“Only if one disregards all propriety,” she muttered darkly.
“There you are, brother,” Sophia’s brisk voice came from behind them.
Alistair turned and bowed to his sister. “As you see.”
She finished descending the stairs. “Wasn’t sure you’d come down for dinner. And quite neat, too. I suppose I should be honored. But then”—she eyed Mrs. Halifax’s hand on his arm—“perhaps your pretty toilet wasn’t for me.”
Mrs. Halifax tried to withdraw her hand, but Alistair placed his firmly over hers, preventing her. “Your favor is always uppermost in my mind, Sophia.”
She snorted at that.
“Sophie,” Phoebe chided from behind her. She shot an apologetic look at him. Poor Phoebe McDonald was always smoothing things over in his sister’s wake.
Alistair was just opening his mouth to point out just that—perhaps unwisely—when Jamie came rushing around the corner, nearly cannoning into Sophia.
“Jamie!” Mrs. Halifax cried.
The boy skidded to a stop and stared at Sophia.
Behind him came his sister, more sedate as always. “Meg said we were to come to dinner.”
Sophia looked down her long nose at the girl. “Who are you?”
“I’m Abigail, ma’am,” she said, curtsying. “This is my brother, Jamie. I apologize for him.”
Sophia arched an eyebrow. “I’ll wager you do that quite a lot.”
Abigail sighed, sounding world-weary. “Yes, I do.”
“Good girl.” Sophia almost smiled. “Younger brothers can be a chore sometimes, but one must persevere.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Abigail said solemnly.
“Come on, Jamie,” Alistair said. “Let’s go into dinner before they form a Society for Bossy Older Sisters.”
Jamie headed into the dining room with alacrity. Alistair took his habitual seat at the head of the table, seating Sophia to his right as was proper, but ensuring that Mrs. Halifax was to his left. He pulled out her chair for her pointedly when she tried to make a break for it and hide at the other end of the table.
“Thank you,” she muttered rather ungraciously as she sat.
“You’re quite welcome,” he murmured gently as he pushed the chair in overly hard.
Sophia was busy instructing Abigail on the proper placement of her water glass and so missed their byplay, but Phoebe watched them curiously from the other side of Mrs. Halifax. Damn. He’d forgotten how observant the little woman was. He nodded at her and received a wink in reply.
“So you’ve begun writing again,” Sophia said as Tom brought in a tureen of clear soup with a maid to serve it.
“Yes,” Alistair replied cautiously.
“And this is the same work?” she demanded. “The one about the various birds and animals and insects in Britain?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. I’m glad to hear it.” She waved away the basket of bread Abigail was attempting to pass her. “No, thank you. I never eat yeasted breads after luncheon. I hope,” she continued, turning on him again, “that you’ll do a proper job of it. Richards made a hash of it with his Zoölogia a few years back. Tried to show that chickens were related to lizards, the idiot. Ha!”
Alistair leaned back to let the maid set a bowl of soup before him. “Richards is a pedantic ass, but his comparison of chickens and lizards was quite reasonable in my opinion.”
“I suppose you think badgers are related to bears as well?” Sophia’s spectacles glinted dangerously.
“As a matter of fact, the claws of both have a striking resemblance—”
“Ha!”
“And,” he continued unperturbed, as they had, after all, been arguing like this since childhood, “when I dissected a badger carcass last autumn, I found similarities in the bones of the skull and forearms as well.”
“What’s a carcass?” Jamie asked before Sophia could set into him.
“A dead body,” Alistair explained. Beside him, Mrs. Halifax choked. He turned and solicitously thumped her on the back.
“I’m quite fine,” she gasped. “But might we change the subject?”
“Certainly,” he said kindly. “Perhaps we ought to discuss dung instead.”
“Oh, Lord,” Mrs. Halifax muttered beside him.
He ignored her, turning to his sister. “You won’t believe what I found in the dung of a badger the other day.”
“Yes?” Sophia asked with interest.
“A bird beak.”
“Nonsense!”
“Indeed, it was. A small one—perhaps a titmouse or a sparrow—but a bird’s beak most certainly.”
“Surely not a titmouse. They don’t come to the ground that often.”
“Ah, but it’s my judgment that the bird was already dead when ingested by the badger.”
“You promised no more dead bodies,” Mrs. Halifax burst out.
He looked at her and had a hard time not laughing. “I promised no more badger carcasses. This is a bird carcass we speak of.”
She frowned at him, beautifully, of course. “You’re being didactic.”
“Yes, I am.” He smiled. “What’re you going to do about it?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sophia and Phoebe exchange a raised-eyebrow glance, but he ignored them.
Mrs. Halifax tilted her nose in the air. “I just think you should be more polite to the woman who oversees the making of your bed.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Are you threatening to place toads in my bed, madam?”
“Perhaps,” she said loftily, but her eyes laughed at him.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, lush and wet, and he felt his loins turn to iron. He said low so no one else could overhear, “I would pay more attention to the threat were it something else you placed in my bed.”
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Don’t what?”
“You know.” Those harebell-blue eyes met his, wide and vulnerable. “Don’t tease.”
Her murmured words should’ve made him feel ashamed. But, like the basest cad, it only heightened his interest. Careful, a voice whispered. Don’t let the woman seduce you into thinking you can give her what she wants. He should listen to that voice. Should obey and turn away from Mrs. Halifax before it was too late. Instead he leaned forward, beguiled despite himself.
LATER THAT EVENING, Miss Munroe lifted her dish of tea, pinned Helen with a piercing gaze, and asked, “How long has my brother employed you as his housekeeper?”
Helen swallowed the sip of tea she’d just taken and replied cautiously, “Only a few days.”
“Ah.” Miss Munroe sat back and stirred her tea vigorously.
Helen turned to her own tea, somewhat disconcerted. It was hard to tell whether that “ah” had been approving, disapproving, or something else entirely. After dinner they had retired to the sitting room, now cleaned—well, at least cleaner than it had been before. The maids had labored over it all afternoon and even had a fire crackling in the old stone fireplace. The stuffed animals still stared down out of rather gruesome glass eyeballs, but they no longer had trails of cobwebs hanging from their ears. That was a definite improvement.
Jamie and Abigail had stayed in the sitting room only long enough to make their good nights. When Helen had put them to bed and returned, Sir Alistair had been in discussion with Miss McDonald at the far end of the room. Miss Munroe had sat waiting by the door. If Helen was a suspicious sort, she’d wonder if Miss Munroe had been lying in wait for her.
Now she cleared her throat. “Sir Alistair said he hadn’t seen you in quite some time?”
Miss Munroe scowled over her tea. “He hides himself away here like a leper.”
“Perhaps he feels self-conscious,” Helen murmured.
She glanced to where Sir Alistair and Miss McDonald were in conversation. Instead of tea, he drank brandy from a clear glass. He tilted his head toward the older lady, listening gravely to whatever she was saying. His clubbed hair exposed his scars, but it also civilized his countenance. Studying his profile, she realized that without the scars, he was a handsome man. Had he been used to female attention before he’d been maimed? The thought disconcerted her, and she looked away from him.
Only to find Miss Munroe watching her with an inscrutable expression. “It’s more than self-consciousness.”
“What do you mean?” Helen frowned into her tea, thinking. “Abigail screamed when she first saw him.”
Miss Munroe nodded once, sharply. “Exactly. Children who don’t know him fear him. Even grown men have been known to look askance at him.”
“He doesn’t like making others uncomfortable.” Helen looked into Miss Munroe’s eyes, seeing a spark of approval there.
“Can you imagine?” Miss Munroe mused softly. “Having a face that made you the center of attention wherever you went? Having people stop and stare and be afraid? He can’t just be himself, can’t just fade into a crowd. Wherever he goes, he’s made aware of himself. He never has a moment of respite.”
“It would be hellish.” Helen bit her lip, a wave of unwanted sympathy washing over her, threatening to drown her good sense. “Especially for him. He’s so gruff on the outside, but on the inside I think he’s more sensitive than he likes to let on.”
“Now you begin to understand.” Miss Munroe sat back in her seat and stared broodingly at her brother. “It was actually better when he first returned from the Colonies. Oh, his wounds were fresher then, more shocking, but he hadn’t yet realized, I think. It was a year or two before he knew that it would always be like this. That he was no longer an anonymous man but a freak.”
Helen made a small sound of dissent at the harsh word.
Miss Munroe looked at her sharply. “It’s true. It does him no good to gloss over it, to pretend that the scars aren’t there or that he’s a normal man. He is what he is.” She leaned forward, her gaze so intense that Helen wanted to look away. “And I love him more for it. Do you hear me? He was a good man when he went away to the Colonies. He came back an extraordinary man. So many think that bravery is a single act of valor in a field of battle—no forethought, no contemplation of the consequences. An act over in a second or a minute or two at most. What my brother has done, is doing now, is to live with his burden for years. He knows that he will spend the rest of his life with it. And he soldiers on.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze still locked with Helen’s. “That to my mind is what real bravery is.”
Helen tore her eyes away from the other woman and stared blindly down at the teacup, her hand trembling. Earlier, in the kitchen, she’d not fully understood his burden. To tell the truth, she’d thought him a bit of a coward for hiding in his dirty castle. But now… To live an outcast to humankind for years and to understand fully that damnation—as surely such an intelligent man as Sir Alistair must—yes, that would take real fortitude. Real bravery. She’d never thought before about what Sir Alistair endured, what he would endure for the rest of his natural life.
She looked up. He still talked to Miss McDonald, his face in profile to her. His scars were all hidden from this angle. His nose was straight and long, his chin firm and somewhat pronounced. His cheek was lean, his eye heavy-lidded. He looked like a handsome, clever man. Perhaps a bit weary this late in the evening. He must’ve felt her gaze. He turned, fully revealing his scars now, welted and red and ugly. His eye patch hid his missing eye, but the cheek under it sagged.
She stared at his face, at him, seeing both the handsome, clever man, and the scarred, sardonic recluse. The air felt thin in her lungs, and her chest labored to take in more, but still she stared, forcing herself to see all of him. All of Sir Alistair. What she saw should have repelled her, but instead she felt an attraction so intense it was all she could do not to rise and go to him at once.
