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the time he reached the landing and was breezing into the room, lighting a lamp on a table beside a brazier.
    “’Tis a fine room, my lord guardian,” she said, suddenly more the overly generous hostess and less the she-dragon of but a few moments ago. “Plenty of light during the day. Windows to the inner ward.”
    Tapestried walls and a cluster of chairs, a work-table, a settle by the cold brazier. No bed, but that was easily taken care of.
    Certainly better than the tent and cot he was used to.
    His home, for the moment.
    His castle.
    His ward.
    “I hope you’re pleased, my lord?”
    Pleased? Bloody hell, the woman pleased him dangerously well; that softly impatient hand shaping her hip, her hem revealing an equally impatient tapping foot, the discrepant flowers sagging from her girdling belt, her inexhaustible resolve.
    “It will do, madam.” Would have to do, for the time being, for his purposes.
    “Good, my lord, then I’ll see that you get a—” She stopped short as a great pounding suddenly rolled down from the wooden stairs. A sound that drew a sharp but deeply concerned frown from the woman.
    He nodded toward the thundering sound. “What would that be, madam? Prisoners?”
    Fear flickered across her fine features, softening them for an instant. “My private apartments are above.”
    “Then you have bats, madam.”
    And then they came swooping down the stairs, pounding footsteps and giggling voices and then a useless bellow from far above.
    “Come back here, young ladies! This minute! Do you hear me?”
    But the chaos only increased, until it spilled into the solar along with two girls, then Leod, who hadn’t a chance of catching up with them.
    “Taliaaaaaaa!” The girls sped past him to his irritated ward, encircled her with their arms.
    “Is he gone?”
    “Are you married, yet?”
    Married?
    “Did you have to kiss Rufus?”
    Kiss de Graffe?
    “Does this mean you’re going to have a baby now?”
    A baby? Holy Christ!
    “What the bloody hell is going on here, madam?” His bellow stopped everything. Gained him two pairs of startled eyes and another pair flashing over the heads of the girls.
    “My lord, please refrain from cursing in front of the girls.”
    Her family? Sisters? Far too old to be of her own body. Golden-haired, clinging fiercely to her, hiding in her skirts now.
    “Who’s he, Talia? Who are you, sir?”
    “Talia, there’s a man in here.”
    “Yes, Fiona.”
    “Where’s Rufus?”
    Why the devil would the woman be kissing that bastard de Graffe? And why was she looking at him asthough she had just been caught in some magnificent falsehood.
    “Explain, madam.”
    She ignored him, bent to the girls. “Rufus is gone.”
    “For good, Talia?”
    “Please, please say for good.”
    Another glance at Alex, before she said, “Rufus won’t be coming back.”
    She was bloody well right about that.
    “Yayyy!!” The girls clasped hands and jumped around in a circle until the woman took hold of their wrists and held them apart.
    “Settle yourselves, please. My lord, this is Brenna.” She raised the hand of the eldest. “And this is Fiona. My sisters. Ladies, this is Lord Alexander de Monteneau.”
    They turned to him as a pair, inspecting him from head to boot, still holding fast to Talia’s hands.
    “A new one, Talia?” Fiona said, leaning hard against the woman, her teeth catching up her lower lip. “Is he going to stay, do you think?”
    “Are you going to marry him, Talia?”
    Marry him?
    “Brenna, please. Take Fiona and go to bed.”
    But the pair didn’t seem to be finished with him. “He’s big! Lots bigger than Rufus!”
    “To bed, Fiona! Take them, please, Leod.”
    Alex could only stare at the woman and wonder about all this marriage talk. And babies and kissing. What the holy hell had been going on before he’d arrived?
    She cast him a short, angry glance, then shuffled the two girls toward Leod and the door. “Upstairs with you both. Now!”
    “But