One Little Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

chair, wondering if his knees might give.
    Miss Hamilton had turned around. “Faith, MacLachlan, are you ill?” she asked, hastening toward him.
    Alasdair shook off the feeling. “I’m quite well, thanks.” He released his grip on the chair. “It’s just been a trying day, that is all.”
    “Och, ’tis that terrible bruise between your eyes, I do not doubt,” warned Miss Hamilton, all her o ’s coming out just like Granny MacGregor’s. “The blood’s all left your brain, man. Put some ice on it and take yourself to bed.”
    Alasdair shook his head. “I’ll have this miserable business settled first,” he insisted. “Now, as I was saying, I shall pay you one hundred fifty pounds—”
    “Three hundred,” she reminded him. “Payable in advance.”
    It was robbery, plain and simple, but Alasdair hadn’t much choice. “Fine, then,” he muttered. “And you’ll stay and see to the child until…until I think what next to do.”
    Suddenly, her face almost crumpled. It seemed most uncharacteristic, but thoroughly genuine.
    “Oh, Lord!” he said. “What now?”
    She drew a shuddering breath. “It just seems such a vast step,” she admitted. “I was just taking hold of the fact that I must let my wee Sorcha go, and now this! I feel so ill prepared.”
    “Well, you bloody well don’t haggle like you’re ill prepared,” he complained. “How would you like to be in my shoes? Half an hour ago, I was minding my own business and sleeping my way through the world’s most delightful fantasy, when next I know, you and Lady Sorcha here are waltzing into the middle of my life. It’s a damned inconvenience, to be frank.”
    Miss Hamilton did not look particularly chagrined. “What I meant was that this isn’t what one would call a reputable household, is it?” she went on. “I shall be ruined, I daresay. On the other hand, I am not at all sure it much matters anymore.”
    Alasdair drew himself up rather straight. “This is a bachelor household, true,” he admitted. “But I don’t entertain my mistresses here, or go about seducing the servants, Miss Hamilton. And I certainly don’t trifle with mere girls, if that is what you meant.”
    “I don’t know what I meant!” said Miss Hamilton, patting Sorcha rhythmically on the back as she paced. “’Tis half my problem. I’ve little experience in the ways of the world. Indeed, I knew almost nothing of child rearing until Mamma died. I have lived most of my life in small Scottish villages. I know there are things a lady oughtn’t do, and I’m relatively certain that living under your roof is one of them. But you are offering me a terrible temptation: a way to stay with my sister.”
    Her sudden vulnerability troubled him, for reasons he couldn’t explain. “Look, Miss Hamilton, if the child is to stay here, sooner or later, she will need a governess,” he said. “If you are old enough to be a governess, then why shouldn’t it be you? I have no female relations to fob her off on unless I send her back to Scotland—which, given the way gossip runs, is probably the last place she needs to be. So, have you a better idea?”
    “No,” she said, her voice very small. “None at all.”
    “Then I shall give you your three hundred pounds,” he conceded. “And in return, you shall make my problem go away. Does that sound fair?”
    Miss Hamilton sniffed. “Oh, I am going to regret this,” she whispered. “I know it already.”
    Just then, the butler came back in with tea. Alasdair motioned the tray away. “We have a change of plan, Wellings,” he said. “Be so kind as to take that up to the schoolroom.”
    “The schoolroom, sir?”
    Alasdair smiled. “Yes, it seems I have acquired a…a ward,” he answered, gesturing at the child, who had dozed off on Miss Hamilton’s shoulder. “Arising, alas, from the sudden death of a distant relation. Miss Hamilton here is her governess.” Alasdair bowed in her direction. “Wellings will have your