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She stood and shook down her night rail, then crouched and pulled the commode out from under the bed. She scooped up her skirts and squatted over the commode. The sound of her water hitting the commode was loud in the room, drowning out the dripping footsteps from the eaves.
She sighed in relief.
Something creaked outside the bedroom door. Abigail froze, her stream still trickling into the tin commode. Flickering light crept under the door. Someone stood in the hallway. She remembered Sir Alistair’s horribly scarred face. He’d been so tall—taller, even, than the duke. What if he’d decided to toss them from his castle?
Or worse?
Abigail held her breath, waiting, her thighs burning from crouching over the commode, her bottom growing cold in the night air. Outside the door, someone hawked—a long, scratching, liquid gurgle that turned Abigail’s stomach—and spat. Then boots scraped against the floor as he moved away.
She waited until she could no longer hear the footsteps, and then she leapt up from the commode. She shoved it away and scrambled into the bed, yanking the covers over her and Jamie’s head.
“Wassit?” Jamie muttered, slumping against her again.
“Shh!” Abigail hissed.
She held her breath, but all she heard was the sucking sounds Jamie made as he jammed his thumb into his mouth. He wasn’t supposed to do that anymore, but Miss Cummings wasn’t here to scold him. Abigail wrapped her arms tightly around her little brother.
ther, 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 aristocratic 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.”
“I repeat. I. Don’t. Have. A. Housekeeper.” He spoke slowly so perhaps her confused brain could understand the words. “Nor do I wish for 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 the 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 the paper 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 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 becoming quite wet out here, you realize.”
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 both wide and firm, supple and masculine. The smile revealed him as not the gargoyle she’d been thinking him, but a man.
