Outrageously Yours

by Allison Chase

  Work became the only haven where they were safe, the laboratory the only room they might cohabit without falling into each other’s arms. On Wednesday, however, Ivy stood up after breakfast and announced that she would not be available to assist him for the next several hours.

  “Why not?” he demanded a shade too severely. This sudden breach in their routine had caught him completely off guard.

  She waited until the footmen had finished clearing off the buffet and exited through the swinging door to the servants’ hallway. “It occurred to me last night that I have been derelict in my duty,” she said. “Working with you . . . being with you,” she added in a brittle whisper before continuing more firmly, “has distracted me from the reason I was sent here. Your sister is still missing, but she must be somewhere, and finding her note in Ben Rivers’s office persuades me she is hiding close by, here in Cambridgeshire.”

  “And you intend to search for her?”

  She nodded. “Someone has to have seen her recently. I intend to make inquiries.”

  “And supposing you end up chasing her off?”

  “I’ll take that chance. With your permission, I’ll ride out on Butterfly and begin a circuit of the area.”

  He pushed his plate away and stood. “Of course you have my permission. You’ll also have my company. I’m coming with you.”

  “But . . .”

  “You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I thought it would be best if I did.”

  “We’ll keep to public roads,” he assured her, “and avoid crumbling follies.”

  They spent that day and the next traveling as far north as St. Ives, and as far south as Saffron Walden. They called upon the families of Gwendolyn’s friends and checked the roadside inns along their route, but no one remembered seeing a woman of his sister’s description. Each night when they returned home exhausted and discouraged, Simon grabbed for the post tray in hopes of finding a letter from her, some word of her at all. More and more, he accepted the notion that whatever Gwendolyn had planned would be revealed at the consortium, and that he had no choice but to wait until then.

  “I was so certain we’d find some trace of her,” Ivy said as she sank onto the drawing room settee that Thursday night. The strain of the day’s ride showed in the shadows beneath her eyes, in the slight trembling of her hands as she untied her neckcloth.

  “I wasn’t at all sure we would.” Simon poured them each a brandy. After handing one to Ivy, he sat in the wing chair opposite, a safe and reassuring distance away. True to his word, there had been no off-the-road sojourns, nor had they utilized the private rooms at the inns they visited. When they’d taken their meals, it had been in the public rooms in full view of the other patrons. “If my resourceful sister doesn’t wish to be found, rest assured she’ll find a means of evading us.”

  Ivy sipped the brandy, shuddering as the fiery liquid went down. She compressed her lips and studied him through narrowed eyes. “You don’t always think very highly of your sister, do you?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve come to think so highly of her that I shan’t make the mistake of underestimating her ever again.” Hunching deeper into the chair, he stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. “If only the world were different . . . Gwendolyn might not have chased trouble if she’d only had matters of true significance to challenge her intellect.”

  “As I have had these past two weeks,” Ivy said softly.

  He nodded. “Indeed.”

  On Friday they began the considerable task of dismantling and packing Simon’s generator for the move to Windgate Priory. Every component needed to be carefully catalogued and each crate clearly marked and stacked in precise order, first in the laboratory, then in the two wagons waiting on the drive.

  Simon did most of the physical work of disassembling the equipment. He called out each mechanism and its purpose, while Ivy kept written records, correcting him whenever he misspoke and a part might have been mislabeled.

  He didn’t explain that his absentmindedness was because she befuddled him, that though they had reached a silent agreement that they would not repeat their activities of the night of the green dress, he thought of little else. However much he tried to focus on coils, levers, and gears, his mind ran rampant with images of Ivy’s slender arms and legs wrapped around him; Ivy on his lap, her silken skirts bunched around her waist and her breasts spilling from her bodice; Ivy with her head tipped back and her body convulsing with wave after wave of ecstasy.

  “Lord Harrow?”

  Realizing this wasn’t the first time her voice had prodded, he looked up from the web of wiring that attached the coils to the pistons. “Yes, Ned?”

  She lowered her writing tablet and gestured to the dark-haired footman towering respectfully beside her. “Daniel wishes to know if we’ll require any more crates, and if so, what sizes.”

  Simon considered the remaining generator components, then scanned the dwindling supply of crates. He was about to reply in the negative when his gaze shifted to the armoire, and then back to Ivy.

  For it was Ivy, and not Ned, waiting intently for his answer. A hand propped at her hip, she, too, flicked a gaze at the armoire. He had promised he wouldn’t repeat his electroporting process, but when it came to abandoning his discovery, to demonstrating only the power of his generator at Windgate Priory . . .

  He simply didn’t know if he could do it. Pretending he’d never electroported and hushing up his discovery would have been akin to Galileo agreeing that the world was flat and that the sun rotated around the earth. And in Ivy’s look of reluctant acceptance, he saw that she already knew his answer.

  To the footman she said, “We’ll need at least two, perhaps three more crates, large ones, some five feet wide and equally as high.”

  Then she returned to making notations in her tablet, until Simon touched her elbow. “I don’t know exactly what I shall do at the consortium, but it seems prudent to bring the electromagnets along.”

  “Of course we shall bring them. I knew all along we would.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I promised....”

  Her dark eyes snapping with anger, she slapped her quill against the paper and held it there. “I never asked you to make such a promise, nor did I ever think you could keep it. To do so would be to deny your greatest passion, and we both know you are incapable of that.”

  She moved away to catalogue the array of small parts arranged across the main table. Simon watched her go. Beneath his breath he murmured, “Not my greatest passion. No, my love, not nearly so.”

  Ivy and Simon had worked so intently that evening that neither realized they’d missed suppertime until Mrs. Walsh’s shrill admonitions spilled from the speaking tube. “Lord Harrow, how are you to keep up your strength if you don’t take time to eat a decent meal? ...”

  “You go on down,” he said to Ivy as the housekeeper’s scolding continued to echo in the nearly empty laboratory. “Bring something back up for me,” he added when Ivy tried to coax him into joining her.

  With a heavy heart, she left him. They had fallen to efficiency and politeness, with so much between them left unsaid. It was best this way, of course. She had her mission. And she had new goals in life, burning reasons to remain independent, for she had no intention anymore of simply returning to her former existence. A new plan was forming in her mind, one that she hoped, with Victoria’s help, might lead to a more fulfilling future.

  Yet there were moments, frequent ones, when she wished to forget her new ambition and simply let herself love him. Love him, and let the future bring what it may. At those times, she forced herself to remember that she wasn’t the only one with reasons to avoid intimacy. Simon had made himself clear on that point, and if his words hadn’t been enough, his actions certainly had. As much as he might want her physically, and as high as he seemed to hold her in his esteem, there was always that sudden pulling back, that look of appr
ehension that filled his eyes, like a wolf suddenly discovering its paw trapped in a hunter’s snare.

  She wanted no husband, and Simon wanted no wife. But if they weren’t careful . . . Her hand pressed her belly. . . .

  A blond head and broad shoulders came into view as she descended the main staircase to the ground floor. In the entrance hall, Colin Ashworth stood speaking in tense undertones with Mrs. Walsh. When the earl saw Ivy, he strode to meet her at the bottom of the steps.

  “I say, Mr. Ivers. Is Lord Harrow in his laboratory?”

  One look at the man’s harried expression confirmed to her that something was very wrong. Could his being here have anything to do with Gwendolyn?

  “Good evening, Lord Drayton. What brings you to Harrowood at such an hour?”

  “Something dreadful has happened,” he said curtly. “I must speak with Lord Harrow at once.”

  A hectic flush stained his skin, and with his head bent and shoulders bunched, he looked about to push past her should she deny his request. Over Lord Drayton’s shoulder, Ivy conducted a fleeting and silent communication with Mrs. Walsh. True, no one was ever to venture into Simon’s laboratory uninvited, but the urgency of the earl’s manner seemed in Ivy’s opinion to warrant breaking that rule. Mrs. Walsh proved to be of similar mind, for she gave a slight nod, all the encouragement Ivy needed.

  “This way.”

  He followed fast at her heels, so close in fact that she reminded herself not to swing her hips as she climbed, but to maintain a masculine bearing. She burned to question him, but this impulse she held in check as well. If his business had anything to do with Lady Gwendolyn, she would find out soon enough.

  As they neared the top of the tower stairs, the laboratory door opened. “Iv . . . ers.”

  Simon fell mute, his near slip in speaking her Christian name evident in the surprise etched in his countenance. A glance over her shoulder assured her that Lord Drayton hadn’t noticed. He came to a sudden stop near the landing and peered up at Simon. “Don’t throw me out until you hear what I’ve come to tell you.”

  Poised in the doorway above them, Simon paled. “My sister . . . Something’s happened.”

  Ivy pointedly ignored the hand Simon extended to help her clear the last step, as had become his habit whenever they climbed the tower together. Fortunately, Lord Drayton seemed equally oblivious of this slip.

  “This isn’t about Gwen,” Lord Drayton said. “There’s been an incident on campus. A death. Perhaps . . . a murder.”

  The last of the color drained from Simon’s face. “Dear God. Who?”

  “A student. A first year named Spencer Yates.”

  “No!” Reaching out, Ivy pressed a hand to the wall. Her knees melted beneath her and she started to go down.

  Simon caught her around the waist. “Let’s go inside.”

  Accepting his support, Ivy let him convey her into the laboratory and settle her on a chair. He knelt in front of her. “You knew him.”

  She nodded weakly. “He was one of Jasper Lowbry’s mates. All of them were so kind to me, taking me under their wing when I arrived at the university.” A feeble smile trembled across her lips. “They thought it of vital importance that I learn to drink brandy. Spencer . . . He was forever puffing on those beloved cheroots of his. Nasty things . . . made me cough. . . . I ...” Her throat closed around the rest. With a glance at Lord Drayton, she attempted to blink back her tears.

  Simon patted her shoulder, a message of much deeper sympathy shining in his eyes. He pushed to his feet and turned to the earl. “Tell us what happened.”

  “A fellow student found him dead in the main chemistry laboratory this morning. At first it was believed he somehow fell and hit his head on the edge of a table. But now the coroner says he likely died of an intentional blow.”

  Ivy’s surroundings swam in her vision. “It can’t be true.”

  Simon dragged two stools close to hers. Then he brought over the brandy he always kept on hand. As Lord Drayton provided further details, she held the snifter Simon pressed into her hand, but didn’t drink from it.

  “The authorities are questioning Errol,” the earl said. “Ben is with him. That’s why I came. I thought you should know.”

  “Surely they can’t suspect Errol.” Incredulity made Simon’s voice sharp.

  “No, I’m quite certain they do not. For one, he hasn’t the strength necessary to commit murder. But it was his laboratory. They are questioning everyone who had access to the facility over the past few days as well.”

  “What about the murder weapon?” Simon asked him.

  “That’s the strange thing. The irregular shape of the wound points to a heavy object with a rough surface. Like a rock.”

  “What motive could anyone have to murder a student?” Ivy’s feigned tenor shook and cracked, for an instant revealing her natural tone.

  Again, Lord Drayton seemed not to notice, his attention absorbed in relating the shocking news. “The authorities aren’t willing to disclose their theories just yet. I assume they are considering all the usual possibilities. Jealousy, whether over a girl or academic standing—”

  “Spencer was to attend the consortium.” Ivy swallowed a sob.

  Lord Drayton nodded sadly. “Yes, he was to serve as my secretary and take detailed notes on the various demonstrations.”

  “He was your assistant.” Simon frowned.

  Something passed between the two men, a caustic tension that had Ivy sitting up straighter, gripping her brandy snifter tighter until she forced her fingers to relax around the delicate glass. Both men sat rigidly upright, their jaws bluntly squared. Was Simon accusing Lord Drayton of the crime? For another instant, the possibility of them coming to blows crackled in the air between them.

  Simon was the first to look away and ease his posture. Lord Drayton immediately followed suit, taking a drink of his brandy. He settled a sympathetic gaze on Ivy. “I didn’t know Mr. Yates at all well,” he said. “But he seemed a promising student, and was well liked among his peers. Quite a number have already gathered at St. John’s in his memory.”

  “You’d like to be among them.” Simon didn’t pose this as a question, but as a statement. When Ivy nodded, he set down his brandy and stood. “We’ll go into town immediately. Errol isn’t strong. If I must, I’ll push my advantage as a peer to make certain he is treated with deference, and that some overeager constable doesn’t interrogate him to the brink of exhaustion.”

  “I’d hoped you would say that.” Lord Drayton came to his feet as well. “As my father’s heir, I hold only an honorary title. As a marquess in your own right, you command the sort of authority that Errol may need.”

  “You did the right thing in coming here.” And then Simon did something utterly surprising, given his history of ran-cor toward Lord Drayton. He extended his hand. When the earl grasped it, Simon gave the man’s hand a firm shake and said, “Thank you.”

  Early the next morning, Simon tapped on Ivy’s door. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday afternoon, for they had arrived home separately last night, and spent many hours apart. While Simon had sent his carriage to collect her following Spencer Yates’s impromptu memorial gathering at St. John’s, he had remained in town long afterward to support Errol through the ordeal of answering endless questions.

  Colin had been correct in that no one was suggesting Errol had anything to do with the boy’s death, but since Yates had died in Errol’s laboratory, the magistrate felt it necessary to collect every bit of information Errol could provide about schedules, experiments, and possible student rivalries.

  One detail nagged at Simon, as if a mongrel had set its teeth to his nape. The murder weapon was believed to have been a blunt instrument with a rough surface . . . as Colin had said, possibly a rock. The timing chilled his blood. Dear God, could there be a connection between Gwendolyn’s disappearance with the queen’s mysterious stone and Yates’s death?

  Ivy’s door suddenly opened, cutting short his
troubling thoughts. Though dressed in a black wool frock coat, a stiffly knotted cravat, and a pair of gray breeches tucked into her half Wellingtons, she appeared sleepy-eyed and sweetly tousled, her curls having rebelled against her effort to tame them and her cheeks retaining the soft flush of slumber.

  Inappropriate images of the two of them rolling across her still-warm bed filled his brain. They’d both been through different versions of purgatory yesterday, and the fatigue of it showed on her features. He resisted the urge to pull her into his arms, stroke her hair, and offer what comfort he could with kisses.

  Instead he leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “How did it go at St. John’s yesterday?”

  She blinked, her spiky lashes shadowing her cheeks. “Awful, as you can well imagine. The students are all in shock. I’ve never seen Jasper so despondent.” She hugged her arms around herself. “How is Mr. Quincy?”

  “Also in shock. He feels partly responsible, if only because Mr. Yates had been in the laboratory at Errol’s request, doing some cataloguing.”

  “Surely if someone had wished to ...” She broke off, pressing her lips together and bowing her head. “Someone with ill intentions toward Spencer would have found opportunity elsewhere, if not in Mr. Quincy’s laboratory.”

  “Indeed. But I came to tell you that I’ve brought Errol here as my guest. I don’t wish him to be alone now.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “It means you and I must be extra careful. There can be no further indiscretions on our part.”

  He had intended to use no particular emphasis, but the word indiscretions rang out like a discordant bell.

  Ivy winced. Her chin rose in the air as she backed up a step from the doorway. “I assure you, sir, I shall curb my improper tendencies as best I can.”

  “That is not at all what I meant and you know it.” He knew his next move would constitute one of those indiscretions that could prove troublesome should anyone witness it, but the chagrin on Ivy’s face sent him over the threshold in pursuit of her.