Dark Temptation

by CHASE, ALLISON

  ‘‘My parents have both changed so much through the years,’’ Rachel said sadly, ‘‘especially these last several—’’

  She seemed to catch herself and went silent.

  ‘‘What about these past years?’’ Sophie prompted. ‘‘What changed? Have they become unhappy?’’ Is that when your father became involved with brigands?

  As if contemplating making her escape, Rachel regarded the bedroom door with longing.

  Sophie squeezed her hand. ‘‘Forgive me. I have no business prying.’’

  Rachel’s face became pinched. ‘‘Promise me you’ll do as Father says and stay out of trouble. Promise me that, Sophie, and I won’t mention the cloak to anyone. I’ll even say I dirtied it myself should anyone ask. Just swear to me you won’t go sneaking off again.’’

  This last ended in a whisper fraught with anxiety, and Sophie knew with a certainty that Rachel’s warnings were not given out of a general concern for her welfare. The girl knew something, perhaps more than her family suspected she did. Wasn’t it always the quiet ones who rooted out everyone’s carefully guarded secrets? Perhaps Rachel even knew where her father went last night, and why.

  How Sophie yearned to forget civility and grill the girl for answers. Yet she knew pressing Rachel would do no good. That strength she had detected moments ago would keep those answers locked securely away until Rachel was ready to divulge them.

  By the same token Sophie didn’t think she could fool her cousin with a blatant lie. ‘‘I wish to neither find trouble nor stir it up,’’ she said. ‘‘But I am who I am. My family hoped my being here would help quell my natural tendencies to delve into affairs that shouldn’t concern me. I’m afraid it isn’t working.’’

  ‘‘No, indeed. They were wrong to send you to Penhollow.’’ Rachel stood up from the bed and went to the door. ‘‘Dreadfully wrong.’’

  ‘‘Rachel, wait.’’ When the girl paused with her hand on the knob, Sophie hopped down from the bed. ‘‘I can’t promise I’ll stay out of trouble, but I’ll try if you’ll promise me something in return.’’

  ‘‘Yes?’’

  ‘‘Never give up on the man you love, even if your father disapproves.’’

  Rachel merely stared back, then turned and left the room.

  Deep within Edgecombe’s foundations, Chad lowered his lantern, illuminating the stone and tile flooring as he made his way through the chilly vaults. One by one he inspected the meat and dairy larders, the ice and coal closets and, at the end of the whitewashed corridor, his father’s wine cellar.

  Long ago, in his childish zeal for adventure, he had scampered through these cellars, dodging busy servants as he searched for the Keatings’ legendary tunnel. He had found nothing. His father had chuckled at his disappointment and told him that if the Keatings had built a tunnel, they certainly wouldn’t have made its access so obvious that a child could find it.

  Remembering what the vicar had revealed to him beneath the pulpit, Chad examined more than the walls. He pushed against cupboards and counters to see if they moved. He tapped the flooring with his feet. If those men at the farmstead had been talking about Edgecombe—and Chad would swear they had been—then there had to be a tunnel . . . somewhere. There was simply no other way to bring in cargo from the sea, no other way past the cliffs lining the coast beyond the harbor.

  The Gordons’ farm . . . He ruled out the possibility. True, the beach and sloping property provided easy accessibility to the water’s edge, but it was also too visible from both the village and the road to offer any real privacy to anyone unloading illicit cargo from a ship.

  As soon as Grady returned from Mullion, Chad intended to have another look at the coastline from water level. Until then, however . . . he stepped down into the wine cellar.

  Bottles glinted in the surrounding shadows. Placing his lantern on the floor, Chad ran his palms over the damp walls and pushed against the stone shelving. All felt and appeared as solid as the rock from which it had been quarried. He retrieved the lantern and started to leave, planning next to try the laundry cellar. A whisper of a breeze stopped him.

  Turning in a slow circle, he studied the play of light and shadow on the walls and bottles. At a faint skittering sound, his head snapped to the left, toward an alcove once used for storing casks, but empty now.

  He stepped down into the recess and felt an infinitesimal shift in the tiles beneath his feet, so slight that anyone else would have assumed that age-loosened grout had caused the movement.

  Heart racing, he fell to his knees to examine the clay tiles. With the flat of his hand he pushed down, then from side to side. As one solid unit the tiles shifted again. He bent lower, brought the lantern closer and could just make out the infinitesimal gaps running around the centermost tiles to form a square some three feet wide.

  A trapdoor.

  Excitement rippled through him. He jiggled the tiles again and realized he would need a tool to wedge them open. Remembering the collection of tongs and picks hanging from the wall of the ice chamber, he bolted to his feet. In the corridor he heard a thud penetrate the arched ceiling above his head.

  He went still, head raised to listen. He heard it again. Someone was above, in the kitchen.

  Sophie? As eagerly as he grasped at the possibility, it didn’t make sense. Not after their time at the chapel. He had all but warned her to stay away from him, had practically threatened her, then substantiated his admonitions by pawing and groping her.

  No, surely not Sophie. Then . . .

  Get rid of him . . . soon enough.

  The men from the farmstead?

  Blood pumping, he grabbed a wine bottle off the nearest shelf and headed for the steps. At the top he paused to listen. The partially open door offered a slim view of the main pantry. He saw no one, but heard movement in the adjoining kitchen. His fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle.

  The shuffling nature of the individual’s gait perplexed him, as did the creaking of cupboard doors. Not an assassin, then, but a thief? Not necessarily any less dangerous.

  He pushed the door wider, freezing when the hinges whined. Sweat beaded across his brow. When no one rushed in to discover him, he swiped a sleeve across his forehead, pushed the flat of one palm against the door and stepped through.

  A sudden clatter suggested the intruder was rummaging through a cutlery drawer just to the right of the pantry doorway. Chad listened for signs of a second individual, but heard none. Raising the bottle above his head, he set a foot on the threshold.

  With a howl he leaped through the doorway. A shriek filled his ears; a flurry of motion blurred in his vision. A mug flew at him, sailing over his shoulder and smashing against the brick hearth behind him. He caught an image of wild eyes, grizzled hair, a pair of gnarled hands. Then he lunged.

  Chapter 15

  Chad rammed a lean, stooping figure up against the work counter. The cupboard below shuddered from the impact of booted calves. A glass went over and shattered. Cutlery fell with a clatter onto the floor. Chad bent the man over backward, pinning his gaunt shoulders to the countertop. A haggard face gaped up at the bottle hovering in Chad’s raised fist.

  His other hand circled the intruder’s neck. ‘‘Who the hell are you and what the devil do you want?’’ A sputtering reply prompted him to ease his grip a fraction. ‘‘Who are you?’’

  ‘‘N-Nathaniel.’’

  Chad regarded terrified features, wide, rolling eyes. The intruder’s remaining resistance drained away, and Chad concluded that whoever Nathaniel was, he posed little threat to anyone. The poor man was frightened out of his wits.

  Chad released him, set the bottle on the counter and backed away. ‘‘What are you doing here?’’

  Nathaniel unfolded his gangly length from the counter. He pointed a crooked finger toward the cast-iron cookstove. ‘‘Preparing breakfast.’’

  Chad saw a frying pan on the stovetop. Beside it a coffeepot gurgled, emitting jets of steam. On the worktable
beside it sat a jug of milk, several eggs and a rasher of bacon.

  ‘‘Did Kellyn send you?’’

  ‘‘She said I was to do the cooking and the cleaning, look after the horse and whatever else milord requires.’’

  Chad took in Nathaniel’s leathery features, the befuddlement clouding his faded brown eyes. The fellow stood clutching his hands, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.

  The gesture touched a chord of sympathy in Chad. For all his advanced years, Nathaniel seemed little more than a child. Chad smiled to set the man at ease. ‘‘You’re a man-of-all-work, then?’’

  ‘‘Aye. Been doing the trimming.’’

  ‘‘Trimming? You must mean the gardening. Are you the groundskeeper hired by my solicitor?’’

  This was met with a look of confusion. Nathaniel shrugged. ‘‘I do the trimming and the sweeping.’’ Frowning, he shuffled backward, his heels thwacking the cupboard doors. ‘‘Only by day. Ain’t safe by night.’’

  Seeing the man’s agitation, Chad held up his hands in a gesture of reassurance. ‘‘That’s quite all right, Nathaniel. I won’t ask you to come at night, and I’ll always be sure to release you well before dusk. Did Kellyn discuss your wages?’’

  Nathaniel shrugged.

  ‘‘Well, we’ll arrange something.’’ A sudden notion prompted Chad to ask, ‘‘Nathaniel, since you’ve been looking after Edgecombe for me, have you ever encountered anyone in the house or on the grounds?’’

  Wide-eyed, he gave an adamant shake of his head. ‘‘Ain’t seen no one.’’

  ‘‘You’re quite sure?’’

  ‘‘No one.’’ Boot heels struck the cupboard doors again.

  It was an awfully quick answer, in Chad’s estimation. As if Nathaniel had been instructed by someone to make such a denial. Thinking it unlikely he’d glean much useful information from his new manservant, he gestured toward the stove. ‘‘You continue cooking breakfast, Nathaniel, and then put it in the warmer for me. I like my bacon crisp. In the meantime, I’m going below again for a little while.’’

  ‘‘Never go below,’’ he heard the man murmur to his back.

  Chad turned. ‘‘Who told you that? Kellyn?’’

  Nathaniel only stared, his faded eyes unreadable.

  ‘‘Chad? Are you here?’’

  The echo of Sophie’s own call made her jump, while the resounding silence of the house raised a shiver of unease. Going to the staircase, she placed her foot on the bottom step and craned her neck to view the corridor above. ‘‘Chad? It’s Sophie.’’

  Was he upstairs in his room? A wayward tendril of longing curled about her apprehension. The last time she had climbed these steps she had discovered the rapture of forbidden pleasure in Chad’s arms. A rapture that might have been repeated last night, had they been anywhere else but the chapel.

  Had she made a mistake in coming here? Of being alone in this deserted house . . . with him? Desire stabbed, evoking the scent of him, the taste of him, the heat of his touch on her bared flesh. At the same time an unsettling fear of something she could not name breathed caution against her nape.

  Be warned . . . I am no gentleman.

  Oh, that was what he would have her believe, and perhaps there was truth to it. But something more lurked inside him. Something he feared . . . and feared her knowing. . . .

  But she had not come here for seduction, or to confront him about his secrets. She called his name one more time, then turned away from the staircase and chose a direction at random. She entered a drawing room, long, elegant in a masculine fashion, but revealing no sign of Chad.

  Moving on into the next room, she came to a closed door, and once again her heart gave a thump. Could this be the room from which she had first spied Chad? She pressed her ear to the door. Hearing nothing, she knocked and spoke his name. With a quick look over her shoulder, she turned the knob, peeked . . . . . . and gasped. That day she had seen Chad she had crossed the terrace to have a look through the window. She had seen furniture, countless books and every indication that someone used this room as a library.

  Now empty bookshelves gaped from the walls, and no furnishings remained. She ran her hand across the nearest bare shelf, blew dust from her fingers, and moved to the window that overlooked the terrace. Closed shutters obstructed the view. She raised the window, opened the wooden shutters, and pushed the window closed again.

  Yes, this had to be the room. The waviness of the panes blurred the gardens, but she could make out the unkempt rows of pear trees, dogwoods and the wilder, native rowans. That day Chad had looked directly at her, long enough to have remembered her. Yet when they met at the chapel he had shown no hint of recognition, and later denied having been here.

  Why?

  The design of the window seized her attention. She backed up to study the diamond-paned mullions and stone sill. Details of that morning tumbled back.

  The window had been a bay, not flush to the walls as it was now, but bowing gracefully outward beneath the slope of a slate overhang.

  A whisper at her shoulder made her jump. She pivoted, expecting to find Chad behind her. There was only the empty room, the strangely yawning shelves. A hiss raked her spine.

  Mmmurrrrderrrr.

  Whirling, she once more confronted the window, to find nothing but the view outside, the trees and hedges shuddering in the sea breezes.

  Quickly she retraced her steps into the hall. ‘‘Chad—Oh!’’

  Her hand flew to her mouth but not in time to stifle a yelp. Moving from the slanting shadows of a formal dining room a figure emerged, tall and thin and stooped. As he moved in front of the terrace door, the light behind him threw his features into dark relief. She could make out only deep-set eyes and a grim slash of a mouth.

  Heart lodging in her throat, Sophie backed into the bend of the staircase. With a swift glance to the front door, she gauged her chances of escaping. She might make it out, but he could easily catch her in the forecourt.

  She thrust out her chin and conjured her most commanding tone. ‘‘Who are you? Where is Lord Wycliffe?’’

  ‘‘I’m Nathaniel.’’ He made no move toward her. ‘‘Milord’s below.’’

  ‘‘Below as in where? The kitchen? The cellars?’’

  A freshly dug grave?

  ‘‘I insist you tell me exactly where Lord Wycliffe is,’’ she said. ‘‘This instant, and don’t simply say ‘below.’ ’’

  Sharp shoulders hunched beneath a worn tweed coat. ‘‘Dunno.’’

  ‘‘Don’t know, or won’t tell?’’ Her misgivings kicked up like a sea breeze. ‘‘H-has anything happened to him? W-why are you here?’’

  ‘‘Cook the meals, tend the horse, trim the garden.’’

  She blinked. ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘His horse needs oats and a good brushing down.’’ He started to turn away.

  Her apprehensions realigned into sheer bafflement. She stepped out from the staircase. ‘‘Good Lord, you’re his servant, yes?’’

  Wariness crept over his face. ‘‘By day. Only by day.’’

  The odd comment piqued her curiosity. ‘‘Why only by day? What happens here after nightfall?’’

  Nathaniel’s bristly eyebrows converged. ‘‘Milord promised I may leave before dusk.’’

  ‘‘I see. Well, if his lordship promised, then you needn’t worry.’’ No longer fearing him, she strode past the bewildered servant and entered the dining hall. ‘‘I suppose this way eventually leads to the service staircase and down to the kitchen? Is that where I’ll find the earl?’’

  Nathaniel didn’t answer. As Sophie reached the middle of the room, a faint rumbling shook the floor beneath her feet. Above the dining table the crystal chandelier tinkled.

  ‘‘What on earth?’’

  She felt another shudder; then all went still. Nathaniel stood braced in the doorway behind her, hands pressed to the lintel on either side.

  ‘‘Not safe.’’ His eyes rolled upward, exposing the whit
es. ‘‘Must go.’’

  Before she could object, he scurried through the terrace door and was gone.

  The quiet pressed in around her. Chad was still somewhere below. . . .

  She forced her legs to move despite their trembling. One empty, silent room followed upon another until she found the service corridor and stairwell. At the bottom she came upon a scullery, where pans and dishes dripped on the drain board beside the water pump. Seeing no signs of a disturbance she stepped into the main kitchen, where the aroma of cooked bacon permeated the air.

  ‘‘Chad?’’ She cleared her throat and spoke louder. ‘‘Your man told me I’d find you down here. Please don’t jump out at me or anything.’’

  How stupid of her; of course he wouldn’t do any such thing. In a walk-in pantry a door stood partially ajar. Beyond the threshold stone steps plunged away into inky darkness. She leaned in and called his name. The downward spiral of her voice twisted her stomach into knots of reluctance.

  ‘‘I suppose if I’m going to leap,’’ she whispered shakily, ‘‘I should at least be able to see what I’m leaping into.’’

  Doubling back into the kitchen, she snatched a lantern off a windowsill and lit it with a piece of stove kindling. Then she returned to the stairs, steeling herself for the descent.

  A subterranean chill greeted her at the bottom. Her lamplight flickered over whitewashed walls and arched ceilings, and sent shadows dancing in the doorways of workrooms and larders. Her footsteps raised a clamor on the tile-and-stonework flooring and made her cringe.

  The corridor ended at the entrance to a wine cellar, where her lamp reflected dollops of light on countless bottles. Detecting no sign of Chad, she turned to go.

  Sophie.

  ‘‘Chad?’’ She spun full circle.

  Nothing in the room moved; not a sound drifted from the corridor. Perhaps a rustle of her petticoats had deceived her ears. She arced the lantern, chasing the shadows from an alcove in the corner. In the tile flooring a hole gaped.