“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.”
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