, welcoming him in. Happily. Wonderfully. Easily.
Perhaps too easily.
This was her one great fault: a tendency to act too soon. To fall in love too fast. Giving everything of herself only to regret her impulsive passion later. She’d thought Lister’s kisses lovely, too, once upon a time, and what had that led to?
Nothing but despair.
She drew away, panting, and looked at him. His eye was half-closed, his face flushed and sensuous with a darkened beard of whiskers.
She tried to think of something to say. “I…”
In the end, she merely pressed her fingers to her lips and ran from the room like the greenest virgin.
“ROVER,” JAMIE SAID. He was squatting in the grass behind the castle, watching as the puppy sniffed at a beetle he’d found.
Abigail rolled her eyes. “Does he look like a Rover to you?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, and then added, “Or perhaps Captain.”
Abigail carefully lifted her skirts and found a bit of dryish grass to sit in. Most everything was soaked from the storm the night before. “I think Tristan would be nice.”
“That’s a girl’s name.”
“Is not. Tristan was a great warrior.” Abigail frowned a little, not entirely sure of her facts. “Or something. Certainly not a girl, anyway.”
“Well, it sounds like a girl’s name,” Jamie said stoutly.
He picked up a twig and held it in front of the puppy’s nose. The puppy bit the twig and took it from him. He flopped on the ground, back legs splayed behind him, and started chewing the twig.
“Don’t let him eat it,” Abigail said.
“I’m not,” Jamie said. “And, anyway—”
“Oy!” a familiar voice called. “Wot have you there?”
Behind them stood Mr. Wiggins. His head blotted out the morning sun, and the red hair standing up around his face seemed to be on fire. He swayed just a little on his feet and frowned down at the puppy.
“He’s Sir Alistair’s dog,” she said quickly, afraid he’d try to take the dog. “We’re watching him for Sir Alistair.”
Mr. Wiggins squinted, his little eyes nearly disappearing into wrinkles in his face. “Lowly work for a duke’s daughter, innit?”
Abigail bit her lip. She’d so hoped that he had forgotten Jamie’s words from the day before.
But Mr. Wiggins was thinking about other matters. “Juss make sure it don’t piss in the kitchen. Have enough work about here as it is, don’t I?”
“He—” Jamie started, but Abigail interrupted him.
“We won’t,” she said sweetly.
“Huh.” Mr. Wiggins grunted and walked off again.
Abigail waited until he’d disappeared into the castle; then she rounded on her brother. “You mustn’t say anything to him again.”
“You’re not the master of me!” Jamie’s lower lip trembled, and his face was growing red.
Abigail knew that these were signs of an imminent fit of screaming or crying or both, but she pressed, anyway. “It’s important, Jamie. You mustn’t let him tease you into saying things.”
“I didn’t,” he muttered, which they both knew was a lie.
Abigail sighed. Jamie was still very young, and this was the best she’d get out of him. She held the puppy out. “Would you like to hold Puddles?”
“He’s not Puddles,” he said, but he took the puppy and squished it against his chest, hiding his face in its soft fur.
“I know.”
Abigail sat back on the grass and closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. She ought to tell Mama what Jamie’d said. She ought to go right now and find her. But then Mama would become cross and worried, and it’d spoil this new happiness. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, anyway.
“Puddles hasn’t seen the stables,” Jamie said beside her. He seemed to have recovered his good temper. “Let’s show him.”
“Very well.”
Abigail stood and trailed her brother across the wet grass toward the stables. The day was lovely, after all, and they had a sweet puppy to take care of. Something made her look back over her shoulder in the direction that Mr. Wiggins had gone. He was nowhere to be seen, but black clouds hovered in the distance, ominous and low, threatening the sunshine.
She shivered and ran to catch up with Jamie.
“THEY SAY WHEATON will propose another soldiers’ pension bill this next parliament,” the Earl of Blanchard said, leaning back in his chair until Lister feared he’d break it.
