But then he’d woken many a morning in this state. And since he’d returned from the Colonies, he’d had naught but his own hand to satisfy his animal desires. Once, several years ago, he’d reached a point of such frustration that he’d journeyed into a wretched section of Edinburgh. There he’d sought out the services of a woman paid to relieve men of their erotic urges. But when the whore he’d settled on saw his face in the candlelight of her rented room, she’d asked for a higher price. He’d left, humiliated and disgusted with himself, the whore shouting curses behind him. He’d never repeated that awful experience. Instead, he’d settled for his own hand whenever base lust overcame his reason.
The puppy bumbled out from the covers at the sound of his voice, its rear end wiggling in delight. It was a brown and white spaniel with floppy ears and a speckled nose. The puppy had come from a litter belonging to a farmer living just beyond Glenlargo. Saddling Griffin and riding out in search of a puppy yesterday had been a whim. The sight of Jamie scattering petals on Lady Grey’s grave had stayed in his mind, nagging him for hours yesterday. Even more disturbing was Abigail running so determinedly away from the burial. Poor lass, so stiff and unlikable. Not sweet and biddable as a girl should be. He snorted softly. In a way she reminded him of himself.
The puppy stretched on too-large paws, his round belly nearly touching the bed, and yawned. No doubt he would need to relieve his bladder soon and, being a baby, wouldn’t care where he did it.
“Hold on, laddie,” Alistair muttered.
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.”