“I was just passing the kirkyard and…” He glanced back at the gate, searching for a better explanation. “I saw you, and worried that a young woman would venture in here at thishour.”
“It is Samhain Eve.” She looked at him as if that saideverything.
“So?”
“It’s a magical night,” she said, her expression showing that she held him for daft. “The Samhain lovers appear then. They were just starting to take shape when you frightenedthem.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to scareghosts.”
“They have every reason to be cautious,” she informed him. “They were murdered here centuries ago when this land was part of the medieval church garden. Legend claims they were star-crossed lovers and met here for their trysts, thinking no one would discover them in such a quiet place, late atnight.”
“Theyerred?”
She nodded. “Obviously so, or they wouldn’t have been killed. No one knows exactly what happened, but it is believed robbers fell upon them in the very moment they…” She paused, drew a breath. “In a delicate situation,” she finally said. “It was Samhain Eve, and ever since, they return on this night, seeking one lastkiss.”
“A romantic tale,” Greyson agreed, wishing she hadn’t mentionedkissing.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed a woman, and he felt a ridiculous urge to correct that now, with this outspoken raven-hairedbeauty.
Fortunately, she chose that moment to square her shoulders and frown at him, her ire dashing hisdesire.
“This is the third year I have hoped to see them.” She brushed at her sleeve, clearly peeved. “You ruinedit.”
I have ruined many things,sweeting.
Greyson kept that to himself, regret pinchinghim.
“My apologies,” he did say. He wasn’t about to regale her with his long list of misdeeds and failures. Nor his hopes that now, with the purchase and restoration of Gannet House, he hoped to achieve somegood.
The gods knew it wastime.
She glanced at the spot she’d been watching and the movement treated him to a tantalizing hint of summerroses.
“They will not be returning this night,” she said. “The moment isgone.”
“Chased away the ghosties, have I?” Greyson lifted a brow, wishing he didn’t feel the powerful need to see her glistening, raven-black hair unbound and tumbling to herhips.
The truth was, he wouldn’t mind seeing much more of her than her glorious tresses. He’d also love to lean in and nuzzle her neck, savoring the scent ofher.
He frowned, not liking what that said abouthim.
Namely that he’d gone entirely too long without enjoying pleasant, deliciously unrestrained femininecompany.
Worse, that he’d sunk so low he couldn’t stave off lustful thoughts about a young woman who was likely an innocent, her starry eyes and maidenly heart keen on nothing more salacious than catching a glimpse of phantomlovers.
Of course, he could invite her to Gannet House, though the only spectral entertainment he could offer, to his current knowledge, amounted to no more than odd knockings, phantom footsteps, the occasional cold spot, and the echoing howls of Jericho, Arbuckle Priddy’s beastly, red-eyed hell-hound. If he really stretched matters, a band of marauding, see-throughVikings.
Somehow his home’s supposed hauntings didn’t seem as romantic as her long-ago, ill-fatedlovers.
Annoyed by how easily she stirred him, he strove to ignore his ungentlemanly response to her, and block his senses to her feminine allure. He had no business noticing any woman’s charms. For sure, he shouldn’t dwell on the off-limits temptations of a rose-scented, dewy-skinnedvirgin.
So he gave her another smile, one he hoped would make him appear older and wiser. Anything but the dangerous, hot-blooded, nothing-to-offer her wretch that hewas.
A far-traveling adventurer who’d reaped not fame and riches, but failure andregrets.
A drafty echo-filled house and a bristly, sometimes cantankerous manservant, comprising his world, his affection for both already marking him in Aberdeen society as a man as prone to eccentricities as poor ArbucklePriddy.
Not that hecared.
