For a dangerous moment, Anne had allowed herself to forget this man was not her equal but her employer. Seeking to escape the havoc his smile was still playing with her heart, she turned toward the window, absently hugging the journal to her breast
as she gazed out at the falling rain. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have been so passionate in my protest. It’s just that the young lady in question has been the subject of sordid gossip for over a decade now. She’s had her life dissected and her honor impugned by complete strangers who would denounce her as a strumpet just so they might appear more virtuous.” She could feel her temper rising again. “I’m not saying the girl is without blame, but it’s far more difficult for women who are embroiled in scandals than men. The women’s reputations are destroyed, while the men get to go off scot-free to seduce the next innocent they encounter, boasting about all their conquests along the way.”
“From what you told me,” he gently reminded her, “the man who seduced Angelica didn’t exactly walk away unscathed.”
“Well, he proved to be the exception to the rule,” she admitted, thankful Dravenwood couldn’t see how hard her face must have looked in that moment. “All I’m saying is that the girl doesn’t deserve to have her belongings pawed through by strangers. She already lost so much. Couldn’t we at least leave her some small measure of privacy and dignity?”
She sensed rather than saw Dravenwood come up behind her. He was standing so close she could feel his warmth, could smell the scent of the bayberry soap that clung to his freshly shaven throat and jaw.
Could remember how warm and safe she had felt when he had held her against his body in the dark and how she had shuddered with anticipation when she had believed he was going to kiss her.
Reaching over her shoulder, he gently but firmly tugged the journal from her grip. She turned to face him, deeply disappointed that he would so callously dismiss her wishes.
He was already crossing the tower. As she watched, hugging herself with her now empty arms, he tucked the book back into its hiding place, then placed the doll on top of it. He even took the time to fan the doll’s mildewed skirts out in precise folds so they would shield Angelica’s secrets from any other prying eyes.
“There.” He turned back to face her. “Satisfied?”
She nodded, although watching his capable hands handle the doll with the same tenderness he had used when handling the journal had stirred such a deep yearning in her she wasn’t sure she would ever be satisfied again.
More to distract herself than him, she wandered over to the bed and trailed a hand over the tattered lace hanging from the canopy. It drifted through her fingers like cobwebs. “After seeing this chamber, it’s probably not difficult for you to understand how Angelica grew up to be such a brat. According to local lore, her father sent to Paris to have all of those ridiculous dolls specially commissioned just for her.”
“Sounds like your ordinary doting papa to me.” A corner of the earl’s mouth curled in a droll smile. “If ever I was blessed with a daughter, I’d probably be tempted to do the same thing.”
Trying not to imagine a laughing Dravenwood with a little girl with sooty-dark curls and misty-gray eyes perched high on his shoulder, Anne said, “From what I’ve heard, the tower hadn’t been fit for habitation for centuries, so Angelica charmed her father into bringing in an army of workmen and spending a fortune renovating it just so she could preside over her own little kingdom. She probably fancied herself some sort of long-lost princess.” Anne shook her head, a helpless, little laugh escaping her. “And who could blame her, given how hopelessly indulged she was?”
“Some children can be spoiled without being ruined. I suspect she was one of those.”
Anne gaped at him, unable to hide her surprise. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Dravenwood jerked his head toward the journal. “Because when she was only seven years old, she already understood her birthday was also the anniversary of her mother’s death and sought to cheer her father by doing a watercolor of her mother with a harp and angel wings as a gift to him. Because when she was eleven and several of her father’s tenants were stricken with cholera, she defied his
express wishes and slipped out of the house to deliver baskets of food to their cottages. Food she’d been scavenging from her own plate by skipping dinner and going to bed hungry for nearly a week.”
Unable to bear any further recitation of Angelica’s virtues, Anne snapped, “It’s easy to be generous when you lack for nothing yourself.”
“You’re being rather hard on the young woman, aren’t you? Especially after making such a passionate plea on her behalf.”
“I was defending her privacy, not her character.”
Dravenwood’s eyes narrowed to smoky slits as he studied her. “Perhaps your own staunch moral character makes it difficult for you to sympathize with the failings of mere mortals.”
Anne would almost have sworn he was mocking her. His penetrating gaze seemed to peel away her thin veneer of respectability, to see straight through to all of the subterfuge, all of the lies she’d told to accomplish her aims.
He’d already given her a taste of just how persuasive he could be. How he might tempt a woman to spill her secrets just by drawing her into his arms and brushing his mouth ever so lightly against her lips.
Armoring her heart against the power of that gaze, she said, “And are you including yourself among the mortals or the gods?”
His harsh bark of laughter was edged with
bitterness. “It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I’ve spent most of my life sitting high upon Mount Olympus, gazing down my nose at those I considered less virtuous than myself.” His expression darkened. “But I can assure you it’s a very long fall from Mount Olympus. And a
very
hard landing.”
Not if you have someone waiting to catch you in their arms
.
The thought sprang unbidden to Anne’s mind. She inclined her head, hoping the shadows would hide her blush. Unfortunately, her reticence only fueled Dravenwood’s curiosity.
“You chided me for invading Miss Cadgwyck’s
kingdom,
as you call it, but just what were
you
doing here?”
Anne couldn’t very well tell him she’d come here intent upon doing the same thing she’d been doing for the past four years whenever she had a free moment—searching, always searching, wracking her brain and the chamber for any clue to the location of the only key with the power to free her from this tower forever.
So instead she told him the closest thing to the truth she could manage. “Sometimes I come here to be alone. To escape. To think.” The cozy patter of the rain only seemed to confirm her words. “But I should get back before the others miss me.” She gestured toward the door, inviting him to precede her.
Visibly amused by her high-handedness, he started for the door. She followed, but just as they reached the landing, he turned back, eyeing her thoughtfully. “Since you found me here, you haven’t once addressed me as ‘my lord.’ I rather like that.”
“What would you prefer I call you?
Master?
”
As their gazes met, some infinitesimal shift in his expression gave her reason to regret those mocking words. A dangerous ember smoldered deep in those cool gray eyes of his, threatening to make her
staunch moral character
go up in a poof of smoke. “My Christian name is Maximillian.”
Trying not to imagine how satisfying the name would sound rolling off her tongue, she blinked innocently at him. “Very good, my lord.”
“Do you have a Christian name? Or is
Mrs.
your Christian name?”
“Anne. My name is Anne.” Even though his face revealed nothing, it wasn’t difficult to imagine what he was thinking—a plain name for a plain woman. “Do watch your step on the stairs, my lord,” she cautioned. “Yet another reason for you to stay clear of this place. The stairs are crumbling and could be quite dangerous to anyone not familiar with them. Why, you might have fallen and—”
“Broken my neck?” he volunteered helpfully.
“Turned your ankle,” she said stiffly.
He pondered her warning for a minute, then
stepped aside. This time there was no mistaking the challenge in his mocking smile as he graciously extended a hand toward the stairs. “After you, Mrs. Spencer.”
L
ATE THAT NIGHT
M
AX
found himself once again standing before Angelica’s portrait. He lifted his candle higher, bathing the portrait in its loving light. He might never know the woman she would have become, but his trip to the tower had enabled him to steal a glimpse of the girl she had been.
He leaned closer to the portrait. He’d been too busy mooning over Angelica’s winsome face to pay any heed to the signature scrawled in the corner of the canvas. So
this
was the man whose merest touch had set her heart to “beating like the wings of a captive bird” in her breast. Max’s eyes narrowed. He was certainly no stranger to the gnawing pangs of jealousy; he just hadn’t expected to suffer them over a woman who had died a decade ago.
Committing the artist’s name to memory, he straightened. Now that he’d read Angelica’s diary, he was even more curious about what exactly had happened on the night the portrait was unveiled. Perhaps he had been looking for answers in the wrong places. Tomorrow he would send Dickon to the village with a dispatch for London. If answers
were available within the annals of London society gossip, he knew just the man to find them.
A
NNE WOVE HER WAY
through the market, paying little heed to the cacophony of voices and noise drifting around her. She’d already nabbed a handsome goose, freshly plucked, and a new skein of yarn for Nana from one of the traveling vendors who set up rickety wooden stalls along the main street of the village each Friday morning. She always kept a large store of supplies at the manor, but before she made the long walk home that afternoon, the basket hooked over her arm would be laden with any extras they would require for the week to come.
As she passed the fox-faced magistrate, she spared him a cool nod. She could feel his beady little eyes following her as she moved on to the next stall. Once, such scrutiny might have tempted her to tug the brim of her homely black bonnet a few inches lower in the hope its shadow might hide her face. But now she held her head high, having learned that most people in the world saw only what they expected to see. And what they expected to see when she strolled by was the plain and pious visage of Cadgwyck Manor’s housekeeper.
The brisk autumn air was redolent with the
aroma of roasted chestnuts. Unable to resist the enticing scent, Anne stopped at the next stall to purchase a bag for Dickon from her own pin money.
“Nearly shot the poor fellow dead, he did. That’s what me cousin Molly heard. Had to flee London before they arrested him for duelin’.”
As Anne moved on to the next booth, toying with some pretty silk ribbons she knew Pippa would adore, she paid little heed to the nasal tones of Mrs. Beedle, the village laundress. The woman was a notorious busybody. Anne had little patience for such gossip herself, having discovered firsthand just how much havoc it could wreak on a life.
“I thought he had the look of a rogue about him—marchin’ into
my
Ollie’s tavern, tossin’ ’round purses of gold in that high-handed manner o’ his and orderin’ everyone about as if he owned the place.”
Anne jerked up her head, a lavender ribbon slipping through her fingers. There could be no mistaking the braying voice of Avigail Penberthy, the innkeeper’s buxom missus. Nor could there be any mistaking the identity of the high-handed rogue who went marching about as if he owned every inch of land beneath his shiny leather boots.
Unable to resist the temptation, Anne sidled closer to the two women, adding eavesdropping to her burgeoning catalog of sins.
Mrs. Beedle lowered her voice. “Molly heard he was the perfect gent till his fiancée threw him over. Jilted him at the altar and ran off to marry another just as they was about to say their
I do
’s!”
As both women sighed in chorus, their sympathies shifting, Anne felt a stab of empathy in the vicinity of her own heart. She could only imagine what a terrible blow such a slight must have been to a man of Dravenwood’s unyielding pride. Now she understood why he had arrived at Cadgwyck looking as if he were haunted by his own ghosts. He must have loved his fiancée very much for her abandonment to have cut him so deeply.
“I didn’t think he’d last a night at the manor, much less more than a fortnight. He must have made a deal with the devil hisself to survive livin’ in that tomb,” Mrs. Penberthy suggested, a shudder rippling through her voice.
“The devil?” Mrs. Beedle whispered. “Or the devil’s mistress?”
Normally Anne would have been thrilled to hear evidence that Angelica’s legend was growing, but on this day, the women’s nonsense was grating on her nerves. Refusing to listen to another word of it, she brushed past them, giving Mrs. Penberthy’s ample bottom a hearty bump with her basket as she did so. “Pardon me,” she murmured.
Both women started, then exchanged a guilty glance. “Why, Mrs. Spencer, we didn’t see you there!”
“No, I gather you didn’t.” Anne fixed the laundress with an icy stare. “Mrs. Beedle, I expect we’ll be seeing you at the manor next week?”
The laundress gave her a lukewarm smile. “Aye, Mrs. Spencer. I’ll be there.”
Leaving them with a cool nod, Anne continued on her way, feeling their eyes follow her all the way to the end of the street.
“M
Y LORD?”
A
NNE TENTATIVELY
poked her head around the door frame of the library later that afternoon to find her employer reclining in a leather wing chair, his long, lean legs in their skintight trousers propped on an ottoman and crossed at the ankles.
“Hmmm?” he said absently, turning a page of the book he was perusing.
Anne barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes when she saw it was
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith. She allowed herself a moment to covertly study the clean, masculine lines of his profile, the inky sweep of his lashes, the hint of beard darkening his jaw, even though he’d shaved only that morning. Remembering the gossip she’d heard in the village,
she could not help but wonder what sort of woman could break the heart of such a man.