The Temptation of Your Touch (19 page)

A skirted dressing table sat directly across from the bed with a broken stool sprawled on the floor in front of it. Max’s steps slowed as he approached it. He was already trespassing, but somehow invading the sacred domain of a young woman’s dressing table made him feel even more like a marauder.

There was something irresistibly feminine about the dusty items scattered across the marble top of the dressing table—an ivory-backed mirror with a silver handle; a pair of amber hair combs; a cachou box of lip salve; an assortment of bottles labeled with promising names like
Milk of Roses, Olympian Dew,
and
Bloom of Ninon
; a faded ribbon rosette that might have been plucked from an elaborate coiffure and carelessly tossed on the table in the wee morning hours after dancing the night away at some magnificent ball.

And a single bottle of perfume.

Max drew the cut-crystal stopper from the elegant bottle, then lifted the bottle to his nose, already knowing what he would find. Its contents had dried up long ago, but as he inhaled, the subtle notes of jasmine filled his lungs—sultry, erotic, yet strangely innocent. He was carefully returning the bottle to its place when he saw the heart-shaped silver box adorned with pearl plating sitting on the corner of the table.

He hesitated, knowing just how Pandora must have felt when presented with such an enticing temptation. He picked up the box, cradling it in a hand that suddenly seemed far too large and clumsy to be entrusted with such a treasure.

Fighting a mixture of dread and anticipation, he gently lifted the hinged lid to reveal an empty interior lined in ruby velvet. A handful of familiar, slightly off-key, notes drifted through the room just as they had drifted through his balcony door on his first night at the manor.

Unable to bear their piercing sweetness, he slammed down the lid. If anything could summon up a spirit that wished only to be left alone, then surely it was that haunting melody. Restoring the music box to its rightful place, he turned to survey the rest of the room, growing ever more desperate to find some clue to the mystery that was Angelica Cadgwyck.

He was facing a tall mahogany armoire almost
identical to the one in his room. He crossed the timber floor with a determined stride, hesitating only when his hands closed over the ivory knobs on the twin doors. One of the doors hung askew on its hinges, leaving a narrow crack between door and frame. Bracing himself for some grinning skeleton to come tumbling into his arms, he threw open both doors at once.

All he saw were the remains of an extravagant wardrobe that had gone unprotected from the elements for years—shredded satin, shattered silk, moth-eaten merino. The floor of the armoire was littered with delicate slippers in faded pastel shades with frayed ribbon laces and curling toes. When he nudged one of them with his boot, a squeak of protest warned him a family of baby mice had taken up residence there.

Leaving the doors of the armoire hanging open, he swung back around to face the room, finally forced to admit that his was a fool’s errand. If Angelica was guarding any secrets, she had taken them over the edge of that cliff with her.

A row of dolls gazed down their noses at him from a shelf carved into the stone wall itself. Hairline cracks marred their pale porcelain faces, but did nothing to detract from their haughty demeanors. Even their daintily pursed lips looked disapproving. Oddly riveted by the sight, Max drifted across the tower toward them. Their satin skirts were stained with mildew but still arranged in precise folds. They had obviously been placed there with tender care by the hand of a girl too old to play with them any longer but too young to relinquish their cherished place in her heart.

He reached up to draw one of the dolls from the shelf. She didn’t resemble her young mistress, yet something was oddly familiar about her. Her painted lips didn’t seem to be pursed in disapproval, but to hide a smile. Her brown eyes were lit with a mocking twinkle. Unable to place the resemblance, Max shook his head ruefully, wondering if he was losing his wits completely. He was starting to see ghosts everywhere he looked.

He was returning the doll to her perch when he noticed something odd. He had believed her to be sitting on a Prussian-blue velvet cushion befitting her exalted station, but closer inspection revealed it wasn’t a cushion at all but a velvet-bound book. Max shoved the doll carelessly into the corner of the shelf and drew the book into his hands.

A gentle ruffle through the fragile pages confirmed that it was a journal—the sort a young girl might use to preserve her musings and dreams.

And her secrets.

Still holding the journal, Max wandered over to one of the windows, where the light was marginally better. He gazed blindly out over the rain-slicked
cobblestones of the courtyard. Despite his romantic fancies, Angelica hadn’t been some captive princess abiding in this tower. And even if she had been, he had come too late to rescue her. If he had even an ounce of integrity left in his soul, he would return the journal to its hiding place and do what Mrs. Spencer had suggested—leave Miss Cadgwyck to rest in whatever peace she had managed to find.

Before Clarinda had walked away from him and back into his brother’s arms, that’s exactly what he would have done.

Propping one boot on the splintered remains of the window seat, Max opened the journal to its first page. It began with the usual mundane meanderings of any child enchanted with dolls and ponies and fairy cakes. But between the lines of those simple yet charming sketches of daily life at Cadgwyck, a portrait far clearer than the one on the landing began to emerge.

Angelica had been overly indulged perhaps, but still keenly aware of those around her. She was the first to notice when her childhood nurse was suffering from a toothache and required a poultice to relieve it. Nor was she above mourning when the young son of one of her father’s grooms suffered a fatal injury after being kicked by an ill-tempered horse. The ink on the page where she recounted that incident was splotched and the paper
wrinkled, as if it had been forced to absorb more than one tear.

She clearly adored her father and looked up to her older brother, Theo, even as she despaired of his constant teasing and tweaking of her curls. She envied him the freedoms he enjoyed as a boy and seized every opportunity she could find to sneak out and run wild on the moors alongside him, even if it meant risking a stern scolding from her papa when she returned. But apparently the man couldn’t stay angry at her for long because he would relent every time she crawled into his lap and fixed her small arms around his neck.

Max skimmed through the pages, discovering long gaps between the dates as she grew older. She’d probably been too busy living life to record it. As the years danced past, the script grew more flowery, the clumsy blots of ink replaced with the elegant penmanship of an educated young lady.

After a drought of several months, he found this entry:

March 14, 1826

Papa has decided to commission a portrait of me for my eighteenth birthday. Although I know it will please him, I am dreading the prospect of sitting for hours on end for some stuffy old artist
without twitching so much as an eyelash. However shall I survive such torture?!

A smile touched Max’s lips. Like any girl of seventeen, she was prone to fits of drama and overembellishment. But as he read her next words, his smile faded.

April 3, 1826

I can be silent no longer. I must now make a confession fit for no other ears but yours: I am in love! It has come upon me like a storm, a fever, a sweet, yet terrible, madness! Upon our very first meeting, he brought my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss upon it as if I were already the sophisticated young lady I so often pretend to be for my other suitors. I fear sitting for this portrait may prove to be a sort of torture I had not anticipated.

April 14, 1826

You cannot know how difficult it is for me to strive to appear calm and collected as he arranges me for his pleasure, commands me to tilt my head this way or that, scolds me ever so gently when I fidget or fail to smother a yawn. The merest touch
of his fingertips against my cheek makes me a stranger even to myself. As he leans over me to correct the angle of a curl or a ribbon, I am terrified he will hear my heart beating like the wings of a captive bird in my breast and discover all. It is almost as if those piercing blue eyes of his are peering into my very soul. I dare not be so bold as to hope for his affection, but in those moments I fear I would do anything to win the slightest crumb of his approval. Anything at all.

April 28, 1826

Oh, woeful day! The portrait is finished! Where once I was counting the seconds until my birthday ball with joyful anticipation, now I dread the day of its arrival. Every tick of the clock brings me closer to the moment when he will be gone from here, taking my still-beating heart with him.

May 3, 1826

He is teasing me mercilessly by refusing to let me see the portrait until its public unveiling at the ball. I tremble at the prospect. What if it should reveal the besotted creature I have become? Would
he be so cruel as to expose the deepest yearnings of my heart to the mockery of the world?

May 6, 1826

All is not yet lost! He sent me a note, begging me to meet him in the tower after the unveiling of the portrait. What if he should try to steal a kiss? He cannot know he would not have to steal it for I would give it freely. How could I do any less when he already has my heart?

Max’s brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown. So Angelica and her beloved artist had not yet been lovers when she agreed to meet him in the tower that night. She had still been an innocent, yet ripe for seduction. Especially by some cunning lothario whose every word, smile, and touch had been calculated to lay bare the heart of a young woman undone by the joy and anguish of first love.

Even as he felt his frown deepening to a scowl, Max knew he was being unfair. If the portrait was any indication, the artist had been just as enamored of Angelica as she was of him.

He was about to turn the page when another realization struck him. If their final rendezvous had taken place in the tower, then chances were that
this was where the man had died. Max studied the timber floor, every stain and shadow now suspect. Angelica’s lover might have breathed his last right beneath Max’s very boots. For some reason, Max abhorred the notion of Angelica’s nest, her charming refuge from the harsh realities of the world, being forever tainted by such violence.

The next page of the journal had no date, just six stark words, absent of dramatic flourishes and exclamation marks:

I am ruined. All is lost.

Dread uncurled low in his gut as Max slowly turned the page. He already knew what he would find—blank pages, all that remained of a life unlived. He began to frantically flip through them, almost as if he could will the words to appear. Words that would reassure him Angelica had given herself enough time to realize that as long as she could draw breath, all was
not
lost. There was still hope.

But her voice had fallen silent, leaving him with nothing but empty pages and the hushed whisper of the rain.

The journal fell shut in his hands. He was still gazing down at it, dazed by his journey into the past, when a furious female voice cut through the quiet.

“What in the devil do you think you’re doing?”

Chapter Eighteen

F
OR AN ELUSIVE MOMENT,
Lord Dravenwood looked so guilty Anne thought he was going to tuck Angelica’s journal behind his back like a schoolboy caught perusing a book of naughty etchings. Before she could fully appreciate just how oddly beguiling that was, the expression vanished, leaving his eyes hooded and his face as inscrutable as always.

He
was the last thing she had expected to find when she’d climbed the stairs to the tower. None of the former masters had been bold enough to beard the White Lady in her lair.

She had been standing there paralyzed in the doorway for what felt like an eternity, watching him handle the journal with a touch so tender it was almost reverent. The sight of his strong, masculine hands ruffling through those fragile pages had sent a delicious little shiver through her, almost as if he were touching
her
.

Desperate to shake off the lingering sensation, she stormed across the tower and snatched the journal from his hands, earning a raised eyebrow for her trouble. “Men! Always interfering where they’re not welcome or wanted! I suppose you thought you could just march up here and begin rifling through things that are none of your concern as if you hadn’t been taught any better. Why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

He continued to survey her with infuriating calm.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded when she realized he was not responding to her fit of pique.

A grave smile slowly spread across his face. It was the first smile he had given her that didn’t contain so much as a hint of mockery. The smile transformed his face, deepening the grooves around his mouth and making her heart stutter. “I was just thinking that I haven’t been scolded like that since I was in short pants. Actually, I was so eager to please as a child I’m not sure I’ve
ever
been given such a magnificent setdown. Except by my little brother, of course.”