“I shouldn’t have disturbed you,” I said. “I’ll leave you now.”
“Don’t,” he said.
I chafed at the order, yet I obeyed.
“I want you here with me, Miss Leavold,” he said. “Violet was your family too. You should be able to pay your respects alongside her former husband.”
And so we stayed at the grave another ten minutes, me looking at Mr. Markham from underneath my eyelashes, watching his face as he traced the lines of the angel with his eyes. There was longing in his expression and pain too, and his shoulders, normally so broad and straight, were slumped, as if a great weight were pressing down on him.
“I made a mistake once,” he said. “And now its ghost will follow me forever.”
Violet. Was his mistake in killing her? Or marrying her in the first place?
He looked up, searching my eyes. “You have something about her right now, in your face. I can see her, as if she’s inside of you, wanting to speak to me.”
“I feel nothing but myself,” I said.
He came around the grave. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. And then a finger traced up my sleeve to my neck, running down my jaw to my chin, where he held my face as he examined me. “I believe it is only Ivy Leavold inside of here.”
For a moment, his face was mere inches from mine, and I could see every irregular fleck of pale jade in his bright green eyes. My body pulsed with heat, remembering last night.
“Would it be wrong of me to kiss you here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Then perhaps we should leave.” He offered me an arm, and I took it, only looking back at the grave once as we made our way back to the house.
“It’s supposed to be the party of the decade,” Adella was telling the dinner table. “We can’t miss it.”
“The Prince of Wales will be there,” Gideon added.
“Of course we’re going,” Molly said matter-of-factly. “It won’t be any trouble to get down there by Friday, certainly.”
“You’d want to leave tomorrow at the latest,” Mr. Markham said. “Give yourself two days for the journey—it will be easier.”
“You talk as if you aren’t coming with us, Jules.” Molly glanced over at me as she said it, as if it were my fault.
“I’ve been to one of the baron’s parties, and once was enough for me.”
“Perhaps you were at the wrong party,” Silas said, grinning. “Because everyone knows that once is never enough. And you haven’t been down to London in over two months—for all you know, your house there has been burgled and all the servants have given up on you ever coming back and left.”
Mr. Markham picked up his wine glass. “I doubt that.”
“Oh, do come with us,” Helene said. “Why would you stay here in this dreary old heap when we can stay at the Savoy and dance with royalty?”
“Thank you, Helene, but my mind is quite made up.” Our eyes met for the briefest of moments and then he looked back at the others. “I’ve left Markham Hall too unattended as of late, and I must set myself to my responsibilities. For a little while at least.”
I kept my gaze on my plate, trying not to give any indication of how happy this made me, that Mr. Markham was staying here, and that I would have him to myself once again.
Molly was clearly not pleased. “Don’t cloister yourself, Jules. It never makes you happy. You’re not meant to be stationary and domestic.”
“You know me not at all if you think that I am at risk of being domestic.”
She didn’t answer, but there was something sharp in her face as she turned to Charlotte and struck up a conversation. Something sharp and savage, and I knew that this seemingly small transgression of Mr. Markham’s would not be forgotten.
They left the next morning, in a flurry of trunks and carriages and frantic servants, the guests yawning widely and rubbing their eyes as they climbed into their conveyances.
I was kissed and petted by the women and given deep, stately bows from the men, and they all exclaimed over how much they would miss me while they were gone. I treated these sentiments politely but skeptically. I failed to see how they could form such an attachment to me in a matter of days, but perhaps some people were like that, seeking transient thrills and connections and people, and perhaps they really felt as if we had formed some sort of insoluble bond since they’d arrived. Then I flushed, remembering the night in the parlor, the lips and the hands, all stroking and caressing and rubbing, and the way I’d given myself over to it entirely, the pleasure and the fitful ecstasy of such intimate things.
Silas gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Goodbye, pet,” he said. “I look forward to seeing you again.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing against my ear. “And I look forward to tasting you again.” He pulled back, his blue eyes burning, and my body warmed in response.
Then he gave a wide smile—all white teeth and charm. “That is, if Mr. Markham ever decides to share you again.”
“Don’t bother the girl, Silas,” Molly said, coming up to us. She looked very smart in a light blue traveling dress and matching bonnet.
“I’m not bothering her,” Silas said. “I’m making promises.”
“To the carriage.” Molly waved him off. “Honestly.” He gave me a bow and then left, the grin subsiding into something like a smirk, as if he were pondering a private joke.
Molly looked at me in that half-quizzical, half-razored way of hers. “We will be back after our stay in London, I’m sure,” she said. “It is so strange that Julian should stay home. Normally, he would never miss a chance to escape this place. I must conclude that it has something to do with you.”
“Mr. Markham makes his own decisions for his own reasons,” I said.
“Oh my dear,” Molly said. “You are so bad at hiding your feelings. Don’t be ashamed—I doubt you’ve had practice with it. I can see in your eyes that you want him and that he wants you. It will only be a matter of time now. But don’t forget what I told you—Julian Markham will make you his world, but only for a time. Are you strong enough to bear that kind of disappointment?”
“You know nothing of my strength,” I said, unexpectedly irritated. “And beyond that, it’s none of your business.”
She cocked her head at me. “I’m not your enemy, Ivy. You are young and not used to the games of grown men. I only want to help.”
It was difficult for me to take her at her word when I could still hear the sounds of her and Mr. Markham together. “Then I should thank you for your consideration and courtesy.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “There’s no need to be so cold.”
Mr. Markham came over then, having supervised the loading of the trunks and hatboxes. “Miss O’Flaherty,” he said, inclining his head.
“Julian.” She raised her hand and he kissed it quickly and then dropped it.
“Safe journey,” he said and then placed a hand at the small of my back to guide me back to the door.
“See you soon,” Molly called as she climbed into the carriage. Mr. Markham didn’t answer, but I knew that he’d heard.
She gave me a smile through the carriage window as it rolled away, a smile both menacing and pretty at the same time, and I knew that whatever was between us would never be friendship. She had her own agenda, her own desires, and she was far more experienced than me at seeing her desires flower into fruit.
The last carriage creaked down the drive, and then it was only Mr. Markham and me. He gave me a look, long and intense, and he opened his mouth to speak, but then he turned back to the house and went inside. I remained in the courtyard, watching the trees blow in the summer wind, thinking of marble angels and Molly O’Flaherty.
That night, it was only Mr. Markham and myself for dinner. We sat with the table between us—an expanse of wood that felt painfully large, with silver tureens and carafes and tiered trays making it impossible to see one another, and hovering servants that made it awkward to converse. When it was time
to adjourn to the parlor, I felt a heavy sense of relief. I wanted him alone, with nothing between us.
When he walked into the parlor, turning to shut the door quietly behind him, I came forward from the fireplace where I’d been standing.
“Ivy,” he said, and the way he said my name was beautiful. It was music in an opera hall, rain on a lake, the first glorious birdsongs of early spring.
“Julian,” I whispered.
Something thawed in his face, some darkness parted, and his eyes shone. “I like hearing that word from your lips.”
“I like saying it. Very much.” I came closer. “Why did you stay?”
“For you.”
A nervous sort of joy flipped in my stomach.
Now it was he who took a step closer. “I stayed for you, Ivy. I stayed because I wanted you all to myself. The others were right, I’m hoarding you, but I can’t help it. I want your time and your conversation and your company. And your—” here his voice caught.
“…And my body,” I finished for him.
“Yes. And that.”
“I am glad you didn’t go,” I whispered. But I couldn’t bear it any longer. “What happened between you and Molly O’Flaherty?”
“History,” he answered after a moment. “Ancient history.”
“But…”
Understanding kindled in his eyes. “You heard us. The night we played charades.”
I nodded, my throat stupidly tight.
“I didn’t fuck her,” he said. “If that’s what you thought.”
“I heard kissing.” My voice quavered, and I inwardly cursed my weakness. I wanted to be sophisticated and aloof about this. I wanted him to see how strong I could be. But I cared too much. Hurt too much.
I wanted him all to myself.
“She kissed me,” he admitted. “And I kissed her back. I wanted you so badly, but I was also determined not to take advantage of you. She knew it. I think in her own way she was trying to help.”
“She’s still in love with you.”
He laughed. “Molly doesn’t love people. She may desire them, she may enjoy their company, but she would never stoop to the level of such an undignified emotion.”
“But you two were together once.”
“Once,” he said. “But no more. I pushed her away that night you heard us. I don’t indulge in inferior consolation. If I couldn’t have you, then I wouldn’t have anyone.” He turned away from me for a moment, half his face in shadow. “And I needed to be faithful to you. I had to be.”
The conviction in his voice was almost chilling in its intensity. It was the conviction of a sinner desperate to repent. I didn’t understand it, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I was too relieved.
“So you and Molly didn’t…”
He faced me again. “No, wildcat. I couldn’t. When I want someone the way I wanted—want—you, I don’t fuck other women.”
I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t help it. “Was it the same with Violet?”
He sunk into a chair. I got the sense that he was gathering his thoughts, preparing his words, and when he spoke, it was carefully. “I didn’t sleep with anyone while I courted Violet. Not even her. God help me, I had this idea that if I didn’t have her until we were married, that it would show her how different I was from the other men who wanted her, who kept chasing her even after she was engaged to me.”
“Did it work?”
“In the end? No. There was no happy ending for us, and there wouldn’t have been even if she had lived.” He stood and starting pacing, running a hand through his hair. “There are things about me—things that frightened her, things that I could never even show my first wife—and you know what’s strange? I can show them to you. I feel like I can share the darkest parts of me, and you, little wildcat, would love it.” He stopped in front of me, taking my wrist in his hand and bringing it to his mouth, kissing the delicate skin there. “You have the same darkness, I think. And that’s what I need.”
“And that wasn’t Violet?”
His eyes darkened again. “No. That wasn’t Violet.” He let go of my wrist. “Imagine an exotic animal, captured from its native climate and then placed in a zoo. Imagine that animal grew sleek and lazy, spoiled and passive, still bearing the stripes or spots of a wild beast, but inside so feckless and tamed that weakness had permeated every lineament of its soul.”
“Tamed is not a word I would have thought to describe Violet.”
“Of course not—she gave every appearance to the contrary. But in the end, she was no different than any other well-bred girl who dabbles in lust. She wanted things soft and easy, the way most men were willing to give it to her.”
“And what do you do that’s so disturbing to these well-bred girls?”
“Would you like me to show you?”
“Yes,” I said, all my doubts replaced with unconditional longing for the man in front of me. “Yes, again and again.”
Mr. Markham took my hands in his own and looked at me. The firelight flickered off his square jaw and chiseled cheekbones, his eyes greener than ever. “You remember what I said in the library that night. I don’t want to ruin you.”
My face flushed hot, and I yanked my hands out of his. “You don’t get to decide if I’m ruined, Julian Markham. I’ve spent the last ten years looking after myself. I’m as free as you are, and I get to decide whether something ruins my future or not.”
“Ivy—”
“I have no future,” I said. “I will never marry well, not with my family history and not with my lack of money. My only future is here, at Markham Hall. Unless you don’t want me.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t utter those words again.”
“Then what is at stake, Mr. Markham? Truly?”
He seized my waist and pulled me close against him. “My soul. Yours.”
Something about the desperate note in his voice made my blood flare, and I tilted my chin up, remembering the night we met, of the rasp in his words as he had taken my wrist in his hand. “My soul was yours to take from the moment I met you, Julian.”
With a low growl, he swept me into his arms and carried me out of the parlor, his eyes glittering in the dark of the stairwell as he carried me to his bedchamber. My pulse was racing, lust and adrenaline and disbelief and—yes, if I admitted to myself, the smallest trace of fear—but when the flickering firelight of Mr. Markham’s room threw his face into dim relief, I had never seen him look calmer. He set me down on the thick rug before the hearth, staring at me as he shrugged off his dinner jacket and unknotted his cravat.
The intensity of his gaze unnerved me, and I took a step backward toward the door, not because I didn’t want this, didn’t want him, but because I knew beyond a doubt that everything in my life was about to change, completely and totally.
“Don’t be skittish,” he said, holding out a hand.
If I took it, then I was giving him my consent. I was giving myself consent. All of the conclusions I’d come to about our relationship, about our future, about what I wanted—tonight would cement them. This moment was my last chance to withdraw, to plumb any uncertainties I had left. Was I truly ready to give my body to this man in such an irrevocable manner?
I placed my hand in his, and he pulled me close, his lips brushing against my ear. “Do you trust me?”
Any well-brought up woman would say no. But I wasn’t well-brought up, hadn’t been anything remotely like that since my parents died. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Good.”
His hands slid down over my shoulders to my waist, and he dropped a kiss on my lips. I tilted my face toward him, wanting more, but he moved around behind me, and I felt his fingers dance down my neck, down to the hollow between my shoulder blades where the buttons to my dress began. One by one, the buttons tugged and loosened, freeing me incrementally.
The dress slid down my body, the silk whispering against my petticoats and my corset. “A woman’s first time should be entirely about her,” he said
in a low voice. “I promise to do my best, but you test every limit of my self-control.”
Oh, how I hoped that was true. I knew I should expect gentleness, but that wasn’t ever what I had responded to from Julian. Seeing him at the edge of his restraint, his eyes half-lidded as he barely resisted his own darkest urges, knowing it was me who made him that way, it made me just as wild. I craved that, that simultaneous feeling of power and lack of power.
“Don’t be too gentle,” I murmured.
“With you, wildcat, I don’t think there’s any real risk of that.”
My petticoats fell away, and he laid them carefully over a chair. Then came my corset, my breasts feeling heavy and full without its support.
When I was entirely naked, he stood before me, his eyes taking in every dip and curve of my body. I felt his eyes like his fingers, as if he were marking with his gaze all of the places he wanted to kiss. And I saw clearly the outline of his desire, his erection large and hard in his breeches. His eyes kept lingering on my breasts, on the place between my legs.
“You were made for fucking,” he said roughly.
I looked at his green eyes, the way his body exuded power and wealth and lust and raw animal need.
“I was made for you,” I answered.
In less than a second, his mouth was on mine, lips insistent and demanding. My lips parted and our tongues met, his hand behind my neck as we kissed. Even weeks after our first kiss, the connection still made my pulse pound and my body respond in ways that made any memory of propriety laughable.
Mr. Markham bent his lips to my neck, licking and nipping and sucking, and then—without warning—he swept an arm behind my knees and I was being carried to his bed. He kept kissing me as he walked, deeply and urgently, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he were desperate to taste as many kisses as he could.
“Close your eyes,” he said as he laid me down. “I want you to think only about yourself.”
But that was impossible. As his mouth closed over my nipple, drawing it into a stiff point, all I could think about was him—his face as he worshipped my breasts, the shadows in his eyes as he held himself back from the depths of his own desire. The sight of his erection, throbbing for me and me alone.
The Awakening of Ivy Leavold Page 10