The Temptation of Your Touch
The coastline had undergone a magical transformation beneath the kiss of the autumn sun. Cottony wisps of cloud drifted across an azure sky. The moss furring the broad rocks along the top of the cliffs was no longer cast in drab shades of gray, but was revealed to be a shade of green somewhere between emerald and jade. Beams of sunlight shattered against the diamond-sharp crests of the waves, brightening the water to a blue-green intense enough to make a man—or woman—dream of Barbados and tropical breezes and swaying palms. Far below them at the foot of the cliffs, the sand of the cove shimmered like gold dust.
“It does rather take one’s breath away, doesn’t it?” Anne couldn’t completely hide her pride as she surveyed the view.
He slanted her a mocking glance. “There was no need for you to follow me out here, you know. I have no intention of flinging myself off the cliffs in a fit of pique like your impulsive Miss Cadgwyck.”
“Well, that’s certainly a relief.” She seated herself on the opposite side of the rock, ignoring her first inclination to hug one knee to her chest as she might have done when she was a girl. “I suspect you would make a very intolerable ghost, always slamming doors and groaning and rattling your chains. I daresay we’d never get another decent night’s rest.” As the wind tugged her shawl from her shoulders, she tilted her face to the sun, wishing she could pull the pinching pins from her hair and let it ripple free as well.
“You wound me with your dour assessment of my character. It would no doubt surprise you to learn that for a very long time I was considered the most eligible catch in all of England.”
Anne remembered the words of the women in the village: He was the perfect gent till his fiancée threw him over. “And why should that surprise me? What woman could resist a gentleman with such a delightful temperament and affable wit?”
He snorted. “As you’ve probably already guessed, I was pursued more for my title and my fortune than my charms.”
Stealing a glance at the rugged purity of his profile and the shadows his long, sooty lashes cast on his beautifully sculpted cheekbones, Anne doubted that was entirely true. “It’s been my experience that charming men tend to think even more highly of themselves than they want others to do. I’ve never cared for them myself.”
“Then you should be very fond of me.”
May God help her if she was, Anne thought. She dragged her gaze away from his profile and returned it to the sea, feeling suddenly dizzy in a way that had little to do with the height of their perch. “You certainly weren’t very charming to your brother and his wife. Especially not after they came all this way just to bid you farewell.”
The distant look in his frosty gray eyes deepened, as if he were staring at something far beyond the sea. “I shall have to beg your forbearance for my ill manners. Their visit came as something of an unwelcome shock. I hadn’t seen Clarinda since our wedding day.”
Anne frowned in bewilderment. “Don’t you mean her wedding day?”
He gave her an arch look.
“Oh!” Anne breathed, thankful she was already sitting down. So Clarinda Burke was the woman who had jilted him at the altar, the woman who had broken his heart and given his lips their cynical curl. She remembered the look she’d glimpsed in his eyes as he had watched his brother’s wife walk away from him, possibly for the last time. Now she knew exactly where she had seen that look before—whenever he gazed up at Angelica’s portrait.
“Needless to say, it came as quite a shock to society when my bride tossed me over at the altar so she could marry my brother. All of London was abuzz with the gossip. I’m surprised it didn’t travel as far as Cadgwyck.”
Not wanting him to know that it finally had, Anne forced herself to say lightly, “Ah, but you forget—we have our own scandals to gossip about in Cadgwyck. Why did she toss you over? Did you do something to earn the slap the two of you spoke of?”
His laughter was edged with bitterness. “I was fortunate it was no more than a slap. Had there been a pistol handy that day, she might have very well shot me.”
“Were you unfaithful to her?”
“Once she agreed to wed me? Never.” Dravenwood swung around to face Anne, the frost in his eyes extinguished by a fierce fire. “Not in word or in deed. Not with my body or in my heart.”
Mesmerized by the passion in his eyes, Anne felt her own heart skip a beat. She had always dreamed of having a man look at her that way.
But not while he was thinking of another woman.
He returned his gaze to the sea, his jaw set in a rigid line. “Clarinda and my brother fell in love when they were very young. They had a rather . . . tempestuous relationship, and when Ash went off to seek his fortune, leaving her behind, it broke her heart.”
“And you were there to pick up the pieces?”
“I tried. After she was forced to accept that Ash wasn’t coming back for her, she collapsed and became very ill. I”—he hesitated—“I helped to look after her for several months. Until she was well enough to manage on her own.”
While a wealth of information was in that simple explanation, Anne sensed he was leaving out large chunks of the story, not to protect himself, but to protect his sister-in-law. Anne had become quite adept at doing that herself.
“Once Clarinda recovered, I offered for her. But she refused me. Since I was Ash’s brother, she was afraid she would never see me as anything more than a reminder of the love she had lost. It took me nine years to finally convince her we would suit.”
“Nine years?” Anne echoed in disbelief. “Well, no one can accuse you of being fickle, can they?”
“You don’t know how many times I wished they could! Wished I was the sort of man who could tumble a different woman into my bed every night without ever once stopping to count the cost to their hearts or mine.”
His frank confession made Anne feel oddly breathless. “After finally agreeing to marry you, what made her change her mind?”
A sardonic smile curved his lips. “Since I was the one fool enough to save Ash from a firing squad and bring him back into her life, I have only myself to blame. On the day we were supposed to be wed, she found out that all those years ago I’d had a hand in keeping them apart because I didn’t believe Ash was good enough for her. So she slapped me across the face and walked right back into his arms. She got the man she had always loved while I got exactly what I deserved—a lifetime of regrets and a crumbling manor haunted by a spiteful White Lady.”
Anne pondered his confession for a moment. “Just how old were you when you committed this terrible crime of the heart?”
He shrugged. “Two-and-twenty, I suppose.”
A ripple of laughter escaped her, earning a puzzled scowl from him. She rose to face him. “You say your brother and Clarinda were very young when they fell in love, but you were little more than a babe yourself—a young man in the first flush of passion. You lashed out because your heart was wounded. Because you couldn’t accept that the woman you loved might never come to love you back. But now you seek to condemn that impulsive young fool with the wisdom and experience of a man full grown. Tell me—would you be so merciless and unbending toward any other soul who made such an error in judgment?”
Dravenwood drew closer, glowering down at her. “Are you mad, woman? I don’t deserve any mercy. I robbed my own brother and the woman he loved of ten years they might have spent in each other’s arms!”
“Perhaps you did them an unintended service. You said yourself their young relationship was very tempestuous. Their love might have needed time to season and gain in maturity so they could truly embrace the happiness they’ve found today.”
“What I did was unforgivable!”
“It might have been wrong—even wicked perhaps—but was it truly unforgivable? Is any sin unforgivable if the heart is genuinely repentant?”
There was no way for Anne to let him know how desperately she needed him to agree with her. Especially while standing at the edge of those cliffs where another life had
ended because a young girl had been too foolish and proud to forgive herself. A pleading note softened her voice. “There’s a difference in being sorry for what you did and throwing away the rest of your life because you feel sorry for yourself.”
He took a swift step toward her, his hands closing over her upper arms. Even through her shawl she could feel their fierce strength, their irresistible heat as he drew her toward him. He gave her a sharp, little shake, his scowl a fearsome thing to behold. “I didn’t come to this place looking for absolution. And I certainly don’t need your absolution, Mrs. Spencer.”
“What do you need, my lord?” she asked, feeling her breath quicken, her moist lips part in reckless challenge.
His smoldering gaze strayed to her lips, giving her a dangerous glimpse of exactly what he needed. Not forgiveness, but forgetfulness, if only for a night or perhaps even just a few hours. What he needed was the chance to be the sort of fickle man who could tumble a woman into his bed just because he desired her, not because he had loved her for half his life.
She could almost see the effort it took for him to drag his gaze from her lips, to gentle his grip and firmly set her away from him. Instead of the relief she should have felt, her heart ached with disappointment.
“I need the same thing Angelica needs,” he said hoarsely, unable to completely purge the passion from his voice. “To be left the bloody hell alone.”
With that, he turned and went stalking away from her, skirting dangerously close to the edge of the cliffs as he followed them around to the promontory.
Anne hugged her shawl around her as she watched him go. The wind snatched the sigh from her lips as she whispered, “As you wish, my lord.”
THE ROGUE HAD DARED to put his hands on her.
Hodges stood at the corner of the window in the second-floor study, his temple pulsing with fury as he watched Cadgwyck’s new master turn his back on Annie and stride away. She stood there gazing after him, hugging herself through the flimsy protection of her shawl.
She looked so small standing there at the edge of those towering cliffs, so terribly vulnerable—as if it would take little more than a gust of wind to blow her right over them.
Hodges touched his fingertips to the windowpane, his face drooping in a mask of sorrow. He never could bear it when she was sad. All he wanted to do was coax a smile back to her lips, to hear her merry laughter ringing through the halls of the manor once again.
The butler’s eyes narrowed as they followed the rogue’s path along the cliffs. He was the one who had stolen her smile. The one who had left her there all alone to be buffeted by the winds of fate.
The man was a fraud, an impostor, a shameless seducer of all that was pure and virtuous. Hodges drew his shoulders back, standing so straight and true that few who had known him in recent years would have recognized him.
There could only be one true master of Cadgwyck. Once the impostor was banished, that master could return to take his rightful place.
Hearing the door behind him creak open, Hodges whirled around, tucking both hands behind his back like a guilty child.
Dickon’s freckled face appeared in the crack between frame and door. “Pardon me, sir, but have you seen the good shovel? I thought I’d head down to the caves and do some more excavating while the earl’s out on the cliffs.”
“Haven’t seen it, lad,” Hodges replied, his shoulders settling back into their natural slump. “But you might ask Nana.”
“Will do. Thanks!” Dickon set off on his errand, his cheerful whistle drifting back to Hodges’s ears.
Hodges drew his hands out from behind his back. He stood there for a long time, gazing down at the brass-handled letter opener gripped in his trembling fist. For the life of him, he could not remember how it had gotten there.
Chapter Twenty-one
FOR THE FIRST TIME in their brief acquaintance, Mrs. Spencer did precisely what Max had ordered her to do. She performed her duties and supervised the other servants without so much as a hint of impropriety in her actions or her words.
Max was surprised by how much he missed being flayed by her sharp tongue or being offered some opinion he had not solicited and did not welcome. His every request, no matter how trifling, was met with polite subservience. After a few days of this, he began to have wicked fantasies about requesting her to do something utterly outrageous. Every time she asked, “Will there be anything else, my lord?” he had to bite his tongue to keep from blurting out “Take down your hair” or “Lift the hem of your skirt so I can steal a peek at your garters.” He was no longer sure of what he would do if she responded with a dutiful “As you wish, my lord” while slowly raising her hem to tease him with a glimpse of a trim ankle or a shapely calf.
Even brooding about Clarinda would have been a welcome distraction from his growing obsession with his housekeeper. But his brother’s wife seemed to occupy his thoughts less with each passing day. It was almost as if Clarinda’s kiss and her benediction had finally broken the spell she had cast over him when he had been little more than a boy. When his hikes along the cliffs no longer relieved the peculiar tension gathering like a storm in him, he took to walking to the village each afternoon, hoping to receive a reply from his inquiry into Angelica’s precious artist. But as his housekeeper had warned him, the post was notoriously slow in reaching Cadgwyck. Although it had been nearly a month since he had posted the inquiry, there was still no word.
The villagers had begun to eye him as if something were suspect about any man who could survive sharing a house with a ghost.
He supposed his ferocious demeanor and barked requests didn’t help. Before long, they were crossing both themselves and the street whenever he came stalking down it.
His patience—or lack thereof—was finally rewarded on a sunny Thursday afternoon. As the squat postmistress handed over the thick package tied in string with his name neatly inscribed on the front, she seemed as relieved as he was.
Max tore open the package and began to scan the first page. He’d read only a few lines when a grim smile began to spread across his face. This was one discovery even his unflappable housekeeper would not be able to ignore.
ANNE WAS IN THE kitchen, chatting with Nana and nursing a copper kettle of crab stew over the fire, when one of the bells strung over the door began to jingle. Ignoring the treacherous leap of her heart, Anne glanced up to discover it was the bell for the master’s study.
She was tempted to ignore it or to send Hodges or Dickon to answer the summons purely out of spite. But after a morning spent scouring every inch of the attic for what had to feel like the millionth time, Dickon had gone out for a well-deserved romp on the moors. And the last time she’d seen Hodges, he had been merrily waltzing through the ballroom with an invisible partner on his arm and a tea cozy on his head.
Anne traded her gravy-stained apron for a clean one, then leaned down to bellow into Nana’s ear, “I don’t suppose I could talk you into going to see what his lordship wants?”
Nana grinned up at Anne from her rocking chair, baring her toothless gums. “If I was but a few years younger, I’d be more than happy to give that man whatever he wanted.”
Anne recoiled in mock horror. “Why, Nana! I had no idea you were such a shameless little hoyden!”
Nana cackled. “The right man can turn any woman into a shameless hoyden.”
Anne sobered, remembering the dangerous desire she had glimpsed in Dravenwood’s eyes before he had set her away from him on the cliffs. “What about the wrong man, Nana? What can he do?”
Nana caught Anne’s sleeve in one of her bony claws, urging her down so the old woman could whisper in her ear, “Give her what she wants.”
“YOU RANG, MY LORD?”
Anne stood stiffly in the doorway of the study, trying not to think about Nana’s words or how beguiling Lord Dravenwood looked as he sat behind the desk, his coat draped carelessly over the back of his chair while he worked in a waistcoat of copper-colored silk and dazzling
-white shirtsleeves.
This time he did not leave her waiting while he tended to his ledgers, but immediately rose and came around the desk. “I just returned from the village. I received something in the post that I thought might be of interest to you.”
“Have you been summoned back to London?” she inquired hopefully, blinking at him with all of the innocence she could muster.
He leveled a reproachful look at her before nodding toward the leather chair in front of the desk. “There’s no need to hover there in the doorway like a raven portending doom. Do sit.”
“Is that a request or an order?”
“It’s an invitation. Please?” The husky note in his voice gave her a jarring glimpse of just how dangerous he could be to her resolve when he wasn’t ordering her about in that high-handed manner of his.
Anne approached the desk and gingerly sat, clasping her hands primly in her lap.
Dravenwood propped one lean hip on a corner of the desk, an ember of excitement flaring in his smoky eyes. “I’ve always believed every mystery is nothing more than a mathematical equation that can be solved if you find the right variables and apply them in the correct order. The one variable we already have in Angelica Cadgwyck’s mystery is the name of the artist who seduced her. So I decided if I wanted to find out what really happened on the night of her birthday ball, I needed to learn more about the man.”
Anne kept her face expressionless with tremendous effort. She could only pray he hadn’t noticed the blood drain from it.
“While I was perusing Miss Cadgwyck’s portrait, it occurred to me that any man who could paint with such undeniable skill must have left some mark on society. So I enlisted the help of a certain investigator the Company has done business with in the past—an extremely tenacious Scot named Andrew Murray. Mr. Murray has a gift for ferreting out the one grain of truth in even the most sordid and convoluted nugget of gossip.” Dravenwood stopped abruptly, tilting his head to study her. “Aren’t you going to scold me for prying into matters that are none of my concern?”