Sir Oliver was as unimpressed by the exterior of Fenwick Manor as he was unprepared for the impact of its interior. With obvious reluctance, Rue Fenwick, recognizing his name, had invited him into the great hall. He managed to overlook her loveliness for several minutes as he cataloged the interior of the house.
In his mind he heard drums and cymbals, the music of revels and whispers of Tudor political rivalries. His imagination caught fire.
How could four young women have spent their lives in this splendid ruin and not have found the hidden treasure? They must have heard of it. And how would he delicately approach the subject without appearing to come across as the fortune hunter he was?
Poetry, of course.
Words of flattery. He made his living writing sonnets to noblewomen who in turn supported him with little baubles, which he sold and professed to have lost.
“Darling Oliver, how can you be so careless with your watches?” his last countess had asked him as she lay naked and squashing him to the bed.
“Perhaps because time flies when I am with you.”
“You adorable cad.”
Yes, he was a cad, and were he a more talented cad, he wouldn’t have to write poetry to wealthy ladies of the beau monde in order to survive. He wasn’t much of a gambler. But this endeavor, a treasure hunt, inspired him. He disregarded his stirrings of guilt and allowed Rue to introduce him to her sisters.
Naturally, he would share in whatever hidden fortune he discovered. But what a complex puzzle of a house. It could take months to search every nook and cranny, and how was one to do so without appearing obvious?
“Sir Oliver, please come into the drawing room and take refreshment,” said a tall, dark-haired lady whose stare, he swore, pierced his innards.
“Lady . . . ?” he asked, hinting for a first name.
She gave him a vague smile. “Sometimes.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.”
Arrogant woman. She hadn’t even properly brushed her hair for his visit, although neither had he. But then Oliver found the look of tousled artist appealed to most females, and God knew it wasn’t as if he lived on Park Lane and had a reliable valet to keep him in style.
She didn’t appear to be a typical daughter of the nobility. Neither of the two other sisters, Lilac and Rue, were dressed to receive guests, but with their natural beauty, what did clothes matter?
The unfriendly siren led him into a sunlit room and to a hard chair that sat beside a large golden lyre. It looked like something a giant might own; he wondered when the golden hen would appear so that he could snatch it and run. But on closer inspection the lyre’s strings were so worn that Oliver doubted it would play a chord.
“Is Ivy—Lady Ivy—at home?” he asked when he realized the women awaited an explanation for his appearance. “I do have the right day this time? I sent a box here last week and received a letter in return that she would be at home on Wednesday.”
The statuesque lady whom one of the sisters had referred to as Rosemary gave him a curt nod. “We sent the box to her place of employment, which we shouldn’t have done. She hasn’t been gone from home all that long. I’m not sure she’ll be ready to receive callers the minute she walks in the door.” She crossed her arms. “You are the poet Sir Oliver?”
He warmed. “You know my work?”
She sniffed in reply.
He glanced at Rue for support, only to find an impassive expression that indicated she wouldn’t take his side over her older sister’s. “But I owe her a personal apology, don’t you agree?” he said. “I’ve thought of nothing but her since that day in the street. I can’t write a decent verse. I’m rather hopeless. I have to see her.”
“This sounds like more than an apology,” Lilac said candidly. “Are you hoping to court her?”
He lowered his gaze. Odd. At a soirée in London his looks could melt stone, but these women appeared to be made of the stuff. He’d feel a damned fool if Lady Ivy refused him as a suitor.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and after the scandal her sire had created, she ought to be grateful that a man of Oliver’s renown would consider reintroducing her to society. True, it was half-world society, and his motives might be tainted, but if by his deep thinking he discovered in this house a fortune, then everyone would benefit.
He shuffled his feet, staring past the sisters, who were studying him as if prepared to torture him with one of the weapons on the wall.
Where in this house would he began to search for a treasure?
A half minute later Ivy stood before him, looking not as grateful as he would have hoped. He had rescued a family heirloom. Perhaps she did not remember him? He rose, bowed.
“Sir Oliver,” she said in a hoarse voice that sent a prickle down his spine. “How unexpected to see you at Fenwick.”
He straightened in surprise. Her condescending manner challenged him. It was a good thing she was fair on the eyes. He might enjoy this match. “Lady Ivy,” he said, flicking back his coattails. “I am enchanted to see you again.”
She turned and inhaled as if to breathe in—what? The odor of mildew rising from the floor? Did she think he would be dismissed that easily? He stood back in amusement. Her sisters divested her of her cloak, revealing a figure that took no deception to appreciate. A smattering of servants appeared in the passageway to rejoice at her return.
“Lady Ivy,” he said, clearing his throat. “If this is not a convenient time to call, I understand.”
She glanced back at him as if she had forgotten his presence. In a fortnight’s time, he swore, he would have her eating out of his hand.
* * *
Ivy had been dying for a private welcome and a chance to divulge all that had happened to her at Ellsworth Park. Now she had to entertain Sir Oliver—and was she supposed to repay him for the necklace? Yet, after an hour of small talk, when she broached the subject, he became incensed.
“That was atonement for the accident, and a chance to deepen our friendship.”
“So you do want to court her,” Lilac said gleefully from her chair in the corner.
“Honestly, Lilac,” Ivy said, choking on the bite of biscuit she had taken. “Must you always speak your mind?”
“It’s quite all right,” Sir Oliver said with a laugh. “I don’t have a family of my own. I was an orphan, you see. This is quite pleasant for me.”
“It’s pleasant for us, too,” Lilac said. “Some people think the four of us are dangerous, if you can believe it.”
Sir Oliver glanced at Ivy. “Dangerous to the heart, they must mean.”
“No, no,” Lilac said, shaking her head. “‘Dangerous’ in an unpleasant way.”
He smiled thinly. “I assure you, no one will insult you in my presence with impunity.”
“How unpoetic,” Rosemary murmured.
Lilac frowned at her. “Were you really an orphan?” she asked Oliver, returning her attention to him.
“Yes. But don’t waste your pity on me. How can I regret my life when it has brought me to this present place?”
At that point Rosemary excused herself to work and left the hall without looking at Oliver.
“Work?” he said into the silence that followed her departure. “Is she a seamstress?”
“She’s a writer,” Lilac said.
Sir Oliver’s remark reminded Ivy of her other “family.” What if the duke’s soon-to-be mistress had arrived during Ivy’s absence? She might gratify the duke, but her arrival would also pique the children’s curiosity. Ivy ought to be there to act as a moral barrier, so to speak. Of course Ivy didn’t care if His Grace diddled a spoon while she was gone. But she had promised to oversee Mary and Walker’s upbringing.
She frowned, trying not to picture what the duke might be doing while she drank tea with an attractive rascal who had just scooted his chair closer to hers. She flinched at the unsubtle scrape of wood against stone. Oliver’s eyes moved languidly over her face. He started to talk about London. She didn’t listen.
Surely the duke would wait until dark to bed that woman.
What a naive assumption.
He had kissed Ivy just after sunrise on his study floor.
“What time is it?” she asked in alarm, noticing the lengthening shadows on the carpet.
Sir Oliver consulted his pocket watch. “It’s not gone six yet.”
“Six o’clock? I have to return to Ellsworth before it’s dark.”
“Is the duke that strict?” Rue asked in sympathy.
No. He was that unstructured. “It’s the children, you realize,” she explained, handing Lilac her cup and rising for the cloak and gloves she’d removed what seemed only minutes ago.
Sir Oliver stood at her side. “What a shame. Do you think it would help if I put in a word? On your behalf—you know, explain to him that you had been in the company of a well-known person?”
“Don’t you dare,” Ivy said quickly. The last thing the duke would appreciate was knowing that she’d spent the afternoon with Oliver.
“And I was hoping for a tour of the house.”
“Come next May, Sir Oliver,” Rue said, her shadow falling between him and Ivy. “You can admire the gardens at their finest. You will be inspired.”
His strained smile intimated that he hoped for more than a horticultural tour for inspiration. “My traveling carriage will be quicker than that antique which brought you here, Ivy. Honestly, my dear, you’d have been faster gliding on a sleigh without snow.”
“That’s not the vehicle that almost ran me over?” Ivy could not resist teasing. “Oh, forgive me. I shouldn’t have mentioned it again.”
His smile transformed his face. For the first time Ivy saw past his superficial veneer to the charisma of the poet who sent the ladies of upper-crust London into raptures. Yet Ivy didn’t feel the least tug of attraction toward him. “But of course you should. Tease me all you like. It is the reason I am here.”
* * *
Ivy rushed through her good-byes to her sisters, even though she felt unsure about abandoning them to a man as ingratiating as Sir Oliver.
“I feel responsible for him,” she whispered to Rue as they embraced beside the straggly hollyhocks.
Rue smiled rather wickedly. “Don’t worry. Rosemary is keeping her eye on him.”
“What about Lilac?” Ivy asked under her breath.
Rue laughed. “She considers him useful for some odd reason.”
Ivy considered Oliver to be an annoyance. He’d wasted the precious hours she’d wanted to spend at Fenwick with his aimless flirtation. Yet on the bumpy ride back to Ellsworth, she managed to forget him entirely.
She promised herself she would make up the time she’d wanted to spend with her sisters on her next visit. Perhaps by then, she thought, as the carriage drew into Ellsworth and she hastened through the house, she would have collected a few more anecdotes about the duke to share with her siblings.
She walked into her bedchamber and peered at the clock on the mantelpiece. Half an hour late. The old carriage horses couldn’t travel these country roads as they had done years ago. The journey to London had taken its toll on the faithful bays. She stripped down to her shift. Well, at least the duke hadn’t caught her.
She bent over her washstand, splashing water over her face, and stared in the mirror. She froze, not at the cold, but at the reflection of a man sprawled across her tidily made bed. The duke might not have caught her.
But she had caught him, sleeping, in her bed.
She lifted the pitcher, counted to ten, and reconsidered. She set the jug down silently and picked up a towel, draping it over her bare shoulders.
She looked at him again in the mirror. He hadn’t moved.
She turned, water slipping down her breasts, and walked to his side. She wondered if he was dead drunk or flagrantly courting an invitation. Clearly the woman he awaited had not made her eagerly anticipated arrival, which meant that while Ivy was envisioning the duke engaged in unspeakable sins, he had been here . . . snoring softly on Ivy’s bed.
What was she to make of this?
Why on earth had she rushed back to the park, terrified of being late?
“Your Grace,” she said, nudging his big stockinged foot. “Are you in your cups?”
“Cups.” He opened his eyes, perusing her semiclad figure like a man who’d never tasted a drop of liquor in his life. He was alert, keen, a waking beast. “I couldn’t find you at the appointed time, so I came in here to check. I must have dozed off. The children exhausted me. Did something happen at Fenwick to keep you?” He glanced at the clock. “You’re late. We can’t allow that. A governess should be prompt.”
Her temper simmered. She hadn’t been able to enjoy a decent visit at home with her shoes off and now this—this—intimidating spectacle expected her to behave as if it were acceptable for him to await her return in her bed.
“Your Grace, I might not have moved about in high society as often as you. But we both know that a duke doesn’t nap in the governess’s bed. I am in the act of undressing.”
“Don’t let me stop you.” He sat up, crossing his legs in the middle of her bed. “I’ll cover my eyes.”
“You shall leave the room.”
“You could use the screen.”
“Excellent idea.”
He folded his arms behind his head, giving Ivy cause to appreciate the breadth of his shoulders beneath his crisp linen shirt. “Except that Mary knocked the screen over chasing Walker through the house and Carstairs removed it for repairs.”
“I thought something was missing.” She reached around in annoyance for her cloak. “I should also have realized that something was here that didn’t belong.”
“No.”
“Sit down on the bed. This is important.”
She wavered. Perhaps something had happened during her absence. Perhaps he had an excuse for his presence.
“Does it concern the children?”
He looked directly into her eyes. “Yes. Walker went into hysterics when he discovered you had gone.”
Doubting this, she perched on the edge of the bed nonetheless. “What happened?”
“I ran around being his horsey until I wanted to cry. Cook plied him with treacle all day until he felt sick and fell asleep. Mary is convinced you met the man with the pearls. I’m worn-out.”
“Oh, honestly,” Ivy said, putting her hand over her eyes.
Her heart was pounding. The intimacy between them had built into an inevitable confrontation. It was the end of a trying day; he had granted her no chance to rally her defenses. He looked too comfortable, too confident sitting in her small bed. He should not be here. This was a conversation that should take place between a husband and a wife.
Had no one ever taught the duke that he couldn’t behave exactly as he liked?
Why was she not more shocked to discover him lying in wait for her? Had she become completely detached from convention or so attached to him that nothing else mattered? In his presence Ivy felt as if she had taken leave of her senses.
“Did you meet him today?” he asked, after an interlude during which her anxiety escalated until she feared her heart would burst.
She felt him uncross his legs, his body leaning into hers. How foolish to pretend that if she couldn’t see him, he could not threaten her. His knuckles slid from her ear to her throat, an unsubtle declaration of intent to seduce that she responded to against her will.
“Ivy,” he said, his touch dipping boldly into the deep cleft of her breasts. “There was a male visitor today at Fenwick.”
She stole a glimpse at him through her fingers. A grave error. His eyes studied her with a wicked fascination that made her wonder what he saw in her that she didn’t. “How do you know?” she asked, lifting her hand to his wrist to thwart his next move.
“Carstairs drove by on an errand.”
“No one drives by Fenwick on an errand. You sent Carstairs after me.”
“I was worried that your coach would not survive the journey. How you traveled in that contraption to London is frightening to contemplate. I half expected Carstairs to come running home with word he’d found a pumpkin and liveried mice on the bridge to your house.”
His fingers continued to caress her—soon, she knew, she must object—as he recited what she judged to be a well-rehearsed although not implausible explanation. Sensual instincts and conflicting emotions warred inside her. He was a bewitching man. She knew that at any moment he would make a bolder play. This was no time to engage in a battle she could never win. Her body was defecting to his side, urging her to surrender.
Should she run from the room?
She sensed he wouldn’t stop her. Where could she hide wearing a shift and a cloak? She’d be the one who would look mad. Perhaps she could talk reason into him.
“How do you know that my visitor wasn’t a male relation?” she asked, reminding herself that one simply didn’t push a duke off a bed, no matter how dangerously desirable he made one feel.
His smile provoked her. “If you had any male relations, they would have claimed Fenwick the day your father died.” His thumb stroked the shape of her breast through her secondhand cotton shift. “He left you unprotected.”
“He didn’t expect to die.”
“No. I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry that you’ve had no one to take care of you.”
The cotton abraded her nipple; an intense stab of pleasure pierced her belly. His lightest caress rendered her weak and wanting. She leaned her shoulder back against the bedpost, missed, and would have fallen to the floor had his other hand not lashed around her waist.
He gathered her into the core of his body. Her stomach fluttered in pleasure at the sensation of hard strength that embraced her. “Where is your lover?” she asked in one last bid to distract him. He was breathing unevenly, and she could hardly breathe at all. But it didn’t seem to matter as long as he held her in his arms.
He buried his face in her neck. “I wrote her a letter and asked her not to come.” His firm lips moved with maddening slowness to meet the hand caressing her breast. Her heart was beating too hard. His touch felt illicit and essential. “It’s better that way.”
She needed to escape. She needed his kisses. The anticipation of not knowing which she needed more, of wondering what would happen if she chose him, reduced her to nothing. Instinct made the decision for her. She brought her hands to his large shoulders and felt the deep sigh of satisfaction he exhaled against her skin. “Why did you ask her not to come? I thought you were desperate.”
“Oh, I am,” he admitted with a laugh. “But not for her.”
She wasn’t about to ask him to explain that remark, although it tantalized her. “That sounds rather cruel.”
“It was a kindness for both of us.”
“Won’t she be upset?”
“I’ll find a way to soothe her feelings. She’s fond of jewelry.”
She reminded herself that he had just dismissed the woman who was meant to be in his bed. That didn’t mean he could sleep in hers. But the words wouldn’t come. He had gained the advantage. She wondered what he expected in return. He hadn’t given much thought to deciding his mistress shouldn’t visit. Ivy surmised that the woman wouldn’t view his decision as kindness.
“You realize that I’m about to kiss you?” he asked, as if there were any chance she would refuse when she’d already lifted her face to his and gripped his shoulders in anticipation. “I take that as consent,” he said, his eyes dancing with promise.
“I’m not consenting to anything.”
“Then let me know when to stop.”
“I don’t want you to think for a minute that I’m willing to replace your mistress.”
“Did I ask you to?” he said with a provocative smile.
Before she could answer, he turned her onto her back and pinned her with his body to the bed. She gasped as if a marble statue had toppled upon her, except that James happened to be gloriously alive, a warm-blooded man to the last angle. His black hair fell across his face and partly concealed the dimple in his left cheek. Beautiful, privileged, on the verge of an arrangement with another lady. What was she doing lying beneath him and secretly reveling in her imprisonment?
The situation felt entirely unfair. She might have been his had it not been for the war and her father’s missteps. But then an innocent debutante could not have kept the heart of a dashing heir to a dukedom for long. He would have broken hers.
He still could.
“Why did you send her away?” she asked, the heat of his body spreading through hers, draining her will to resist him. She might have been naked for all that the unfastened cloak and shift protected her against his hardness.
“It’s difficult to explain. I want to kiss you all over. Do you mind?”
“Yes.” But she didn’t. Quite the opposite. She wanted the kisses he had asked for. She parted her lips the moment his mouth covered hers. His tongue stroked hers, gently at first, and his fingers walked down her throat to her stomach. He was kissing her face and throat, and repositioning his body so that she lay snugly beneath his right arm.
“Ivy,” he said starkly, giving her an instant to breathe before he kissed her on the mouth again, and his fingers slipped inside her shift to rub across her tender nipples. Her breasts swelled. “I want to do more than kiss you.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she said, slipping deeper under his spell.
“This is what desire does to a man.” He lowered his head to her breasts and caught a nipple between his teeth. Her back arched. “Believe me, it doesn’t always happen like this. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this desperate. I’m mystified by what you’ve done to me and completely at your service.”
Desire did inexplicable things to a woman, too, she thought, closing her eyes. She couldn’t look at his face and follow what he was doing to her body. His hand drifted down her side and eased beneath the hem of her shift. A pulse began to throb in the place between her thighs. His fingertips brushed her hidden flesh and instead of flinching, she felt herself dampen, open to his possession. She inhaled as he probed her folds with his thick fingers.
“Have you ever been touched here before?” he asked, stroking her so slowly she wanted to cry with pleasure.
“Of course not,” she whispered, afraid of what he would ask her next. Or what she would ask of him. She was aware of a mounting tautness in her belly, a need that he appeared in no hurry to alleviate. How had he stolen her composure so completely? She managed to lift herself an inch before subsiding at the rasp of his voice.
“One day I’ll do more than touch you, Ivy. I’ll make you mine.”
“Will you dismiss me if I deny you?” she whispered, opening her eyes.
“I don’t think you understand what I just said. You won’t deny me. I think you want this even more than I do.”
She felt his shoulders tense and realized she was holding him so tightly that her fingers had gone numb. He stared at her, his eyes unfathomable, before he lowered his gaze to the juncture of her thighs where his fingers played her. She should have been ashamed that he would see her unraveling bit by bit, but her pleasure only mounted, a tautness inside her that he seemed to control.
“Tell me how badly you need this,” he said in a low wicked voice.
She bit the inside of her cheek.
“Tell me or I’ll stop.”
“I need . . . you—you—”
He laughed in delight. Her hips twisted, and then they both lost control. Her belly clenched, and a power rose from inside her that plunged her into oblivion before she broke into fragments and knew vaguely that when she was put back together she would never be the same Ivy Fenwick again.
She swallowed a sob and felt the pulsations of pleasure ebb from her body. The duke did not say a word. He merely withdrew his hand, sighed deeply, and rolled to his feet. Ivy drew up the shift and cloak to cover herself, still shaking from what he’d done to her.
He paced at her side, debonair to her tousled muss despite his disheveled fine linen shirt and black pantaloons. She hoisted the cloak over her shoulders.
“That was quite bad of you, James,” she said with a broken sigh. “I don’t ever expect to find you lying in wait for me in my room again.”
* * *
He hadn’t expected her to find him, either. How could he explain that an attack of nerves had ambushed him when he’d searched her room and realized she hadn’t returned? And then, because the children had exhausted him, he had stretched out on Ivy’s bed, intending to rest his arm, and had fallen asleep?
“I would have been fine if you hadn’t taken off your clothes,” he remarked as she picked up the dress she had discarded.
“Then it’s my fault that you brought the children in here and broke the screen? That you didn’t announce yourself to me as soon as I walked in the door?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t at fault for that.” He frowned. “I hope you don’t go to supper, looking that—that disarrayed.”
She bent at the washstand, talking again to his reflection. “Well, who disarrayed me, James?”
He watched her pat water on her cheeks and wrists. He was beginning to feel like a damned fool. He’d never touched a servant in his life, and she wasn’t acting anything like one now. Still, he wanted to kiss her sweet mouth and punish her for her ability to bewilder him with a show of power. He had always believed himself to be above such abuse.
But his body was pulsing with intense urges he had never known. He wanted to throw her onto the bed and fill her with his cock. “I don’t know what happened to me just now,” he said crossly. “I was asleep, susceptible to you.”
She splashed a little arc of water back his way. “As if it’s never happened before.”
“Not like this. I told you.”
“Susceptible? Tell me more. You said I didn’t understand what you meant. Well, explain.”
He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure now what he meant. An arrangement with a governess? Never. Set her up as a mistress? Unlikely. Marriage? His mind evaded an answer.
She patted her face and décolletage dry with a second towel that hung on the washstand and retreated into her small dressing room. When she returned, he could see that she hadn’t correctly laced her gown. The imperfection would bother him all night, not due to any obsession for neatness on his part, but because he knew how beautiful she was underneath her clothes. He would look at her and remember how her soft body had cushioned him when he should not be thinking of her at all.
Her voice underscored his lapse in attention. “Am I going to be dismissed, James?”
“You will if you refer to me by my first name outside this room. Not that I mind. But the servants will think it peculiar.”
“Since we will not be alone together in here again, I will only use your title from now on. Or perhaps I shall refer to you as ‘His Disgrace.’”
He narrowed his eyes. “Of course I won’t dismiss you.”
“Then I won’t resign.”
“You can’t resign. Our contract is binding. Besides, I understand you need the wages.”
She brushed around him. “I’ll go about my duties now if I have your permission.”
“You might want to look at the front of your gown before you do,” he said smugly. “You haven’t laced it correctly, and that wouldn’t have happened if you’d asked for my help.”
* * *
The following day Ivy stayed true to the pact she had made with herself to let nothing distract her from her work. Her charges, in turn, appeared to have made a pact with each other to drive her to distraction. At the start of their morning lesson, she motioned to Mary, whose wide-eyed innocence Ivy was soon to discover hid the strategical genius of the ancient general Hannibal.
“Come to my desk, dear, and read aloud this passage pertaining to the Reformation.” She cast a pained look at the row of mounted plaster busts representing the English monarchy that sat in the front of the casement windows. “Master Walker, please don’t dance around those busts with that letter opener. You’re liable to scratch one of our monarchs with your reckless play or, worse, knock a king or queen out the window.”
“I’ll do more than that. I’ll—” He paused before the bust of an austere-faced Queen Anne. “She’s ugly. I’ll execute her first.”
Ivy swallowed a gasp. “You shall do no such thing in my presence.”
“He will, Lady Ivy,” Mary said with certainty. “That’s why our father won’t allow him near a foil yet.”
Walker leveled the letter opener to his chest and wheeled on Mary. “On your knees, Mary, Queen of Scots. Your head will roll like a turnip when I’m done!”
Mary hopped up onto her chair, clenched her hands to her chest, and bellowed at the top of her voice. “I am betrayed by the fickle Elizabeth, blackhearted witch of England!”
“Good gracious,” Ivy muttered. “You’ll have everyone thinking there’s a murder being committed up here.” She sprang from her chair and strode forward to take possession of Walker’s weapon, Mary shrieking the entire while.
“Give me that opener right now,” she said, sprinting around the globe after Walker. “You’ll kill one of the gardeners if a bust goes out the window and lands on his head.”
“Catch me!” Walker taunted.
Mary jumped off her chair. “I’ll catch the traitor for you, Lady Ivy.”
“Master Walker, sit down this minute!” Ivy shouted.
And to her amazement he did.
Mary pursed her lips. “He won’t stay.”
“He will.”
Mary stared at her. “Uncle James told us that you lived in a house as old as the king who chopped off heads.”
“I still live there,” Ivy replied, feeling a prickle of apprehension. Were Mary’s words a foreboding that the house would be sold off, after all? “The king your uncle was speaking of wasn’t the only monarch to order a beheading. My house was built during the reign of King Henry VIII.”
“That king!” Mary said, snatching the heavy ruler from Ivy’s desk. “He’s the one who lopped off his wives’ heads.”
“He didn’t do the lopping—the chopping—an executioner did.” She went down on her knees to gather the papers Mary had sent flying from the desk. When she stood up, the girl was charging across the room toward the bust of Henry VIII. The schoolroom ruler rose in the air like an executioner’s ax and then descended to take a sudden swing like a golf club.
“No. Stop right now. Stop her,” she said in panic to Walker.
Walker set aside the pile of threads he’d begun to pull from the carpet and lumbered to his feet. Ivy realized the burden fell on her to take action. She set forth across the room as if the future of the English monarchy hung in the balance.
“Mary, don’t,” she said, dodging the globe.
But Mary did.
And Ivy extended her arm from its socket as far as it could reach, her fingers glancing Henry’s plaster beard, her hand shattering glass and making history as it did. She felt a stinging pain in her wrist and found herself curiously detached from the events that followed. Rivulets of blood the color of poppies flowed to her fingertips. A distressing sight, really.
The plaster bust crashed down to the garden below and by great fortune did not take another victim in its descent. She rested against the windowsill and wondered absently why she felt giddy and why the duke was standing in the doorway, his face frightening to behold. She felt Mary tugging at her skirts before she closed her eyes and sighed, floating into darkness.
* * *
James was passing through the hall when he heard the commotion from the upstairs drawing room where Ivy was giving the children their lessons. His pride urged him not to interfere. He believed enough in her abilities to handle his niece and nephew without his interference. She hadn’t hesitated to put him in his place. She could take care of Walker and Mary. Besides, if he did interfere, she would only accuse him of seeking an excuse to see her again.
But the sound of glass shattering could not be ignored. And when one of the gardeners came running into the house with a decapitated bust under his arm, James didn’t wait for an explanation.
He raced upstairs and took one look at the scene in the drawing room before he went into action. Ivy sat upon the windowsill like a picture in a broken frame. Everything about the moment seemed distorted. She was sickly white, and there was enough blood trickling from her wrist that he might have feared her dead had she not turned her head toward him. Mary had a tight grip on her other hand.
“Ivy,” he said, approaching her as calmly as he could.
“I broke the window,” she said, turning her head away. “Did you know you can tell the age of a house by the depth of its windowsills?”
He rushed forward and gathered her up in his arms. He would deal with her complaints at a later time. He knew the children were watching. Their attention did not deter his instincts in the least.
He bore Ivy through the door to his bedchamber with a humanitarian purpose he convinced himself elevated him above his earlier earthly desires. He might even have believed his good intentions had a sweetly mocking voice not spoken over his shoulder as he laid the slowly reviving governess on his bed: “Ivy?”
A disbelieving silence, then the same voice continued with, “Ivy Fenwick? One of my oldest friends?”
Ivy sat up from the bed as if reanimated. James was so relieved to see her return to her former self that he finally turned to acknowledge the woman who had shadowed him into his suite. He hadn’t been paying attention to her or the children at all. But the rubies around her neck blazed so brilliantly that even if James had managed to disregard her dramatic entrance, he couldn’t ignore her presence entirely, much as he would have liked to.
He took her by the arm. “Elora, I sent you a letter asking you not to come,” he said in a low voice.
“I didn’t receive it,” she said, pulling her arm free. “Why is Ivy Fenwick bleeding in your bed?”
“She’s the governess,” he said, wondering which of his servants had given her Ivy’s name. “And she needs a physician. She’s had an accident, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“How could I fail to notice? There is a trail of blood from the drawing room to your door. Do you like my necklace?”
“Does the Tower of London know the Crown Jewels are missing yet?”
“That would be quite the theft, wouldn’t it?” she asked with a grin.
James did his best to politely pretend she didn’t exist, but when she started to help settle Ivy into the bed, he realized that erasing Elora from the scene was an impossibility. Ivy was the only one who mattered right now. He had bound her wrist with a bed tassel to stop her flow of blood. If he could, he’d lie down next to her to rest his throbbing head.
“I feel better,” Ivy murmured, her head bobbing back against the pillow. “I left the drawing room in a mess. Your Grace, please forgive me. Are the children safe?”
He nodded at her from the foot of the bed. “We rang Carstairs for the physician. Never mind the mess.” Or the mistress, he thought. Talk about bad timing. The situation appeared too suspicious to explain it as anything but the truth.
Elora moved to the other side of the bed. “You don’t remember me, do you? It’s been a long time, and we didn’t part during what one would call an enchanted evening.”
James felt as if he should do something to interrupt the conversation, but what? “Despite what it looks like, this isn’t what either of you are thinking.”
* * *
Elora’s red hair had darkened over the years, but she had retained the slender figure and verve that Ivy had admired during their boarding school years. Unfortunately it appeared that she had also remained true to her penchant for misadventure—and it had brought them together in the duke’s bedroom.
That was a sobering thought.
“What it looks like, James,” Elora said, “is precisely what the servants told me to expect—that the governess cut her hand on a broken window and that you brought her here to await the doctor’s arrival.” She smiled down at Ivy in sympathy. “He did a decent job of bandaging it, but then James is good with his hands. How did it happen? Are you in pain?”
Ivy scooted over to make room for Elora on the bed. “The children misbehaved during a history lesson. It was an accident. Your Grace, I hope that nothing in the garden was damaged. I feel fine now, but I am embarrassed for putting you to all this trouble.”
Elora laughed. “We’ve had our share of troubles, haven’t we? I suppose you know that James and I were on the brink of an arrangement, unless he was hoping to be discreet—in which case I have ruined any chance of that.”
The duke shook his head, seemingly perplexed, and slid his hand in his pocket. If Ivy’s wrist weren’t stinging like mad, she might have started to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. But she could see blotches of her blood on his pristine white shirt and bedcovers, and she felt responsible for losing control of the children’s lesson.
“So,” Elora continued, “I became a fallen woman because of that one wretched night at the masquerade ball, and you, who should have been the toast of London, are now a governess.”
James exhaled. “Would you like me to leave? There is an adjoining chamber through that door where I can wait. I could have tea sent up for you so that you can reminisce until the physician arrives.”
“I don’t need a doctor, Your Grace,” Ivy said, slipping from the bed onto a chair. It was true that she felt a little faint, but who wouldn’t after a beheading and then being carried off in those strong arms? Ivy doubted there existed a medical remedy for her attraction to the duke. Undoubtedly her hand would heal. Her heart would only break little by little until she accepted the fact that he wasn’t meant for her.
“You need stitches,” he said unequivocally. He leaned down to move aside the chair he had kicked over during his heroic effort to bear Ivy to the four-poster. “Don’t argue, Elora.”
Elora shook her head. “I agree. I told you I followed a path of blood to the door. Ivy, please get back into bed.”
“But I’m ruining the bedding.”
“The damage is already done,” Elora said. “All the way around, by the look of things. James, may I speak with you alone in the other room while we wait for your physician?”
He seemed to hesitate before he acquiesced to Elora’s request and followed her from the room.
It wasn’t only the loss of blood that depleted Ivy. It was the indignity, her inability to manage the children, and the reminder that once upon a time, she and Elora had sparkled in the same elegant society. Ivy had an indistinct memory about the act that had precipitated Elora’s exclusion from the ton, from grace, but she hadn’t heard the entire story.
She would like to think that the duke had been at war most of the time in the intervening years and that Elora had traveled after trouble alone. But, really, how could it be so?
* * *
Elora joined James in the other room only a minute or so later. “She ought to rest,” she whispered so that Ivy couldn’t overhear. “I think losing all that blood gave her quite a shock.”
“Not to mention your sudden appearance.” James craned his neck to see past her lithe figure. “Leave the door open. I want to keep an eye on her.”
He had known Elora practically all his adult life and wondered now how he could have considered her a potential bedmate. She felt like a cousin or sister to him. She acted like a sister, pushing his coat and newspapers off his chaise to make herself comfortable.
“Elora,” he began, taking a tactical position by the door to his bedchamber, “I think an explanation is necessary.”
“It’s all right.” She untied her bonnet and reclined on the cushions. “I thought at first that you’d found another woman, and I was insulted, but then I heard about Curtis. I realized that you had to think of the children. I never liked his worthless excuse of a wife. I’ll tell Cassandra so if I see her again.”
James glanced toward his bedchamber. Was Ivy trying to tidy the bed? Why couldn’t she stay where he’d left her? And why had Elora arrived here, now, of all times? He had enjoyed playing Ivy’s hero. It was the first gentlemanly excuse he’d had to settle her in his bed. He doubted another situation like this would arise in the near future. Not that he wished any harm to befall Ivy. His heart still felt like it was somewhere in the vicinity of his knees.
“Why did you come to Ellsworth, Elora?” he asked, scowling at her. “Didn’t you get the letter I sent you?”
She waved the glove she had removed in his direction. “Yes, I did. I’m not here as a potential mistress, James. I came to stand for your family.”
He stared blankly at her. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Curtis has been dealt a severe injustice.”
“Excuse me a moment.” He walked across the room to his bedchamber door. “What are you doing, Ivy? Leave the pillows alone. Can’t you hold still for a moment?”
“I don’t wish the physician to see these stains, Your Grace,” came the faint reply.
He tsked. “Do you think he has never seen blood before?”
“Not mine, Your Grace.”
Was it a particular shade of blue? he felt like asking. Instead, he turned back to Elora, who had interrupted her explanation to look at him in surprise. “I’ve never seen you behave this way,” she said, removing her other glove. “You’ve become a stranger, but then I suppose that’s the children’s influence. I could strangle Curtis’s worthless baggage of a wife.”
James frowned. “How do you know about this?”
“It’s all over London. Poor Curtis. I hope you’re arranging for a divorce.”
“When the time comes, of course, I’ll help him with the proceedings. It isn’t a matter of merely closing a door. I imagine he’ll have a say in the matter.”
Her eyes flashed. “You aren’t going to encourage him to keep her?”
He realized then what it was that he had sensed was missing between them and could not name. Elora had attended every one of his family’s functions since he could remember. Conceited donkey that he was, he’d assumed she loved him and had been willing to settle for being his mistress when she secretly wanted to be his wife. “Does this mean that you have loved Curtis all this time and demeaned yourself with me because he was married, and you couldn’t have him?”
She sat up, sighing, and pushing a comb back into her hair. “He wouldn’t have married me, even if he’d never met Cassandra.”
James grunted. “It would have been a blessing had they never met.”
“Except for Mary and Walker. She did give Curtis beautiful children.”
James mulled this over. In his opinion the children had become little hellions, but he didn’t wonder why. Unsupervised, left to their own devices. It was a wonder that they hadn’t caused an accident before today. Or perhaps they had. The servants who’d cared for them wouldn’t tell. Even Ivy had begged him to spare them punishment.
“I don’t understand anything, Elora.” He forced himself not to look into his bedchamber again. “Why didn’t you at least give me a hint of your feelings for Curtis? I might have furthered your cause.”
“You might be the finest lover in London. You might be the duke of every woman’s dreams, but you’re selfish and see only what affects you. My reputation was ruined years ago, James. If you weren’t so self-absorbed, you might have noticed.”
“Well, if I didn’t know about it, then I’m sure Curtis didn’t, either. We were at war, Elora. Who in the ton was hopping from one bed to another like frogs on so many lily pads was the last thing on our minds.”
She heaved another sigh. “Then it would only be a matter of time. How did you think that a lady of my background fell into the half-world? One day I was a debutante, the next I was consorting with rogues and actresses. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to me?”
“I suppose I did, once or twice. But the war changed everything, and I wasn’t sure it was polite to probe into what might have been a distressful subject.”
“But it is polite to sleep with me?” she asked, rising from the chaise to approach him. She reached out her hand.
He shook his head. “Don’t do that now.”
She smiled and lifted her fingers to his disheveled jacket. “Do what?”
“Touch me,” he said in an undertone, turning from her hand. “What do you suppose is taking that physician so long?”
She lowered her hand. “There could be a hundred reasons,” she said, smiling tightly. “But it won’t matter when he arrives if your patient has run away.”
“What?”
He brushed past her to the door in time to hear the precise click of heels echoing through the outer hallway. Ivy had made his bed. And abandoned it. He should have guessed by that mutinous look on her face that she wasn’t going to obey him. Neither was she about to sit there listening to him and Elora discuss the death or resurrection of their arrangement.
“I was only trying to restore your appearance before anyone else sees you,” Elora said, breaking into the bedchamber after him. “Really, James, I think you’re overreacting. She’s injured. She was embarrassed by what happened. I don’t suppose my turning up helped. Where could she have gone? To the kitchen, or the garden?”
“Home,” he said, afraid he’d driven her away. “She could have misinterpreted the conversation you and I had and taken offense.”
Elora laughed. “Aren’t I the one who should be offended by finding a woman in your bed?”
He disappeared into the hall, scowling, and stared down the empty staircase. “You’re the one who admitted being in love with my brother and using me as second-best,” he said without looking around. “This isn’t a good time to talk about it.”
“Did you love me, James?”
“Of course I didn’t love you,” he said in exasperation. “That was understood.” He spied a figure at the bottom of the stairs. “Mary! Have you seen your governess?”
“She didn’t come down this way, Uncle James. What’s wrong with her?”
“Her hand is deeply cut.”
Mary clung to the banister. “She would use the back stairs, wouldn’t she?”
“You’re right, Mary,” he said in relief. “You and Walker go to the kitchens or to your rooms.”
“She didn’t mean to break the window, Uncle James,” she called up to him. But he didn’t respond.
Elora had already anticipated his next move, and hastened down the stairs to talk to Mary.
James wondered what was wrong with him. He might have felt more shocked at Elora’s admission had he not realized himself that even a sexual arrangement between them wouldn’t work. Thank God he had never slept with her. A steamy hour here and there, yes. But he needed a woman soon or he would lose his sanity. Not just any woman, either. Not for an uncomplicated affair.
He couldn’t simply seduce the governess, as much as he wanted to, because she wasn’t just any governess. He realized a solution existed, and he thought he was ready to explore it.
He had waited five years for the perfect woman. He could wait a little longer to repair the poor impression he had made. For now he could keep Ivy under his roof, his guard, and he saw no reason why she would resist him once he proved that he could be redeemed. There wasn’t any question of an “arrangement” with Ivy, except for the contract she’d signed. He was grateful for that, as devious as it sounded. She was bound to him for a year.
Neither of them was to blame for losing each other the first time. She’d come back into his life for a reason. He wanted her more than he had on the eve of war. But this wanting went deeper than anything he’d known. A half decade of waiting, lusting, and dreams hidden away for the right woman.
She wanted him, too.
All he had to do was to persuade her of the obvious.