But he still didn’t answer. He observed her with a mixture of contempt and something else she couldn’t identify. His face darkened and his brow furrowed, giving him a positively frightful appearance, as if he were some wronged man on his way to the gallows.
“You would be.” One of his large hands pushed back the hair that fell over his forehead. “I suspect Lady Belle made a damn deal with the devil at some point in her life.”
“I beg your pardon?” Hope asked, confused.
He glowered at her.
“Did she send you out here? Dressed in your night garments?” he asked, before tilting his head back. “I won’t be tempted, Belle!” he shouted, as if Belle was hiding somewhere. “You’re a bloody devil!”
Goodness. This man was obviously unhinged. She backed up a couple more feet.
“I don’t know who you are or why you are in Belle’s garden, sir, but I suggest you leave, as trespassing is a punishable crime.”
“Trespassing?” He laughed bitterly, his accent doing strange things to her. The way his R’s nearly rolled, but then didn’t. Well, it made her shiver. “You think I’m trespassing?”
“I know you are,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Belle lives alone.”
“Aye, that she does.”
“Then youaretrespassing. I insist you leave this place at once.”
“Is that so?” he said, slowly coming towards her. Hope tried to back up again, but she bumped into a hedgerow of boxwood. He smelled like clover and honey. “And who is going to make me?”
Shaking with fear—and, heaven help her, some sort of arousal—Hope lifted her foot and kicked out, right between his legs.
“Ack!” he yelled, stumbling back long enough for her to whirl and race back towards the rose bush that camouflaged her secret staircase.
What a frightful brute. Hope hurried into her room, closing the opened doors behind her, and locking them with purpose. With any luck, he would realize his folly and leave the garden immediately, because she was going to immediately inform the staff that there had been a trespasser on the property.
CHAPTER FOUR
Graham cursed as Hope scurried off and climbed the hidden staircase to a room that would have been his own while he was growing up had his father not lost Lismore Hall. He had become familiar with the house over the past ten years, since striking up a friendship with Lady Belle, but this was too much. To put this Trojan horse of a woman in that room was malicious as far as Graham was concerned.
He was already in a foul mood, given that he had been delegated by his uncle to inform Lady Belle that the McTavish clan would hold a ball in her nieces’ honor a week from Friday as a welcome to the Highlands. Graham had never heard something so preposterous. It seemed his uncle had forgotten their lifelong hatred of the English. But when he’d said as much, his uncle had only smiled, apparently enjoying his discomfort. He wondered if his uncle and Lady Belle were conspiring against him.
Shaking out his bruised toes, he speculated what Miss Hope Sharpe would do when she saw him at the dinner table in an hour or so. She might scream, or try to kick him again. He wished she would. Anything to distract him from the unprecedented attraction he felt for her.
It had been immediate, like being on a horse that spooked. His heart dropped into his stomach the moment he laid eyes on her. She was fresh-faced and beautiful, with pale skin, dark eyes, and a set of lips the color of apple blossoms before they bloomed. With her curly, coffee colored hair tied back by only a single ribbon and draped over her shoulder, she resembled some medieval maiden.
Her soft, lush frame had been detailed by the cinching of her pale green robe, and for a moment, he had been stunned at the sight of her, looking like some fairy princess standing in her private kingdom. Only it wasn’t her kingdom.
It was his.
That Lady Belle had chosenhermade him particularly hostile. She was perfection, the picture of his every desire, and he had no doubt that Lady Belle had made a deal with the devil himself to lure Graham to do her bidding. Well, he wouldn’t do it. He was his own man, and no amount of female meddling would control his fate.
He stalked across the garden as a voice within him reasoned that perhaps all was not lost. Whyshouldn’the marry an attractive woman to gain his home back? It would hardly be a sacrifice to lay with a woman like Hope for the rest of his life. And if she were even-tempered and kind-natured, too, well, he just might be able to count himself a lucky man if he were her husband.
But it was the principle of the matter. Lady Belle had long implied that Lismore Hall would return to him one day, and while she had never outright promised it to him, it now felt as though she had snatched it away from him all the same. She was meddling in his life’s affairs; a habit she had formed the very day he was born.
And as far as marriage went, Graham hadn’t ever given the matter much thought. He always assumed it would happen after he gained ownership of Lismore Hall, and now that seemed highly unlikely. Hope Sharpe seemed prepared to kick him out, literary. He wondered if Belle had explained to Hope who he was and if she knew her aunt’s plans.
Striding into the castle without preamble, Graham ran into Rose, who gave him a curious look. Why Lady Belle had hired this mouse of a woman to be her personal secretary, he did not know. Rose barely spoke above a whisper, and her intense stare made people uncomfortable. She would scurry away whenever she found herself in the presence of Graham and his cousins, particularly Jared McTavish.
She was an odd woman, to say the least.
“Mr. MacKinnon,” Rose said softly, nodding to acknowledge his presence.
“Where is she?” he asked, ignoring pleasantries.
