To Beguile a Beast (5 page)

Helen sighed. “Yes, my love, it was.”

A very dirty castle with a surly master—and she’d let them both defeat her. She’d seen movement in the high tower window as they’d tramped out to the waiting rented carriage. No doubt Sir Beastly had been gloating over her rout.

“Our house in London is much nicer,” Abigail said. “And maybe the duke will be happy that we’ve come back.”

Helen closed her eyes.
No. No, he wouldn’t.
Abigail obviously thought that they’d be returning home to London now, but that wasn’t an option. Lister wouldn’t welcome them with open arms. He’d steal the children from her and toss her into the street.

And that was if she was lucky.

She looked at Abigail and tried to smile. “We won’t be going back to London, dearest one.”

Abigail’s face fell. “But—”

“We’ll just have to find another place to stay.”
And hide.

“I want to go home,” Jamie said.

A headache started at her temple. “We can’t go home, sweetheart.”

Jamie’s lower lip protruded. “I want—”

“It’s simply not possible.” Helen inhaled and then said in a quieter voice, “I’m sorry, my darlings. Mama has an aching head. Let’s discuss this later. For now, all you need to know is that we must find another place to stay.”

But where else could they go? Castle Greaves might’ve been filthy and its master impossible, but as a hiding place it’d been perfect. She patted her skirts, feeling for the little leather bag that hung under them. Inside were some coins and quite a few jewels—the nest egg she’d saved from Lister’s gifts. She had money, but finding a place where a single woman with two children wouldn’t excite comment was going to be difficult.

“Shall I read to you from the fairy-tale book?” Abigail asked very quietly.

Helen looked at her and tried to smile. Her daughter really was a dear sometimes. “Yes, please. I think I’d like that.”

Abigail’s face smoothed in relief, and she bent to rummage in the soft bag at her feet.

Beside her, Jamie bounced on his seat. “Read from the story about the man with the iron heart!”

Abigail drew out a bundle of papers and very carefully paged through them until she came to the place she wanted. She cleared her throat and began reading slowly. “Once upon a time, long, long ago, there came four soldiers traveling home after many years of war.…”

Helen closed her eyes, letting her daughter’s high clear voice wash over her. The fairy-tale “book” she read from was actually a bundle of loose papers. The original book was written in German, and Lady Vale translated the tales for her friend, Lady Emeline Hartley. When the viscountess had sent Helen and her children north, she’d requested that Helen transcribe it so that she might eventually have the translation bound for Lady Emeline. All the long journey into Scotland, Helen had read the stories to the children, and now they were familiar favorites.

Helen glanced out the window. Outside, the purple and green hills rolled by, bringing them closer to the little village of Glenlargo. If she was still Sir Beastly’s housekeeper, she could’ve bought groceries there. Something more appetizing than moldering bacon and oats.

Oh, if only she wasn’t so terribly useless! She’d spent her entire adult life as the plaything of a rich gentleman. She’d never been trained in anything practical.

Except that wasn’t quite true. Once upon a time, before Lister, before she’d broken ties with her family, when she was still young and innocent, she used to help her father as he made his rounds. Papa had been a doctor—quite a successful one—and sometimes when he visited patients, she had accompanied him. Oh, not to help with the doctoring—that was considered too distasteful a task for a young girl—but she’d kept a little notebook in which she’d written his thoughts on the various patients they attended, kept a calendar of appointments, and made lists.

Lots of lists.

She’d been Papa’s helper, his organizer of lists. The one who kept his life and business in order. It hadn’t been a big job, but it had been an important one. And, now that she thought about it, wasn’t that really what most housekeepers were? Certainly they needed to know how to clean and run a house, but didn’t they often delegate these jobs to
other
people?

Helen sat up so suddenly that Abigail stuttered to a stop. “What is it, Mama?”

“Hush, darling. Let me think. I have an idea.” The carriage had reached the outskirts of Glenlargo. It was a tiny village in comparison to London, but it held everything a small, isolated community needed: shops, craftsmen, and people who could be hired.

Helen half stood in the swaying carriage and pounded on the roof. “Stop! Oh, stop the carriage!”

The carriage jerked to a stop, nearly throwing her back on the seat.

“What are we doing?” Jamie asked excitedly.

And Helen couldn’t help but grin at him. “It’s time to enlist reinforcements.”

The castle was silent as he made his way down the winding tower stairs. It was nearly always silent, of course, but last night, when Mrs. Halifax and her children had occupied his home, it had seemed less dead. He shook his head at the morbid thought. He’d watched the woman leave this morning and had rejoiced at once again being virtually alone—Wiggins hardly bothered him at all. It was good to be alone. Good to not be interrupted at work.

When he could work.

Alistair scowled as he reached the hallway, and strode to his own rooms first. Lady Grey liked to nap in a spot of sunlight under the windows in the afternoons. But his rooms were as he’d left them this morning: empty and untidy. He frowned at his unmade bed, the coverlet and sheets trailing on the floor. Hmm. Perhaps a housekeeper wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

He returned to the hall and called, “Lady Grey!”

No scratch of claws on stone floor heralded her approach.

Most of the other rooms were closed off on this floor, so he proceeded to the next. Here there was an old sitting room he sometimes used. He looked, but Lady Grey wasn’t lying on either of the overstuffed settees. Farther down the hall was the room he’d given to Mrs. Halifax. He glanced in and didn’t learn anything besides the fact that her bed had been made. She might not’ve ever been here at all, so forlorn did the room look. From outside he thought he heard the sound of her carriage pulling away again. Fanciful nonsense. He continued his search. On the main floor, he checked all the rooms without success, ending in the library.

“Lady Grey!”

He stood staring at the dusty library a moment. There was a patch of afternoon sun where a curtain had fallen and never been replaced, and sometimes she would nap here. But not today. Alistair frowned. Lady Grey was over a decade old and noticeably slowing down.

Dammit
.

He turned and strode toward the kitchen. Lady Grey didn’t usually go there without him. She and Wiggins didn’t get on, and the kitchen was where the manservant hung about most often. In fact—

He halted abruptly at the sound of voices. High, childish voices. He wasn’t being fanciful now—there were children in his kitchen. And the odd thing—the completely unexpected thing—was that his first emotion was gladness. They hadn’t left him after all. His castle wasn’t really dead.

Of course, that was followed very quickly with outrage. How dare she defy his command? She should be halfway to Edinburgh by now. He’d order another carriage, and he’d pack her pretty arse on it himself if he had to this time. There was no room in his castle, in his life, for a too-attractive housekeeper and her pair of brats. Alistair started forward, his intent focused, his stride firm.

And then the childish voices clarified into words.

“. . .
can’t
go back to London, Jamie,” the girl was saying.

“Don’t see why not,” the boy replied in a mutinous voice.

“Because of
him.
Mama said so.”

Alistair frowned. Mrs. Halifax couldn’t return to London because of a man? Who? Her husband? She’d presented herself as a widow, but if her husband was still alive and she’d fled him… Dammit. The man might’ve hurt her. There were very few things a woman could do if she married badly, but fleeing her husband was one of them. This put a different angle on things.

Which wasn’t to say that he had to welcome her back with open arms. Alistair felt a wicked smile curve his lips.

He sobered and entered the kitchen. The children were at the far end of the room, squatting by the hearth. At his appearance, they both rose hastily, turning guilty faces toward him. Revealed between them was Lady Grey, lying before the small fire. She was on her back, her large paws in the air. She turned a sheepish face toward him, her ears flopping comically upside down, but she made no move to rise. Why should she? Quite obviously she’d been receiving the adoration of the children.

Humph.

The boy stepped forward. “ ’Tisn’t her fault, really! She’s a nice dog. We were just petting her. Don’t be angry.”

What kind of ogre did this child think him? Alistair scowled and advanced toward them. “Where is your mother?”

The boy glanced over his shoulder at the outside kitchen door and backed up a step as he talked. “In the stable yard.”

What was she doing in the stable yard of all places? Bathing his gelding, Griffin? Winding daisies in his mane? “And what are you two doing here?”

The girl moved around her brother so that her body shielded his. She stood very stiff, her thin little chest nearly quivering with tension. “We came back.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. She looked like a martyr ready for the torch. “Why?”

She looked at him with her mother’s blue eyes. “Because you need us.”

He halted his advance. “What?”

She drew in a breath and spoke carefully. “Your castle is dirty and awful, and you need us to make it nice.”

“Huh,” Sir Alistair said. He cleared his throat with a grating, rumbling sound. Then he frowned. When he frowned, the red scars twisted on his cheek.

Abigail looked down. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She should apologize to him for screaming at him last night, but she didn’t quite have the courage. Her new apron was pinned to her bodice, and she plucked at it. She’d never worn an apron before, but Mama had bought one for herself and one for Abigail in the village. She said they’d need them if they were to set the castle kitchen to rights. Abigail didn’t think cleaning a castle would be nearly as fun as Mama was trying to pretend.

She peeked up at Sir Alistair. The corners of his mouth were turned down, but oddly his frown wasn’t half as frightening as it’d been the night before. She cocked her head. If Sir Alistair hadn’t been a very big, very stern sort of gentleman, she might’ve thought that he didn’t know what to do next, either.

“There was hardly any food in the pantry this morning,” she said.

“I know.” His mouth went flat.

Jamie had gone back to the big gray dog by the fire. He’d been the one to see her when they’d come in the kitchen. He’d run over to pet the dog, despite Abigail’s warnings. Jamie adored dogs of all kinds, and he never seemed to think that they might bite him. Abigail always thought about being bitten when she saw a strange dog.

She had a sudden longing for home, in London, where she knew everyone and where everything was familiar. If they were at home right now, she and Jamie would be having tea and bread with Miss Cummings. Although she’d never been very fond of Miss Cummings, the thought of her pinched, narrow face and the bread and butter she always served made Abigail’s chest ache. Mama said they might never return to London.

Now Sir Alistair was frowning down at the big dog as if he might be cross with her.

“Mama’ll be in soon,” Abigail said to distract him.

“Ah,” he said. The old dog put a paw on his boot. Sir Alistair glanced up at Abigail, and she stepped back. He was so stern-looking. “What are your names?”

“I’m Abigail,” she said, “and that’s Jamie.”

“We’re to have tea when Mama comes in,” Jamie said. He didn’t seem at all nervous at Sir Alistair’s presence. But then he was blissfully rubbing the dog’s ears.

Sir Alistair grunted.

“And eggs and ham and bread and jam,” Jamie recited. He often forgot things, but not things that had to do with food.

“She’s going to make some for you as well,” Abigail said cautiously.

“She isn’t a very good cook,” Jamie said.

Abigail frowned. “Jamie!”

“Well, she isn’t! She’s never done it before, has she? We always—”

“Hush!” Abigail whispered fiercely. She was afraid that Jamie was about to say that they’d always had their own servants. He was so stupid sometimes, even if he was only five.

Jamie looked at her with wide eyes, and then they both looked at Sir Alistair.

He was hunched down, scratching the dog under her chin. Abigail noticed that his hand was missing two fingers. She shivered in disgust. Maybe he hadn’t heard them?

Jamie rubbed his nose. “She’s a right nice dog.”

The dog tilted her head and waved a great paw in the air as if she’d understood Jamie.

Sir Alistair nodded. “That she is.”

“I’ve never seen one so big.” Jamie began stroking the dog again. “What kind is she?”

“A deerhound,” Sir Alistair said. “Her name is Lady Grey. My ancestors used hounds like her to hunt deer.”

“Coo!” Jamie said. “Have you ever hunted deer with her?”

Sir Alistair shook his head. “Deer are rare in these parts. The only thing Lady Grey hunts anymore is sausages.”

Abigail carefully bent and touched Lady Grey’s warm head. She made sure to stay far enough away from Sir Alistair so that she didn’t accidentally brush him. The dog licked her fingers with a long tongue. “She’s still a nice dog, even if it’s only sausages she hunts.”

Sir Alistair turned his head so he could see her out of his good eye.

Abigail froze, her fingers clutching Lady Grey’s wiry fur. She was so close to him that she could see lighter bits of brown like a star around the center of his eye. They were almost gold-colored, those bits. Sir Alistair wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning anymore, either. His face was still horrible to look at, but there was something almost sad about it, too.

She drew in her breath to say something.

At that moment, the outside kitchen door blew open. “Who’s ready for tea?” Mama asked.