“That’s improper,” she said in a faint voice.
“It is for other men to look.” His voice was thick. “But not for me.”
“Why is that?”
He sank his finger into her core, probing his finger as deeply as he could. The knob of his shaft throbbed against his pantaloons. She was soft and wet. He pushed a second finger inside her sheath.
She gasped and lifted one leg at an enticing angle. That artless move practically forced James to his knees. He clenched his teeth and considered the consequences of replacing his fingers with his cock. His belly quivered in readiness. She moved against his hand, needing a release as desperately as he did. He could feel her excitement grow. She laced her arms around his neck, panting, closing her eyes.
“Soon,” he whispered, and applied his thumb to the hood of her sex. She gave a soft groan and his erection jumped. If she weren’t so damned sweet and innocent, he’d unfasten his trousers and burrow between her thighs before she could draw another breath.
For now, it was enough to pleasure her and savor every helpless shiver that coursed through her seductive body.
His senses reveled in her unguarded sensuality. He looked at his hand, his fingers snug between the folds of her sex, and he felt a rush not only of passion, which he knew well, but of possessiveness. He belonged inside her. She would be his.
Her heel slid down across the couch. “James,” she whispered, her essence glistening on his hand. He swallowed. The fingers she had curled around his wrist tightened. She wanted to know she was safe. And he wanted to assure her.
Still, he teased her, brought her to the edge again and again, ready to break himself. He stroked her faster until he knew she couldn’t last another moment. When she reached her peak, she writhed with a sensual wildness that was beautiful and delectable to behold. As the tremors subsided from her body, she opened her eyes and gave him an unfathomable look. We she inviting him to continue or simply too dazed to express what she felt?
It took him almost a minute before he withdrew his hand from her warmth. “I promise you,” he said, “this isn’t going to be the last time we’re together.”
She surprised him with a cynical smile. “You led me here under false pretenses.”
He watched in regret as she drew her skirt down over her knees. “And what about the man who brought you here? Were you leading him on a chase?”
She frowned. “No, not intentionally.”
“How long have you known him? Where did you meet?”
She slid back against the couch to sit upright. “I met him in London when—oh, I might as well tell you the truth.”
“I’d prefer you did. In fact, considering what’s happening between us, I expect you to.”
“It’s rather embarrassing, but not as unsavory as what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said with a frown.
“Yes. I do. You’re jealous.”
“I’m not. All right—perhaps I am a little. I am still insulted that you didn’t ask me for an advance.”
“How? There were scores of other applicants for the job. It didn’t seem a good way to start work by asking for a loan.” She looked away. “I wanted to make a good impression.”
“Oh, you did,” he said quickly.
“Not that sort of impression. I almost died when I dropped my door knocker and ended up on the floor with you.”
“Forgive me.”
She looked back at him. “I’m every bit as guilty as you.”
“That must have been quite an accident,” he mused, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his hand. The scent of her body still tantalized him. He didn’t want it to go away.
“There wasn’t an accident.” Her frown deepened at the memory. “The incident alarmed the bystanders more than it did me. I was so preoccupied, I never saw the phaeton coming.”
Preoccupied. James understood that. It took enormous effort for him to carry on this conversation while his carnal self was still making demands. His blood had barely cooled to a simmer. How easy it would have been to persuade her to give him her innocence. How complicated their lives would become afterward. But apparently another man also desired her.
Did this man have a conscience?
Was it any of James’s business?
He decided, wisely or not, that it was.
He realized that Ivy was staring at him, awaiting a reaction. “Why were you preoccupied?” he asked somberly, just to show he was paying attention.
She sighed. “I can’t tell you. It’s personal.”
“What?”
“It’s a family matter.”
“Are you saying that I’m good enough to dally with in the dark but not to entrust with a family secret?”
“Do you want to know what happened with Sir Oliver or not?” Ivy asked him in a mildly annoyed tone that reminded him she was an earl’s daughter.
“Yes. Go on. I want to know everything.”
“He apologized profusely for his reckless driving. I would have been content to leave it at that.”
“But he wasn’t?”
“Evidently not.”
“He’s a scoundrel. Take it from one who knows. You shouldn’t see him again.”
Ivy wriggled to the far end of the couch. “He asked me to marry him.”
James scowled. “All scoundrels propose in the heat of passion.”
“Do they?” she asked archly, her eyes widening at this helpful information. “I shall have to keep that in mind. However, in the interest of fairness, I should explain that what he attempted to do to me was nothing compared to what we just did.”
James nodded. “I see. It’s a good thing, too.”
“And no one has asked for my hand in five years.”
“That long?”
“Furthermore, as grateful as I am for this position, I must be truthful and confess that I am like any other woman who wishes for a husband and home of her own.”
He stood abruptly as she lifted herself from the couch, waving aside the hand he extended to help her. “Those are normal desires,” he said after a pause. “I don’t understand why they haven’t been fulfilled.”
“I’m not asking you for sympathy.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t offering it. In my opinion the only reason your desires weren’t satisfied is because you were locked away in a manor with a moat of thorns to discourage callers.”
“My name was ruined.”
“Nonsense.”
She drew a breath. “I’ll say good night now, Your Grace. I’ll look in on Mary before I go to bed. Do we act as if this never happened?”
“That will be easier said than done.”
“Then—” She half turned, then stopped. “May I confess one more thing?”
His gaze drifted over her becoming silhouette. “Of course.”
“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but Sir Oliver became rather persistent and I panicked. Not because I dreaded having to kiss him. He’s rather handsome if one is drawn to brooding self-indulgent men, which I am not. But I panicked because I was afraid of having to face you after I came home late and in a different carriage. And—” She trailed off, leaving him in suspense.
“And?” James gestured with his hand.
“And in order to discourage him, I said that you would challenge him to a duel if you knew what he was doing and that everyone knew what an expert shot you had been in the infantry.” She paused to catch her breath. “I had no right to say that, but I did. I’ll understand if you dismiss me.”
She curtsied and rushed from the room before James could comment or even sort out what she had said.
Dismiss her? Not after tonight. Not ever, if he had the last word in the matter. He didn’t know what part she would play in his future, but he wasn’t
about to lose her because she had bragged of his skill in order to defend herself against a persistent jackass.
Fight a duel in her honor? He was furious enough at the bastard who’d upset her to tear him apart with his bare hands.
But fight a duel?
Everyone knew what an expert shot you had been in the infantry.
But only four people knew that James could no longer hold a gun steadily enough in his right hand to shoot with any accuracy at a phaeton, let alone at an opponent on a dueling field. Carstairs, his physician, Wendover, and his commanding officer.
James would disgrace himself in a duel. He would be forced to forfeit or be killed. But he would defend Ivy no matter what the personal cost.
He just didn’t know how.
Chapter 18
Rosemary felt guilty that she had applied for a position outside the house—who would care for Lilac if she was left alone at Fenwick? Ivy held the family together and Rosemary supported her efforts as best she could. Poor Lilac still believed that her childhood friend would return to marry her. Rosemary could no longer even remember his name. He had gone off to school and allegedly from there to war. His parents had died in the interim.
Rosemary wandered through the house, tired from helping the servants restore order to the great hall. No one could recall the last time a birthday had been celebrated in style, and despite the fact that Oliver reminded Rosemary of a fox in a henhouse, she had enjoyed setting a good table, surrounded by young ne’er-do-wells who knew how to laugh, if nothing else.
Cheer. Warmth. Laughter.
How long it had been since Fenwick had known a revel?
Oliver and his friends had departed in an excess of high spirits and promises to return. Rosemary had been waiting for the house to settle before she sat down to write into the night.
Now she mounted the stairs, not bothering with a candle. She knew her way in the dark. Everyone had already retired for the night. Perhaps she would go to her mother’s room for inspiration.
But someone in the house appeared to have had the same idea. She entered her mother’s musty bedchamber without making a sound at the exact moment that a figure disappeared into a panel inside the fireplace.
“Rue?” she whispered before she noticed the gray frock coat and notebook that had been placed on a stool by the wall.
She wished now for a candle to read what Sir Oliver had written in his notebook. Perhaps another of his idiotic poems to commemorate tonight’s party.
Why had he pretended to leave and then returned? He was already acting as if he were the master of the manor, and as far as Rosemary knew, Ivy hadn’t accepted a proposal.
“Dammit,” he muttered, banging something—his head, she hoped—against the wall. “Where the hell did I put my tinderbox?”
Rosemary rushed forward, pressed her hands against the panel, and said into the airless void, “Perhaps you left it under your coat. Why don’t you have a little think in the dark to refresh your memory?”
His face popped into view as the panel started to close. “What the blazes are you doing, woman?”
“I should be asking you that.”
“How am I supposed to see in the dark?”
The panel slowly ground back into place. “You’re a writer,” she said, looking down at his shadowy form. “Use your imagination.”
“How—”
She backed away from the fireplace and sat on the edge of the bed. An hour in the passage might teach him not to assume he could act as lord of the manor without permission. After several minutes she curled up on her mother’s coverlet, wishing she hadn’t drunk that last glass of wine. Spirits made her drowsy, drained her of the energy to write.
She closed her eyes. Oliver would wake up the entire house with the racket he was making. If he had half a brain, he would find the tunnel leading to the solar. The manor walls concealed a number of cavities in which the girls had played as children until Lilac had fallen through the rungs of a rotted ladder.
She’d broken her leg in several places, and it had never healed properly. The girls had been forbidden to explore the hidden passages of Fenwick after the accident.
When they were younger, they’d listened to the noises inside the walls at night and sometimes still did.
“They’re ghosts,” Rosemary always insisted.
“They’re rats,” Ivy would counter with all the authority of her one advanced year in age.
Rosemary kicked off her shoes. Tonight Rosemary was forced to agree with her sister. That was definitely a rat in the wall. And he was still scratching. She pulled a dust-laden pillow over her head and tried to remember where she had left off in her story, the revision of Anne Boleyn’s tragic life.
* * *
Mary’s bed looked like a shipwreck, even without benefit of a visit from her unruly brother. Ivy tucked the girl in snugly and escaped to her room without incident. Then she took her time washing and changing into her nightclothes, feeling not the least bit tired.
She wanted to stay up all night savoring the memory of the duke’s every caress, the silly conversation they had shared.
She wouldn’t have slept even if her conscience let her; just as she had blown out the candle, the loudest thunderclap she’d ever heard blasted from the back fields of the estate.
She waited for rain to fall.
She waited to hear Mary call for her.
She waited to hear one of the servants in the house rouse or the dogs bark, but there was no other disturbance until, at dawn, she forced herself to stir from her chair to face the day.
And the duke—as lovely as the prior evening’s intimacy had been, it had also been illicit and could only lead to unhappiness. Ivy certainly could not allow such liberties to continue.
Determined, she recommitted herself to resisting any other advances he made. Despite how she might feel toward Sir Oliver, at least the man had offered her marriage.
* * *
What a beautiful dream. Anne Boleyn stood on the brink of her revenge, watching as Henry was led to the scaffold, his head to lose. Beside her Rosemary heard the taunts and jeers of the spectators, the cries of treason from courtiers who jostled against her and pulled her back by the arm to squeeze in for a closer look.
“Don’t,” she mumbled, one insistent hand reaching through her dream to drag her across the bed. “Leave me alone. He deserves to die, and I shall be witness to justice served.”
A shrill voice assaulted her eardrum. “Thanks to you, he might well have died in there! What came over you, Rosemary? How could you be so unkind to a man who brought food to our table? One of these days you and Rue will murder some innocent who comes to our door.”
Rosemary groaned and buried her face in the pillow, but the tirade continued. “How could you mistreat the man who hopes to marry Ivy?”
Rosemary turned her head to avoid meeting Lilac’s baleful stare, only to look across the room into the smirking face of the man she had enclosed in the wall last night. And completely forgotten. She sat up in a swelter of guilt and resentment.
“He doesn’t look dead to me.”
“He was practically unconscious when I found him,” Lilac said, darting to Sir Oliver’s chair to dab his wrists and throat with the damp towel in her hand. “What if I hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night to check in on you? This is what happens when you overimbibe.”
“What if,” Rosemary mused, stretching her arms in the air. She narrowed her eyes. “What if that man who scribbles nursery rhymes hadn’t broken into the house and sneaked into Mother’s room, doing who knows what?”
Oliver surged from his chair. “Nursery rhymes?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. Nursery rhymes convey political messages and contribute to social improvement. Your poems are written to impress wealthy tarts and flatter flatulent old lords.”
“Oh!” Lilac’s hand flew to her mouth. “Rosemary, how can you speak such awful words?”
Sir Oliver glanced in the old looking glass to straighten his stained cravat. “She speaks the same awful words that she writes. She hasn’t the talent to become a success and so she despises those who have.”
Rosemary stilled. The smile that spread across her face felt like ice breaking in a frozen pond.
“Where is my gun, Lilac, dear?”
Lilac shook her head, disregarding this threat. “He wants to be our friend, Rosemary. The only friend we’ve had in years. What has he done to earn your distrust?”
“Ask him why he was in the passageway.” Rosemary’s anger surged to the surface. She’d never wanted to pummel anyone in her life as much as she did Oliver, not even the most ruthless of debt collectors who had hounded the sisters without mercy for months on end. He’d gotten under her skin, and he knew it. “Ask him the reason why.”
Sir Oliver glanced at Lilac and shrugged helplessly, the handsome prince confronted by an evil witch. “I tried to explain to her last night, but she wouldn’t listen. You are my witness. She won’t listen to me now.”
“Rosemary, I’m truly ashamed of you,” Lilac said in an undertone.
“He’s a snake,” Rosemary said in an incredulous voice. “And he’s crawled into your good graces. Lilac, you’re a bumpkin and I shall tear my hair out by the roots with despair of you.”
Lilac calmly took her by the arm. “He went into the passageway because the carpenters had warned him that the interior structure of the house showed signs of decay. He was afraid the manor would collapse in on itself like a house of cards. He was concerned about the safety of the workmen and that we might witness an accident.”
Rosemary remained unmoved. “And his solution to this imaginary tragedy was to sacrifice himself? How noble.”
“I thought so,” Lilac said, frowning.
“Noble deeds can be performed during the day,” Rosemary exclaimed. “Wouldn’t it have been safer to explore in the morning with someone standing by with a light? And to ask permission?”
Sir Oliver looked sheepish. “I had a little too much wine last night and got carried away. I never meant to frighten anyone. Rosemary is right. I should have told someone what I was up to.”
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