The Temptation of Your Touch (16 page)

Piddles was curled up on a faded rag rug in front of the stone hearth, his chin resting on his paws while a
plump calico cat with tufted, white feet dozed in the cushion of the rocking chair in the corner.

It wasn’t his cook but his housekeeper bending over to peer into the open door of the cast-iron oven. Max sincerely doubted Nana’s rump had ever been that shapely. For once Mrs. Spencer didn’t look as if she’d been dipped into a vat of starch. A large white apron protected her skirts, and her face was flushed pink from the heat of the stove. Several strands of hair had escaped the net binding her chignon and tumbled down to frame her face. Max watched in reluctant fascination as one of them began to curl in the moist heat.

Despite her dishevelment, she looked happier than Max had ever seen her. She was even humming some tuneless ditty beneath her breath.

Just as she closed the door of the oven with a rag-wrapped hand, he said, “An early riser, are we, Mrs. Spencer?”

Straightening so fast she nearly bumped her head on a copper stew pot, she spun around to face him. She looked as guilty as if he’d caught her in flagrante delicto on the kitchen table with some strapping young gardener, an image that gave Max more pause than he had planned.

The rag slithered to the floor. Her hand darted up to tuck a strand of hair back into the net, but met with little success. “My lord, even in London I’m
sure it is customary to ring when you need something, not creep up on your servants and frighten them half out of their wits.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked flatly.

She glanced at the table. It was covered from end to end with sacks of meal and flour, crocks of butter and lard, a basket of brown-speckled eggs, bottles of spices, stoneware bowls, and a slew of other utensils and ingredients, many of them unidentifiable to Max’s untrained eye.

Her mouth took on a faintly insolent cast. “Cooking.”

Max advanced on her. “I was under the impression that Nana did the cooking for the household.”

“Nana is feeling a bit under the weather today.” As if to remind him someone was within screaming distance, Mrs. Spencer nodded toward the door. “She can’t manage the stairs any longer so she sleeps in a room just down the corridor instead of in the servants’ quarters.”

Max moved around the end of the table. She turned with him as he stalked her, following him warily with her eyes as if he were a snarling hound and she a wounded fox. “And just how many days of the week is Nana under the weather?” he asked. “Four? Six?
Seven?
”

“She is getting on a bit in years. We don’t mind lending a hand when we can.”

“We?”
Max looked around the kitchen pointedly. “
You
seem to be the only one here.”

Mrs. Spencer lifted her stubborn little chin. “I’ve discovered that if I rise early, I can work undisturbed for a while before the others awaken.”

Max could almost feel her exasperation with him growing. He might be master of the house, but this was
her
kitchen.
Her
territory. He was the interloper here. She would probably like nothing more than to pick up the flour-dusted rolling pin from the table and chase him from the room.

“Is there something you need?” she asked.

As he gazed upon her proud visage, Max was surprised to feel a dangerous surge of desire uncoil within him. He needed many things, none of which she could supply.

“If not,” she said, turning away from him with a defiant flounce of her apron, “I have other matters to—
Ow! Damn it all!
”

He’d gotten her so flustered she had forgotten all about the fallen rag and seized the stove door’s handle with her bare fingers. As she cradled her wounded hand to her breast, gritting her teeth to keep another cry from escaping, Max quickly closed the distance between them. Helpless tears sparkled in her hazel eyes, making them look larger and more luminous.

Cursing himself for distracting her, he gently tugged
her hand into his own. “Let me see,” he urged when she kept her fingers tightly curled.

Her breath escaped in a near sob. “There’s no need. I don’t require a nursemaid.”

“It wasn’t a request. It was an order.”

She sniffed. “That’s very high-handed of you. I hope you know I plan to mock you mercilessly over supper tonight, and my impressions are even more spot-on than Dickon’s.”

“Make sure and include the part where I sack you for disobeying a direct order.”

Still glaring at him, she reluctantly unfolded her hand. Each of her slender fingers had an angry red mark on it.

“Fortunately, you let go of the stove before the skin could blister. But it must hurt like the very devil.” He glanced up to catch her biting her lower lip. “You may cry if you like.”

“How very magnanimous of you. Must I seek your permission for that as well?”

Despite her sullen expression, she didn’t protest when he led her over to the basin resting on the long table beneath the row of windows. He cranked the pump, then gently guided her wounded hand beneath the spigot. As the cool water cascaded over her fingers, she moaned. Her eyes fluttered shut, her face going slack with relief.

Max was strangely transfixed by the sight. Her
mink-colored lashes weren’t particularly long but they were lush and curled lightly at their tips. She didn’t appear to be wearing a trace of powder, yet her skin had the smooth purity of fresh cream. His gaze strayed to her lips. When not flattened into a dutiful smile or puckered into a disapproving moue, they were surprisingly ripe and rosy with an enticingly kissable little Cupid’s bow at their top. She opened her eyes and he yanked his gaze back to her hand before she could catch him staring.

“Come,” he said gruffly, tugging her over to one of the benches flanking the table. He eased her into a sitting position, then straddled the bench and sank down in front of her. “I’ve just the thing for your burns.”

Thankful he hadn’t gobbled down every bit of butter in the house during his culinary orgy, he dipped his fingertips into an earthenware crock and began to dab a bit of the stuff onto each of her wounds. Most women of his acquaintance wouldn’t leave the house without elbow-length gloves to protect their lily-white skin. But her hands were lightly tanned with fingertips that sported a callus and shallow nick or two. They were the hands of a woman who was no stranger to hard work.

“How did you know the butter would help?” she asked, casting him a shy glance from beneath her lashes.

“I had a baby brother who used to get into a great deal of mischief as a lad. He was always knocking down beehives or swiping hot mincemeat pies out from under Cook’s nose and scorching his fingers. I had to play nursemaid to his wounds more than once so our parents wouldn’t find out what havoc he’d been wreaking and give him a sound thrashing.”

“
Had
a baby brother?” she echoed softly, plainly fearing the worst.

Max couldn’t quite keep the bitter edge from his tone. “He’s no longer a baby.”

“What about you? Didn’t you get into any mischief of your own?”

A rueful snort escaped him. “Very little. But only because I didn’t dare. Before I could stand up in my cradle, it was drummed into my head that I was the eldest son, my father’s heir, and the hope of all who worshipped at the Burke altar. Mischief was a pleasure afforded to lesser mortals, not to solemn little boys in short pants who would someday be dukes.”

“It sounds like a heavy burden for a child to bear.”

“I’m not sure I ever was a child.”

“Did your father approve of your career with the East India Company? I thought noblemen were expected to do little more than lounge about at their clubs with other gentlemen of means, sipping brandy and discussing their tailors and their triumphs at the faro tables.”

Max shuddered. “A pursuit for which I was singularly ill suited. My father nearly had an apoplexy when I announced my intention to join the Company. But once he saw that my influence would imbue the Burke name with even more prestige and power, he embraced my choice as if it had been his fondest ambition for me.”

“Didn’t you ever tire of being the perfect son? Didn’t you ever want to escape the shackles of duty and do something really . . . wicked?”

A reluctant half smile canted his lips as he lifted his eyes to meet her inquisitive gaze. “With my every breath.”

Only then did he realize he had finished smoothing the butter over her burns, but was still cradling her hand. His thumb was absently stroking the center of her palm, tracing lazy circles over the satiny skin he found there.

His smile faded. This was an impossible situation. She was an impossible woman. Yet in that moment, with her hand cupped trustingly in his and the sweetness of her peppermint-scented breath fanning his lips, the world seemed ripe with possibility.

It suddenly occurred to him that this might be his chance to break the chains of duty. What could be more wicked than stealing a kiss from the lips of his housekeeper? Why, it was practically a rite of passage, wasn’t it? Nefarious gentlemen had been
seducing their housekeepers and parlor maids for centuries.

Max’s body had already hardened in anticipation, urging him to do something wild and impractical for once in his life, consequences be damned.

He lifted his other hand toward her face, half-expecting her to flinch away from his touch. But when he brushed his thumb over the softness of her cheek, she held as steady as her gaze. One of her stray curls tickled the backs of his fingers as his thumb strayed into even more dangerous territory, grazing the velvety warmth of lips no longer pressed together, but parted in invitation. Testing the softness of those lips with the firmness of his thumb only deepened his hunger until all he could think about was how sweet they would taste beneath his own.

As Max leaned forward, Mrs. Spencer’s lashes swept down to veil her luminous eyes, almost as if to deny what was about to happen. Their lips were a breath away from meeting when the first tendril of smoke came wafting between them.

Chapter Fifteen

B
OTH
A
NNE’S AND
D
RAVENWOOD’S
gazes flew to the stove to discover thick, acrid clouds of smoke billowing around the cracks in the cast-iron door. Crying out with dismay, Anne sprang to her feet and rushed for the stove. This time she remembered to grab both a rag and a wooden paddle before throwing open the door. Her rescue effort came too late. The paddle emerged from the oven topped with a smoldering lump.

She dumped it on the table. Dravenwood joined her, gazing down at the blackened bread with a dismay equal to, if not greater than, her own.

“Forgive me,” he said, his voice still husky with an emotion that could have been either chagrin or desire. “I should never have distracted you.”

“The blame is entirely mine,” she replied, her fingertips absently straying to the familiar shape of the locket beneath her bodice. “I allowed myself to
forget that only a few careless seconds of inattention can ruin everything.”

He nodded curtly, then strode from the room without another word.

Anne watched his broad shoulders disappear through the door, recognizing with a treacherous stab of regret that neither of them would be foolish enough to make that mistake again.

“T
HE MASTER WISHES TO
see you in his study.”

Anne glanced up from her task of halfheartedly grinding some fresh garden dirt into the drawing room carpet with the heel of her boot to find Lizzie standing in the doorway. The young maid was wringing the hem of her apron in her hands, looking nearly as anxious as Anne felt.

Anne had been halfway expecting this summons since her encounter with Lord Dravenwood in the kitchen that morning. She had hoped finally receiving it might loosen the knot of dread in her stomach, not tighten it into an inescapable vise.

She had spent the past ten years desperately trying to prove she was no longer the same girl she had been. But all it had taken was a tender caress and the tantalizing promise of a kiss from Dravenwood’s beautifully sculpted lips to shatter that illusion. What might she have done if their lips had
actually touched? Wrapped her arms around his neck and climbed into his lap? Would he have stolen her heart as deftly as he stole her kiss? Was she even capable of giving one without the other?

“Thank you, Lizzie.” Tucking a flowerpot half-full of dirt beneath the ruffled skirt of a chaise longue, she managed an encouraging smile for the girl before climbing the stairs to meet her fate.

The door to the study had been left open a crack. Anne slipped into the room to find Lord Dravenwood seated behind the dusty cherrywood desk, surrounded by towering stacks of ledgers with mildewed covers and yellowing pages. He was making notations in one of the open ones, his concentration absolute.

She stood there, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. That morning in the kitchen she had discovered just how intoxicating—and how dangerous—it could be to have his attention focused on her with such intensity.

A wavy, dark lock of hair had fallen over his eyes. He brushed it back impatiently, his pen still flying across the page. Something about the boyish gesture unleashed an odd tenderness in Anne’s heart. Knowing it was wrong to spy on him in such a craven manner, she cleared her throat.