Ivy lightly traced the creases in his beautifully sculpted face with her fingertip. She wished she could stay the night, watching over James, if only to hear him tell her that they belonged together as man and wife, and that was that.
There was a chance he would change his mind by morning. But he must have been brought into her life five years ago for a reason—perhaps so that her heart would hold a place for him.
She poured another glass of water to leave at his side and debated whether to add a few coals to his fire. He still felt hot. She decided that she would check him again in half an hour and slipped from his room, hoping that no one else in the house spotted her. Of course he would be well. As he’d pointed out, it wasn’t likely that a man could make love with such intensity and succumb to a grave illness hours later. Not that she was an expert on the subject. But she was the one who should be running a fever. She felt both exhausted and exhilarated.
Her mind kept returning to the offer he had made her. His wife. The duchess. A title that implied dignity and rulership. No more trysting in the Chinese Room. Or knocking over chairs. And if they ever needed a governess, Ivy would conduct the interview and would not kiss any of the applicants on the floor.
A fine example the two of them had set for the rest of the house as well as for the children.
Of course Ivy could not have foreseen that one of the little mischief-makers would be waiting in her room, tonight of all nights.
“Walker, what are you doing in that chair and wearing on your head? And is that your uncle’s cane? Are you sleepwalking? Or is that you, Mary? Answer me. This has to stop.”
She gasped as the shadowed figure rose from the chair and stepped into the moonlight. It was—she wasn’t sure who it was at first. It appeared to be a footman dressed in a maid’s frilly mobcap and apron. Had the servants been using her bedroom for their antics? She nearly laughed until she took a closer look at the agitated face under the cap and realized it belonged to Sir Oliver.
Her heart jumped in alarm. She hadn’t believed any of his nonsense about rescuing her from the duke. “Oh, no, Oliver. Not in here. Have you gone daft?” Which was a question she realized didn’t need an answer. He was wearing a cap and apron in the house of a man who had decreed he would kill Oliver if he set foot on this property again.
“I might well be daft,” Oliver said. “I can’t think of any other explanation for the risk I’m taking.”
She was so upset the words tangled in her throat. “It’s rash and dangerous for you to come to this house, let alone sneak into a private room. How did you find your way inside?”
His lips thinned. “I waited for hours outside the garden walls. I hoped I would see you in your window.”
“The duke will fly into an understandable rage if he catches you here.”
His gaze drifted over her with a sly knowledge that felt like a violation. Her hair needed to be brushed and bound. She had not bothered to refasten the buttons at her nape. She was relieved that he did not remark on her unkempt appearance.
“The duke is ill, isn’t he?” he asked, his voice mildly taunting.
“What makes you think that?”
“I saw a physician leave the house.”
“The children often beg treats from the kitchen and suffer for it.”
“The children were playing in the summerhouse in the dark. Without their governess.”
“Leave this room right now, Oliver.” She couldn’t control the quiver of panic in her voice. “If the duke discovers you here, he’ll kill you and I don’t think anyone would blame him.”
He looked down at her bare feet. “Why would the duke come to your room this late at night?”
“That is not your affair. Nor did I say he would. The issue is that you are here, a trespasser and intruder.”
He gripped her by her upper arms. “I want to marry you. Don’t you feel anything for me at all?”
“At this moment exasperation is the kindest emotion I can muster. Let me go.”
“Let me kiss you. Or at least arrange to meet me tomorrow.”
“What if someone sees you here? He won’t tolerate an insult, Oliver. You’re the most stupidly impulsive man I have ever met.”
He laughed. “I was half-mad before I met you. When are you coming back to Fenwick?”
“Aren’t you listening to me? No, you are not. I might as well be talking to the wall. Fenwick will belong to a stranger before long if my sisters and I can’t scrape together enough money to pay its upkeep. You aren’t plump in the purse, and we don’t know each other.”
He lowered his head to hers. “We could save Fenwick together. I know you won’t believe me, but in the short time I’ve been living there, I have fallen under its spell.”
“You’ve been living there?”
“If you had read my letters, you would have already known.”
“What letters?” she asked in bewilderment.
“Ah. That’s what I thought. The duke has intercepted your correspondences. The devil.”
The devil, indeed. Ivy wasn’t at all surprised. James had made no secret of his possessive streak. “How can you be living at Fenwick? Who gave you permission? It needs to be put to a vote.”
“It was. Lilac voted yea, and Rosemary nay.”
“Well, I wasn’t asked.”
“You were. You didn’t reply. Nor did Rue. Quigley was the deciding vote, and a hard one to win. The lease on my London lodgings ran out at the end of the month, and I have moved into your gatehouse.”
Ivy shook her head, stunned by her sister’s betrayal. “Why would Lilac agree to this? I don’t believe you.”
“She agreed because Rosemary almost killed me. Yes, it’s true. She pushed me into a hidden passageway and left me there to rot. If Lilac hadn’t rescued me, I would be dead.”
Ivy felt as if she were frozen in the moment. Part of her wanted to be back in James’s arms. Another part wished she could return to Fenwick with its secrets and her sisters and no problem more complicated than surviving another tomorrow. The familiar, no matter how painful, called for her to return. But the duke needed her, and where or why Oliver stood in the middle of this muddle, she hadn’t the patience to discern.
“I’ll come to Fenwick as soon as I can.” And she would not take Oliver’s word on anything until she had talked to Lilac and Rosemary for herself. “Now escape this house before either the duke or I kill you, Oliver. This is a provocation that no gentleman would excuse.”
He released her. His mouth quirked in a triumphant smile that tempted her to slap his face. “Just kiss me once.”
A cry rent the silence. A hinge creaked. Ivy turned instinctively, half-expecting to discover a naked duke standing in the door. Oliver, for all his high-flown nonsense, had retreated back into the dark. But it was not the duke who darted into the room and flung her arms around Ivy’s waist. The diminutive intruder was Mary, loud sobs shaking her body.
* * *
The sound of a female weeping penetrated his drugged sleep. Ivy? He ordered his body to act. He preferred the agony of hell to this helpless oblivion. He summoned all his energy to shove the counterpane to the floor. His right arm jerked upward into the air. He swept his hand across the bedside table.
An enemy in the night. Where in God’s name were his weapons? A soldier had cried for help. Curtis. He thought of his brother in battle. Goddamn Curtis’s wife for betraying her family. How could she abandon those beautiful children? He would hunt down her lover and take revenge to satisfy his brother’s honor.
He hated this weakness, this fog in which unrecognizable figures loomed and disappeared before he could work out where they stood. He must fight it. Fight. Pain jolted him into a twilight clarity. He’d rather suffer then sleep.
He wrapped his reliable arm around the bedpost and pulled himself upright. The poultice on his shoulder slithered down his chest. The drug was still strong in his blood, beckoning him back under black waves of oblivion. He released the post and reached back for the water on the table, taking a deep swallow before he realized it was morphine. Where the hell was his pistol? Not that he could pull the trigger. He grabbed something sharp.
Did he still hear crying? Had he been weeping in his sleep? He staggered from the bed but made it no farther than to the clothes chest before he had to rest.
“Damn, damn, damn.” He grasped another post, struggling to remain upright.
From his viewpoint he could look through the window to the garden. Was a deer running through the park? A maid? Was he hallucinating? Why was he clutching a pair of scissors? He glanced up again. He saw nothing in the garden but the familiar blur of hedges laid out beneath the moonlit trees.
His hand loosened from the post.
The crying had stopped, but he heard soft voices in the hall. His instincts told him that his sanctuary had been invaded. He had ruined a young woman and failed as her protector in one single night.
* * *
Ivy went to Mary without a moment’s hesitation. She had only an inkling of what the child had witnessed in her past, but she vowed it would not happen again. “What is it? Walker again?”
“N-no.”
Sweet mercy. “Then what is it, my dear? Why are you crying so?”
“Papa might be killed. Uncle James is sick. And I peeped in on Walker. He’s wet the bed, my lady, and I don’t know how to tell him that our mother is never coming home.”
Ivy was ashamed at how relieved she felt that Mary’s distress did not stem from catching her governess in an indiscretion. “Tomorrow we shall make other arrangements. Perhaps I shall sleep in the dressing closet between you and Walker. Come here. I have a handkerchief to dry those tears. I know how sad you must be.”
“Have you been sad before?”
“Oh, very.”
Mary trailed her to the wardrobe, whispering, “Is the maid still in your room?”
Ivy closed the drawer and then the wardrobe door. “The maid?” she said, turning around woodenly.
“The one I saw you talking to before I came in. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Ladies like to talk to each other. She had a funny voice. Was she angry with you?”
Ivy dabbed gently at Mary’s face. Was this how it started? A small untruth meant to protect an innocent person? What if Mary mentioned the “maid” to James? Would Ivy lie again to prevent James from challenging Oliver to a duel? A little lie that grew into a circle of deceit like a serpent consuming its own tail and ensuing self-destruction? Better to say nothing than to deceive.
“You may always interrupt me when you are upset, Mary. That is why I am here. Calm yourself. Sleep in my bed tonight. I’ll ring for another maid to change Walker’s sheets.” And she would peep in on James on the way, allowing the moron in the maid’s cap to escape before a servant on the estate sighted him and roused the duke from his bed.
* * *
But the duke was not in his bed. And it was Ivy who almost panicked, not Mary, when she encountered James lumbering down the hall toward them in his nightshirt, dripping the poultice she had applied and brandishing a pair of scissors. To be fair, he did look like a mythological monster and her frayed nerves could not be expected to withstand another shock tonight. As soon as she realized he was in a feverish state and had no idea what he was about, she returned to her practical self—she who mopped up messes, tended the ill, called out instructions, and promised herself she could have brandy and a private bellow when it was all over.
Mary came to her senses as most young women eventually do in a crisis. She ran back to her room to ring for help and settle down to read Walker stories in his bed when he woke, while Carstairs and three able young footmen guided the duke back into his chamber. Ivy nearly fainted when she discovered the chaos he had wreaked. The bronze-gold bed tester shimmered against the parquetry floor. Side tables and chairs had been overturned as if swept by a dragon’s tail. Whatever had caused him to go into this frenzy?
Even when incapacitated the duke was a power like no other man Ivy had known.
She hung back as Wendover and the footmen herded him back into the bed, Wendover shouting for someone to call back the physician and James, in response, ranting about the insanity of Napoleon Bonaparte and an intruder in the park.
“Doesn’t anyone believe me?” he roared.
Ivy stood back from the doors to his room. It was improper for her to be present at all in the duke’s extremity. What did it count that he had proposed to her during the height of their pleasure? There had been no witnesses.
He might forget his promise by tomorrow. He might not remember it now.
Despite the uncertainty, she couldn’t regret what she had done. She had given herself to him of her own will. Even if she weren’t bound to him for a year, she knew she wouldn’t leave him by choice. She would love him long after her legal obligation was fulfilled.
For five years she had lived her own life. She hadn’t cared what anyone thought—until he had broken through her isolation and forced her to return to the world that existed outside Fenwick. He couldn’t simply leave her to manage Mary and Walker on her own. What if she had conceived a child tonight? Had he left a will to cover this eventuality? Why was she letting herself fear the worst?
The duke’s roar broke through her reflections. “Why won’t anyone believe me?”
“Believe you about what?” Wendover patiently asked with the measured respect of a lifelong friendship.
“England has been invaded by an army of maids,” James replied, and although Carstairs closed the doors and Ivy heard no more, she knew that this was not the end of the matter.
The duke would live to recover and cause more trouble in her life.
* * *
She was still awake when the sun rose. Mary had come back to Ivy’s room, where they had held a nightlong vigil, each one taking turns to scout the hall and return with news.
“His valet knocked and was admitted at two,” Mary reported.
“The maids brought in boiling water,” Ivy announced at dawn.
“You should have seen his breakfast.” Mary crawled into Ivy’s bed. “It was enormous, and I’m so hungry.”
“So am I,” Ivy said, sighing in relief. “Sneak back to your room, miss. Try to get some sleep.”
Mary turned onto her side. “Do I have to?”
“A good spy can’t be caught in her night rail. I shall commend you to the Alien Office for your intelligence work.”
Mary rolled off the end of the bed. “You’re ever so silly.”
“Be sure to take your passport. Beware of iron spikes in the hall.”
“Lady Ivy?”
Ivy listened to the clatter of activity outside her room. “Later, Mary. I have to wash and dress and look presentable.”
Mary giggled. “Good luck.”
“You—”
Mary darted into the hall and closed the door.