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A wanton, indeed.
Helen inhaled, shaking the crude thoughts away, and set her candle on the stone step of the castle. The moon was high enough to see a little in the dark as her eyes adjusted. The group of trees by the drive rustled softly in the wind, their tops waving against the night sky. Helen shivered. She should’ve brought a wrap.
There was a kind of path that led around the side of the castle, and Helen began picking her way. She rounded the back of the castle, and the moon shone, full and fat, on the hills in the distance. Its light was as nearly bright as day, and as she tore her eyes from it, Helen belatedly saw that she wasn’t alone. A tall male figure was silhouetted against the sky, like an ancient monolith, grim and still and lonely. He might’ve stood thus for centuries.
“Mrs. Halifax,” Sir Alistair rasped as she started to turn away. “Have you come to torment me even in the night?”
“I’m sorry,” Helen murmured. She could feel a flush start on her cheeks, and she was grateful for the dark, not only to hide her blush, but also to keep him from seeing the expression on her face. Her wayward imagination conjured up that same hazy picture of him nude. Oh, dear! “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
She turned to go back around the castle, but his voice halted her.
“Stop.”
She peered at him. He still faced the hills, but he’d turned his head toward her.
He cleared his throat. “Stay and talk with me, Mrs. Halifax.”
It was an order, spoken in commanding tones, but Helen thought perhaps there was a hint of a plea underneath the gravel in his voice, and that decided her.
She wandered closer to where he stood. “What would you like to talk about?”
He shrugged, his face averted again. “Don’t women always have something to babble about?”
“You mean fashion and gossip and other terribly unimportant things?” she asked sweetly.
He hesitated, perhaps thrown off balance by the iron underlying her tone. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked, sure she had misheard him. “What?”
He shrugged. “I’m not used to the company of civilized people, Mrs. Halifax. Please forgive me.”
It was her turn to feel uncomfortable. The man was obviously grieving the death of his loyal companion; it was unkind of her to snap at him. In fact, considering she’d made her living for the last fourteen years by catering to the needs of a man, it was rather out of character for her.
Helen pushed that strange thought aside and wandered a little closer to Sir Alistair, trying to think of a neutral topic of conversation. “I thought the meat pie at dinner was quite good.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I noticed that the boy ate two slices.”
“Jamie.”
“Hmm?”
“His name is Jamie,” she said, but without any censor.
“Quite. Jamie, then.” He shifted a little. “How is Jamie?”
She looked blindly at her feet. “He cried himself to sleep.”
“Ah.”
Helen stared out at the moonlit landscape. “What a wilderness this is.”
“It wasn’t always.” His voice was low, the gravel making it rumble in a sort of comforting way. “There used to be gardens that led to the stream.”
“What happened to them?”
“The gardener died and another was never hired.”
She frowned. The ruined terrace gardens were silvered in the moonlight, but she could see that it was terribly overgrown. “When did the gardener die?”
