It was all so complicated, this mix of loyalties and betrayals. I couldn’t keep track of who deserved my sympathy and who deserved my disregard, and I certainly couldn’t keep straight how much fear I should allot to Mr. Markham.
And as much as I wanted to trust Silas, as much as I instinctively liked him, he was Mr. Markham’s oldest friend. They shared a bed and they shared women—would they also not share and keep each other’s secrets? How could I be certain that Silas wasn’t deluded—or worse, lying to protect my future husband?
The sun was truly dawning now, pink and orange streaks radiating past the pitched roofs and gables of the city. More people crowded the streets, the din of wheels and voices beginning to soar above the paving stones to mingle with the birds chirping and the wind blowing past swinging signs and creaking branches.
“I am telling you this,” Silas said, as if tuned into my thoughts, “because most people don’t know, but I think you deserve to. And Julian deserves your trust. See, after that horrific fight, she vanished. Disappeared. Julian joined us in the parlor, saying that Violet had gone to her room to rest, but would be down shortly. She never came.”
“Did you look for her?”
“Yes. He didn’t want to highlight her absence, so he waited until the guests had left, and he and I searched the house and grounds. The housekeeper helped too. That’s when he told me that Violet had taunted him about her and Gareth, threatened to sleep with Gareth that very night to prove Mr. Markham’s impotence when it came to following through on his threats of divorce. He was furious, expecting to come upon the two in every corner, and also terrified, because Violet had really sounded hysterical enough to hurt herself, and he worried for her safety.”
“How could she say such things?” I wondered. “About Gareth, I mean, when her position was so tenuous? Surely she would be more calculating than that.”
“She was like a cornered animal, ready to lash out at anything and anyone. For what it’s worth, it deeply wounded Julian. Fidelity is something he prizes himself on—don’t look so surprised, Miss Leavold—and he was unfailingly faithful to both Arabella and Violet.”
“It’s not hard to be faithful for a month,” I said, more to myself than to Silas.
He heard anyway. “Don’t be so suspicious. He would have been loyal to both of them until the end of his days. But it cuts both ways: he expected the same loyalty of Violet and she so blatantly refused. Yes, this understandably hurt and angered him very much.”
Silas might have been trying to reassure me, but I felt anything but reassured in that moment. All he had conjured in my mind was the image of jealous wrath, of a black bitter hurt that might not have thought twice about cutting a strap on a saddle.
“What I’m trying to say is that despite his anger and jealousy, Julian still searched everywhere. He still worried about her. And when we couldn’t find her, he sent a servant to Scarborough to notify the constables and mobilize a larger search. We agreed to sleep for a few hours, and then resume looking at dawn.”
“But she was dead by dawn.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Markham was stirring now, and the sound of his long limbs moving in the sheets made me drop my voice and step closer to Silas. “So you were apart from him for part of the night?”
“Yes, but Ivy, he couldn’t have murdered Violet. What man searches for a woman in the frozen dark for hours, sends for the police, and then decides to kill her a couple hours later? What kind of man would do that?”
I didn’t know. Because part of me didn’t know what kind of man Mr. Markham was at all.
The rest of our sojourn in York was largely uneventful. Mr. Markham took me to the silk warehouse and then to a fashion house, where all manner of dress styles were presented to me. Shoes, a veil, jewelry, new underthings—the process of attiring a wealthy man’s bride was as arduous as it was overwhelming, and I found myself deferring to Mr. Markham’s choices because I simply did not care.
The only thing out of the ordinary that occurred was running—almost literally—into a strange man in our hotel lobby, where we had stopped to offload several hatboxes and other sundry items. Mr. Markham had been directing the porter to our room and I had been searching for the gloves I wanted to wear to dinner that night, when I felt legs brush against my skirt. I turned to see a short man, quite old, with clouds of white hair around his head.
“I beg your pardon,” he said softly.
“No apology is necessary,” I said and then went back to my search, assuming the encounter was over.
“Are you Ivy Leavold?”
I straightened, quite surprised. No one here in Yorkshire could possibly know me by sight, outside of the residents of Stokeleigh and Mr. Markham’s circle of friends. “Yes,” I answered hesitantly. “I am she.”
He nodded, a serene motion that indicated he had already known the answer, but was genuinely pleased to have heard it just the same. Everything about him seemed gentle, inoffensive. “Miss Leavold—”
And then as abruptly as we’d made contact, he bowed and left, not finishing his sentence or giving me any gesture of farewell. I was still staring after his surprisingly agile figure as he descended the hotel steps when Mr. Markham came up to me.
“Who was that man?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.” The man in question was now completely gone from sight, having merged with the bustling sidewalk traffic. “But it was the strangest thing; he knew who I was. He knew my name was Ivy Leavold. Isn’t that odd?”
Mr. Markham didn’t answer. But a frown creased his face and he wrapped a tight arm around me. He didn’t let me out of his sight for the rest of the day, and several times I caught him glancing over his shoulder, as if he were worried that we were being followed.
“Let’s elope to Gretna Green,” I begged as we came out of yet another store. “Let’s marry abroad. This is too much.”
He turned to me then and caught my chin in his gloved fingers. “Ivy,” he said, looking both amused and pained. “Must we have this fight every time I give you something? I’m not above taking you to the bank and showing you what is in the accounts there in order to stop this fretting about money.”
“It’s unnecessary,” I said, but he moved his fingers to my lips.
“It’s necessary to me,” he said, voice gravelly. “Think of how generous you are being right now, indulging my selfish whim to dress you like a queen.”
“But I’m not a queen,” I protested.
“You are, wildcat,” he said, and then I was pressed against the wall of the store we’d just left, his hips and chest pressing into me. “You are the queen of my mind.” He moved his hips, and even through my dress, I felt his arousal. “Among other things…”
And then his mouth moved over me, kissing my lips and my nose and my jaw and the shell of my ear, and my protests melted away.
But I didn’t forget that I wasn’t the first bride to be purchasing silks and lace for a wedding to Mr. Markham. Two women had done the same before me, one of them perhaps in this very city, at these very shops, and I sensed her, a ghost trailing her fingers over unraveled bolts of fabric and over the sweet-smelling leather in the shoe shop.
If she could speak, would she warn me away? And why was she following me, even from the streets of York, to Markham Hall? I felt her weighing on my mind as we jostled home in the carriage, as we slid our bodies together in Mr. Markham’s bed.
He had loved her, Silas had said.
And I had to know that at least with her, at least with this poor, gentle, doomed girl, that his love had not ended in violence.
“I knew I’d find you down here.”
I opened my eyes to see Mr. Markham pushing his way through the tall grass of the clearing, bluebells nodding sedately in his wake. His jacket was off and slung over his arm, and his sleeves were rolled up, exposing his lean, defined forearms.
We’d been back at Markham Hall for a couple of days, and this
morning I’d decided to flee the dark corridors and brooding tapestries seeking the bright yellow sun and high blue sky, soaking in the July sights and smells before it inevitably rained. I’d even brought a book with me—Lorna Doone—but couldn’t focus on John and Lorna and Carver’s feuding love triangle. Instead, my thoughts raced from Arabella to Violet to bolts of silk and lace, until the chirruping of crickets and the calls of birds had lulled me into an uneasy peace, and I’d fallen into a warm, grassy doze.
Mr. Markham sat down next to me, his head blocking the sun, and I peered up at him, at the way the bright light framed him and cast his sharp, strong features into shadow. There was nothing about him to suggest violence or pain right now; his face was open and warm and his eyes glowed with affection. Silas’s words had done very little to reassure me, but seeing Mr. Markham like this did. I almost felt as if I could know him, know all of him and therefore trust him completely. And if I could know him, then maybe the ever-present doubts would finally evanesce and allow me to bask fully in my good fortune.
“Did you love Arabella?” I asked. I knew it was abrupt, impolite even, but I didn’t care. I had to stitch together these pieces of his past. I had to know that he wouldn’t grow tired of me, wouldn’t grow to despise me. Wouldn’t hurt me. If he had loved Arabella, as Silas had said, then maybe everything else that Silas had told me was true, and whatever secret Mr. Markham was keeping was something less horrifying than murder.
There was a flash of shock in his face, a quick downturn to his mouth, and for a moment, I thought he would shutter himself away again. But he didn’t. Instead, he rearranged his long frame so that he was lying in between my legs, his head resting on my lower stomach, and he said, after getting comfortable, “Yes. Yes, I loved her.”
“Silas said you did.”
“Silas. Of course.” He adjusted his head, putting pressure on my pelvis, and I was acutely aware of the fabric that separated his mouth from my sex. He kept talking, stroking my leg through my dress. “We knew each other a long time before we married, and we wrote frequently. When the family solicitors told me that it was time to settle down and ensure that Markham Hall had an heir, it never occurred to me not to marry the girl my father had intended. She was kind and intelligent and pretty, in a frail sort of way. I had always enjoyed her company. And yes, in those short weeks, I grew to love her.”
“I’d heard it implied that you took her to Italy to intentionally exacerbate her illness.”
I didn’t need to see him to know that his jaw was clenching, that those stubbled cheeks were tensing with anger. “If they could have seen her—so lovely even as she could barely lift her head to speak—they wouldn’t say such things. She was a saint; I could no more have harmed her than I could’ve harmed a child. We went to Italy because we had initially decided to honeymoon in Switzerland and then the doctors in Geneva thought the warm Mediterranean air would help—to comfort her at least, if not to cure her. And it did seem to help, a little. She was awake and alert, at least, in her final days.”
There was an exhale and then an uneven inhale. “Part of me died the day she died.”
The breeze had stilled and so when he said those words, they hung heavy and laden in the air. It took me a minute to identify the difference between when he talked about Arabella and when he talked about Violet, but then I saw it. It was sadness. There was no guilt or torture or haunted remorse when it came to his first wife, only the memory of young love and keen loss.
I twined my fingers in his hair. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “You deserved a happy and full life together.”
“And you deserved living parents and a competent brother to take care of you.” He turned so that he was almost prone in between my legs, his face cradled in the crease where my thigh met my hip. He peered up at me, looking so young and so vulnerable like this, and I felt my heart twist. I loved his strength and his weakness, his command of me and his dependence on me.
I loved him. I loved him to the point of the damnation of my soul.
And I was afraid of him.
“Why are you asking me about Arabella?” he asked, and he resumed stroking my legs, this time under my dress.
How could I tell him about my vast array of insecurities and fears? How could I confess that I was afraid that he would grow bored of me? That he might betray me, abandon me, or kill me? No. It was too ridiculous to voice out loud, as was the feeling that if I could claim his past, I could somehow claim a safe future for us.
We met gazes and his face grew serious. “Answer me, Ivy.”
“I just wanted to know more about Arabella,” I evaded. “You’ve talked of Violet, but never of her…”
A calloused hand was sliding up my thigh now. “It was fifteen years ago. I loved her, but memories fade with time, and I’ve had years to grow accustomed to the idea of her death.” My skirts were pulled up unceremoniously, exposing the thin drawers I wore. “And, Ivy, you are lying to me.”
“I—I am not lying—”
A loud smack reverberated through the meadow and I processed the noise before I processed the heat flaming on my flank. I gasped and looked at him. His dark brows had drawn together and his eyes were stern.
“Lie again and I’m taking you over my knee. Do you understand?”
I nodded, feeling the burn of his smack turn into molten sensation. For some reason, the idea of being taken over his knee seemed almost appealing.
My drawers were pulled off, and then my legs spread so that I was bare and open to his grim and determined face. Without warning, he jabbed two fingers inside of me, rough and probing, pinning my hips to the ground with his other hand. I writhed against the sudden invasion; I wasn’t ready for it and I wasn’t ready to answer his questions, no matter what methods he used to leverage the answers out of me.
“Why. Did. You. Ask,” he said, punctuating each word with a thrust of his fingers.
I cried out, trying to squirm, but I didn’t know if I was squirming away from him or toward him, because the rough pain had turned oh so quickly into pleasure and suddenly I didn’t want him to stop, not ever.
“You’re wet now,” he observed. “Does it arouse you to make me angry? To lie? To have me punish you?”
I moaned, because he had found that perfect spot inside that turned me at once tense and melting.
“It does. Such a bad girl. So filthy to find pleasure in such things.” And then he took his fingers—slick with my own want—and slid one into my ass. I whimpered as he added a second and then used his other hand to caress my clit with feather-light touches.
“Please,” I said raggedly. “I need to be fucked.”
“Filthy,” he repeated. He didn’t move, just kept stoking that dark fire with his fingers and watching me writhe with a rigid, almost disciplinary, expression on his chiseled face. “Tell me why you asked, Ivy, or I swear to God, I will never let you come again.”
“I…I was scared,” I managed.
“Scared of what?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. Even in the haze of pleasure, I realized that I was close to revealing something irrevocable, and that doing so carried a whole host of consequences—wounding him emotionally was but one. It didn’t seem wise to alert the predator that I’d caught his scent; if I confessed that I was worried for my safety, would that alone seal my fate?
He pinched my clitoris and twisted, a bright, sharp tweak that elicited a noise I’d never heard from myself. “Scared of what?” he demanded.
“Of you,” I whispered finally, tears spilling out of the corners of my eyes. “I’m scared of you.”
Time seemed to freeze then. His mouth parted with surprise and his eyes widened. That wound I’d been afraid of creating—it was there, an almost visible slash across his chest. I regretted it all then, not just confessing to my fears, but to having them in the first place and maybe to even coming to Markham Hall at all. Then his eyes narrowed and his mouth pressed into a thin line.
“On your knees,”
he ordered.
I clambered to obey, tears still falling, desperate to make that brief look of pain a distant memory, desperate to show him how much I did love him, despite everything else.
“So you believe all the gossip then?” he breathed, standing up and walking around me. “That I’m in the habit of killing my wives? And you thought you’d make sure that, at the very least, I didn’t kill one of them?”
I knew there was no point in lying now. I nodded, miserable with crying and also with the pulsing, unsated want between my legs. He came around behind me and laid his hands on my shoulders.
“Are you afraid now?” he asked. “We are alone, after all, I could kill you right here in this pasture and nobody would know.” The jagged sarcasm in his words couldn’t hide the bleakness in his voice. My heart split at that bleakness, wanted to heal it, cover over the parts of him that I had blighted with my admission.
His hands slid up and wrapped around my neck. I shivered, and there again was the pull of fear and desire, the adrenaline sending fast and painful throbs to my swollen cunt.
“Are you afraid now, wildcat?” he asked, his fingers tightening. “Afraid of me?”
“Julian,” I murmured. “Please.”
“Please what?”
His fingers were still loose enough that I could turn my head, and I did so now, looking back at him and wincing at his tortured expression. I only knew one thing that would help, the one thing that always helped us, the language our souls both spoke and demanded. “Fuck me,” I pleaded. “Fuck me until this isn’t here anymore.”
This. This fight, this betrayal, this doubt. This ugly thing I’d nursed for the past two months and now let free in a sunny meadow on a perfect afternoon. But he could get rid of it, my Julian could. He always did that, with his mouth and his fingers and his cock. He could drive us away from pain and into bliss, erase my doubts, if only temporarily. If only he would give it.
The Education of Ivy Leavold Page 7