The Temptation of Your Touch (24 page)

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

F
OR 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.

A
NNE 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.”

“Y
OU 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?”

“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

“B
L
ACKMAIL?”
A
NNE 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.”