That might have been a frustrating enough start to James’s day without Carstairs bounding across the lawn after him and shouting, “Sir Oliver Linton of London is in the reception room and wishes to see you on a matter of utmost urgency!”
James glanced over his shoulder to gauge Ivy’s reaction to her other suitor’s name. But she and the children had walked out of earshot, and he was glad for it.
At least now he had a person on whom he could take out his exasperation. Finally he could meet this brash fox and put him in his place. It took nerve, he thought, to call upon a duke uninvited. It required sheer gall for a caller to leave the reception room and settle himself in the study.
He didn’t bother to disguise his contempt when he walked into his study and discovered Sir Oliver reading one of the books on his desk. “Would you mind not prying into my personal belongings?”
Sir Oliver dropped the book on the desk as if it had burned his fingers. “Bad habit, I’m afraid. I tend to judge a person’s character by the books he reads. Ovid’s Epistles. I’m quite impressed.”
“Don’t be.” James took his chair, ignoring the hand extended over the desk. “It belonged to my father.”
“I see. Well, I hope this is not an inconvenient time to call.”
“It is. I was in the middle of an important meeting.”
“Ah. Then I shall be succinct. I’ve come to discuss the matter of Ivy Fenwick.”
James smiled. “Do you have a complaint to lodge against her? If so, I suggest you put it in writing so that my estate manager can review it at his leisure. Now if that is all,” he said, rising.
“Dash it,” Oliver said forcefully. “I am seeking your permission to court the lady, not complain about her.”
James leaned forward as if Oliver were a fly he were about to flick off his desk. “What?”
“Hasn’t she mentioned me?”
James widened his eyes. “I do not engage in personal conversations about members of my staff with strangers.”
Oliver tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. “No,” he said. “I don’t imagine you would. But I just introduced myself.”
“Unless, of course, she came to me with a problem that required my intervention. That would be a different matter.”
Oliver nodded in understanding. “A problem such as a recalcitrant child?”
“Or the unwelcome advances of an admirer.”
There was a pause. “I imagine it is a common problem inside a house this large.”
James waited for another moment to pass. “It is a problem outside this house, too, I fear. Not even a week ago my governess was accosted on the park grounds.”
Oliver’s eyes glinted; he’d raised his guard. “She told you this?”
James shrugged. “She didn’t have to. I witnessed the offense with my own eyes.”
It was Oliver’s move. He gave a soft laugh. “Perhaps the scene you witnessed looked incriminating, but I assure you it was innocent. We’d had too much wine and were overcome with high spirits on the ride here.”
“My governess did not appear to be in high spirits when she was running from you through the maze.”
“Man-to-man, Your Grace, isn’t ‘offense’ an exaggeration? She resisted one last kiss outside my carriage. It was only mischief.”
He scowled. “Man-to-man, Sir Oliver, I consider Lady Ivy to be an essential person in my household and any offense against her will be regarded as an insult served to me.”
Oliver crossed his knees. “Do you mean that if I want to court her, I’ll have to court you, too?”
“Don’t play with words.”
“It’s what I do. I am a poet. I write pretty words.”
“Keep this up, and the next thing you’ll be writing is your eulogy.”
“She’s only a governess to you, but to me—she is everything. Please give me your approval, and share whatever advice you believe might help my cause. I’m still encountering resistance from her.”
“I’m not giving you my approval because you annoy me, and I have no advice to share on the subject except to say it will have to be a very long courtship, almost a year, so that she can fulfill her obligations to me.”
“But there must be other governesses.”
“Oh, there are,” James said. “The reception room was packed with them. Carstairs might have even retained their names if you’d like to select another one to court.”
“I mean governesses that you could choose from after letting Ivy go.”
James stared at him. “Now why would I want to go through all that rigmarole of interviewing another governess when the children have grown so fond of the one we have? The entire household is passionate about Lady Ivy. We are so passionate about her that we are no longer allowing her a day off.”
At this point James forced himself to stop before he revealed his own passion for Ivy to the presumptuous coxcomb. He rose from his chair, indicating an end to the conversation.
“I have no advice to share, I’m afraid. I am no Casanova. But I do have a steward named Carstairs who will see you to your carriage.”
“Well, I’m not quite finished. I—”
James strode from the room before Sir Oliver could complete whatever irritating statement he had been about to make. If he wanted Ivy so desperately, and she wanted him, then James wouldn’t stand in their way.
Yes, he would.
As he reached the front door, he realized that he couldn’t afford to deceive himself. He would stand against this man like the Cliffs of Dover against a French invasion, and obviously he didn’t have the luxury of the year in which to win her over.
Subtle overtures and regard for propriety would fall by the wayside in this war.
It took a scoundrel to trump another scoundrel.
James would not lose. Ivy would be his no matter how many strategical battles, for her, and against her, he would have to fight.
* * *
Ivy sensed brewing trouble in the air, and the stormy expression on the duke’s face when he strode past her to rejoin his friend only confirmed her fear.
“What’s put him in such a bad temper?” Mary whispered over the drawing propped on her lap.
“I haven’t any notion,” Ivy replied.
“Do you think Uncle James could have heard from my father?” Walker asked as Ivy put aside her sketchbook.
“I’m sure he would tell you if he had,” she said. “What do you say we end afternoon lessons with a game? Please, anything but a sack race. And nothing to do with beheadings.”
“How about hide-and-seek?” Mary cried, and Walker clapped with such enthusiasm that Ivy was forced to conceal her chagrin. There went the remainder of the day, but the children deserved a diversion from their worries. “Fine. But inside the house. I’m not climbing any hills or trees. Wash up first and we shall meet in the entrance hall in twenty minutes.”
* * *
The house provided two hundred or so hiding places where a normal governess wouldn’t think to look. But Ivy hadn’t been the eldest of four sisters for nothing. After she counted down against a marble column, she opened her eyes and spotted her charges careening toward the corridor of the west wing. Several doors slammed as she set off at a leisurely pace.
She passed through the ballroom with no success, and from there to the gold drawing room, so glorious in the waning light that she almost forgot her purpose.
At last, in a darkened anteroom to the music chamber, she closed in on her prey.
A muffled sound rose from the depths of a huge armchair that faced a tapestried alcove. She trod softly across the carpet and swung around to confront the culprits in the chair before they could flee.
“Aha! I’ve caught you fair and square and you’re not getting away from me again!”
James looked up in dark amusement, slouched in the depths of the armchair as if he’d been half-asleep. From his bare left hand dangled one glove. His other hand, encased in the black leather of another, lifted to rest at her side, the pressure it exerted deceptively light. “And why would I want to flee from anyone as fetching as you? Especially when you’ve gone to so much trouble to find me.”
Her shocked brain failed to cobble together a coherent response. She managed to straighten an inch before he reacted. The glove dropped to the floor. The heel of his left hand slid down her spine. The next thing she knew, she lost her balance and landed with her chin buried in his cravat and her hip trapped between his groin and upraised knees.
For a moment neither of them moved. But she wasn’t as light as air. She’d fallen hard and at an off-kilter angle. The chair tipped backward.
She gasped.
“Oh, God,” she heard James mutter before they toppled over in a tangle on the floor. Something hard hit the floor. The back of the chair or what sounded like a large pumpkin.
He made an indecipherable noise. Mortified at their undignified descent, she hoisted herself up to examine the man she had imprisoned. It seemed that strange paroxysms gripped his strong frame. Had he been dealt a blow to the head?
“Are you conscious, Your Grace?”
Alarmed by his failure to answer, she crawled over his torso to determine whether he was merely winded from the weight of her, or in the throes of a serious affliction. His face lay hidden in the crook of his arm . . . all the better to smother the snorts of silent laughter he evidently could not control.
“You find it amusing to frighten me?” she asked, forgetting her place and gripping a handful of his cravat to—well, she had to force herself to refrain from strangling the rogue.
“Yes.” He turned his head, his eyes warm with triumph. “You lose. I knew you wouldn’t last a week. It was worth a cracked noggin to win.”
She reared back. “What the devil are you talking about?”
He tapped her chin with his gloved fingers. “This is a forbidden act under the terms of our recent agreement.”
She stared down into his sinfully handsome face. “You don’t think for a moment that I came in here looking for you?”
“No?”
“No. No. I was playing hide-and-seek with the children.”
He grinned. His hand stole down her arm, black leather on bare skin. “You can use any excuse you want, darling. My door is always open.”
“Then let me get up and shut it.”
His hand lifted to her chin again. “Let’s renegotiate, shall we?”
“In this position?”
“Not close enough?”
She rocked back on her heels and pressed against the arm of the overturned chair to push onto her feet. There wasn’t time for her to even turn around. In one lithe move, James sprang upright and walked her into the wall.
She stood against the ancient tapestry she’d admired only a minute ago. “You promised me this wouldn’t happen.”
“But you made it happen,” he said, loosening his cravat. “I’m only a man, after all. How can I resist when you throw yourself in my lap? I was almost asleep, and vulnerable to your wiles.”
“My wiles, indeed.”
“You’re full of them.”
She pursed her lips. “Are you accusing me of attacking you?”
“That’s what it felt like. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I just wanted to keep our facts straight.”
“If it didn’t count when you caught me falling over one of your dogs,” she said, “then why should this?”
“I came to your rescue. Again. And we weren’t alone. I didn’t throw myself at you in a moment of weakness.”
She could feel a vein throbbing in her temple. Perhaps she was the one who’d hit her head on the floor. “I thought you were Mary and Walker.”
He raised his brow. “Do I look like Mary and Walker?”
“Not in the least.” She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. “And if you don’t believe that I was playing with them, then I suggest we find them together and you will discover the truth.”
The dark intensity in his eyes mesmerized her. A moment later his mouth slanted over hers and Ivy decided she didn’t care if he thought she had broken their pact. He was kissing her again, and she was kissing him back as if it had been months and not days since they’d sworn never to be together again.
She succumbed to his expertise.
He rewarded her surrender with kisses that unwound her like a skein and slowly drove her wild. He bit her neck and blew gently on it to soothe the sting. His hands shaped her breasts and he ground his body against hers until her blood pulsed in need. Her muslin dress proved no hindrance to his quest. She doubted a coat of armor could safeguard her from his talents. And she wished—oh, how wicked of her—she wished for each of them to be standing naked against the other.
“James,” she whispered, one hand hooked around his neck, the other motioning to the scarlet damask couch across the room.
“Hmmm?”
“Why don’t we—” The deep thrust of his tongue inside her mouth made her forget she’d meant to suggest they sit down together. He grasped her bottom in his hands and drew her into the hard ridge of his arousal.
“Why don’t we what?” he asked hoarsely, sucking hard on her lower lip.
“I can’t remember—oh, yes, I can. The couch.”
He lifted his head, his eyes hooded. “Would you like me to carry you to the couch?”
She struggled to recover from his kiss. “It’s either that or we return to decency and go about the rest of our day.”
He shook his head, leaned down to lift her as his answer, then froze.
A peal of children’s laughter chimed from the door of the music room. Ivy smoothed her dress and looked into the duke’s disgruntled face as he straightened.
“She’ll never find us in here,” Walker crowed above the muted sounds of furniture scraping across the wooden floor.
“She will if you knock over that harp,” Mary cried. “And why are you blocking all the doors? How will we get out if we hear her coming?”
Ivy gave James an I-told-you-so stare. He subjected her to a long hard look, put a finger to his lips, and pointed to a second door beside the fireplace. “I’ll go out through the anteroom. You can leave through the main door.”
“But I’m the one who has to catch them,” she whispered.
He brushed a kiss against the back of her neck before he bent to right the overturned chair. “Our pact is broken. We might as well become partners. Between Mary’s penchant for beheadings and Walker’s for building fortresses, we’re liable to need each other as allies in the future.”
She drew away in reluctance, still under the influence of his powerful masculinity. “I believe I can manage the children, Your Grace.”
“As well as you manage me?”
This was neither the time nor the place to prove herself to the grinning blackguard. Ivy hoped, however, to have improved her management skills before their next encounter. At minimum she must come to terms with her own expectations. Would she be content to become the duke’s mistress? She knew the answer. But was she prepared to lose him?
* * *
James’s melancholy had lifted. He still felt a dark threat in the air, but through it a few rays of light had penetrated so that the rest of his life did not seem as bleak as it had an hour before, when he realized he had serious competition for Ivy.
If he had to fight a duel to prove his manhood, then he would fight a duel. Even though it meant learning to use a gun with his left hand. Time was his true rival.
Time, and whoever was at his study door as he sat contriving excuses to seek out Ivy to apologize for his behavior. Or to resume where they had left off. He hadn’t imagined that she’d fused her sweet body to his and kissed him like a sorceress who had just discovered her own power. He was still as hard as steel. In fact, he should check whether it was her at the door.
No. Ivy wasn’t privy to Carstairs’s secret code of knocks. His rap-rap-RAP meant an important person had come to call, a person James knew.
He rose from his desk and scowled at the door. It wouldn’t be Wendover, annoyed that James hadn’t returned to the lake to fish. Wendover would not bother knocking.
“What do you want, Carstairs?”
“I regret interrupting you again, Your Grace, but there is another gentleman here from London who claims you are acquainted and insists on speaking with you.”
“It’s not that rhyme-maker again?”
“Oh, no, Your Grace. But—I’ve a sense there might be a connection to our governess.”
“Is this ‘sense’ grounded in fact, Nostradamus, or is it a message you received from another world?”
Carstairs chuckled. “He mentioned Fenwick Manor, Your Grace.”
“Dear God. Send him in.”
James returned to his desk. Now what? A confrontation with another suitor for Ivy’s hand? Who could blame the woman for hiding inside that house for so long? No wonder the gardener had let the thistle and thorns grow roof-high to conceal the Fenwick sisters from the world.
But a wall of thorns hadn’t protected Ivy from James.
He glanced up in surprise at the gentleman Carstairs ushered into the room. He was in his late sixties, with tousled gray hair, jacket too short in the sleeves, and a high-quality coat that needed a good cleaning.
“Don’t you remember me, Ellsworth?” he asked, dropping into a chair without waiting for an invitation.
James narrowed his eyes. Where in the world would Ivy have met this person? “Have we met?”
“You lost a hand of cards to me at the club.”
“Did I?”
“Then I lost three to you.”
“I don’t doubt your word, but I’m afraid I still don’t remember.”
“A crowd of us went out after your victory to celebrate and ended up sailing down the Thames on a barge with several amorous women. I fell off, and you saved me.”
James expelled a sigh. “Now I remember, Ainsley Farbisher. What brings you here?”
“I understand you are managing a property I would like to acquire.”
“A . . . property?” James felt the muscles at the back of his neck tense in forewarning. It was one thing for James to covet Ivy as a treasured possession. It was quite another for a gin-soaked old gent to sit across his desk and echo the same sentiment. “I hope you are not referring to a person in my employ.”
Ainsley’s eyes bulged. “Good heavens. I was speaking of the attractive parcel I passed on my way here. The house that stands beyond the stone bridge.”
“You mean Fenwick Manor?”
“Yes, that’s it. The Tudor estate in the oak wood.”
“And you don’t wish to marry any of the ladies who occupy the house?” he asked, scowling in suspicion.
Ainsley contemplated the question. “Is that a condition of acquisition?”
“Have you ever seen the inhabitants of the manor?” he asked pointedly.
“No, I haven’t. Is it in use as some sort of an asylum?”
“Excuse me?” James asked, masking a smile.
“I was told by a tavern keeper that several men who’d visited the manor had disappeared inside the house and that their remains were never found due to tragic circumstances or—” He wavered, appearing afraid to continue.
“Or what?” James asked, completely enjoying this legend of the Fenwick sisters.
“—or else the house is currently in use as a country brothel and the men who enter would rather die than leave.”
James did smile then. “Ainsley?”
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Come here and take a look at my boots.”
Ainsley obeyed, withdrawing a handkerchief from his coat to dab at his brow. “Handsome, they are. The height of fashion.”
“I’m glad you approve. Your head will be pinned beneath the sole of one if you make another ridiculous remark about asylums or brothels.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
Ainsley returned to his chair in relief. James leaned back. This was no coincidental offer. Had the acquisition of Tudor manors become the latest rage among London’s aristocracy? Or had the mystery of four beautiful sisters sparked interest in another type of procurement? All James knew was that he felt compelled to guard their privacy from young poets and old fools and probably everyone ill-intentioned who fell in between.
“How did you hear about Fenwick?”
“I can’t remember,” Ainsley said, blinking at the change in James’s tone. “Must have been at the club.”
“Odd topic of conversation for gentlemen gamblers in London, don’t you think?” James asked, his eyes boring into Ainsley’s.
Ainsley slid to the edge of his chair. “No. No, we’re always boasting about who has inherited or won the largest acreage. Distressed properties with that much potential don’t land in one’s lap every day.”
“Perhaps you read about it in the news,” James suggested.
Ainsley’s eyes lit up. “That’s it, of course. I’m always dipping into papers that passengers leave in their coaches. My wife brings them home by the basket when she takes the stage to visit her mother.”
James started “Your wife?”
“Yes. Alvina.”
“Why the deuce are you asking about marrying vulnerable young ladies when you have a wife?”
“I only asked if the marriage were a condition of sale,” Ainsley said, clearly miffed. He came so swiftly to his feet that he knocked his cane across the floor. “On second thought, perhaps it would all be too much for me to manage.”
“What? The manor house or the Ladies Fenwick?” James picked up the cane and handed it to the gentleman, who seemed in a sudden rush to leave.
Ainsley backed out the door, bowing awkwardly. “Good to see you again, Ellsworth. Hope we meet soon at the club.”
James followed the man to the hall to demand further explanation, but the instant Ainsley slipped outside, another visitor approached, commanding his complete attention.
Ivy had scraped her lustrous hair into a lopsided knot and changed into a bleached white dress with blue ribbons banded beneath the modest bodice. Her mouth looked dark and swollen from their kisses, a sight that immediately emptied his mind of everything but lustful hope. Or hopeful lust. She turned him inside out.
“I want a moment of your time, please, Your Grace,” she said. “If it is not inconvenient.”
He ignored the crispness of her voice, the rigid lift of her shoulder when he stepped closer to her. “Would you prefer we spend this moment together in the Chinese Room?” he asked, his smile impudent. “And it’s no inconvenience at all.”
“That will not be necessary.”
She moistened her bottom lip. Right then he could have handed her the keys to Ellsworth Park. She was the woman that had eluded him all his life. “No? You mean—do you want our encounter to take place here, now?”
Her eyes met his. “Not that sort of encounter, you single-minded knave. I’m not going to let you deceive me again.”
He studied her. “I deceive you?”
She was breathing fast, her skin shone, and her hands were clasped behind her back, not in modesty, he realized. But in restraint. She wasn’t aroused at all. She looked ready for a bout of fisticuffs.
“I didn’t lose fairly,” she said.
He grinned. “It doesn’t matter. I won, and I don’t care whether it was fair or not. You fell into my arms.”
“I won’t fall that easily in future. I don’t like losing to a cheater. I was only doing my job. That incident shouldn’t have counted. You’ll have to be at death’s door for me to make a mistake like that again.”
James frowned as if listening intently to every word she said. Which he wasn’t. Her message, however, he understood. She was angry at him, and it wouldn’t last. He adored her. That was enough for a man to assimilate in one day. He wasn’t ready to admit it to her. But he couldn’t deny the truth to himself.
“At death’s door,” he said. “That is an unkind sentiment. I am hurt to the quick. What did Shakespeare have to say on the subject, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful governess’? To think that I saved you from the windowsill.”
“And I appreciated that.”
“You don’t sound appreciative.” As a matter of fact, she sounded as if she wanted to murder him. And he wanted to keep her in this house for the rest of their lives. He saw the future clearly: Ivy arguing with him in the doorway and him giving her orders afterward that had nothing to do with domestic affairs. Ivy, in his bed, inviting him to take pleasure in her body. Ivy, reading to their children.
A footman passed through the hall.
Ivy turned her head. “That’s all I wished to say. I was only trying to do my job the day you rescued me from the windowsill.”
He realized he shouldn’t tease her. Yet how could he resist? “Do you know what my job is?”
“To taunt every woman you meet?”
He took the hit, reminding himself not to underestimate her. “That was also unkind, Lady Ivy.”
“How remiss of me. I forgot that Your Grace is such a tenderling who must be mollycoddled.”
He smiled. “The worst sin I have committed is to find you irresistible.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not certain where you have acquired your religious instruction. Perhaps at the Hellfire Club. But if you are curious about the definition of the sins we have both committed, I’m sure the parish church would be pleased to provide you with a Bible.”
“Thank you for the advisement,” he said after a pause to imply that he’d taken her warning to heart. It wouldn’t do a damn bit of good, but he’d play along.
She eyed him narrowly. “My conscience has been bothering me all afternoon.”
He looked at her without blinking. “Mine hasn’t.”
“Well, that’s all I meant to say.”
“Then I’m glad you said it.”
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
“I won’t touch you again unless you beg me. You won’t touch me unless I’m about to be lowered into my grave. If that’s what you want.”
She swallowed. “I think that would be for the best.”
He folded his arms across his chest. It wouldn’t be the best for him, but he could wait, knowing that she’d be worth every damn minute of suffering until he held her in his arms again.
“Then thank you,” she murmured, and dropped a curtsy as if she had read his thoughts and hastened to leave before temptation got the better of him.
It almost did.
But somehow he was able to nod, feigning compliance, and watch her walk away, pretending he had conceded to her wishes, which weren’t unreasonable.
There were times when a man had to toss a lady over his shoulder, give her a good smack on the behind, and master her until the next morning.
This wasn’t one of those times.
But it wouldn’t be long now.
And his blood clamored for the day.