The Temptation of Your Touch Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gothic touches—gables pitched at dizzying angles, lancet windows set with cracked panes of jewel-toned glass, impish gargoyles spitting streams of rainwater on the unsuspecting heads of anyone reckless enough to pass below them.
    A tragic air of neglect hung over the place. Shutters hung at awkward angles over the grimy windows. The roof sported several bald spots, where slate shingles had been hurled into the night by the gleeful fingers of the wind and never replaced.
    Had the village lad not been with him to confirmthis was indeed their destination, Max might have mistaken the manor for a ruin. The house looked as if it would do them all a great favor—especially Max—by completing its inevitable slide over the edge of the cliff and into the sea.
    Despite its dilapidated state—or perhaps because of it—Max felt a curious kinship with the structure. The two of them might just suit after all. The manor looked less like a home and more like a lair where a beast might go to lick its self-inflicted wounds in privacy and peace.
    The wind sent a fresh veil of clouds scudding across the moon. Darkness reared up to cast its shadow over the house once more.
    That was when Max saw it—a faint flicker of white in the window of the crumbling tower, gone as quickly as it had appeared. He frowned. Perhaps he had been wrong about the tower being abandoned. Or perhaps a broken pane of glass still clung to a splintered window frame, just large enough to pick up a reflection.
    But a reflection of what?
    With the moon cowering behind the clouds, there was nothing but an endless stretch of moor on one side of the manor, and jagged cliffs and churning sea on the other. The flash of white came again, no more substantial than a will-o’-the-wisp against that solid wall of blackness.
    Max glanced over to see if his companion had noticed it, but Hammett was using every ounce of his attention to keep his team from bolting back down the hill. Both horses were tossing their heads and whinnying nervously, as if they were as eager to depart this place as their young master. By the time Hammett got them under control and brought the cart to a lurching halt, the tower was once again shrouded in darkness.
    Max gave his eyes a furtive rub with the palms of his hands. He was hardly a man given to fancy. Those spectral flashes must simply be a symptom of his own exhaustion—a trick of his weary eyes after the grueling journey. Due to the run-down state of the house, a man was more likely to be murdered by a loose chimney pot or a rotted banister than a vengeful ghost.
    “Are ye sure they’re expecting ye, m’lord?” Max’s young driver blinked the last of the rain from his ginger lashes as he gazed anxiously up the hill toward the manor’s forbidding edifice.
    “Of course I’m sure,” Max replied firmly. “My solicitor sent word over a month ago. The household staff has had ample time to prepare for my arrival.”
    Despite Max’s insistence, he couldn’t blame the young man for his skepticism. Except for that mysterious flash of white, the house looked as deserted and unwelcoming as a tomb.
    Max gathered the single portmanteau he had salvaged from his baggage and climbed down from the cart. He had decided to leave the rest of his bags at the inn and risk the villagers picking through them rather than transport them in the back of the cart, where they would have been soaked through in minutes.
    “It’s nearly ten o’clock,” he pointed out. “The lateness of the hour must be taken into account. And I can hardly expect even the most devoted of servants to be lined up in an orderly row on the front steps to greet their new master in this foul weather.”
    Although Hammett still looked dubious, he managed an encouraging nod. “I’ll bring the rest o’ your baggage at first light, m’lord. I swear I will.”
    Reaching into his coat, Max drew out a second purse and tossed it to him. “In my years with the East India Company, I came to