“You,” I said. “You came here a few weeks ago.”
He inclined his head politely, agreeing. “It is interesting that you know that, Miss Leavold. I was under the impression that you were out visiting with friends at that time. I had insisted on coming here to visit you myself, and then conveniently you were not home.”
I paused. I couldn’t puzzle the right information out of his words.
He seemed to understand this. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small white card.
Jonathan Wright, Esq.
33 Portage Street, York
“I’m an old friend of Edward Wickes,” he said. “We studied law together, and we now frequently assist each other when the need arises. For example, when trying to hunt down a certain young woman known to live at Markham Hall.”
My confusion was not abated at all. “Why would Solicitor Wickes be looking for me? And why send you to come talk to me—why not simply write?”
“He did write, Miss Leavold. He’s been writing you for almost three months now. And you haven’t answered a single letter. The situation was important enough that he felt there must be a more dramatic intervention. So he called upon me.”
“He hasn’t written,” I said. “Or the letters got sent to the wrong address. Or—”
“Or,” he said softly, “somebody’s been taking them before you could read them.”
“But who—” No. It was ridiculous. None of the servants cared enough about me to steal my mail, and while Mrs. Brightmore hated me, I couldn’t picture her confiscating letters. Surely not.
Right?
“Whatever the case may be, I am here to deliver two messages. One is that Mr. Wickes is very anxious to see you, but his health makes it impossible for him to leave London at present. He is hoping that you will visit him as soon as you can arrange for a visit. He has even offered to pay for the trip himself, if you need him to.”
I shook my head, still feeling confused. “No, that won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’ll be traveling to London today actually. We leave this afternoon.”
Mr. Wright looked over my dress, the small white rosebuds in my hair. “After your wedding,” he said.
“Yes.”
He glanced at the floor a moment, and in that moment, I saw that he made a decision, swallowing back something with visible effort.
“The second message Mr. Wickes wants to convey is that you yet have a relative living. Your aunt, Esther Leavold. She is lately returned from India and was most horrified to learn of your circumstances. She wishes to be reunited with you at once, and she wants you to know that you are invited to come live with her.” He looked at my dress again. “Although it has only been since today that I understood Mr. Markham’s intentions for you. I am afraid your aunt and Mr. Wickes had no idea that your situation was changing so drastically.”
His words were not filtering in properly, not finding residence in anything I was prepared to understand. I felt the need to sit immediately, and he sensed this, taking my elbow and guiding me to a low ancient bench. I sat, my head feeling light.
“I have an aunt? Who wishes to take me in? I have family?” My voice broke on this last word, broke hard, and I felt tears pricking at the back of my eyelids. “I’ve never heard of her. And I didn’t think—I mean, I had rather given up on…”
I couldn’t finish. But I didn’t need to. Mr. Wright understood. I’d been orphaned. I had grieved and accepted that there would be no one out there bound to me by blood, no one who was born with an obligation to love me and care for me. And I had survived the grief. Adapted and grown and against all odds had found a new life for myself here in the North, in Mr. Markham’s arms. And now everything had changed in an instant.
“I should go,” Mr. Wright said. “I have been given the distinct impression that Mr. Markham does not want me to talk to you.”
I looked up, my eyes wet. “You have?”
Mr. Wright knelt in front of me, very easily for a man of his years, and gave me a grave but kind look. “It is not my place to advise you on anything of a personal nature, but I feel compelled to warn you that some perceive Mr. Markham to be a dangerous man.”
I was already shaking my head, but he held up a hand. “I know it is not what you want to hear. But have you given any thought to why Mr. Markham wouldn’t want us to communicate? Have you considered that he might have taken Mr. Wickes’ letters before you could read them?”
“No,” I whispered. “That’s not what has happened.”
“I hope not.” He stood. “Congratulations on your upcoming marriage, Miss Leavold. And please make your way to London as quickly as possible.”
And he vanished into the rain.
The encounter had lasted barely five minutes. Gareth still wasn’t present with the carriage, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I paced up and down the hallway, pausing at the door to the library.
Have you consider that he might have taken the letters?
No. They were lost. Sent to the wrong address or mixed up. And so what if Mr. Markham had told Mr. Wright I’d been away that night—I certainly had not been in a state to receive him anyway, not with the amount of laudanum I’d taken.
Not with the amount of laudanum he’d given me.
I was walking in circles before the library door now, the gold silk of my dress brushing against the medieval flags of the entry hall, my new boots clicking impatiently on the floor. As I paced, I kept seeing glimpses of the library floor, of the place where Mr. Markham had so irrevocably claimed me for his own. But perhaps he’d done that the day he’d proposed, or the day after, when he’d denied me. A day that started with me on my knees in his bedroom…
An idea formed, a half idea really, the shade of a premise with barely any logic, but it was fed by the undercurrent of doubt that now swelled in my mind. I didn’t stop to ponder or pull the idea apart, I simply acted, hurrying up the stairs and going into Mr. Markham’s room, empty of its owner but still smelling of grass and summer, of the particular soap he liked to use. I ignored all this, ignored my pounding pulse and the heat behind my eyelids and I dropped to my knees by his bed.
I gazed for a moment at the trunk underneath, incongruously gleaming in the dusty space under the bed. AW sparkled golden, even in the dim light. I reached for it, just barely able to snag the corner with a fingertip. It was heavy, and I had to flatten myself on the floor before I could properly shift it to a place where I could pull it out.
It was a smallish trunk, but solid, and the well-oiled hinges did not creak as I lifted the lid. I expected oft-creased and caressed love letters from decades ago, locks of hair and handkerchiefs and pressed flowers. I expected the things that a man would keep to remember a sweet wife who died too young.
There was nothing like that. In fact, the trunk was empty save for eight letters, all addressed to me, all sent from Solicitor Wickes. All opened.
I picked one of them up, hands shaking, and slowly unfolded the paper, reading the cordial missive informing me of my aunt Esther’s return to England. The next informing me that she was inviting me to stay with her. The next asking politely if I had received the first two. And on and on, each letter growing more worried than the last.
Mr. Markham had read them. Mr. Markham had hidden them.
Why?
“I was planning on showing you the letters,” a voice said from behind me. “After the wedding.”
I turned, my heart thudding, to see Julian leaning tiredly against the doorway, clad in a sharply pressed morning suit. His wedding suit. I dropped the letters guiltily, like a sinner caught sinning, even as anger flared at the sight of him.
“You’re not at the church,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“Gareth got me the moment he saw Mr. Wright’s horse tied up in front. I came right away. I didn’t want him to speak to you. For reasons that are now apparent.”
“They aren’t apparent,” I said, and I realized there was a tremulousness in my voice that edged o
n hysteria. “They aren’t apparent at all. Why are these letters under your bed? Why would you hide the fact that I have a relative? Why, when you knew how desperately I missed having a family?”
He was by me in an instant, on his knees, his face close to mine. “I am your family now,” he said heatedly. “Me. Only me.”
His hand was gripping my upper arm. Hard. “You and my family aren’t mutually exclusive,” I said. “I can have you both.”
“I don’t want to share you,” he said harshly. “With anyone.”
I wrenched away from him. “And why is that? Were you worried that I would leave you if I had another choice? Did you think that I was only marrying you—only fucking you—because I needed a place to live?”
Now he was the one to blanch. “No—”
“Because we’ve been over that,” I said over him. “You knew that wasn’t the case. You knew that I loved you for who you are—that I would love you even if I was an heiress with millions of pounds to my name. Why couldn’t you trust that I would love you no matter what happened?”
He ran a hand through his hair, a shaky violent motion that betrayed vulnerability and possessiveness and guilt. I stood and turned away so that I wouldn’t have to see it.
“Come back here,” he snapped. “You don’t get to walk away from me.”
He stood and grabbed at my arm. I spun around and slapped him. He staggered back.
“You lied to me, Julian! Why? Why?”
He didn’t touch his cheek, even as red splotches bled across his freshly-shaven skin. “Ivy,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t do this. Please.”
“You either answer my questions or I leave this room.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I knew he could see the resolve written across my features. He took a deep breath and finally spoke. “I didn’t want you to have the option to leave me. If you found out about the night Violet died, about the things I did. I didn’t want it to be easy for you to walk away from me.”
I was too strong to buckle or swoon, but I still backed against the dressing table, my fingers wrapping around its edges for support. His answer was so honest—too honest—and it was terrifying. He wanted me trapped here. He wanted to make it as hard as it could be for me to leave him, even after he’d promised me that I could leave at any time.
“You said,” and now the emotion broke through, shaking my voice and wetting my eyelashes. “You said that I could leave when you told me the truth. Or after you told me. You said I could leave whenever I wanted!”
He was breathing heavily. “I meant it, wildcat—”
“Don’t call me that!” I said, suddenly furious. “You don’t get to call me that now!”
Anger glittered in his eyes. “I can call you whatever I like. Because you’re mine, Ivy. You were mine the moment you let me circle your wrist with my hand the night we met. You were mine from the moment I pulled your first orgasm from your body on the floor of my library. You are mine and I have every right to protect what’s mine.”
“So I can’t leave.” My words were flat.
He shook his head, defensively, desperately. “That’s not what I’m saying. You can leave. You can utter bluebell at any time and I’m at your mercy. I only hid the letters for now because I wanted to show you…I wanted to show you how perfect I could make your life if you gave yourself completely to me and became my wife. Then I would tell you about Violet. Then I would tell you about your aunt. But first I needed you to be mine in the eyes of the law and of God. I needed to show you everything I could give you.”
It was always going to come to this, I realized. It was always going to come down to his secrets, his mysteries, his guilt. And I loved him with every atom and molecule that vibrated in my body, but I couldn’t live with those secrets any longer. I would always love him, always want to be with him, but treachery and betrayal was a line I couldn’t force myself to cross.
“Tell me what happened the night she died.”
He came to me and circled my upper arms with his hands. “No, Ivy, not yet. Listen to me—”
“Don’t touch me.”
His hands dropped and he stepped back. “Please,” he whispered. “Let me make it right.”
“If you want to make it right, then you’ll tell me,” I cried. “If you didn’t kill her, why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because I don’t want you to hate me,” he said. Sadness sliced through his words like broken glass.
“Don’t you see that I will anyway? If you try to trap me here? If you keep lying to me?”
“Once you know this, you can’t unknow it,” he said. “It…it’s the worst thing I’ve done. The worst thing in a lifetime of bad deeds. Please, Ivy. Please let it go.”
I took a step toward the door, unable to wrestle with him any longer. Our signal pressed against the inside of my lips, begging to be uttered. One word and he would have to let me leave.
“Wait,” he said. “Please.”
I stopped and looked at him, not bothering to wipe the tears from my face. Tears that dripped hot and fast onto my wedding dress.
Mr. Markham sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands. “I fucked someone else.”
My stomach rose into my chest, and I knew I was going to be sick. What was he saying? He had been with another woman…recently? While he was supposed to be with me?
He couldn’t mean that. He wouldn’t mean that.
“Julian,” I started but then couldn’t finish.
“The night Violet died. I fucked another woman.” He looked up at me. “You have to understand, fidelity was—is—one of the most important things to me. When my mother was alive, my father never made a secret of his mistresses or the maids he fucked or the houseguests he seduced. Mother never complained, pretended not to notice, but I could see how it killed her inside. So I vowed that I would never do that to a woman I loved. To a woman I didn’t love, even. I would only be with one woman at a time. So when Violet cheated on me with my valet, I was furious. I had suspected something for weeks, but hadn’t been certain. Didn’t want to believe it. And then she told me she was pregnant—” He bit off his own words and stared dully ahead. “I wanted to be a good husband, Ivy. Even after I realized that I didn’t love her, that I couldn’t be married to her any longer, I wanted to provide for her. Set aside a house and a decent living for her and her child. But she threatened to kill herself when I brought it up. She vacillated between suicide and threatening to fuck my servants and my friends in my own bed. I was infuriated. She stormed out of the house. I decided to give her time to cool off, then after our guests left, I would bring her back. Talk to her. Silas and I searched, and we couldn’t find her. We sent for the police and decided to catch a couple hours of sleep while we waited for them to arrive.”
I slowly sat in a nearby chair. “What happened?”
Old pain flashed in his eyes. “She made good on her promise. I found her fucking Gareth in my bed.”
“Oh, Julian.”
“I was so angry—livid and furious—I could barely think. I never blamed Gareth, you understand; I’d seen my father threaten and coerce enough servants into having sex with him that I knew it wasn’t really Gareth’s fault. But I blamed her. Yes, I blamed her.”
“What did you do?” My voice was barely audible now.
“At first? Nothing. I stormed out of the hallway and walked right into Brightmore. She had seen everything. She knew everything.”
I was beginning to understand. Remembered Brightmore’s words. I told the master how to handle a wayward wife. And he did.
“She didn’t say anything at first. But she left and she came back with the rector’s wife. Mrs. Harold had contrived some excuse or another to stay the night, probably for a chance to be alone with me. Our paths had crossed at many social events in the past…I knew she wanted me to take her to bed. I’d never followed up on her advances; I was never interested.” He sighed. “Brightmore dragged her to me. She told me that
I needed to show Violet that I was the husband, I was the master, that her adultery would not be tolerated.”
Mrs. Harold. Her tears today made more sense now.
I had a hand pressed to my mouth now, the other hand fisted in my skirts. Oh God, the skirts that Mrs. Harold had helped dress me in…for my fucking wedding. The woman that Brightmore had hauled before Mr. Markham like a harem girl had helped me prepare to marry him and she had tried to warn me…
Julian buried his face in his hands. “And God help me, I listened. I wanted Violet to know—to feel—how I felt, even if it was only for a second, even if it was the barest shadow of the feeling. I pulled the rector’s wife into my room, threw Gareth out, and rounded on Violet. I tied her wrists to my bedpost.”
“What did you do to her?”
“To her? Nothing. But to Mrs. Harold…” He trailed off and then gave a bitter laugh, a dark noise that sent chills down my spine. “You know, she didn’t even say anything when my housekeeper hauled her to me like a slave, or when I tied Violet naked and crying to my bed. That woman dropped to her knees when I told her to, opened her mouth when I told her. All in front of my wife.”
I tried to hide the disgust in my voice. “So you made Violet watch?”
He looked at me. “If I’m to make a confession, I should confess it all. I may be damned, wildcat, but for some reason I feel as if we are damned together. That you will love me anyway.”
I glanced away from him. He’d hit upon the confusion that had been dogging me these past few weeks, the worry that I was as monstrous and toxic as he was. And he was right, I would love him anyway.
But loving and staying were two different things.
He stood, pacing in a jerky, agitated way. “I know I’m a terrible man, Ivy. But you must understand, I’ve never been that angry, before or since. All I could think about was hurting Violet in the same way she’d hurt me. The rector’s wife was so eager too, even with Violet right there. I fucked her over and over again, on her knees, bent over a chair, on the floor. I fucked her until I got bored with her, with my anger. I fucked her until I got bored of hearing my wife cry.
The Education of Ivy Leavold Page 13