The Temptation of Your Touch (13 page)

Leaning forward, she blew out the candle, banishing that creature to the past where she belonged.

Chapter Twelve

A
NNE STOOD AT THE
head of the long pine table in the kitchen the next morning, her gaze traveling the circle of faces turned expectantly toward her. Each of those faces was desperately dear to her, but she still felt the burden of their need weighing down her heart. Sometimes she didn’t know if her heart would be strong enough to bear it.

Nana had already finished her porridge and retreated to her rocking chair in front of the hearth to rescue Sir Fluffytoes from the hopeless tangle the cat had made of her yarn. Hodges was rocking back and forth in his chair and humming the singsong notes of a nursery rhyme beneath his breath, the front of his white waistcoat already dappled with various food stains.

Anne sighed. She had hoped to send Hodges back to the cellar to do some more excavating while Lord Dravenwood was occupied elsewhere, but in
his current condition, Hodges probably wouldn’t be able to find the cellar, much less any treasures that might be hiding there.

Pippa and Dickon sat directly across from the maids, who had managed to stop giggling and chattering just long enough to give Anne their attention.

Anne had found the five young maids on the streets of London, living from one crust of bread to the next. They shared one thing in common with her—they had all been left to fend for themselves after being betrayed by a man. Or in some of their cases, by many men.

When Anne had first brought them to Cadgwyck, they had slunk around the manor like a pack of feral cats, shying away from every sudden movement and loud noise. Their hair had been stringy and dull, their features pinched by a combination of hunger and mistrust.

Now their hair was shiny, their faces full and glowing with good health and good humor in the cozy light from the kitchen fire. To them, Cadgwyck Manor wasn’t a pile of crumbling stones, but the only true home they’d ever known.

Anne had deliberately chosen the window of time before the earl would rise to address them all.

“I don’t wish to alarm any of you,” she said, pitching her words at a volume even Nana could hear over the steady creak of her rocking chair, “but I’m
afraid we’re going to have to endure Lord Dravenwood’s company for a little longer than we anticipated.”

“And just why is that?” Pippa demanded, looking alarmed.

Anne bit her bottom lip. “I fear I have only myself to blame. In my haste to be rid of the man, I may have overplayed my hand last night.”

“Oh, dear!” Betsy’s cheerful little pumpkin of a face went as pale as the starched folds of the mob-cap perched atop her yellow curls. “He didn’t catch you, did he?”

If she closed her eyes, Anne could still feel Dravenwood’s arms enfolding her, hauling her against the hard, ruthless planes of his body as if she weighed no more than a feather from one of his pillows. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But I told him I’d left my bed to investigate a mysterious noise myself.”

“And he believed you?” Lizzie asked hopefully.

Anne could still see the skeptical gleam of the earl’s eyes shining down at her out of the darkness. “I’m not sure Lord Dravenwood believes in much of anything. Since his suspicions have already been stirred, I think it would be best if we try a more subtle approach from this day forward.”

Pippa blew an errant curl out of her eyes, her expression sulky. “Just how long must we put up with the insufferable man?”

Anne took a deep breath. “A fortnight at least. Perhaps as much as a month.”

Dickon groaned. “I can’t wear that silly wig for a fortnight. It itches something fierce!”

“You’re just going to have to bear up. He’ll be gone soon enough, just like all the rest,” Anne assured the boy. “We don’t want to make him
too
comfortable, of course, or he might stop pining for his London luxuries and decide he fancies it here. We’ll keep feeding him uninspiring meals and making sure the house is as inhospitable as possible. But for the time being there will be no more peculiar noises in the night or mysteriously closed chimney flues. I think it would be best if Angelica didn’t put in any more appearances for a while.”

“She won’t care for that,” Pippa warned. “You know what a brat she can be when it comes to getting what she wants.”

“I’ve often thought the two of you were kindred spirits in that respect,” Anne shot back, earning an appreciative chuckle from Dickon. Pippa made a face at him.

“Angelica has always been a good girl,” Hodges said softly to the remains of his porridge. “If she is overly indulged, it is only because she deserves to be.”

Anne gazed down at his snowy-white head, forced to swallow around the sudden tightness in
her throat. “Yes, darling. Angelica
is
a good girl. If not for her, none of us would be here right now.”

Dickon still didn’t look convinced. “How are we supposed to keep hunting for the treasure if he’s always lurking about, ordering us to fetch his gloves or lick his boots clean or glowering at us as if we’d accidentally gelded his favorite stallion?”

“We’ll simply have to take more care,” Anne replied. “Once the earl has relaxed his guard a bit, we’ll have a much better chance of—”

“Mrs. Spencer!”

Chapter Thirteen

A
N
NE FROZE RIGHT ALONG
with the rest of them as the echo of that familiar roar slowly faded. After a stark moment of silence, one of the rusty bells strung over the door began to jangle with undeniable violence.

“Do you hear the cathedral bells?” Hodges clapped his pudgy hands, his eyes shining like a child’s. “Why, it must be Christmas morning!”

Lizzie gazed up the inscription above the bell, her eyes as round as saucers. “ ’Tis the master’s bedchamber.”

Pippa gave Anne a wide-eyed look, but Anne shook her head in answer to the girl’s unspoken question. Neither Anne nor Angelica had had a hand in this bit of mischief. Anne was as bewildered as the rest of them by their master’s abrupt summons. Keenly aware of their anxious gazes following her every move, Anne forced herself to walk
calmly from the kitchen. She waited until she was out of their sight to quicken her steps to a run.

W
HEN
A
NNE ARRIVED AT
the east wing, Dravenwood was pacing back and forth in the corridor outside his bedchamber in shirtsleeves and trousers, his untied cravat hanging loose around his throat. He wasn’t trailing smoke or reeking of fire and brimstone, but he did appear to be in a devil of a temper.

As she approached, he wheeled around and stabbed a finger toward the closed door. “There is a creature in my room!”

To Anne’s credit, she managed to keep a straight face. “What is it this time, my lord? A ghost? A bogey? Or perhaps a werewolf?”

Scowling at her from beneath a brow as dark and forbidding as a thundercloud, he reached down and flung open the door. Anne gingerly peered around the door frame, unsure of what she would find.

Piddles was curled up right in the middle of his lordship’s bed, chewing on a piece of mangled leather. As they crept into the room, the dog bared his pronounced underbite and let out a low growl, as if to warn them away from attempting to wrest his prize from him so they might chew on it themselves.

A smile slowly spread across Anne’s face. “That is
not a creature, my lord.
That
is a dog.” She squinted at the shiny leather tassel dangling from one corner of the dog’s mouth. “And what is that? Is it . . .”

“It
was
one of my very best boots,” Dravenwood said morosely. Piddles gulped, then swallowed. The tassel disappeared.

As the dog went back to gnawing on what was left of the boot, the earl glared at him. “I discovered him when I came out of the dressing room. How do you suppose the little wretch got in here?”

“Was the door secured?”

Dravenwood snorted. “Why should that matter in this house? He probably just walked right through it.”

“If it wasn’t locked, he may have nudged it open with his nose.”

“Such as it is.” Dravenwood eyed a squashed black button disparagingly, as if it couldn’t possibly have any useful purpose.

“I’m afraid it’s a long-standing habit of his.”

“Along with ingesting wildly expensive footwear?”

Sighing, Anne nodded. “As well as stockings, straw bonnets, and the occasional parasol. I’m terribly sorry, my lord. I’ll be more than happy to remove the dog from your chamber, but I fear your boot is quite beyond repair.” She marched over to the bed and snapped her fingers. “Piddles, down!”

The dog uncurled himself and obediently
descended the bed stairs, landing on his stocky legs with a decided thump. He sank down on his squat haunches, the remains of the boot still hanging from his mouth, and looked up at her expectantly.

Dravenwood frowned. “Every time I got anywhere near the bed, the beast snapped at me like a baby dragon. I was afraid I was going to lose a finger, if not an entire hand.”

“Dickon is the one who trained him.”

“Well, that explains it. Why do you call him—”

As if anticipating the question, Piddles strolled to the foot of the bed, hiked up his leg, and proceeded to ruin the earl’s other boot.

Anne held her breath. Their last master would probably have kicked the cantankerous little dog out the nearest window for such a slight.

But after a short pause, Lord Dravenwood simply sighed. “Well, it wasn’t as if I was going to have need of one boot.”

Unmindful of his narrow escape, Piddles trotted from the room, his stub of a tail wagging proudly as he displayed his trophy for all the world to see.

“Did you never have a pup when you were a boy, my lord?” Anne could not resist asking.

Dravenwood shook his head. “My father had hunting hounds, of course, but he believed such beasts were for sport, not for pleasure.”

“And what did you believe?”

He frowned as if no one had ever asked him such a thing before. “One winter, when I was a very small lad, I found a litter of kittens that had been abandoned by their mother in a corner of the hayloft. They were tiny, mewling creatures . . . so very helpless. I wrapped them up in my woolen muffler and carried them back to the house, thinking I might be able to coax my father into letting me keep them in my bedchamber until they grew old enough to thrive on their own. He informed me that animals had no place in a house and I must give them to one of the footmen for safekeeping.” Dravenwood’s voice remained almost painfully expressionless. “I found out later he ordered the footman to drown them in a bucket.”

Anne gasped. “How unspeakably cruel! How could he do such a wretched thing to those poor, innocent creatures?”
And to his own child,
she thought, her heart going out to that eager little boy who had hurried back to the house in the cold with his precious bundle.

“I’m sure he thought he was teaching me a valuable lesson about life.”

“What? Not to trust a footman?”

“That only the strong are worthy of survival.” Judging by the cool look he gave her, it was a lesson he had learned only too well.

Effectively reminded of her place, Anne smoothed
her apron and said stiffly, “I’ll send someone to tidy up right away, my lord.”

Eyeing the puddle spreading around his remaining boot, Dravenwood’s eyes narrowed to silvery slits. “Dickon.
Send Dickon
.”

H
AVING LEFT
D
ICKON ON
hands and knees, muttering beneath his breath as he grudgingly scrubbed the floor of the master bedchamber, Max sat all alone at the head of the massive dining-room table. He was wearing his
second
favorite pair of boots and feeling no less ridiculous than he had the day before.

As he waited for his breakfast to arrive, he was forced to smother a yawn. His midnight encounter with both the ghost and his housekeeper had kept him tossing in his bedclothes until the wee hours of the morning.

He should never have mentioned hearing the ghostly laughter to Mrs. Spencer. She and the other servants were probably gathered in the kitchen at that very moment, having a hearty laugh at his expense.