‘You are very quiet, Jane,’ Ivo observed.
They were sitting at either end of one of the sofas in the drawing room after dinner. Great-Aunt Honoria was dozing in the largest, most comfortable armchair with her feet up and Eunice was diligently working on the petit-point seat cover the Dowager fondly imagined was all her own work after she exhausted herself by setting half a dozen stitches in it before dropping off. His grandfather was playing chess with Ranwick, whose dubious pleasure it was to be invited after family dinners to be soundly thrashed by his employer and then to have his every move critically examined afterwards.
‘I am a little tired, that is all.’
Her smile looked forced and he felt a pang of worry for her. Her life had been turned upside down within days and although most young women would have leapt at the chance to marry an earl—any earl—he knew that for Jane this was second best to independence and her art.
‘I went for a walk this afternoon and found it more draining than I had anticipated, so then I began work on my sketches with the boot boy, Jem.’
‘Walk? I did not see you.’ He cursed his own weakness in not obliterating that inscription, but it had seemed like the last nail in the coffin of his dead youthful dreams. He would go back tomorrow with hammer and chisel and do the job thoroughly. Unless Jane had already seen it.
‘I went into the park. That way.’ She gestured vaguely and Ivo released the breath he had not realised that he had been holding. She had gone in the opposite direction from the ice house and hermitage. ‘The grass was longer than I had thought and harder work, but I expect the exercise did me good.’
‘I will show you the best walks,’ he said. ‘The grounds staff scythe paths through the rough grass to make it easier. And we must begin our riding lessons.’
‘Later, I think,’ she said. ‘I have too much to think about without adding learning how to stay on a horse to the list.’
‘Yes, of course, it is not something to be rushed into. Tell me how the sketches are progressing. Is everyone being co-operative?’
‘So far, yes. I have drawn Jem, the boot boy—he is a very bright lad and he is exceedingly ambitious. Could you give him serious consideration for hall boy if Billy gets the footman’s post at... Colne Hall, is it? And I sketched Molly, the new scullery maid, who is homesick but being brave about it because she knows this is a good household and Mr Evans, the clerk, who found the whole thing very embarrassing because he is self-conscious about his ears.’
‘His ears?’ Ivo tried to recall what Evans looked like and realised he was having difficulty.
‘They stick out, so I am drawing him in half-profile and he is much more relaxed about it,’ she said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘In half a day you have discovered the ambitions of the boot boy and the hall boy, consoled the scullery maid and set the clerk at ease. You are going to become a much-loved mistress of the house, that is clear.’ And he had not expected it and was now a trifle ashamed of himself. He had thought that Jane, not used to such a large staff, would have found the servants difficult to deal with and that she would be far too preoccupied with her art to give much thought to household management. He should have realised that to create a good portrait one must take an interest in the person you are painting. It was he who was too distracted to pay attention to the woman who would become his wife.
‘And that makes you smile? I suppose the prospect of domestic harmony must appeal.’
‘It makes me smile because I am reminded once again what a very nice person you are and what a good decision I made in proposing to you, Miss Newnham.’ She blushed and laughed a little and he reached across and took her hand, needing to touch her, feeling a strange sense of peace steal over him.
I have done the right thing asking her to marry me, he thought and found that the peace was disturbed by a tremor of desire.
He wanted to kiss Jane, not because she needed reassuring, or convincing, but because he wanted to. Wanted rather more than kisses.
Jane met his gaze and he saw it there, too, an awareness, a warmth. Her fingers tightened around his and her thumb moved over his knuckles.
It was disturbing, this feeling. He was betraying Daphne by wanting another woman and yet Daphne was not his to desire any longer and she had made it more than plain she did not love him. He could not live like a monk all his life because he could not have the woman he loved and he should be a husband in all ways for Jane, not think of her as second best.
She was still watching him, her head tipped a little to one side, those hazel eyes questioning. She was warm and soft and innocent, yet there was steel within those feminine curves and an untapped sensuality that made his blood heat.
‘Jane, shall we go outside and—?’
‘Ha! Checkmate again.’ His grandfather was crowing over the unfortunate Ranwick’s latest defeat at the chessboard. ‘Now, where you went wrong was in your third move. If you had only played—’
‘You must not be afraid of him. He shouts and he blusters, but inside he is really not so bad,’ he murmured, taking the opportunity to lean close.
‘I like him,’ Jane whispered back. ‘He is afraid of showing what he feels, that is all. It makes him gruff. He is so proud of you—did you realise?’
‘What, proud? No, you must be mistaken.’ Ivo laughed off the old hurt. ‘He was angry that I joined the army. Foolish romanticism, he called it. A youthful desire to play at chivalry.’
‘And that is why he can recite every battle and skirmish you have been involved in and the dates, I suppose? He knows every wound you suffered, has clippings of every mention in the London Gazette. He showed me and made quite certain that I knew I was marrying a gallant soldier, a hero.’
Ivo found that his mouth was open and closed it abruptly. His grandfather had followed his career, thought him gallant?
‘I had no idea,’ he managed to murmur at last. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ He swallowed, reluctant to expose a weakness, yet knowing he owed her honesty. ‘It had hurt, I will not deny it. I never thought myself a hero, that is nonsense, I was simply doing my duty. But I thought he felt I was wasting my time, playing at soldiers.’
‘Rough games to play,’ Jane remarked, letting go of his hand. ‘I have seen the scars.’ She leaned forward, put one hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. ‘Goodnight, Ivo. I think I will sleep well tonight.’
He stood, drawing her to her feet, and bent to kiss her on the lips. ‘So will I. Goodnight, Jane.’ She went over to speak to his grandfather and Ranwick, then bent to whisper to Cousin Eunice without waking his great-aunt.
Yes, he would sleep well, he thought, opening the door for Jane and nodding to the footman on duty in the hall to send a maid upstairs. But first he was taking a lantern, hammer and chisel down to the hermitage and erasing all traces of that inscription.
‘Kendall!’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Before you go up to bed, there is something in that proposal for the cottage repairs from Brownlow I want to talk through. Come into the study, will you.’
Jane sat up in bed, the day’s sketches spread out in front of her. She was pleased with them and planned on catching some of the more senior members of the household the next day. She should be analysing these now, looking for weaknesses, but the lines kept blurring and reforming as Ivo’s face. The way he had been looking at her... The way he looked when she told him about his grandfather. Had he really had no inkling of how the old man saw him? It seemed not. Men were strange creatures, unwilling to talk about their feelings.
He was never going to tell her about Daphne, she knew that, so she was going to have to make up her own mind whether she was prepared to go ahead with this marriage or not. Marrying a man who was not in love with you was quite a different thing from marrying one who was in love with someone else, she was certain. But he was never going to see Daphne again, surely—not after the violent way she had reacted to his well-meaning attempts to help her. Daphne was married, unavailable, and she, Jane, was here with him.
Ivo liked her, he felt desire for her, although she understood from Verity and her own observations that men, the strange creatures, were quite capable of desiring women they were otherwise indifferent to, or did not even know. He was kind—he had shown her how precarious her unplanned ambitions were, but had done so without patronising her. He was brave and loyal, so he would make every effort, she was certain, to put thoughts of Daphne aside once they were married.
She trusted him, Jane realised. She had from the beginning: a large, battered, unknown male who should have been threatening, even semi-conscious. But some instinct had made her trust and she was going to rely on that now. Trust and put the work in as her youthful advisor Jem had said.
Marriage to Ivo would give her the freedom that wealth and status afforded a woman. It came at a price—she was not walking into this blindly. If she had mistaken the man, he could confine her in the rigid role of countess and mother, stop her painting, lock her in a gilded cage.
Jane gathered up the sketches and set them aside, blew out the candles and wriggled down in the bed. He had taken a chance on her, too. Ivo had rescued her from social disgrace, given her the opportunity to paint, when he must have been hurting over Daphne’s betrayal. He must still be hurting, she worried as she began to drift off to sleep. Was there any hope that one day, if they both worked at this marriage, he might come to love her as she loved him.
Jane sat up, wide awake in the darkness.
I love Ivo? When did that happen?
She lay down again, shaken. This was dangerous, it made her so much more vulnerable. Dangerous, but wonderful, too.
Days passed and the frightening, glorious, reality of loving Ivo coloured every one of them. Jane did not think she betrayed herself because he certainly showed no signs of the alarm a man might be expected to feel on discovering that the other half of a marriage of convenience was inconveniently in love with him. He remained kind and amusing and, when he took her in his arms, passionate.
Responding to that passion was dangerous. She knew she was too inexperienced to hide her feelings, that she should try and remain cool and modest in her response, but it was impossible. Ivo felt so strong and solid when he held her against him, she felt safe and in peril all at the same time and she wanted the peril, wanted his heat and the urgency she could feel him controlling.
‘The wedding night seems a long way off,’ he said three weeks before the day, after one long, delicious kiss in the laundry where he found her after drawing sketches of the head laundry maid and her little team.
The women had trooped off to the drying yards, lugging dripping baskets of linen with them, leaving her in the steamy warmth, her hair lank and her face red. ‘I look a mess,’ she protested when Ivo caught her up and kissed her.
‘You look flushed and lovely and decidedly wanton,’ he countered, picking her up and sitting her on the long sorting table. ‘I want to make you even more disordered.’
‘You make me feel disordered,’ she said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Ivo—what are you doing?’
‘Helping you cool off.’ His hands were busy with the fastenings of her bodice, then he tugged at the shoulders and she found herself sitting there in her chemise. One glance down at the thin muslin and she realised what his gaze was fixed on—the curve of her breasts pushed up by her stays.
At least I am so red in the face with the heat he will not see my blushes, she thought as his hands fastened on her waist.
‘Ivo!’ The downward pressure of his hands pulled down the edge of the stays until she felt her nipples escape. It felt...
Goodness, that feels so... Touch me, Ivo, please...
As though by arching into his hands she had spoken out loud he moved in closer, bent his head and touched his tongue to the brown aureoles showing through the damp cloth, licking, fretting as she felt them harden and her breasts began to ache.
‘Ivo... Yes.’
What do I look like? she thought wildly as she fell backwards into a pile of table linen.
Ivo was pressed between her thighs, bent over her. She could feel the hard thrust of him, intimately tight against her, even through skirts and petticoats and his breeches. Then she stopped caring about anything but Ivo and wanting him. There was too much fabric between them and she wanted bare skin, to run her hands over those muscles she had seen at the inn. Her hands made claws and she raked them down the unyielding cloth of his coat, moaning in frustration at not being able to touch him.
His right hand was on her thigh now, pushing up her skirts, and she arched against him, not knowing what she wanted, only that she needed something, needed him...
Then Ivo pushed back, pulled her upright and jerked her bodice back into place. ‘Someone is coming, I heard the yard gate bang.’ He looked at her. ‘Oh, hell.’
‘Coal store.’ Jane managed to totter to her feet, grabbed at her sketchbook and ran for the door into the room where the fuel for the boilers under the coppers was stored. Did it have another door out? She was not sure, but anything was better than being caught in an amorous tangle amid the damask cloths.
They collapsed against the door as it swung closed behind them, both panting.
‘There’s the door to the yard,’ Jane whispered, nodding to where light came in around the battered old planking. Behind them the room filled with the sound of chattering as the laundry maids trooped back in.
‘Miss Newnham’s gone,’ one of them said. ‘Fancy His Lordship wanting us all painted—never heard the like.’
‘She’s nice,’ one chipped in. ‘A proper lady, she is, interested and not talking down to us.’
‘Aye, well, she’ll want her washing done, just like the rest of them,’ the head laundry maid interrupted. ‘How’s that fire, Madge? Do we need more wood under the big copper?’
There was the sound of metal rattling. Jane held her breath and felt Ivo tense beside her, then the girls called, ‘No, it’ll do another half-hour. I’ll get these tablecloths in, shall I?’
Jane and Ivo both slumped against the door.
Just like naughty children up to mischief, she thought and was seized with the urge to giggle.
Beside her she could feel Ivo shaking, then a muffled snort escaped him. He took her hand and took three long strides to the outer door, cracked it open, peered out and then they were outside and round the corner into the shelter of the open wood store.
Jane slumped against one of the posts and gave way to helpless giggles. Ivo sat on the saw horse and laughed until the tears ran down his face.
After a few whoops he managed to get himself under control. ‘Lord, I think I’ve cracked a rib again.’ He pulled out a handkerchief, looked at Jane and passed it over, then wiped his hand over his face. When they had both calmed down he grinned at her. ‘“A proper lady, she is,”’ he quoted, setting Jane off again.
‘We cannot go into the house looking like this.’ Jane straightened up at last, gave a last swipe at her face with the handkerchief and tried to pin back straggling locks of hair.
‘The rose garden,’ Ivo said, holding out his hand.
It was surprising that, after such a tumult of sensation, she could feel calm and happy and at ease with him. They strolled down through the back gate without encountering anyone and made their way round the side of the East Wing into the rose garden, sheltered by high hedges and, more importantly just at the moment in her view, secluded from most of the windows in the house.
‘I am sorry, that should not have happened,’ Ivo apologised. ‘I am afraid my feelings got the better of me.’ Something certainly had and he was not sure what it was. Desire, obviously, but there was more than that. Jane had looked content, happy, pleased to see him and walking into that steamy laundry room had felt for a second like coming home, which was ridiculous.
And then the deliciously damp and disorderly look of her, rosy and round and perfect. And her response. Even thinking about that breathy ‘Ivo... Yes’ made him hard all over again. But it hadn’t been that kiss or the feel of her soft and urgent under him, the promise of the heat between her thighs, that was making him feel so off balance. It was the laughter. Sharing that laughter with her, that moment when they were hiding like two naughty children and both of them had reacted in exactly the same way.
Now Jane was frowning at him, all laughter gone. ‘What was wrong with it? I mean, we could have chosen a better place, somewhere that didn’t have the staff walking in every few minutes, but...’ She seemed to realise what she was saying, blushed, then carried on stubbornly. ‘I liked it, you making love to me. I did not want you to stop, although I know you had to because it would have been embarrassing.’
Ivo was conscious of the scent of the last late roses, of the soft green grass all around them, of the high, concealing hedges, of Jane, still flushed and deliciously flustered and wishing they had not stopped—and all he had to do was take two steps and she would be in his arms and... And then a gardener would come in and start pruning, or shovelling manure on the beds or...
Oh, God, beds. Think about manure, he told himself desperately.
‘You are a respectable lady. I should not be debauching you on the laundry room table. We are not married yet.’
‘We are going to be,’ Jane pointed out.
‘Yes. In a while. Do you not want to wait until your wedding night?’
Jane broke off a rose and twirled it under her nose thoughtfully. ‘Not particularly. I mean, you are not going to decide not to marry me just because you’ve already...’ She seemed to be searching for the right phrase, then left it hanging. ‘It always seems as though one has to wait because otherwise the woman might change her mind having tried it. Not that I am going to change my mind.’ She smiled at him. ‘I think I am going to enjoy...being with you.’
‘So am I,’ Ivo said, realising that he meant it. ‘And not only the bedchamber parts,’ he added, just for the pleasure of seeing her blush. ‘It is a long time since I laughed about something like that.’
‘Like that?’ Her eyebrows shot up and she grinned at him.
‘Something ludicrous. And you have to admit, the pair of us hiding from our own staff, caught like young lovers sneaking off to misbehave in the haystack, is certainly lacking in dignity.’
He sat down on one of the carved stone benches and she came and sat beside him, then lifted her feet on to the seat and leaned back against his shoulder. ‘Nice,’ she murmured and then was silent.
Ivo probed the thought that he should not feel like this, not when he loved Daphne. But he owed Jane his affection and his thoughts because she was going to be his wife. Daphne was lost to him, of her own free will, and for the first time he felt not pity and anxiety, but the stirrings of anger. If she had been unhappy, why had she not written to tell him so and ask to be released from the engagement? As a gentleman he would have had no hesitation in agreeing, however much it hurt.
He shifted on the seat so that Jane could lean more comfortably against him and put his arm around her. Somehow he could not imagine Jane failing to tell him just what she thought and felt.