The Temptation of Your Touch (3 page)

If it had been within his power, Max would gladly have relinquished his title along with his career. Ash had ended up with everything else Max had ever wanted. Why not just hand him the earldom and make him heir to their father’s dukedom as well?

As his parents had bid him an affectionate farewell in the drawing room of their London mansion, neither of them had been able to meet his eyes, plainly fearing he might recognize the relief within their own. Since his past transgressions had come to light on the day his bride had jilted him, proving he wasn’t the perfect son they had always believed him to be, Max had become a stranger to them both—dangerous and unpredictable.

Despite his determination to embrace the rigors of his exile, he felt a flare of relief when his carriage traded the rutted road for a cobbled courtyard. He wasn’t immune to the temptation of stretching his long legs after being confined to the cage of the vehicle for hours—and days—on end.

He was gathering his hat, gloves, and walking stick when the coachman flung open the carriage door. Rain dripped steadily from the drooping brim of the man’s slouch hat.

“Have we arrived at our destination?” Max was forced to practically shout to be heard over the rhythmic slap of the rain against the cobblestones.

“I have,” the man said shortly, his long face looking
as if it would shatter completely if it dared to crack in a smile. “ ’Tis as far as I’ll go. You’ll have to hire one o’ the locals to take you the rest o’ the way.”

“Pardon? I was under the impression you’d been engaged to take me to Cadgwyck Manor.”

“I was hired to take you to the
village
of Cadgwyck,” the man insisted.

Max sighed. His diplomatic skills had once been the stuff of legend, but of late the reserves of his patience had been all but exhausted. “If this is the village, surely the manor can’t be that much farther. Wouldn’t it make more sense to press on than to go to all the trouble of unloading my baggage just so it can be reloaded into another conveyance? Especially in this weather.”

“ ’Tis as far as I’ll go. I’ll go no farther.”

Max wasn’t accustomed to having his will defied, but it was rapidly becoming clear the taciturn coachman was not to be swayed, either by logic or threats. Since Max didn’t have a stockade, a firing squad, or even a dueling pistol at his immediate disposal, he found himself with no recourse but to exit the man’s carriage.

“Very well,” he said stiffly, yanking on his gloves.

He climbed down from the carriage, tugging the brim of his hat forward to shield his face from the wind-tossed gusts of rain. He straightened to find himself standing in the cobbled courtyard of a
ramshackle inn. He half-expected the inn to be named Purgatory, but a splintery sign suspended on creaking chains over the door proclaimed it the Cat and Rat. Max could only hope it was a tribute to the faded black cat with a rat hanging out of its mouth painted on the sign and not what they served for supper.

The establishment had plainly seen better days, but the cozy glow of the lamplight spilling through the windows promised a haven for the weary—and wet—traveler.

Max watched as the coachman’s outriders piled his trunks beneath the overhang of the inn’s roof, where they would at least be out of the worst of the weather. He supposed he should be grateful the lunatic hadn’t dumped him and his baggage in the middle of the moor.

The coachman scrambled back up into the driver’s seat, drawing an oilcloth hood up over his hat to shelter his dour countenance.
He must be in a great hurry to escape this place,
Max thought. He wasn’t even lingering long enough to change out his team or allow his outriders a bit of refreshment.

As the man gazed down at Max, shadows hid everything but the sharp glint of his eyes. “God be with you, m’lord,” he said before muttering beneath his breath, “You’ll have need o’ Him where you’re goin’.”

With that enigmatic farewell, the coachman
snapped the reins on his team’s backs, sending the carriage rocking away into the darkness.

Max stood there in the rain gazing after him, not realizing until that moment just how weary he was. This weariness had little to do with the hardships of his journey and everything to do with the thirty-three years that had preceded it. Years spent chasing a single dream only to have it slip through his fingers like a woman’s sleek blond hair just when it was finally within his grasp.

Max’s expression hardened. He wasn’t deserving of anyone’s pity, especially his own. Forcing himself to shake off his ennui along with the droplets of rain clinging to the shoulder cape of his greatcoat, he went striding toward the door of the inn.

M
AX ENTERED THE INN
on a tumultuous swirl of wind, rain, and damp leaves. The common room was far more crowded than he had anticipated on such an inhospitable night. Well over a dozen patrons were scattered among the mismatched tables, most of them nursing pewter tankards of ale. Max hadn’t seen any other coaches in the courtyard. Since it was the only establishment of its kind in these parts, the local villagers probably assembled there nightly to indulge in a pint—or three—before seeking out the comfort of their own beds.

A thick haze of pipe smoke hung over the room. A cheery fire crackled on the grate of the stone hearth, making Max wish he were an ordinary man who could afford the luxury of drawing off his damp gloves and warming his hands by its flames before settling in to enjoy a pint and some companionable conversation with his mates.

He tugged the door shut behind him. The wind howled a protest as it was forced to retreat. An awkward silence fell over the room as the gaze of every man and woman in the place settled on him.

Max returned their gazes coolly and without a trace of self-consciousness. He had always cut an imposing figure. For most of his life, he had only to enter a room to command it, a trait that had served him well when negotiating peace treaties between warring factions in Burma or assuring Parliament the interests of the East India Company were also the interests of the Crown. He could feel the curious stares lingering on the plush wool of his greatcoat with its multilayered shoulder capes and brass buttons, the ivory handle of the walking stick gripped in his white-gloved hand, the brushed beaver of his top hat. The last thing the patrons of the tavern had expected to blow through their door on this night—or any other—was probably a gentleman of means.

He gave them ample time to take his measure
before announcing, “I’m looking for someone to transport me to Cadgwyck Manor.”

Suddenly, no one would look at him. Instead, they exchanged furtive glances with one another, lifted their mugs to their lips to hide their faces, or gazed into the steaming depths of their mutton stew as if the answers to the mysteries of the universe could be found there.

Baffled by their odd behavior, Max cleared his throat forcefully. “Perhaps you misunderstood me.” His voice rang with an authority honed by years of snapping out orders to brash young lieutenants and chairing board meetings attended by some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in England. “I’m seeking to engage someone to carry me and my baggage the rest of the way to Cadgwyck Manor. I’m willing to pay. And pay well.”

The silence grew even more tense, broken only by an ominous rumble of thunder. Now the villagers wouldn’t even look at each other. Max studied their drawn profiles and hunched shoulders, fascinated against his will. He could easily have dismissed them as a provincial and unfriendly lot with an instinctive mistrust of strangers. But as a man well acquainted with battle fatigue in all of its incarnations, he recognized that their nervous twitching and averted gazes were not a result of hostility but fear.

A woman Max assumed must be the innkeeper’s
wife came bustling out from behind the bar, wiping her hands on her ale-stained apron. Judging by the fetching dimples in the dumplings of her cheeks and the alarming way her heavy breasts threatened to overflow the front lacings of her bodice, she had probably been quite the buxom beauty in her day.

“Now, m’lord,” she crooned, her smile a shade too friendly, “why would ye want to go back out on such a foul night as this? Especially when ye’ve got everything you need right here. Why, we’ve even a mattress ye can let in a private room!” Her smile deepened to a leer. “Unless, of course, ye’d like someone to share it with ye.”

The woman seized a scraggly-haired young barmaid by the elbow and thrust her in Max’s general direction. The girl gave him a flirtatious smile, which might have been more alluring if both her front teeth hadn’t been missing.

Suppressing a shudder at the thought of sharing some flea-infested mattress with a barmaid who probably also had fleas—or worse—Max offered both women a polite bow. “I appreciate the hospitality of your fine establishment, madam, but I’ve already come all the way from London. I’ve no desire to waste another night on the road, not when I’m this close to my destination.”

The woman cast the man polishing a pewter tankard behind the bar a desperate glance. “Please, sir, if ye’ll
just wait till morning, we’ll have our boy Ennor take ye up to the manor. And I won’t let him charge ye so much as a ha’penny for his trouble.”

Ignoring her offer, Max swept his gaze over the room, assessing its occupants with a jaded eye. “You there!” he finally said, settling on a hulking giant of a man with a shiny melon of a head and a homespun shirt stretched taut over the slabs of muscle in his shoulders. The man was hunched over a bowl of stew and did not look up as Max strode over to his table. “You look a strapping sort, not inclined to let a little rain or a bit of thunder and lightning keep you from making a tidy profit. Have you a conveyance?”

“Won’t go.” The man spooned another heaping mouthful of stew into his mouth. “Not afore the sun comes up. She wouldn’t like it.”

“She?” Max cast the innkeeper’s wife a bewildered glance. Although the woman looked perfectly capable of wielding a mean rolling pin, she hardly looked menacing enough to hold an entire village hostage.

“Her.”
The man finally lifted his head to meet Max’s gaze, his voice a rumble even deeper than the thunder. “The White Lady o’ Cadgwyck Manor.”

Chapter Four

A
N AUDIBLE GASP WENT
up from the other patrons of the inn. Catholicism had fallen out of favor in these parts over three centuries ago, after King Henry VIII had decided it would be simpler to divorce Catherine of Aragon than to behead her, but from the corner of his eye, Max saw a man sketch the sign of a cross on his breast.

As understanding slowly dawned, an emotion he hardly recognized came bubbling up inside of him. Throwing back his head, Max did something he hadn’t done for months and had suspected he might never do again.

He laughed.

It was a deep, ripe, full-bodied laugh, as out of place in the tense atmosphere of the tavern as a baby’s cry would have been at the undertaker’s.

“She won’t like that, either,” the bald man warned dourly before returning to his stew.

Max shook his head, still grinning. “I can’t believe all of this nonsense is over a ghost! Although I don’t know why I should be so surprised. It’s not as if I’m a stranger to native superstitions. In India it was the
bhoot
who wear their feet backward and cast no shadow. In Arabia, the cunning
efreet
who can possess a man’s body and then trick others into doing its will. And what crumbling manor or castle in England doesn’t come equipped with its own spectral hellhound or Gray Ghost? I did a fair bit of reading after I decided to come here, and it seems Cornwall is so rife with spirits of the dead it’s a miracle they aren’t stumbling over each other’s chains.” He began to tick them off on his fingers. “There’s the Bodmin Beast, of course, along with the shades of all the sailors lured into dashing their ships on the rocks by unscrupulous wreckers out to salvage their cargo. Then there are the ghosts of the wreckers and smugglers themselves, doomed to wander the mist as flickering lights for all eternity as punishment for their terrible crimes.”

He shook his head ruefully. “But if I’m to have a ghost, naturally it would be a White Lady. Because God knows I haven’t already wasted enough of my life being haunted by a woman!”

The villagers were beginning to eye him askance, as if he were the one making mad assertions. Even
to his own ears, his voice had a wild edge to it, just shy of violence.

The innkeeper’s wife planted her hands on her generous hips, her disapproving scowl warning him just how quickly the villagers could turn on him. “Ye might not be so quick to dismiss our words as a bunch o’ rubbish—or be so bloody smug—if ye’d have seen the face o’ the last master o’ the house on the night he came runnin’ into the village a little after midnight, half-dead from fleein’ whatever evil lurks in that place.”

“Why, he wouldn’t even speak o’ the things he saw!” the barmaid added, her face growing even paler beneath its curtain of lank, lemon-colored hair.

“Aye,” said an old man with leathery skin and a patch over one eye. “Unspeakable they were.”

The other villagers began to chime in, growing bolder with each word. “He swore he’d never set foot in that cursed place again, not for all the money in the world.”