“You may leave me here,” he grunted when they reached his door.
She ignored him and pushed the door open. “You’re an idiot.”
“Several imminent scientists in Edinburgh and the continent would beg to differ.”
“I doubt they’ve seen you half-dead and clutching a wet puppy.”
“True.” He staggered toward the bed. His room was huge. A bed with massive posters squatted between heavily draped windows, the coverlet trailing on the floor. On one wall was a large ancient fireplace, made of the same rose stone as the rest of the castle. For a moment, Helen wondered if this room had been used continuously by the master of the castle since it was built.
Then she shoved the thought from her mind. “Not the bed. You’ll get it wet.”
She guided him toward the fireplace. A single enormous chair sat before the cold hearth. Sir Alistair sank into it, shuddering, while she bent and stirred the fire. A feeble ember still glowed there. Carefully she heaped coals upon it and blew until the fire caught. Rainwater ran down her face from her hair and dripped to the floor. She shivered, but she wasn’t nearly as cold as he.
She stood and faced Sir Alistair. “Take off those clothes.”
“Why, Mrs. Halifax, such daring.” His words were slightly slurred as if he’d been drinking, though she had detected no alcohol on his breath. “I had no idea you had designs upon my person.”
“Humph.” She picked up the shivering puppy and placed it near the fire, where it sat in a forlorn wet heap. She’d worry about the dog later. At the moment, its master took precedence.
Helen stood and started peeling the soaking coat from Sir Alistair’s shoulders. He leaned forward to help her, but his movements were clumsy. She flung the wet coat on the hearth, where it began to steam. Then she knelt before him and worked the buttons through the soaking fabric of his waistcoat. She could feel him watching her, his eyes heavy-lidded, and her heartbeat could not help but speed up. She got the waistcoat undone, pulled it off, and threw it on top of the coat. When she started on the buttons of his shirt, she was conscious that her breath was coming harder. She concentrated, staring at the white translucent material plastered to the hard planes of his chest. Crisp hair was shadowed under the cloth. She could feel his hot breath on the top of her head. This position was too intimate.
She determinedly drew off his shirt before she could stop and think about it, but she still faltered when his nude torso was revealed. His body was ever so much lovelier than her imaginings. The wide strong slopes of his shoulders led to surprisingly thick muscles on his arms, and his chest was broad and covered with dark curling hair on the upper part. Brown-red nipples peaked through the hair, hard and pointed and shockingly bare. His taut belly had only a fine line of dark hair that circled his navel before widening below and then disappearing into the waistband of his breeches. She’d stretched out one hand toward that seductive line of hair before she’d even realized her own movement.
Helen snatched back her wayward hand, hid it in her skirts, and said briskly, “Stand up so we can get the rest of these clothes off you. You’re nearly blue with cold.”
“Mrs. Halifax, your regard alone is enough to heat m-me,” he drawled as he stood. The rakish words were only marred by the chattering of his teeth.
“Humph.”
She knew that her entire face was enveloped in a fiery blush, but she still needed to get those wet breeches off him. She began on the buttons, waving his fumbling hands away when he tried to help her. He swayed as she got the last button undone, and suddenly she was no longer worried about her flush or what he might think of her.
“Get to the bed,” she ordered.
“Bossy woman,” he muttered, but his words were slurred again, and he shuffled toward the massive bed.
Once there, she had him lean against the mattress as she stripped his boots, breeches, hose, and smallclothes from him. She had only a glimpse of long hairy legs and a dark patch of fur at their apex before she was shoving him into the bed and heaping the covers on top of him.
She expected some sardonic comment from him then—perhaps along the lines of her hurry to get him into bed—but he merely closed his eyes. And that forbearance shot a bolt of pure fear through her. She stopped only to scoop the puppy up and plop him beneath the covers next to the man, and then she was running to the kitchen.
Thank God! Mrs. McCleod had indeed left a kettle warming by the banked kitchen fire. Helen quickly made tea and took the pot, a cup, and plenty of sugar along with an ancient metal bed-warming pan back up to Sir Alistair’s bedroom. When she entered, panting from the quick climb up the stairs, his body was a still mound beneath the covers, and her heart gave a painful jolt.
But then he stirred. “I was beginning to wonder if the sight of my naked body had caused you to flee the castle.”
She snorted as she laid her full tray on a table beside the bed. “I’m the mother of a small boy. I’ve seen a naked male body many times, I assure you. I bathed Jamie just tonight.”
He grunted. “I’d hope that my form would be somewhat different than a boy’s.”
She cleared her throat to say primly, “There are some differences, of course, but the similarities are still there.”
“Humph.” She knew he watched her as she took the warming pan to the fire and scooped in glowing coals. “Then undressing me gave you no more worry than bathing wee Jamie.”
“Naturally not,” she said with what she thought was admirable aplomb.
“Liar,” he rasped softly.
She ignored that and brought the hot pan back to the bed. “Can you move over?”
He nodded, his face weary and lined. He managed to inch over on the mattress, and she threw back the covers to use the warming pan on the sheets. She tried hard, but it was impossible not to see the long line of his bared leg, hip, and side. Heat uncurled in her belly. Hastily, she averted her eyes.
When she finished, he rolled back and grunted, his eye closing. “Feels good.”
“Good.” She set the pan on the hearth and hurried back. “Try and sit up so you can take some tea.”
His eye opened, surprisingly sharp and focused on her bosom. “You’re soaked through, Mrs. Halifax. You need to attend to yourself.”
She glanced down and saw that her chemise and wrap were nearly transparent. Her pointed nipples were outlined quite clearly against the thin fabric. Goodness! But modesty hardly mattered at the moment. “I’ll attend to myself as soon as you’re settled. Now sit up.”
“I shall repay you for your officiousness later,” he warned, but he heaved himself against the pillow until he was half upright.
“You do that,” she replied as she heaped sugar into the cup and then poured steaming tea in it.
“I don’t think sugar will help your tea, Mrs. Halifax,” he drawled behind her.
“Oh, hush.” She turned and caught his gaze focused on her bottom. “It’s hot and sweet, and that’s what you need now. Drink.”
She held the cup for him and he sipped, wincing. “Your tea could take the rust off iron. Do you mean to kill me?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” she murmured soothingly. A small corner of her heart seemed to tug at his gruff words. He was so stubborn, so surly, and at the moment he needed her so much. “Take some more.”
He sipped from the cup again, his gaze all the while on her face, steady and disconcerting. Her fingers trembled as she watched his strong throat work. She hastily took the cup away and set it on the tray.
“Thank you, Mrs. Halifax,” he said. His eye was closed, and he’d sunk into the bed, but there was color in his face again. “I think I shall survive the night without you.”
She frowned. “Perhaps I should heat a brick or bring more tea.”
“God, please no more tea. You may retire for the night. Unless”—he opened his light brown eye and glanced at her sardonically—“you’d like to join me?”
Her eyes widened involuntarily at the blunt invitation, and for a crucial moment, she didn’t know what to say or do. Then she whirled and left the room, his laughter echoing behind her as she rushed to her own bedroom.
* * *
PERHAPS IT WAS the memory of his housekeeper’s lush breasts outlined in wet fabric the night before. Perhaps it was the lemon scent of her hair that seemed to linger like a ghostly presence in his rooms. Or perhaps it was simple biological need catching up with him. In any case, Alistair woke the next morning with the vision of her lush, red lips wrapped about his achingly hard prick. An overly vivid erotic dream, but alas, his flesh did not know the difference between reality and fantasy.
Alistair groaned and threw back the covers. His head, and indeed his entire body, ached most horribly, but still his cock was proudly erect. He contemplated that clayish part of himself. What an irony that even the most intellectual man could be reduced to this throbbing base need solely because of plump lips and a round white bosom. His prick bobbed at the vivid image of Mrs. Halifax. Proud. Argumentative.
Entirely naked.
He swallowed and touched himself, running his fingers up hot flesh made iron, surrounding the aching head in his fist. His foreskin was already pulled back by the swelling of his cock, and his seed gleamed between his fingers. His imaginary Mrs. Halifax knelt before him and cradled her own white breasts in her hands. She lifted them, offering them, at once wanton and shy, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He squeezed the head of his cock, feeling the shaft of pleasure shoot to his balls. Her breasts were big and bonny, overflowing her little hands. She took her red nipples between thumb and forefinger and pinched them hard, giving him a wicked look. He groaned and fisted down, pulling gently. If she pushed those soft mounds together, if he leaned forward and thrust his cock between her sweet, hot breasts . . .
Beside him came a small canine whimper.
He instinctively jerked and grabbed for the covers. “Shit!”
Then he remembered and let his body flop back on the pillows. He looked down. The puppy cringed against the bedding, half buried in the sheets that had covered him.
“It’s all right, laddie,” Alistair said. “It’s not your fault I’m a daft man.” Nor was it the puppy’s fault that he still remained erect and aching.
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.
