Miss Munroe snorted. “Then you’re more sanguine than I.”
Helen thought it best not to reply to that comment. Instead, she led her guests to the sitting room that she’d set the maids to cleaning, crossing her fingers that things had progressed since luncheon.
But when she opened the door, Tom the footman was sneezing explosively, his head covered in an enormous dusty cobweb, and both Meg and Nellie were giggling uncontrollably. The servants straightened at her entrance, and Nellie slapped a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter.
Helen sighed and turned back to the ladies. “Perhaps you’d prefer to wait in the dining room. It’s the only entirely neat room in the castle, I’m afraid—barring the kitchen.”
“Not at all.” Miss Munroe swept into the room and stared critically at the moth-eaten row of stuffed animal heads that lined one wall. “Phoebe and I can direct matters here whilst you fetch Alistair.”
Helen nodded and left the servants behind with the ladies. As she mounted the stairs, she could hear Miss Munroe barking orders. She hadn’t seen Sir Alistair since their argument this morning in the kitchen. The truth was that she’d been avoiding him, she’d even sent Meg up with his luncheon instead of delivering it herself. In fact, she realized as she made the third floor, she wasn’t completely sure that Sir Alistair was lurking in his tower room. For all she knew, he’d decided to take one of his rambles.
But when she knocked at the door to the tower, Sir Alistair’s deep voice rasped, “Come.”
She opened the door and stepped into the tower. Sir Alistair was at the biggest table, bent over a book with a magnifying glass in his hand.
He spoke without looking up. “Have you come to distract me from my work, Mrs. Halifax?”
“Your sister has arrived.”
He glanced up sharply at that. “What?”
She blinked. He’d shaved. His unscarred cheek was quite smooth and rather nice-looking, actually. She mentally shook herself. “Your sister—”
He surged around the table. “Nonsense. Why would Sophia come here?”
“I think she’s merely—”
But he was already striding past her. “Something must be the matter.”
“I don’t think anything’s wrong,” she called as she trailed him.
He didn’t seem to hear, descending the stairs rapidly. She was panting by the time they’d made the lower hall, but he wasn’t out of breath at all.
He stopped and frowned. “Where did you put her?”
“In the sitting room with the ugly animal heads,” Helen gasped.
“Wonderful. She’s sure to say something about that,” Sir Alistair muttered.
Helen rolled her eyes. It wasn’t as if she could leave his sister waiting in the drive.
Sir Alistair strode ahead and burst into the sitting room. “What’s happened?”
Miss Munroe turned to him and frowned through her odd spectacles. “Grandfather’s hunting trophies have moldered completely. They should be thrown out.”
Sir Alistair scowled. “You didn’t travel all the way from Edinburgh to critique the state of Grandfather’s hunting trophies. And what are those things on your face?”
“These”—Miss Munroe touched her ugly spectacles—“are Mr. Benjamin Martin’s visual glasses, which he has developed scientifically to reduce the damage that light has upon the eye. I had them shipped all the way from London.”
“Good God, they’re ugly.”
“Sir Alistair!” Helen gasped.
“Well, they are,” he muttered. “And she knows it.”
But his sister was smiling tightly. “Exactly the reaction I’d expect from a philistine such as yourself.”
“So you traveled all the way here just to show them to me?”
“No, I came to see if my only brother was still alive.”
“Why wouldn’t I be alive?”
“I haven’t received an answer to my last three letters,” his sister shot back. “What was I to think but that you lay rotting somewhere in this old castle?”
“I answer all your letters.” Sir Alistair frowned.
“Not the last three you haven’t.”
Helen cleared her throat. “Would anyone care for tea?”
“Oh, that would be lovely,” Miss McDonald said from beside Miss Munroe. “And some scones, perhaps? Sophie loves scones, don’t you, dear?”
“I loathe—” Miss Munroe began, but then stopped abruptly. If Helen didn’t know better, she’d swear that Miss McDonald had pinched her. Miss Munroe drew in a breath and admitted, “I could take some tea.”
“Good.” Helen nodded to Meg, who, with the rest of the servants, had been standing watching the argument. “Please ask Cook for some tea and see if she has any scones or cakes to go with it.”
“Yes, mum.” Meg hurried from the room.
Helen stared pointedly at the remaining servants until they followed reluctantly.
“Won’t you offer your sister a seat?” Helen murmured to Sir Alistair.
“I’ve got work to do,” he grumbled, but said, “Please sit, Sophia, Phoebe. You, too, Mrs. Halifax.”
“But—” she started, then thought better of her objection when he turned his one eye to glare at her. She sat primly in an armless chair.
“Thank you, Alistair,” Miss Munroe said, and lowered herself to one of the settees.
Miss McDonald sat beside her and said, “It’s so nice to see you again, Alistair. We were disappointed that you couldn’t come for Christmas. We had a lovely roast goose, quite the biggest I’ve ever seen.”
“I never come for Christmas,” Sir Alistair muttered. He chose a chair next to Helen, making her rather self-conscious.
“But perhaps you should,” Miss McDonald chided gently.
Her words seemed to be much more effective than Miss Munroe’s strident ones. Sir Alistair’s high cheekbones actually looked a little ruddy. “You know I don’t like to travel.”
“Yes, dear,” Miss McDonald said, “but that’s not sufficient reason to ignore us. Sophie was quite hurt when you never even wrote her a Christmas letter.”
Beside her, Miss Munroe snorted, looking far from hurt.
Sir Alistair frowned and started to open his mouth.
Helen feared what he might say and hastily addressed Miss McDonald. “I understand you live in Edinburgh?”