At Quill’s words, Sophia threw Ivy a speaking look. Perhaps they were right about his respect for her mind, she thought with tentative hope. At the very least he was not dismissive of her like some men were.
“I mean no offense, ladies,” said the duke, eyes widened with realization. “Just being a great clumsy oaf as usual.”
“I’m sure your teasing was innocent, your grace,” Ivy said with a reassuring smile. “We can be a little…”
“Overly sensitive,” Sophia finished for her as she moved to pour for the newcomers. “Force of habit really. And we’ve grown a bit too full of our own importance,” she added with a glance at Daphne, who shrugged at her words.
“I took no offense, Duke,” she said easily. “Though I do admit your words caught me by surprise. We were plotting you see … about—”
“Nothing at all,” Gemma broke in, moving to grasp Daphne by the shoulder. “We must keep those details to ourselves, Daphne. Do you not remember?”
Ivy gave a sigh of relief, grateful that Gemma had broken into Daphne’s confession. She had no wish to have what should be a private conversation between only herself and Quill with the entire drawing room.
“Did you have good weather for your travels, your grace?” she asked hoping to change the subject.
And thankfully the duke took the hint and began to regale them with an amusing story about how his phaeton had nearly collided with a farm cart on the road near Bath. And before long Daphne and the duke lapsed into a good-natured argument on the odds this year for the Royal Ascot, and the Hastings sisters were deep in conversation about some news they’d had in a letter from home that day.
When Quill took the seat beside Ivy, she felt her heart beat faster, try as she might to calm the traitorous organ.
“If nothing else it has been an eventful day,” he said quietly, so close that she could see the ring of dark blue circling the lighter blue of his iris and the light tips of gold on his brown lashes. Not to mention the warmth of his thigh innocently pressed against her own.
“If nothing else,” she said a little breathlessly.
“I thought I should tell you,” he continued, his gaze intent on hers, “that I spoke to Lady Serena about what happened between us today.”
* * *
Ivy took a beat to decide how she felt about the news. On the one hand he’d agreed to give her a couple of days to make a decision about his offer. But on the other, as a man of honor he would not wish to keep her chaperone in the dark about what he saw as a transgression against propriety on his part.
“And what was her response?” Ivy asked carefully. “Since she did not rouse me from my afternoon sleep to cart us both to the nearest minister, I would hazard a guess that she is letting us make our own decision on the matter?”
He looked down at where her hands clasped together, her knuckles white with the effort to keep them calm. This was a man who looked closely at the world around him, she thought. Who looked before he leapt. That he had so forgot himself earlier in the day was either a sign of how much he’d wanted her, or an indication that like anyone else he could behave impulsively from time to time.
“She is convinced that the best course would be for us to marry by special license,” he said with a slight shrug. “But she has agreed to let us do so at our own pace. I did tell her that you are free to decline my proposal of course.”
“And did she agree to keep this news from my family?” she asked, not allowing her apprehension to enter her voice. “Until we are ready to tell them, that is?”
“As I said, she will let us go at our own pace,” Quill repeated. Covering her clasped hands with his own, he spoke in a reassuring voice. “It need not be a hardship,” he said softly. “We rub along well enough together, I think. And I certainly appreciate that clever mind of yours. Though I cannot claim to be much of a scholar myself.”
“How many languages do you speak?” she asked, suddenly, desperately needing to know the answer. She wasn’t sure why, but it was the sort of thing a lady like herself should know about the man who wished to marry her. At least, that’s what she thought in this moment.
Rather than annoyance, she saw him break into a grin. “I’m not a scholar,” he admitted with a shrug, “but languages were something I excelled in at both Eton and Oxford. You have to know some ancient Greek and Latin in order to even be admitted to Oxford, you know.”
Ivy waved her hand in the air dismissively. “It’s easily enough for a peer to use his influence to get past that requirement for his son.”
“Ah,” he said chidingly, “but you didn’t know my father. He was the least likely man ever to use his influence in such a cause.”
She wanted to ask about his father, but decided that was a discussion that would keep for another day.
“So,” she continued, “you have some Greek and Latin. And I daresay French, as well, yes?”
He nodded, and Ivy was aware of the fact that his gaze had dropped to her mouth. Really, it was most unfair of him to look at her like that in a room full of other people.
“And German,” he said with the air of a boy trying to please a harsh schoolmaster. “And Spanish and some Portuguese.”
At her questioning look, he shrugged. “I was in the diplomatic corps during the war. My father did use his influence there—but it was for his own reasons. Didn’t want the heir to be placed in mortal danger, after all.”
Surprised despite herself, Ivy felt her mouth gape for a second before she quickly snapped it shut.
“Do not look so surprised, my dear,” he said with a grin. “I might be a useless aristocrat, but I’m not a complete simpleton. I can certainly carry on a concentration about which word is the best English translation for what I wish to do to your mouth just now.”
“Beso,” she said in a whisper of Spanish.
“Je voudrais vous embrasser profondément,” he said in a tone so low she felt it in her bones.
“Eu quero te beijar,” she replied, the Portuguese words falling from her mouth before she knew what she was saying.
“Is there any tea left, or shall I ring for a new pot?” said Lady Serena in a cheerful tone as she stepped into the room.
Ivy nearly tripped in her haste to get to the tea tray—which she had little doubt had prompted the titter she heard from behind her.
“I’ll do it,” she said reaching for the bell pull. “I hope Jeremy was able to get to sleep peacefully?”
Though the look Serena gave her was searching, she answered easily enough. “Yes, thank goodness. He dislikes going to sleep when he knows there is amusement to be had with the adults downstairs. But I was able to bribe him with a visit to the shore tomorrow with his uncle. I hope you don’t mind, Maitland.”
“Not a bit,” said the duke with a grin from where he stood before the fire. “Nothing I like more than a shell-seeking adventure with Jem. Will you come with us, Kerr? It seems to me we lads should stick together since we’re outnumbered by ladies in this house.”
Stretching out his long legs before him, Quill nodded. “Indeed. If the weather is fine.”
“I hope it will be,” Serena said with a worried frown. “Because I do not know what Jeremy’s response will be if he is thwarted.”
The way she spoke, Ivy would have assumed that Jeremy was the parent rather than the child. But she knew that Lady Serena was merely trying to make the boy happy. There was a hint of sadness in his eyes that told of some darker days when he was not such a big boy.
“I’m not afraid of his reaction,” Maitland assured her. “Quill and I were boys once too, you know. And if we can’t get to the shore we’ll figure something out. At the very least the soldiers I’ve brought will prove a distraction.”
“You will spoil him, Dalton,” Lady Serena said with a smile as she lapsed into using his Christian name. “I vow he will be as tyrannical as you were as a boy before the summer is out.”
“That’s what happens when a boy knows he’s a duke before
he’s out of short coats, Serena,” Quill said with a wink at Ivy.
Sure enough, the duke gave a sound of mock outrage. “And I suppose you wish these fine ladies to believe you were a little angel? I could tell tales about the Marquess of Kerr’s childhood crimes that would fair make your hair curl, ladies.”
And he proceeded to regale them with amusing stories about the cousins’ childhood together.
Before long, however, Lady Serena declared it was past time they were all in their beds. And as they filed into the hall and toward the stairs, Ivy found herself walking beside Quill.
When they reached the landing, where the ladies would go left and the gentlemen right, he said in a low voice, “Sweet dreams, Aphrodite.”
And wishing despite her misgivings that he could come with her to her bedchamber, she followed the other ladies down the hall into the darkness.
Chapter 20
Though Squire Northman’s manor house was not even a mile away as the crow flew, the party at Beauchamp House piled into two carriages for the drive over. One carriage conveyed the Hastings sisters, Lady Daphne, and the Duke of Maitland, while the other carried Ivy, Quill, and Lady Serena.
It did not go unnoticed by Quill that his cousin kept an eagle eye on both her fellow passengers for the duration of the journey. She’d attempted to place the four unmarried ladies in one carriage together, but Quill had insisted that he and Ivy be allowed to ride together. Since the three other ladies in the carriage with Maitland served as their own chaperones, Serena had relented to Quill’s demand but then spoiled things by insisting on taking her place with them.
What she expected them to get up to in a closed carriage with her watching was beyond him. He was able, when Serena managed to glance out the window at the passing scenery from time to time, to steal several glimpses of Ivy in the deep red silk she’d chosen for the evening. It was a color that might have looked a horror with her auburn hair, but instead it showed to perfection against her peaches-and-cream skin. He would bet anything that the modest jet beads she wore were warm from her skin, and he spent a good portion of the drive pleasantly imagining what she’d look like in nothing but those beads.
“Ah, that didn’t take too long, did it?” Serena asked with a cheerfulness that belied the death stare she gave Quill as the carriage rocked to a stop. Clearly he’d not been as careful at concealing his thoughts as he’d hoped.
Ivy on the other hand, seemed oblivious to them both, staring with interest out the window at the torch-lit entrance to the Northman’s sandstone manor house.
Far from feeling easy about the evening to come, Quill jumped down from the carriage before the footman could open the door, and set down the step. Handing first Ivy then Serena down, he squared his shoulders and prepared to make polite conversation with his former lover in the company of his almost betrothed.
While Jem had played happily at the water’s edge that morning, Quill had discussed with Maitland the possible complications tonight’s supper might cause him when it came to winning Ivy over to his way of thinking when it came to marriage.
“If given a choice,” Maitland had said from his seat in the sand beside his cousin, both of them barefoot despite the chill in the air, “I’d make some excuse to keep from walking into that chamber of horrors. But you have no choice. It’s the damnedest thing. I don’t know how you get yourself into these coils.”
Quill had already explained the necessity for he and Ivy to speak with the maid, Elsie, who now worked for Mrs. Northman. The fact that his cousin had come as soon as Quill had sent for him was just one of the things he appreciated about Dalton. He might be the proverbial bull in a china shop at times, but he was a good man. And he’d loved Aunt Celeste as much as Quill had. Like Quill, Dalton and Serena hadn’t had the happiest of childhoods, so they too had sought refuge in the home of their favorite aunt whenever it was possible.
But just now, he was of little help at all.
“It’s not as if my younger self could guess that one day I’d have to face Cassandra across the table from Ivy,” Quill said, thrusting a hand through his already windblown hair. “If I’d had that sort of prescience, I’d have left Cassandra alone in the first place.”
“She is a sweet handful, though,” Maitland conceded with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have turned her down if she’d cast out lures to me, that’s for sure.”
Quill sighed. “If only I knew that she would behave herself,” he said. “It’s not knowing that troubles me. I know she won’t be so bold that Northman will figure it out. She has no wish to give herself trouble. But if she suspects anything between Ivy and me, she might drop a word in her ear just to make things difficult for me.”
“It would all be much better if you’d not ended things badly,” Maitland said.
“Thank you, Duke,” Quill said dryly. “That never would have occurred to me.”
“Don’t take out your anger on me, man,” his cousin protested. “I’m just here to offer my support.”
Now, some hours later at the Northman manor house, Quill couldn’t miss the wink his cousin directed at him as the guests were ushered into the main entry hall.
“I am so pleased you were all able to come,” said Cassandra Northman from beside her thin, taciturn husband, who nodded at the newcomers but said little. “And you too, your grace. When Lady Serena wrote to ask if you would be welcome too, I wrote her back at once. A duke at one’s table must never be turned away.”
To Quill’s relief, Cassandra said nothing untoward as he moved through the receiving line, and soon he and the other dinner guests were milling about in a drawing room that was gilded within an inch of its life, waiting for the dinner bell.
He made pleasant conversation with the local curate, who was keen to know what news there was from London, and the wife of the local magistrate, who wanted to know if he would be around in the summer for the annual fete.
Soon enough they were all shuffling into the dining room, Quill with Lady Daphne on his arm since she was the next in precedence following Lady Serena, who was on her brother’s arm.
Quill was not pleased to learn he was seated at Cassandra’s left with Maitland on her right. But at least Ivy was out of earshot in the middle of the table, with the curate on one side and the son of a local gentry family on the other.
“You must tell me every little thing about the latest on-dits in London, my lord,” said Cassandra as soon as they were seated, punctuating her words with a rap of her fan on his arm. “It’s been far too long since I was there for the season, and I’m simply dying for news.”
“You might do better to ask my cousin Maitland,” Quill said with a nod in that gentleman’s direction, earning him a reproachful look. “He is more lately from London than I am and I daresay his news is fresher.”
“But is he fresher?” Cassandra said with a mischievous grin. “That is the question.” Turning to the duke, she gave him a speculative look, as if weighing the possibilities. At this point, Quill didn’t have any regrets about throwing his cousin beneath the wheels of the metaphorical carriage. He could not afford for Ivy to find any reason to reject his suit. Even if that meant Maitland had to take a sabre cut for the whole regiment.
* * *
To his relief, his cousin seemed happy enough to flirt with their pretty hostess, and he watched with amusement as they batted the conversational ball back and forth over the various courses. By the time Mrs. Northman rose to indicate that the ladies would leave the gentlemen to their port, Quill was feeling quite happy with the evening so far.
That sanguinity lasted until the men filed into the drawing room and a quick scan of the room showed that both Ivy and Cassandra were conspicuously absent.
“Where the devil are they?” he asked Maitland in an undertone.
“Hmm?” was his unhelpful monosyllable as he fixed his gaze on the spot near the tea tray where Lady Daphne appeared to be explaining the finer points of the Pythagorean theorem to a befuddled-looking local matr
on. A jab in the ribs was enough to break into Maitland’s reverie however. “Hey! What was that for?”
“Use your brainbox for a moment and listen,” Quill hissed. “Where are Ivy and Cassandra?”
But Maitland shrugged. “I was in the dining room with you. How should I know? Why don’t you ask Serena? She appears to be attempting to get your attention.” And sure enough, Lady Serena was leveling a speaking glance in their direction.
Hurrying to her side, Quill tried to look casual as he asked, “What’s amiss, cuz?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Serena said beneath the hum of conversation. “Ivy and Mrs. Northman left the room not long after we left you all in the dining room. I hope our hostess hasn’t figured out there’s something between the two of you.”
“What do you mean?” Quill asked, despite the fact that he agreed with her. “What has Mrs. Northman to say to it?”
“Well,” Serena said tartly, “there is that fact that she was your lover some years ago.”
Despite himself, Quill gasped. “How did you know?” he asked in a low voice.
Serena rolled her eyes. “You were one and twenty and as full of your own importance as any young man I’ve ever known—with the notable exception of my brother. I would be very surprised if everyone in the next county didn’t hear of your conquest.”
Wincing, Quill recalled that her assessment of him at that time was painfully accurate. “So you think it has something to do with Cassandra wishing to scupper things between Ivy and me?”
“I cannot know,” Serena said with a slight lift of her shoulders. “They didn’t seem to be at daggers drawn if that helps.”
It did. A very little.
“I’m going to intervene,” he said firmly. “Ivy is stubborn enough without Cassandra giving her more reasons to reject my proposal.”
But it was Serena’s turn to gasp. “You cannot simply go blundering around the house looking for them. It’s possible there is an innocent explanation for their absence.”
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