An Unmistakable Rogue Read Online Free Page A

“Teaching children is a noble calling,” she said, her voice aquiver. The wind from the open door whipped her cumbrous ebon skirts about her legs, calling for her shiver, and his ... awareness.
    Any number of pleasant ways to warm her entered Reed’s addled brain, but he shut the door, instead. “Then you are a governess.”
    He took a step in her direction. “No, and you are?”
    She raised the knife and halted him in his tracks. “Not a governess either,” he tried, but failed, to charm her. He would more than frown if a stranger invaded his house, though it could not be hers. “You do not look as if you would steal someone’s heritage.”
    “What?”
    “Not important. My name is Reed Gilbride and I could use some work.” A position in the house would allow him to search—a place in her bed would not come amiss, either. Reed cursed his idiocy, even as his body began to rise to the challenge. “I intended to knock,” he said, to turn his thoughts. “But the wind opened the door before me.” He bent to examine the latch. “The lock is broken.”
    “Thank you for the keen observation.”
    Tongue as sharp as her blade and just as earth-bound, a tongue he would like to— “You’ll need a hand to repair it,” he said, “especially with a storm gathering just beyond. If you send me out on a night like this, I’m apt to catch my death.”
    Reed envied that bite the goddess gave her full bottom lip, as she worried it with perfect white teeth.
    “How do I know you are not a madman, escaped after years of grisly confinement?”
    His next forward step, or his laugh, rattled her. “Listen,” he said. “If the Gilbrides taught their chil—the people under their roof, anything, it was honesty. I am no criminal.”
    “Exactly what a criminal would say.”
    “All right, I am a criminal, and all I need is an honest post to reform me. Is this your house?” She dressed too poorly for it to be so, but it should be abandoned, after all.
    “I’m ... caring for the house.”
    “You seem young for a housekeeper.”
    Her chin rose. “I’m new to the position.”
    That explained it; the note-sender did not know about the housekeeper, but why? His every turn, of a sudden, mired him in questions. “I need work.” Reed nodded toward the drunken staircase. “This place needs a caretaker.”
    “I have nothing for wages.” She bit that poor, luscious lip again. “But I could use the help.”
    Another forward step ... and Reed tumbled headlong into a pair of wide violet eyes. “I’ll work for a roof over my head and food in my belly,” he said, drowning happily in her amethyst gaze.
    “You are hungry? I have food.”
    So she knew hunger, did this ethereal creature with the heavenly voice and brave carriage, this woman unnerving him at every turn. Never mind this kinship he felt, though they only just met.
    “What can you do in the way of work?” she asked.
    As the oldest on a farm with more children than a schoolhouse? “I can do anything— I do not know your name.”
    She lowered the knife a notch. “Chastity Somers.”
    Chastity. That figured. He had known her five minutes, found himself ripe to seduce her—she had already seduced him—and her name was Chastity. He should take it as a sign, but in her voice, with that accent, her name sounded more like music than a warning. “I can do anything, sweet Chastity Somers. I can build it, fix it, grow it, weave it, thatch it.”
    “Mr. Gilbride, you are a gift from above.”
    That threw him. For a moment there, she reminded him of—
    “You shall be the Sunnyledge caretaker. Heaven knows the house needs attention. Find yourself a place to sleep down here for tonight. I do not yet know where the bedchambers are.”
    A very new housekeeper, and naïve. She would let him sleep in the house? Reed grinned.
    Chastity stepped back. “I thought it best to explore in the light of day,” she said as she turned to go.
    Disappointment gripped Reed.
    “Oh.” She