Outrageously Yours

by Allison Chase

  “You’re coming back to Cambridge with me, then,” Jasper said as she reached him.

  Before she could reply, a voice from behind her roared, “Like hell she is.”

  “She ...? What the . . . ? Lord Harrow? Ned?” Jasper’s baffled gaze darted back and forth between Ivy and Simon. He ducked his head and lowered his voice. “What does he mean?”

  His confusion was the last thing filling Ivy’s vision as Simon linked his good arm through hers and half dragged her, half walked her off the drive and onto the lawn. They walked and walked, Ivy occasionally glancing over her shoulder at a clearly startled Jasper. The young man took a few steps, then stopped, then started and stopped again, vacillating between remaining where he was and taking off after them. When Ivy finally turned to see where Simon was bringing her, she found herself near Windgate Priory’s encircling moat with its mock battlements and landscaped gatehouse.

  Simon pulled her inside a stone gazebo ringed with evergreen hedges and draped with vines. From within the fringe of autumn-bare branches, Jasper, the carriages, and the departing scientists seemed far away, their clamor muted by the stirring breezes and the chatter of birds.

  Simon released her, and alarm shot through her. His pallor had whitened, and his eyes were fever bright. A fine sweat beaded his brow, and as he clutched his left arm to anchor it to his body, pain pinched his features even tighter than before.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” she said. “We should go back to the house.”

  “Not until we’ve spoken.”

  “Your shoulder—”

  “Can blasted well wait, damn it. This cannot.”

  She flinched at his language. He started to reach for her, to grasp her with both hands, but with a groan he shut his eyes and said, “Ivy, forgive me. When I said I was willing, I didn’t mean it.”

  The ground seemed to drop out from beneath her feet. She went to the circular stone bench and collapsed onto it. “Then you aren’t willing?”

  “No. Yes. What I mean is ...” He hung his head, swore, and said, “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I don’t have to tell you it’s been a devil of a couple of days, and then there was your brother-in-law staring murderously at me and speaking of breaking my neck.”

  “Did he? He can put up a ferocious front, but he’d never harm a fly.”

  “One wonders. But the point is, his being there made me . . . well, not say things as I might have wished.” He stood crookedly before her, his right shoulder hunched, the other clearly weakened and hurting. He looked . . . troubled and contrite and so dear she suddenly wished to rush to him and entreat him to stop upsetting himself, not to overexert.

  At the same time he looked like a man driven, bound and determined to speak the words that were obviously sizzling on his tongue. The blue fire blazing in his eyes made her tremble even as it tied an intricate knot of longing and apprehension and most of all hope deep, deep in her belly.

  “Then,” she said, “what would you have said?”

  “I . . . Oh, hang it.” He blew out a breath. “I probably still would have said all the wrong things. It took you walking out of that room to knock the truth free. Because when you left, Ivy, I realized I was about to lose you as completely as a person can lose someone—the one person they love above all others.”

  “You love me?”

  He pinned her with a deadly sharp dagger of a stare. “Of course I love you. Don’t you see? That has been the problem all along. Loving you, and knowing the sort of pain that could bring.”

  “Because I could die, like your wife,” Ivy whispered.

  “Yes. Oh, God, yes. I never wished to go through that again. But Ivy ...” He broke off and staggered to her. Holding his left arm as still as he could, he grimaced and sank to his knees before her. “When you said you were returning to London, and that my services as a husband weren’t necessary, I died inside.” He emitted a bark of bitter laughter. “Don’t you see? The joke was entirely on me, because despite my stubborn intentions, it was already too late to worry about one day experiencing the pain of losing you. When you stomped out of the room, agony struck like a barbed lance and gave a twist. It’s still twisting. The pain in my shoulder is nothing in comparison.”

  “I do not stomp,” she said indignantly. Ever so lightly, she brushed her fingertips across his injured shoulder.

  “Oh, my dear, you stomp. You most certainly do stomp in those half Wellingtons of yours.”

  He released his left arm and set his right hand over both of hers where they lay in her lap. “Ivy . . . Ned . . . my love. Don’t leave me. I need you, in my laboratory, in my bed, and in my life. You’re already in my heart. Nothing can ever change that. Why, do you realize that because of you, I’ve made a startling discovery about hearts, about how to regenerate one that has stopped beating?”

  She drew a quivering breath. “And what is that discovery?”

  “It doesn’t take electricity to make it beat. It takes love. Here ...” He thumped his chest and then quickly returned his hand to cover hers. “Take a listen. Tell me it isn’t kicking up a fine tempo.”

  She couldn’t help a tearful laugh, then quickly bit the insides of her cheeks and frowned. “But there is so much against us. The things I want—”

  “You can have, with me. Where better? You wish to attend classes? I can arrange it. You wish to explore the sciences? My laboratory is yours. And I swear to you, any results you achieve will be published under your name. Not mine, Ivy. Yours.”

  Oh. It was all too, too perfect to be true, and she almost feared to believe him. He was offering the very world she had always imagined and yearned for and never believed could be hers. Her pulse leaped, her blood surged, her entire body ached for that world . . . and for him. But . . .

  Pulling one hand out from under his to wipe away a tear on her coat sleeve, she raised her eyebrows. “They will all ridicule you, you know. The scientific community, society, everyone. The truth about Ned Ivers has become too well-known to remain a secret any longer. I am compromised, and there are people who will never let us forget it.”

  “Then we will forget them.” With visible effort, he pushed up onto the bench beside her. “I am the Mad Marquess of Harrow. Do you think I give a fig what people think?”

  His voice fell to a tempting caress of a murmur. “Ivy, be my marchioness. Marry me, and we’ll be mad together. At least once a week we’ll set the laboratory floor on fire and shoot sparks out the roof. We’ll explode all manner of substances and frighten the villagers for miles around. And whenever the servants threaten to quit, we’ll send Cecil to reassure them.” Smiling devilishly, he raised her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “We’ll make tired old hearts beat again. Think of it, Ivy....”

  The prospect made her own heart clamor with joy. Was it all just a dream? She pressed her fingernails into her palm to make certain it wasn’t. “I’m thinking....”

  “And ...?”

  “Ned? Ned, is everything all right? I became worried when you didn’t return and—”

  Ivy started at the jarring sound of Jasper Lowbry’s query, but it was too late to break the magnetism drawing her lips to Simon’s. Their mouths met as the youth’s bootheels struck the slate floor of the gazebo.

  “Great leaping electrodes, what the blazes is going on here?” Jasper, frozen into a column of stunned consternation, turned several shades of red in rapid succession. “I don’t under—underst-st—”

  “Jasper.” Ivy disengaged herself from Simon and hastened to her friend. She touched his forearm and, for the first time since meeting him, tilted her head and smiled her full smile, without attempting to mask her femininity. “Jasper, look at me. Really look. What do you see?” She added a coquettish wink.

  His jaw dropped. “You mean . . . no. Good heavens. You’re a ... a ... ?”

  “I am, Jasper. I’m frightfully sorry to have deceived you, but you see—”

  “Yes, yes, I believe I do see. God, but it’s obvio
us, isn’t it, if one only looks closely enough.” Studying her face, he gave a nod of comprehension that sent a lock of wavy brown hair falling over the bandage and onto his brow. “I suppose you had no choice, did you? You’re bloody brilliant, but they still wouldn’t have let you into the university.”

  “That’s right,” she said sadly, but also with great relief. She had developed a genuine fondness for this young man, and their camaraderie meant the world to her. “So I lied. I truly hope it won’t affect our friendship.”

  “No, I, er ...” He squinted slightly as he continued to peer down at her. “So, if it isn’t Ned ...”

  “Ivy. Ivy Sutherland.”

  “But not for much longer.” Simon stood and joined them. He slipped an arm around her waist and, despite Jasper’s presence, pulled her to his side. “It’s soon to be Ivy de Burgh. At least ...” He turned her to face him. “I believe that was what you were about to say before your friend showed up.”

  She smiled up at him, and in the lines of his dear, handsome features, she glimpsed a glorious map of the rest of her life. “Indeed I was. I am.” She laughed. “What I mean is, I will. Marry you, that is.”

  He joined in her laughter and crushed her to him in a one-armed embrace that lacked for nothing, not warmth or strength or the promise that dreams were meant to come true. “I love you, my beautiful, brilliant Ned.”

  “I love you, Lord Harrow, and I always will.” Mindful of his injured shoulder, she tightened her arms around his neck. “Together we form a compound that can never be separated.”

  “Ah. Right. I’ll, er, just be off now.” Stumbling backward, Jasper retreated through the gazebo’s archway.

  Simon lifted his lips from Ivy’s and called to him, “Young man. The future Lady Harrow and I will be needing an assistant. Are you available for the job?”

  Jasper replied with an eager smile and a vigorous nod. Then he ran back across the lawns toward the waiting carriages. As he went, he let out a resounding whoop that echoed into the trees and sent a flock of crows scattering across the sky.

  Epilogue

  London, 1839

  “Thank you,Mrs.Eddelson,that will be all for now.

  You and Mr. Eddelson may retire for the rest of the evening.”

  Holly Sutherland accepted the plump housekeeper’s thanks and finished stowing away the last of the supper plates. Then she poured the brewed tea from the kettle into the porcelain teapot, and hefted the rather weighty tray of refreshments up the stairs to the little parlor that overlooked quiet William Street, in the Knightsbridge area of London.

  She had barely crossed the threshold before her newest brother-in-law, Simon, jumped up from the overstuffed chair beside the settee and reached to relieve her of her burden.

  “Here, let me do that,” he insisted, and swung around to deposit the tray onto the low, oval sofa table. Holly secretly chewed her lip until he’d accomplished the task and the room’s new Persian rug had survived unscathed.

  Several months ago, that would not have been the case. Simon still suffered the effects of the injuries he had incurred last autumn while fighting off a fellow scientist who truly had gone mad. But after a rigorous course of exercise and what he termed electromuscular therapy, his once damaged shoulder had regained nearly all its former strength and now sat only slightly lower than the other—so slight that only those familiar with his mishap would have noticed the difference.

  Ivy called it his badge of courage, gotten in his efforts to save her life. Holly called it a deplorable brush with death, one she dearly hoped would never be repeated, neither for him nor for her other brother-in-law, Aidan, who had helped Simon vanquish the villain. The queen had been delighted by the return of her stone, said nothing about its being slightly the worse from wear, and happily resumed her correspondence with her cousin. None of them, not Simon, Aidan, Laurel, or Ivy, had ever fully explained to Victoria the dangers they had faced on her behalf.

  Ah, but all were safe, and all were here tonight.

  “You sit, Holly, and I’ll pour.” Simon’s sister, Lady Gwendolyn, was seated in the corner with a book about dog breeds open on her lap. Another of mad Sir Alistair’s victims, poor Gwendolyn always had a lost, enervated look about her, as if she were just awakening to discover herself in unfamiliar surroundings. Physically, she had recovered from her ordeal of nearly two weeks spent in the wasting grip of laudanum. Her spirit had suffered a blow that time had yet to heal, but Holly and her sisters loved her, and Simon maintained that she seemed happiest when she was among them.

  Gwennie set her book aside and with a shy smile lifted the teapot. Simon passed round the cups and saucers, while Aidan handed out the napkins and removed the cover from the platter of desserts. Stepping around Willow, who was perched on a stool near the hearth, Holly resumed her place on the settee between Laurel and Ivy.

  Holly couldn’t help noting how strange it was that their growing family continually gathered above the Knightsbridge Readers’ Emporium. None of them lived here full-time anymore, and with two sisters married—and married so remarkably well—one would have thought they would sell their modest bookstore.

  She and Willow divided their time between Ivy’s and Laurel’s London town homes, and while a Mr. Randall now managed the Emporium, all four sisters continued to have a hand in running the business. It seemed they could not bring themselves to part with the place that had been their home since Uncle Edward had passed away.

  Ivy insisted the Emporium represented independence and self-sufficiency, which were denied most women and had certainly been missing from the sisters’ lives until a couple of years ago. Willow contended that here they all felt snug and safe from bewildering threats that came from as far away as France. But as Holly gazed at the contented faces of her sisters and new brothers, she knew that neither of those reasons quite explained their attachment to this cramped little town house.

  The plain truth was that for all of them, the Emporium had become a place where adventures began . . . and ended in dreams coming true.

  “Oh, dear, how inconvenient. I’m afraid I can no longer bend in the middle.” The others laughed good-naturedly as Laurel attempted, unsuccessfully, to lean forward and pluck a biscuit from the tray. The poor thing bounced several times with her hand outstretched, but to no avail.

  Only too happy to oblige her eldest sister—and the tiny niece or nephew presently on the way—Holly retrieved the platter for Laurel. With her free hand she gave her sister’s growing belly a fond pat.

  “It won’t be long now, dearest, and then you’ll be as bendable as ever.”

  At Aidan’s cheerfully delivered but shockingly suggestive comment, Holly issued him a glare of admonishment that no one took seriously—not even herself. With a dignified sniff she offered the platter to Ivy, sitting at her other side.

  Ivy turned her face away. “Only tea for me tonight. Of all the things to develop an aversion to while increasing. Eels and asparagus I can fully understand, but cakes and clotted cream? There is no justice.”

  “Never fear, Ivy-divy,” Willow said brightly as she bit into a raspberry truffle. “You’ll be right as rain in no time. Laurel says the worst is over in the early months. Isn’t that true, Laurel?”

  Before Laurel could reply, the sudden jangling of the outside bell made them all jump. Laurel frowned. “Whoever could it be at this hour?”

  “I’ll go see.” Aidan started to rise.

  “No, I’ll go.” Holly set down her teacup and sidestepped out from between Ivy’s skirts and the table. “I’m sure it’s Mr. Biglow from the bakery. I lent him a book this morning, and in exchange he promised to bring by some of his wonderful scones after he closed up tonight.”

  “Oh, splendid,” Ivy murmured. “More treats to turn my stomach.”

  Downstairs, Holly moved aside the window curtain and peeked out. She was surprised to see, not Mr. Biglow’s cart at the curbside, but a black-lacquered brougham of costly design and lacking an identifying
crest. Likewise, the dark-haired young man waiting on the foot pavement wore plain green livery that might have hailed from the household of any number of wealthy London denizens.

  At least, that was what Holly’s neighbors would think. She knew better. Her heart clattering with excitement, she unlocked the door and threw it wide.

  “May I help you?” She craned her neck to see past her visitor. The interior of the coach appeared empty. Was its passenger pressed to the squabs in an attempt to hide from prying eyes? Holly could hardly curb her eagerness as the young footman stooped to get a better look at her in the glow of the streetlamp.

  “Miss Holly Sutherland?” His uneven tenor revealed him to be no more than eighteen or nineteen years of age.

  “I am she.” Her own voice trilled the tiniest bit.

  “This is for you, miss.” He placed a leather-bound book in her hands.

  “Oh?” The title revealed the tome to be a chronicle of the Royal Ascot from the time of its inception to the year before last. “The flat races? I don’t understand. Who sent this? I thought—” But she couldn’t very well blurt out what she thought, because it appeared she had thought wrong. Her shoulders sagged beneath vast disappointment.

  Her visitor leaned closer and whispered, “Look inside, miss.”

  She flipped the book open, and a folded note fluttered out. Before it hit the ground, the young man caught it and handed it to her. Holly broke the seal, her elation returning as she read the hastily penned lines.

  Dearest Holly,

  I need you—and only you. You must come to me at Windsor at once! Tell no one, except your sisters, of course. But please, make no delay!

  Yours,

  V

  Unable to wipe the grin from her face, Holly refolded the letter, placed it back between the pages, and hugged the book to her chest. It seemed the Knightsbridge Readers’ Emporium was about to work its magic once again.