by Regina Scott
Matthew stuck out his lower lip as if impressed.
But he stood over the pavement and stared.
“Never saw anything like it,” he finally said after Kendall had explained its history. “Nearly fifteen hundred years old, you say?”
“Not a day younger,” Kendall assured him.
Matthew shook his head.
Head high with pride, Kendall slipped his arm about Ivy’s waist.
She managed not to drop Sophia onto the pavement, but it was a near-run thing. She was afraid even to breathe lest Kendall realize what he was doing and stop. The way he held her, as if it were the two of them and Sophia united, was more amazing than the pavement at her feet. She nearly cried out when he pulled back to escort Matthew from the room.
“We’ll dine at six,” Kendall said as they headed toward the entry hall. “A footman can show you the way to the dining room. I don’t plan to change.”
Matthew laughed, catching Sophia’s attention and earning a smile. “I couldn’t change if I wanted to. I didn’t bring a bag.”
Kendall’s brows went up, and he looked her brother up and down. “I’d offer you a coat, but it would hardly fit. And I’m not sure what to do about a nightshirt.”
Only one man in the house might be large enough to have clothes that would fit her brother’s frame. After seeing her brother to his room and settling Sophia in the nursery, Ivy went in search of Travis.
The footman’s blond brows tweaked just the slightest when she explained the situation, but he promised to take care of the matter. He and her brother were standing outside the guest room door when she came out of her room a short while later, blue cotton nightshirt in her brother’s hands.
“And my thanks for it,” he was telling the footman. “Were you a boxer?”
“No, Sir Matthew,” he replied, but the look on his face said he was pleased Matthew had suggested otherwise.
Dinner was a fine affair. She had become accustomed to the rich dishes, but her brother did the salmon in dill sauce justice. And Kendall’s glances to her only made the food taste sweeter.
“Allow me to send you off in the morning,” Kendall said as the three of them climbed the stairs for bed.
Matthew nodded agreeably. Then Kendall turned for the right, and Ivy led Matthew to the left.
“Nice of you to walk me to my room,” her brother said. “Fellow could get lost in this pile.”
“It’s actually very well laid out,” Ivy said, pausing before her door. “My room is just down from yours, should you need anything in the night.”
He frowned, glancing back the way Kendall had gone. “You and his lordship don’t share a room?”
She could not have this conversation with her brother. “I wanted a suite so I could be close to Sophia.”
His frown turned to her. “Sophia is his daughter. Shouldn’t he be close as well?”
“I hope he will be, in time. Sophia is all he has left of his first wife, Matty. Sometimes I think he’s afraid to so much as touch her lest he lose her too.”
His frown eased. “So, he makes you his nanny.”
“No,” Ivy corrected him. “I’m not Sophia’s nanny. I’m her mother. I promise you, the role is no imposition.”
Her brother chuckled. “You always were a tiger for her cubs. He has no idea what he’s letting himself in for.”
“But I do. I never much liked London Society, Matty. I could never find my footing. I know how to care for little girls. I like to think I’m good at it.”
“You are.” His voice was soft. “Daisy and Tuny are credits to you. They miss you.”
Her heart tightened, pushing a lump into her throat. “I miss them too. I think of you all often. Perhaps they can come visit, when the Season is over.”
“Daisy tells me you’re hosting a house party.”
So, her sister couldn’t be bothered to explain to him why Ivy had left, but she was all too happy to claim an upcoming party. Ivy had already determined why the letter had gone missing. She’d told Daisy the note explained everything. Very likely Daisy thought that included her prank, which had locked Ivy and Kendall in Lord Carrolton’s library. Her sister should have known better. Ivy wasn’t about to share that particular story. Kendall could well think she’d conspired with Daisy to trap him.
“We are not hosting a house party,” she told her brother. “Disabuse her of that thought at once.”
He shrugged. “You know Daisy. Once she gets an idea in her head, it’s hard to dislodge it. You aren’t so different. I’m not sure I’d have counseled you to accept his lordship’s proposal, just for a mess of porridge.”
“It’s rather nice porridge,” Ivy said with a smile. “And Matty, I can help Daisy and Tuny. I can give them dowries.”
He stepped back. “That’s my duty.”
“And you need to provide for a wife and someday children,” she reminded him. “Let me help Daisy and Tuny.”
“Still thinking like their mother,” he pointed out.
“And I likely will to my dying day,” Ivy replied. “I want the best for them. I love you all.”
“Do you love him?”
She shouldn’t tell him the truth about their arrangement. Kendall had no expectations of her save that she mother Sophia. But just once, just with her beloved brother, she wanted to share her heart.
“Yes, Matthew,” she said. “Perhaps not as extravagantly as some, but I do. I think I have since the day he first offered to dance with me. And do not ask whether he loves me. I know the answer. He loved his first wife. He believes, once having loved, he has nothing more to give.”
“Mad,” Matthew said. “Absolutely raving.”
“Sad,” Ivy argued. “So very filled with sorrow. Imagine how you’d feel if you lost Charlotte. Would you want to look at another woman?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I never thought to love a woman as fine as Charlotte. There will never be her equal.”
The arrow struck her heart. But she had to hope—for Sophia, for Kendall, for herself. Ivy lay a hand on his as he lowered it. “Give him time. He may come to cherish me as I do him.”
Matthew shook his head. “I know what the nobs will say: he’s too good for you. They’re wrong, Ivy. You’re far too good for Lord Kendall, and he better realize it soon, or we really will have words.”
~~~
The next few days passed pleasantly. Ivy and Kendall saw Matthew off in the morning, and Ivy caught Travis bearing off the nightshirt as if he intended to have it bronzed. Her anise biscuits met with much success. She was certain she heard a groan of pleasure from Kendall as he took the first bite. Perhaps her favorite part of each day, however, was after tea, when Sophia was napping, and Ivy would take walks with Kendall.
After their walk the day Matthew had arrived, Kendall seemed to expect Ivy to accompany him. She certainly wasn’t going to protest. Away from his duties, he seemed more relaxed, willing to share their lives. They strolled through the formal gardens at the front of the house and the less formal plantings behind it. They walked to each of the rivers, discussed the merits of the stream, the dangers it could pose to those living nearby. They visited the farm at the very south of the estate, where Kendall discovered they did indeed have chickens. And always they talked, about the future, and about their pasts.
“You say little about your father,” he commented the third day as they walked to the north, where a folly—square and squat—looked up at the house from a precise angle. “Sir Matthew mentioned he began acting as head of the house when he was still a lad.”
Oh, how she hated discussing things that might encourage him to think less of her and her family. “As I told you, our father worked a great deal. You understand the responsibility of providing for a family.”
“Indeed.” He kept his gaze on their destination, the white stone building surrounded by willows. “I am blessed not to have to toil to do so. I cannot imagine having no time to spend with my child.”
Ivy st
opped on the graveled path, drew in a breath of the warm summer air. “He had time. He chose to use it to drink himself into a stupor. He’d been hurt, at the mill,” she hurried to add as Kendall glanced her way, frown gathering. “There was nothing that could be done, and he needed to keep working. Drinking was his way of escape. We all understood, even if we didn’t like it.”
He took her hand, his fingers strong and warm, as if sunlight had infused them. “He was fortunate to have your love.”
“I think he knew that, deep down,” Ivy said, relishing the feel of his hand on hers. “And he did try to give us a mother, for all he chose the wrong person.”
“Ah, yes, this stepmother,” he said. “None of you are fond of her.”
Not fond. A very polite way of collecting all the troublesome emotions surrounding Mrs. Bateman. Perhaps it was the feel of his hand that made some of those emotions tumble out now. “She made us her servants. Matthew had left home by then. He sent money for our care. She found other uses for it.”
And there came the bitterness she fought so hard against. She didn’t want to be that person. She straightened, and her hand slipped out of his. “She was an unhappy woman who chose to make others unhappy. I do not intend to follow her example.”
“You don’t have it in you to follow such an example,” he said. “I have never met anyone like you, Ivy.”
She wanted to hug his praise close, but she couldn’t quite believe it. “Not even Lady Kendall?” she asked.
He started walking again, voice as soft as his look. “Adelaide had a different focus.”
The polite response did not satisfy. “Oh?” Ivy pressed. “In what way?”
“We’d known each other most of our lives; our parents were good friends,” he explained. “So I understood when I married her that health was always fleeting. That didn’t stop us from falling in love. We had so much in common.”
Unlike the two of them, but Ivy merely nodded as they approached the willows, their draperies a contrast to the firm lines of the stone folly.
“You have only to look at Sophia to see her nature,” he continued, hands brushing the silvery green fronds. “Frail, yet inquisitive, happy. She was the love of my life, and my best friend.”
What a blow. Her heart ached just imagining it. She wanted to reach out, gather him close, but she didn’t think he would allow it. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said instead.
“I will always miss her.” His voice was so heavy she regretted even bringing up the subject. “I should have realized carrying a child would be too much for her, but we both wanted children. And I could never refuse her anything.”
Ivy had to take his hand, cradling it in hers. “You mustn’t blame yourself. You said she was frail. She must have understood the dangers.”
He stopped, one foot up on the steps leading to the folly and gaze on their entwined fingers. “She did. And she would likely have gone through it even knowing what lay ahead, just to give Sophia life. She would have made a wonderful mother.”
His voice had thickened, and tears sparkled on his sable lashes. All of her hurt.
“And you have the makings of a wonderful father,” Ivy assured him, giving his hand a squeeze. “And when Sophia is old enough to understand, we will tell her all about her mother and the love that bore her.”
He nodded and lifted her hand to his lips for a kiss.
The sweet pressure worked its way through her, and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out how she felt about him right there and then. It seemed wrong to offer her love when his had been so cruelly taken. She must give him time.
He lowered her hand with a smile as watery as her own, and they climbed the steps to the folly, then turned and gazed at the house. But she held the memory of his kiss to her heart, hope growing that perhaps, someday, they too might share such a love.
Chapter Fourteen
Ivy’s surprise at Kendall’s kiss on her hand was nothing to the shock that reverberated through Villa Romanesque at the note which arrived the next day.
She was crossing the entry hall to take Sophia out for a little sunshine late that morning when she came across Mrs. Sheppard and Martha the elder near the hearth, hushed voices still carrying against all the stone surrounding them. Travis, on duty by the door, kept his gaze carefully away from them, as if hoping Ivy wouldn’t notice.
“It’s the duke’s seal,” Martha insisted, grey hair fluttering with her agitation. “I recognize it from when he sent messages to the previous Lord Kendall.”
“But it’s for Lady Kendall,” Mrs. Sheppard protested. “This can only mean one thing.”
“Is there a problem?” Ivy asked.
Both women spun and stared at her and Sophia, as if they’d been caught stealing some of her biscuits from the cooling rack.
The housekeeper recovered first. “No, indeed, your ladyship.” She swept across the marble tiles to offer Ivy a wax-sealed note. She must have realized her fingers were trembling, for she raised her head and gripped the parchment tighter. Either that, or she simply didn’t want to relinquish the note into Ivy’s care.
“Hold Sophia a moment,” Ivy said, and she traded the baby for the note. Sophia frowned at the housekeeper, who held her out as if afraid she might break the baby, or the baby might break her.
Ivy snapped open the wax and unfolded the envelope. A card tumbled out to fall away from the note itself. Martha, who was hovering at the edge of their circle, bent to retrieve the card.
Ivy scanned down the note, most of which had been written in an elegant hand.
I would be remiss if I did not congratulate you on your nuptials. I hope I may call on you to welcome you to Surrey.
It was signed Eulalie Wey. But below the signature were words in another hand. Good for you for marrying a marquess with a daughter and making a new family. I like you already. Jane.
“News, your ladyship?” Mrs. Sheppard asked, angling her head as if to read the note herself.
Martha held out the card. “It’s from the dowager duchess.”
Mrs. Sheppard must have clasped Sophia hard, for the baby huffed in protest. “Get out the best china, Martha,” the housekeeper ordered. “Travis, see that all the silver is polished. I will not tolerate a speck of dust on any surface.”
Ivy lowered the note as the other staff members in the room turned white. “The dowager duchess did not provide a date.”
“Nor will she,” Mrs. Sheppard insisted, handing Sophia back to Ivy. “You must write back and tell her she is welcome to call at her earliest convenience.” She seemed oblivious to the fact that she had just given her employer an order. “I’ll speak to Mr. Sims about flowers from the garden. Her Grace favors lilies, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Should we inform Lord Kendall?” Ivy asked, unsure whether to be amused or concerned by the amount of preparation required for a simple visit.
“Not yet,” Mrs. Sheppard said, tapping her chin with one finger. “Not until we know the date. I’ll need to alert his valet. No tweed.”
Apparently, Her Grace had an aversion to the fabric. Ivy could only hope muslin and cambric suitable, for she didn’t relish donning her wool this time of year.
“I can see this will involve strategy,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering. I have only one question. Who is Jane?”
Mrs. Sheppard blinked and dropped her hand. “Jane?”
“Yes.” Ivy angled the note for the housekeeper to read, juggling Sophia to keep her from grabbing the parchment. “See? She writes in a different hand.”
“Must be the new one,” Martha muttered.
Mrs. Sheppard straightened. “The Duke of Wey remarried earlier this year.”
“To his governess,” Martha put in with a click of her tongue. “She was a cavalry officer’s widow.”
Mrs. Sheppard regarded her sternly. “That is quite enough. See to your duties, Martha.”
With a drop of a curtsey, Martha hurried back to her work. The housekeeper
turned to Ivy.
“Lady Kendall, I will see that appropriate stationery is provided for you to answer Her Grace. Becky can take charge of Lady Sophia while you write. I will have your response delivered straightaway. Perhaps Tuesday next might be appropriate for the visit.”
Just for a moment, she considered refusing. Why should Tuesday, Ivy’s baking day, be consigned to this visit? Why couldn’t they just come tomorrow? It very much sounded as if the current duchess was like Ivy—a common woman who loved children and had been willing to marry their father to make a family again. And she recognized Ivy as her equal. How pleasant it would be to talk with someone who understood.
But Mrs. Sheppard was so determined to put on a good face. She fairly vibrated with her intentions now. If she needed five days to prepare, Ivy should give them to her.
“I’d be delighted,” Ivy said.
“I don’t suppose you have a card to send,” Mrs. Sheppard said with a sigh, as if Ivy was severely lacking.
“Only in my maiden name,” Ivy replied, glad Charlotte had insisted on the little pasteboard calling cards. “But I suppose I could write my new name over the top.”
Mrs. Sheppard looked as aghast as if Ivy had suggested meeting the dowager duchess in her nightgown. “I sincerely hope that won’t be necessary. I will write to the company that makes his lordship’s and request a set for you. We’ll have to answer Her Grace without one. She must not be kept waiting.”
“Even if we had better things to do,” Ivy told Sophia as she took the baby back upstairs to wait for proper paper. Did one need gilt-edged parchment to respond to a duchess? Ink infused with silver? Seals studded with jewels? She was a little surprised at the delicate pink parchment smelling faintly of roses that Travis brought up a short time later. It was not until she finished the note and given it to the footman to deliver that she realized something.
She wasn’t nervous.
Mrs. Sheppard might scurry about, order her staff in every direction, but Ivy wasn’t worried. Villa Romanesque was her home now. The duchess was coming to visit her. And she could hardly wait to meet Jane.
