“I wouldn’t dare to be so presumptuous. As you so aptly reminded me, you are master of Cadgwyck now. It’s your house. Your painting.” She hesitated for the briefest instant. “Your ghost.”
Nodding his approval, he retrieved a thick sheaf of papers from the desk behind him and shook them open with a crisp snap. “As you probably already noted from the signature on the portrait, the artist’s name was Laurence Timberlake.”
“Laurie,” Anne whispered before she could stop herself.
Dravenwood frowned at her. “What was that?”
“Oh, nothing. I once had a childhood friend named Laurence.”
He went back to scanning the papers. “Murray was able to locate several of Timberlake’s paintings scattered throughout London and the surrounding countryside and agreed he was a most remarkable talent. Murray was as surprised as I that the man hadn’t attracted the attention of some wealthy patron and achieved greater fame.”
“Perhaps being shot to death curtailed his career opportunities,” Anne offered drily.
“On the contrary, meeting a tragic end at such a young age should have only enhanced his reputation and made the artwork he left behind that much more valuable to a collector. There’s nothing society adores more than a love affair gone wrong. Trust me . . . I should know,” he added, flicking a wry glance in her direction.
“So why does this Murray fellow believe Timberlake’s talents were overlooked?”
“When he was tracking down the portraits, he noticed something peculiar. All of the paintings were of young women, and very few of them had remained with the families who had commissioned them. Most had been sold or wound up stored in an attic somewhere.”
“But why?” Anne was thankful she didn’t have to hide her growing bewilderment. “Why would anyone wish to bury such treasures?”
“That question wasn’t answered until Murray was able to track down a young woman from one of the paintings. She’s a marchioness now and the mother of three small children. She agreed to speak to him only if he promised her his utmost discretion. She was the one who revealed that the majority of Timberlake’s income wasn’t derived from his art, but from something far more sinister—blackmail.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“BLACKMAIL?” ANNE ECHOED THROUGH lips that had gone suddenly numb.
Tossing the papers on the desk behind him, Dravenwood nodded. “The scoundrel would choose his victims with care—usually some beautiful young girl with a promising future about to make her debut.” Anne could tell he was thinking of Angelica by the distant look in his eye. “He would deliberately seek out girls who came from wealthy and prominent families whose continuing fortunes and good names might depend on her making a first-rate match. He would accept the commission to paint her portrait, then worm his way into her family’s home and her affections. From what I understand, it was no great challenge for him. He was young, handsome, charming, well-spoken.”
“Everything a naïve young girl might desire,” Anne said softly. “Especially after he immortalized her on canvas, making her believe she was everything she wanted others to see in her.”
“Precisely. After the painting was finished, he would complete his seduction. Then he would go to her father and threaten to expose their sordid little affair to all the world unless her father paid him a handsome sum to buy his silence.”
Anne’s growing agitation made it impossible for her to sit still any longer. She rose and paced over to the window, drawing back the drape to gaze blindly out over the churning waves of the sea. “How can you prove any of this is true? For all you know, the woman your man spoke to might have simply been a scorned lover, out to destroy what was left of Timberlake’s reputation.”
“With her help, Murray was able to track down two more of the women in the portraits. One of them had been cast out in the streets by her family after Timberlake ruined her and was plying her wares on the streets of Whitechapel.” They both knew there was only one sort of ware a woman might be plying on the streets of Whitechapel. The grim note in Dravenwood’s voice deepened. “When Timberlake painted her portrait, she was only thirteen.”
Anne turned to face him, her voice a ragged whisper she barely recognized. “Thirteen?”
“She was the one who told Murray that when Timberlake’s seduction failed, he would sometimes resort to more”—Dravenwood’s brow darkened—“forceful measures.”
Anne slowly drifted back across the room, tugged toward him by the fierce emotion in his eyes and the unmistakable ring of conviction in his words.
“It’s awkward to speak of such an unspeakable failing of my own sex to a woman. Men are supposed to cherish women, protect them, even at the cost of their own lives. The thought of a man using brute strength to overpower any woman—especially an innocent girl—in such a way makes me ill. If you ask me, shooting was too good for him.” Dravenwood curled his powerful hands into fists, his eyes narrowing to smoky slits. “I’d like nothing more than the chance to beat the bastard to a bloody pulp myself.”
Anne might be able to shield her overflowing heart from him, but she could do nothing to hide the warm rush of tears in her eyes.
Dravenwood straightened, gazing down at her with a mixture of alarm and dismay. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have spoken of such things to you. Since you’d expressed an interest in Angelica, I thought you’d want to know that whatever happened to her that night might not have been through any fault of her own.”
What Anne wanted in that moment was to bring one of his clenched fists to her lips and soften it with a kiss, if for no other reason than that he was everything Laurence Timberlake had never been. But all she could do was whisper a heartfelt “Thank you.”
He retrieved the sheaf of papers from the desk, thrusting them toward her as if they were a handkerchief to dry her tears. “Would you care to take the report to your room and look over it?”
“Yes, my lord. I do believe I would.” She accepted the document from his hand, handling it as if it were a pardon from the hand of the king himself. Although she was desperate to escape his scrutiny, she could not resist pausing at the door to give him one last look. “For a man so reluctant to accept absolution for his own sins, you certainly seem eager enough to dole it out to others.”
“Perhaps I simply believe others are more deserving of it.”
“Isn’t that the point of absolution? That we sometimes receive it even when we don’t deserve it?”
Leaving him with that to ponder, she gently drew the door shut behind her.
ANNE STOOD ON THE landing gazing up at Angelica’s portrait, Murray’s report still clutched in her hand. It had been a long time since the two of them had talked.
“He’s determined to prove you didn’t deserve what happened to you,” Anne said softly. “But you and I know differently, don’t we?”
Angelica gazed down at Anne, her enigmatic half smile hiding secrets even the most tenacious investigator would never unearth.
“He’s half in love with you, you know. Perhaps more than half. But you could never truly appreciate a man like him. You’d rather squander your affections on some glib charlatan who would steal a child’s innocence just to line his own pockets with gold. All the earl did was prove you were even more of a fool than anyone will ever know.”
Was that a pout she detected playing around Angelica’s full lips?
“You needn’t waste your pretty sulks on me,” Anne warned her. “Save it for some starry-eyed swain who will appreciate it. I don’t feel sorry for you. Not one whit.”
Anne wasn’t being completely truthful. Like the hands of the longcase clock in the entrance hall, Angelica was frozen in time, unable to travel back to the past to undo what had been done or move forward to embrace the future.
Just like her.
AS MAX STARTED DOWN the stairs the next morning, he was still thinking about his housekeeper. He was beginning to wonder if this house was driving him well and truly mad. He’d never even fl
irted with a pretty parlor maid as a young man. He had always felt it would be unsporting of him to prey on women who depended on him and his family for their livelihood. Yet now all he could think about was his housekeeper and what might lie beneath her starched apron and staid skirts.
She’d jarred him even more when he had shown her the investigator’s report. Her unexpected compassion for Angelica and all the other young women Timberlake had betrayed had caught him off guard. When he had seen the tears well up in her luminous hazel eyes, he’d nearly been overwhelmed by the urge to draw her into his arms and kiss them away.
As he reached the turn in the landing between the third and second floors, he braced a hand on the newel as he always did to slow his momentum. The ball snapped off in his hand, sending him hurtling toward the banister.
Thanks to reflexes honed while sailing some of the roughest seas in the world, he ended up teetering on the edge of the next step instead of pitching forward over the banister in a tumble that would have left him lying broken and bleeding in the entrance hall below.
Or dead.
His heart was thundering against his rib cage just as it had in the moments after the shelf of rock had crumbled beneath his feet on the promontory. He turned the ball over to examine it. Far too much rot was in the wood to determine what had caused the break.
If the ball had deliberately been severed from the post, this was no harmless bit of mischief like a closed chimney flue or ghostly giggles in the night.
He frowned down at the jagged edges of the post. What if something more sinister than a ghost was at work at Cadgwyck? He’d been so intent upon solving the mysteries of the dead that he’d been ignoring the secrets of the living. He was reasonably sure Mrs. Spencer was hiding something. He hadn’t forgotten the desperate conversation he’d overheard between her and Hodges in the drawing room or the untimely death of Cadgwyck’s previous master.
Not wanting anyone else to fall into the trap that might have been set for him, Max slipped the ball into the pocket of his coat. Since he didn’t have Mr. Murray’s resources to reply upon, perhaps it was time he did a little sleuthing of his own.
HE WAS NOT TRESPASSING.
That’s what Max told himself that afternoon as he climbed the back staircase leading up to the fourth-floor servants’ quarters. The manor belonged to him. He was free to roam wherever he liked. And besides, if someone should spot him, he had a perfectly valid excuse for bearding his housekeeper in her den. She wasn’t in any of her usual haunts, and he wanted to take her up on her offer to go over the household accounts with him. For some reason, spending the afternoon closeted in his study with her in front of a cozy fire wasn’t the unpleasant prospect it had once been.
Of course, he could simply have rung for her, but then he wouldn’t have had any excuse to . . . well . . . not trespass.
He emerged at the top of the stairs in an uncarpeted corridor flanked with doors. He could still remember his horror as a boy when his father had drolly informed him servants were always to be housed on the highest floor so they would be the first to burn to death in the event of a fire while the family made their escape. The observation might have been more amusing if his father had been joking.
Since all the doors were standing wide open, Max didn’t even have to feel guilty about stealing a look inside each room as he passed. It didn’t require any detective work on his part to deduce who slept in the first room. Books pilfered from his library were scattered all over the room in untidy piles. Although it was the middle of the day, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Pippa sprawled across the bed, munching on an apple with her nose buried in a book.
The occupant of the next room was just as easily identified. An ancient hornets’ nest dangled from the ceiling, and the table beside the bed sported a collection of interesting rocks and something that looked suspiciously like a mummified toad. They were exactly the sort of treasures Max might have collected as a lad had he been allowed to roam the woods and meadows as Ash had been instead of attending to his lessons.
The next room was slightly larger and looked quite cozy with its neatly made bed and faded leather chair drawn up in front of the coal stove. Max assumed it must belong to his butler.
The last chamber off the corridor was a long dormer room with five beds where the Elizabeths must sleep. Mrs. Spencer had claimed Max had heard their giggles on the night he had left his bed to chase a ghost. He still didn’t believe her. Angelica might not have paid him any more visits, but the echo of her laughter continued to haunt his dreams.
He had reached the end of the corridor. Baffled, he turned in a circle, but there was still no sign of his housekeeper’s room. He was about to give up on his quest and retreat before someone discovered him when he noticed the steep staircase tucked into the corner.
The narrow stairs were more forbidding than inviting, yet Max could not seem to resist them. Shadows enveloped him as he climbed, the risers creaking beneath his boots with each step. At the top of the stairs was a plain wooden door.
He gave it a soft rap. “Mrs. Spencer?”
When there was no response, he tested the knob. The door was fitted with a lock, but it opened easily beneath his hand. Max might have believed he was still in the wrong place if he hadn’t recognized the plain black shawl draped over the foot of the bed. After stealing a furtive glance over his shoulder, he slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.
Now he was trespassing.
The first thing he noticed was the cold.
The weather had turned on them during the night, almost as if the coming winter sought to punish them for enjoying those all-too-brief sunny autumn days. The wind was whistling around the eaves of the attic room, its perch at the peak of the house providing little defense against drafts.
His original mission forgotten, Max wandered deeper into the room, growing more dismayed with every step. A single window set into a recessed dormer let in just enough daylight to reveal how Spartan the room was. It seemed to have been stripped of even the most basic of human comforts. The rooms on the floor below had all been fitted with coal stoves, but this room had only a bare hearth with no hint of recent ash. The other servants’ beds were outfitted with feather ticks and piled high with thick, colorful quilts, but the bed in the attic was little more than a narrow cot with a thin mattress covered by a single worn wool blanket.
Aside from the bed, the furniture consisted of a washstand topped by a chipped porcelain pitcher and basin, a side table, and a battered wardrobe that was obviously the castoff of some distant Cadgwyck ancestor. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the water in the basin icing over on frigid winter mornings.
A pewter candlestick with a nub of a tallow candle, a tinderbox, and a book rested on the table next to the bed. Max picked up the book, shaking his head as he read the title on the clothbound spine—Pilgrim’s Progress. Why should that surprise him? If this room was anything, it was the cell of a penitent.
Max tossed the book back down in disgust, then strode over to the window, half-expecting to find iron bars fixed over it. The window overlooked a desolate sea of moorland with endless waves of gorse and grass swaying in the wind. He shoved it open and leaned out, struck by a dizzying rush of vertigo as the flagstones of the courtyard below seemed to rise up to meet him.
He jerked his head back into the room and slammed the window. As he turned to sweep a despairing look over the bleak little chamber his housekeeper called home, he could not help but compare it to Angelica’s tower with all of the lavish luxuries it must have once afforded a pampered child.
A burst of girlish laughter drifted to his ears. There was nothing spectral about those giggles. His despair shifting into anger, Max hastened down the stairs, his bootheels clattering against the wood.
Two of the young maids had just emerged from the back staircase and were heading for their dormer room, their heads together as they tittered over some private jest.
“Elizabeth!” he snapped.
Both girls jerked to attention, visibly shocked to discover their master had invaded their humble domain. Max could only imagine how thunderous his brow must have looked in that moment.
“Where is Mrs. Spencer?” he demanded.
The maids exchanged a furtive look that made Max want to grind his teeth in frustration. Why did everyone in this house always look so bloody guilty?
“It’s Friday, yer lordship,” one of them finally provided. “She goes to market every Friday. She won’t be back until it’s time to prepare supper.”
He pondered the girl’s words for a moment. “Good. Then I need to set you both to a task. But first you have to promise me something.”
“What, m’lord?” asked the other girl, looking even more apprehensive.
“That you know how to keep a secret.” With that, Max drew the two wide-eyed girls into the circle of his arms and began to murmur his instructions.
ANNE TRUDGED UP THE back staircase, bleary-eyed with exhaustion. She could hardly wait to sink down on the edge of her bed and tug the boots from her aching feet. She’d been up on them since before dawn, and the long walk to the village and back had spread the ache from her feet to her calves.
She had returned from her errands to find Dickon on hands and knees desperately trying to coax Hodges out from the cabinet in the dining-room cupboard before Lord Dravenwood discovered him. Hodges had crawled into the cabinet shortly after lunch and had been cowering there ever since, wild-eyed with fright because he believed the authorities were coming to cart him off to the asylum. It had taken Anne so long to lure him out that she’d had to prepare supper in a terrible rush. She’d been so frazzled she’d inadvertently stomped on Sir Fluffytoes’s tail, nearly broken her neck tripping over Nana’s never-ending scarf, and snapped so sharply at Pippa for leaving a strip of peel on a potato that the usually unflappable girl had burst into tears.
Then she had been forced to play the role of perfect housekeeper as she had helped the maids serve Lord Dravenwood his supper. It might have been her imagination, but he had seemed even more smug than usual. She had turned more than once to catch him watching her from beneath those ridiculously long lashes of his, a speculative gleam in his smoky gray eyes.