The Temptation of Your Touch by Teresa Medeiros Page A

violent pounding of his heart—or perhaps because of it—he hadn’t felt this alive for a long time.
    When he had arrived at Cadgwyck last night, he had foolishly assumed the chief dangers a man might encounter in such a place were a loose chimney pot or a rotted banister. He had never dreamed the cliffs themselves might try to lure him to his doom. Had he been possessed of a more suspicious—and less practical—nature, he might even have suspected foul play. But common sense told him the shelf of rock at the tip of the promontory had simply been weakened by time and the elements. He had no oneto blame for his near fatal plunge into the sea but himself. He should never have wandered so close to the cliff’s edge.
    Shaking his head, Max turned to give the windows of the house a rueful look, wondering if anyone else had witnessed his folly.
    He half-expected to see Angelica herself laughing merrily down at him from some shadowy attic dormer, but there was nothing ghostly about the flicker of movement he glimpsed in a second-story window.
    A S L ORD D RAVENWOOD’S SHARP-EYED gaze swept the back of the manor, then returned with eerie precision to the exact window where she was standing, Anne ducked behind the velvet draperies. Her mouth was dry, her heart still racing madly beneath the palm that had flown to her chest when he had stumbled back from the edge of the cliff, only inches away from a plunge into nothingness.
    She fought to steady her breathing before peeping around the edge of the curtain again. To her keen relief, Dravenwood had already turned away from the house and was beginning to make his way farther along the cliffs, this time remaining a safe distance from their treacherous edge.
    “This one’s going to be trouble, isn’t he?” Pippa observed, setting down her ash bucket to join Anne at the window of the cozy second-floor study.
    Pippa had made a more concerted effort to embrace her role of maidservant on this day, taming her flyaway dark curls into two proper braids coiled neatly above her ears and donning an apron with only a few faded chocolate stains marring its snowy-white surface.
    Anne watched their new master pick his way over the rocks, unaccountably angry at him for frightening her so badly. “They’re all trouble, dearest,” she said darkly. “It’s just a matter of degree.”
    Despite her reassurances, Anne knew Pippa was right. Trouble was written in every line of Lord Dravenwood’s bearing—in the stiffness of his broad shoulders, the way he carried himself as if he were nursing some mortal wound no one else could see. It was etched in the shadows that brooded beneath his eyes and in the way his coat hung loosely on his tall, rangy frame, as if it had been tailored for a different man.
    A man who hadn’t forgotten how to smile.
    But those were just warning signs. Even without them, he was the sort of man who could cause trouble for a woman with little more than a smoldering glance from beneath the thick, sooty lashes veiling his quicksilver eyes or the casual brush of his handagainst the small of her back. And if such a man should choose to employ the full range of his seductive skills, he could easily go from being trouble to being a full-fledged disaster. At least for the woman foolish enough to grant him access to her vulnerable heart—or her body.
    Anne could feel Pippa’s worried gaze lingering on her face. “Whatever is the matter with you, Annie? Why, you’re as white as a ghost yourself!”
    “And why wouldn’t I be?” Anne replied with a lightness she was far from feeling. “I was afraid the careless fool was going to tumble headlong over the cliff, leaving us to explain yet another unfortunate accident to the constable.”
    “What do you suppose ails the man?” Pippa’s smooth brow puckered in a quizzical frown as she watched Lord Dravenwood stalk along the edge of the cliffs, the tails of his coat blowing out behind him. “Do you think he’s recovering from