The Temptation of Your Touch (34 page)

Dravenwood gave her a chiding look. “I don’t mind if you make me grovel a bit just to placate your pride, but you should know I’ve no intention of squandering nine years of my life wooing you.”

“You can’t possibly marry me! Why would you even suggest such a ridiculous thing?”

“It’s what a gentleman does when he compromises a lady,” he patiently explained. “And as you just pointed out, I am a gentleman to the bitter end.”

“But I’m no lady! I’m . . . well . . . I’m your inferior!”

Dravenwood rose to his feet, looking as
dangerous as she had ever seen him. “You are inferior to no man. Or woman, for that matter.”

“But . . . but you can’t just take your housekeeper and make her your countess. Why, you’d be the laughingstock of all society!”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, now would it? Do you honestly believe their scornful glances and cruel gibes have any power left to hurt me?”

“It’s not just society who would scorn you. You have your family to consider as well.”

Instead of looking alarmed, he looked rather delighted by the prospect. “When I offered for Clarinda, my father threw an enormous tantrum and my mother took to her bed for a fortnight. And all because Clarinda’s father was a ‘commoner’ who had made his considerable fortune in trade. Can you imagine what they’ll say when I write to tell them I’m marrying my housekeeper? Why, they might even go so far as to disinherit me and drag Ash back from his adventures to take my place!” His smile deepened into a bloodthirsty grin that made him look more like a pirate than an earl. “Perhaps we should travel to London and give them the news in person. It would almost be worth it just to see the look on their faces.”

Despite all of her noble intentions, Anne’s heart had begun to lurch with reckless hope. But his words dashed that hope. She could never travel to
London. She could never become his countess. She could never be his wife.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” she said softly. “I appreciate your single-minded devotion to propriety, but I’m afraid I shall have to refuse your offer.”

He scowled, pondering her words. “Then it’s not an offer. It’s an order.”

She gaped at him in disbelief. “Why, of all the high-handed, arrogant, presumptuous . . .” She briefly sputtered into incoherence before blurting out, “You can’t just order me to marry you!”

“And why not? You’re still in my employ, aren’t you? I can order you to serve fresh pheasant for supper or bring me a cup of tea. Why can’t I order you to marry me?”

“Because I have no intention of continuing to work for a madman. I quit!”

“Marvelous. Now that you’re no longer my housekeeper, we’ll be free to marry.”

Anne threw up her hands with a strangled little shriek of frustration.

He came around the desk, the coaxing look in his eye far more dangerous to her resolve than his bullying. “The two of us aren’t so different, are we? We’re both bound by duty and the expectations of others. There’s no need for you to spend the rest of your life attending to the needs of others until you’re as stiff and dried-up as you’re pretending to be.” Her mouth
fell open in outrage, but before she could speak, he continued, “As for me, I have no choice but to marry someday to provide an heir to carry on the family line. And I’d already made up my mind I’d never be foolish enough to do it for love.”

Hoping to hide the fresh blow his words dealt her heart, Anne said crisply, “I’m so glad you decided to spare me the tiresome wooing.”

“All I’m saying is that in my world men and women marry for convenience every day. There’s no reason you and I can’t do the same.”

“It won’t work. We don’t suit.”

“Are you so sure about that? From what I do recall about last night, we seemed to suit very well.” The silky note in his voice deepened, sending a reckless little shiver through her womb. “If we marry, we can do that whenever we like, you know. It’s not only legal and condoned by the church, but encouraged.”

Anne had once heard that when a person was drowning, the person’s entire past could flash before his or her eyes. But in that moment, as she felt herself bobbing beneath the waves of his persistence, it was her future that flashed before hers: waking in the warmth of his arms on a chill winter morning, her cheek laid against the crisp fur of his chest; watching him heft their daughter in the air just as he had hefted little Charlotte, twirling her about until she
collapsed in helpless giggles; seeing the silvery frost at his temples slowly melt through his sooty locks; spending the years softening all of his scowls into smiles until their children’s children danced around them, making the halls of Cadgwyck ring once more with the music of love and laughter and hope.

But it was a future that could never be. She’d surrendered her future in the same moment she’d surrendered her past.

“You make a compelling case,” she said. “But I’ll need some time to consider your . . . proposition.”

“I believe I can afford to grant you that much.”

She straightened, smoothing her apron and donning Mrs. Spencer’s bland mask. “Will that be all, my lord?”

He scowled. “No, Mrs. . . .
Miss
Spencer. I don’t believe it will.” She stood frozen in place as he came sauntering toward her, a predatory glint in his eye.

Her mask slipped as he framed her face in his hands and brought his mouth down on hers. This was a kiss no woman could resist. He crushed his mouth against hers, the harsh demand of his lips tempered by the sweeping mastery of his tongue. He raked his fingers through her hair, loosening the silky tendrils from their net until they tumbled around her face in wild disarray. By the time he stepped away from her, she was limp and breathless and aching with want. Her cheeks were flushed with heat and her lips were
parted and trembling in anticipation of another kiss.

He surveyed her, his satisfaction with what he saw evident. “
That
will be all. For now.” His passion-darkened eyes and roguish grin promised her his kiss was only a taste of the delights to come should she be sensible enough to accept his suit.

A
NGELICA
C
ADGWYCK STOOD OVER
Maximillian Burke’s bed. It wasn’t the first time she had slipped into his chamber just to watch him sleep. But it would be the last.

Moonlight drifted through the open French doors, bathing his handsome features in its silvery glow. His lips were slightly parted, the stern lines of his face relaxed in boyish repose. The sheet had slipped down to his hip bones, exposing the impressive expanse of his chest and the chiseled planes of his abdomen. She had always found it fascinating that despite his fondness for propriety, he didn’t sleep in a nightshirt or nightcap like other men, but was content to wrap himself in nothing more substantial than a moonbeam.

He was a greater mystery to her than she would ever be to him. She was still searching for clues as to what manner of man he might have become had he not been prone to such hopeless affairs of the heart.

If the two of them had met at a ball in some other
lifetime, would he have asked her to dance? Would he have scrawled his name on her dance card and waltzed her out the nearest terrace door into the moonlight so he could steal a kiss? Would he have wooed her with pretty words and bouquets of roses and trips to the opera and rides in Hyde Park?

She had promised herself she wouldn’t touch him this time. But the rebellious lock of hair that persisted in tumbling over his brow posed too great a temptation. She reached to gently brush it back, her fingertips grazing the satiny warmth of his skin.

He stirred. She froze. What would she do if he reached for her? Would she be able to resist him if he sought to tug her into his bed and into his arms? After a moment, he simply nestled deeper into the pillow, murmuring a name in his sleep—a plain name that sounded like a sigh on his lips. A name that sent a wistful lance of yearning through her heart.

Not
Angelica,
but
Anne.

It seemed his destiny would always lie in loving the right woman at the wrong time.

She withdrew her hand, holding it up to the moonlight. She could already feel herself fading. For all these years she had been nothing but a shadow, flitting through the corridors of life. But then he had come along and done everything in his considerable power to give her substance again.

She couldn’t afford to let that happen. A ghost couldn’t be hurt by the sharp edges of life. A ghost couldn’t bleed from a broken heart or dream a dream that could never come true.

A ghost couldn’t fall in love.

She pressed a tender kiss to his brow, then turned away from him and drifted across the room. She cast one last longing look over her shoulder at the bed before melting back into the wall and the past.

M
AX AWOKE ENVELOPED IN
the sultry scent of jasmine. He sat up abruptly, his nostrils flaring. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, but he couldn’t remember what he had been dreaming. For some reason, that deeply disturbed him. He didn’t want to go back to being the man he had been before he came to this place—a man who didn’t dream at all.

Whatever he had been dreaming, it had left him with a nearly inconsolable sense of loss. This was different from what he had felt when Clarinda had tossed him over—deeper and more piercing to the heart. It was as if something had gone terribly awry that could never be put right again. He’d had the exact same feeling when he had ruffled through the blank pages at the end of Angelica Cadgwyck’s journal.

He glanced at the empty bed beside him, surprised by how fiercely he wanted to find Anne there, wrapped up in those rumpled sheets. He wanted to pull her into his arms just as he had last night and bury his doubts and fears in the lush sweetness of her warm and willing body.

The ethereal aroma of the jasmine hadn’t dissipated along with his dream, but had only gotten sweeter and more overpowering. He slowly turned to find the French windows standing wide open, just as they had been on his first night at Cadgwyck. He was no more able to resist their invitation now than he had been then.

He tossed back the blankets and reached for his dressing gown in the same motion, compelled by a peculiar sense of destiny. It was almost as if his every choice since coming to Cadgwyck had somehow brought him to this moment.

Slipping into the dressing gown, he padded across the room and out onto the balcony. Lacy tatters of clouds drifted across a luminous opal of a moon. He closed his hands over the cool iron of the balustrade, his gaze instinctively seeking the tower on the far side of the manor.

At first glance the tower appeared to be shrouded in shadows, the blank eyes of its windows still jealously guarding its secrets. But when Max squinted against the darkness, he saw something else—a faint
glimmer that could have been a trick of the moonlight . . . or the flickering flame of a single candle, the exact sort of beacon a man might light to guide the girl he was seeking to seduce to a secret rendezvous.

Although it still made the tiny hairs on his nape prickle, Max wasn’t even startled when the first tinkling notes from the music box came wafting across the courtyard to his ears.

Perhaps he had always known the night would come when Angelica Cadgwyck would be ready to dance with him again.

Chapter Thirty-two

M
AX COULD STILL REMEMBER
the weight of the silver music box in his hands, the way its wistful notes had tugged at his heart like the echo of a waltz danced in the arms of a phantom lover. It could have been his imagination, but on this night the notes sounded even more off-key than usual, giving their song a sinister cast.

He already knew what would come next. But this time he wasn’t going to allow himself to be seduced by that tantalizing ripple of feminine laughter. He wouldn’t be lured into the darkness by a promise that could never be fulfilled. He’d had his fill of chasing ghosts. He was ready to trust his heart to the hands of a warm, living woman—one strong and sensible enough to keep all of his ghosts at bay, even the ones he’d created himself.

He straightened, loosening his hands from the
balustrade. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I would have saved you if I could have.”

The music abruptly stopped.

He was turning away from the balcony railing when a woman’s scream, ripe with anguish, tore through the night, followed by the sharp report of a single gunshot.

H
AUNTED BY THAT HEART-WRENCHING
scream, Max raced across the second-floor gallery, dragging on his shirt as he ran. He rounded the landing and headed down the stairs without sparing Angelica’s portrait a single glance.

Unwilling to waste precious minutes crashing his way through the darkened house, he wrenched open the front door and went pelting across the weed-choked flagstones of the courtyard. Except for the wispy clouds and a misty scattering of stars, the sky was clear. On this night there could be no mistaking a crack of thunder for the report of a pistol.

The tower loomed up out of the darkness. Max had to circle it twice before he finally located an outer door. At first he feared it was bolted, but when he set his shoulder to it and shoved with all of his might, it gave way with a full-throated groan of protest. He found himself on the first floor. Shafts of
moonlight pierced the arrow slits, illuminating the winding steps leading up to the top floor.