“I’ve never had reason to try,” Ivy replied. “Are you saying that you can’t control the way you look at me?”
He gave a droll laugh. “Let’s agree we shall not remain alone in a room together nor seek out each other’s company for the week. That should remove all temptation.”
She smiled up at him. “I should have no trouble obeying those orders. I’ll be as inconspicuous as a speck of dust.”
That, he thought, would be impossible. “Then we will have no further problems.”
* * *
The rest of the day proceeded smoothly in Ivy’s view. Her irritation at the duke’s supercilious attitude buoyed her until evening. During the night, unfortunately, she fell prey to thoughts of him and by morning, she realized she showed signs of weakening. She would stand firm, however. She would not admit she looked forward to that baritone voice booming at the children to stay out of his study or at Carstairs to stop disarranging his desk.
She would submit to torture before confessing that she missed the dark eyes that followed her across the room and engendered sensual images in her mind, sometimes at the oddest moments, as today, when she was scolding Walker for putting a piece of cake in his pocket and sitting on it.
How unseemly to be wiping cream cake from a cane chair while picturing herself half-naked in the duke’s arms. Or worse, wondering what he looked like in the buff. Outwardly she might be holding up to his challenge. Inside, she was on the verge of surrender.
“The cake is gone,” Mary whispered in her ear.
“What? Oh. So it is.”
She glimpsed a flash of black tails at the door and sighed. The duke had left the room without a word.
She could not allow him to keep affecting her in this way. She felt flushed. She suffered chills. She stole glances at him like a fool. Then when he looked up, she looked away, drawing his notice to her disconcertment. He must be thoroughly enjoying himself.
On the third day she decided to give him a dose of his own medicine. She absolutely refused to look in his direction as she was leading the children to the lake with their sketchbooks and he, from what she could guess, was on his way to fish with Captain Wendover on the dock.
She clasped her pencil box and book to her chest and held her head so high that the sun momentarily blinded her. And she tripped over one of the dogs accompanying the duke.
The box and book went flying. So might have Ivy if quick-witted Mary hadn’t grasped the sash of Ivy’s gown in time to slow her momentum. The friendly dog entangled beneath her feet yelped.
Ivy pitched forward, preparing to meet the grass chin-first when a powerful arm lashed around her waist and arrested her fall. The duke straightened and stepped back before she could catch her breath.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
And he said in an expressionless voice, “Did you tear your stitches?”
And in a detached voice she replied, “I don’t believe so. They are to be removed soon, anyway. How good of Your Grace to save me from my clumsiness.”
He nodded. They broke apart. Ivy knelt with the children to collect her pencils. The duke rejoined his friend on the path to the lake.
Chapter 20
That might have been a frustrating enough start to James’s day without Carstairs bounding across the lawn after him and shouting, “Sir Oliver Linton of London is in the reception room and wishes to see you on a matter of utmost urgency!”
James glanced over his shoulder to gauge Ivy’s reaction to her other suitor’s name. But she and the children had walked out of earshot, and he was glad for it.
At least now he had a person on whom he could take out his exasperation. Finally he could meet this brash fox and put him in his place. It took nerve, he thought, to call upon a duke uninvited. It required sheer gall for a caller to leave the reception room and settle himself in the study.
He didn’t bother to disguise his contempt when he walked into his study and discovered Sir Oliver reading one of the books on his desk. “Would you mind not prying into my personal belongings?”
Sir Oliver dropped the book on the desk as if it had burned his fingers. “Bad habit, I’m afraid. I tend to judge a person’s character by the books he reads. Ovid’s Epistles. I’m quite impressed.”
“Don’t be.” James took his chair, ignoring the hand extended over the desk. “It belonged to my father.”
“I see. Well, I hope this is not an inconvenient time to call.”
“It is. I was in the middle of an important meeting.”
“Ah. Then I shall be succinct. I’ve come to discuss the matter of Ivy Fenwick.”
James smiled. “Do you have a complaint to lodge against her? If so, I suggest you put it in writing so that my estate manager can review it at his leisure. Now if that is all,” he said, rising.
“Dash it,” Oliver said forcefully. “I am seeking your permission to court the lady, not complain about her.”
James leaned forward as if Oliver were a fly he were about to flick off his desk. “What?”
“Hasn’t she mentioned me?”
James widened his eyes. “I do not engage in personal conversations about members of my staff with strangers.”
Oliver tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. “No,” he said. “I don’t imagine you would. But I just introduced myself.”
“Unless, of course, she came to me with a problem that required my intervention. That would be a different matter.”
Oliver nodded in understanding. “A problem such as a recalcitrant child?”
“Or the unwelcome advances of an admirer.”
There was a pause. “I imagine it is a common problem inside a house this large.”
James waited for another moment to pass. “It is a problem outside this house, too, I fear. Not even a week ago my governess was accosted on the park grounds.”
Oliver’s eyes glinted; he’d raised his guard. “She told you this?”
James shrugged. “She didn’t have to. I witnessed the offense with my own eyes.”
It was Oliver’s move. He gave a soft laugh. “Perhaps the scene you witnessed looked incriminating, but I assure you it was innocent. We’d had too much wine and were overcome with high spirits on the ride here.”
“My governess did not appear to be in high spirits when she was running from you through the maze.”
“Man-to-man, Your Grace, isn’t ‘offense’ an exaggeration? She resisted one last kiss outside my carriage. It was only mischief.”
He scowled. “Man-to-man, Sir Oliver, I consider Lady Ivy to be an essential person in my household and any offense against her will be regarded as an insult served to me.”
Oliver crossed his knees. “Do you mean that if I want to court her, I’ll have to court you, too?”
“Don’t play with words.”
“It’s what I do. I am a poet. I write pretty words.”
“Keep this up, and the next thing you’ll be writing is your eulogy.”
“She’s only a governess to you, but to me—she is everything. Please give me your approval, and share whatever advice you believe might help my cause. I’m still encountering resistance from her.”
“I’m not giving you my approval because you annoy me, and I have no advice to share on the subject except to say it will have to be a very long courtship, almost a year, so that she can fulfill her obligations to me.”
“But there must be other governesses.”
“Oh, there are,” James said. “The reception room was packed with them. Carstairs might have even retained their names if you’d like to select another one to court.”
“I mean governesses that you could choose from after letting Ivy go.”
James stared at him. “Now why would I want to go through all that rigmarole of interviewing another governess when the childr
en have grown so fond of the one we have? The entire household is passionate about Lady Ivy. We are so passionate about her that we are no longer allowing her a day off.”
At this point James forced himself to stop before he revealed his own passion for Ivy to the presumptuous coxcomb. He rose from his chair, indicating an end to the conversation.
“I have no advice to share, I’m afraid. I am no Casanova. But I do have a steward named Carstairs who will see you to your carriage.”
“Well, I’m not quite finished. I—”
James strode from the room before Sir Oliver could complete whatever irritating statement he had been about to make. If he wanted Ivy so desperately, and she wanted him, then James wouldn’t stand in their way.
Yes, he would.
As he reached the front door, he realized that he couldn’t afford to deceive himself. He would stand against this man like the Cliffs of Dover against a French invasion, and obviously he didn’t have the luxury of the year in which to win her over.
Subtle overtures and regard for propriety would fall by the wayside in this war.
It took a scoundrel to trump another scoundrel.
James would not lose. Ivy would be his no matter how many strategical battles, for her, and against her, he would have to fight.
* * *
Ivy sensed brewing trouble in the air, and the stormy expression on the duke’s face when he strode past her to rejoin his friend only confirmed her fear.
“What’s put him in such a bad temper?” Mary whispered over the drawing propped on her lap.
“I haven’t any notion,” Ivy replied.
“Do you think Uncle James could have heard from my father?” Walker asked as Ivy put aside her sketchbook.
“I’m sure he would tell you if he had,” she said. “What do you say we end afternoon lessons with a game? Please, anything but a sack race. And nothing to do with beheadings.”
“How about hide-and-seek?” Mary cried, and Walker clapped with such enthusiasm that Ivy was forced to conceal her chagrin. There went the remainder of the day, but the children deserved a diversion from their worries. “Fine. But inside the house. I’m not climbing any hills or trees. Wash up first and we shall meet in the entrance hall in twenty minutes.”
* * *
The house provided two hundred or so hiding places where a normal governess wouldn’t think to look. But Ivy hadn’t been the eldest of four sisters for nothing. After she counted down against a marble column, she opened her eyes and spotted her charges careening toward the corridor of the west wing. Several doors slammed as she set off at a leisurely pace.
She passed through the ballroom with no success, and from there to the gold drawing room, so glorious in the waning light that she almost forgot her purpose.
At last, in a darkened anteroom to the music chamber, she closed in on her prey.
A muffled sound rose from the depths of a huge armchair that faced a tapestried alcove. She trod softly across the carpet and swung around to confront the culprits in the chair before they could flee.
“Aha! I’ve caught you fair and square and you’re not getting away from me again!”
James looked up in dark amusement, slouched in the depths of the armchair as if he’d been half-asleep. From his bare left hand dangled one glove. His other hand, encased in the black leather of another, lifted to rest at her side, the pressure it exerted deceptively light. “And why would I want to flee from anyone as fetching as you? Especially when you’ve gone to so much trouble to find me.”
Her shocked brain failed to cobble together a coherent response. She managed to straighten an inch before he reacted. The glove dropped to the floor. The heel of his left hand slid down her spine. The next thing she knew, she lost her balance and landed with her chin buried in his cravat and her hip trapped between his groin and upraised knees.
For a moment neither of them moved. But she wasn’t as light as air. She’d fallen hard and at an off-kilter angle. The chair tipped backward.
She gasped.
“Oh, God,” she heard James mutter before they toppled over in a tangle on the floor. Something hard hit the floor. The back of the chair or what sounded like a large pumpkin.
He made an indecipherable noise. Mortified at their undignified descent, she hoisted herself up to examine the man she had imprisoned. It seemed that strange paroxysms gripped his strong frame. Had he been dealt a blow to the head?
“Are you conscious, Your Grace?”
Alarmed by his failure to answer, she crawled over his torso to determine whether he was merely winded from the weight of her, or in the throes of a serious affliction. His face lay hidden in the crook of his arm . . . all the better to smother the snorts of silent laughter he evidently could not control.
“You find it amusing to frighten me?” she asked, forgetting her place and gripping a handful of his cravat to—well, she had to force herself to refrain from strangling the rogue.
“Yes.” He turned his head, his eyes warm with triumph. “You lose. I knew you wouldn’t last a week. It was worth a cracked noggin to win.”
She reared back. “What the devil are you talking about?”
He tapped her chin with his gloved fingers. “This is a forbidden act under the terms of our recent agreement.”
She stared down into his sinfully handsome face. “You don’t think for a moment that I came in here looking for you?”
“No?”
“No. No. I was playing hide-and-seek with the children.”
He grinned. His hand stole down her arm, black leather on bare skin. “You can use any excuse you want, darling. My door is always open.”
“Then let me get up and shut it.”
His hand lifted to her chin again. “Let’s renegotiate, shall we?”
“In this position?”
“Not close enough?”
She rocked back on her heels and pressed against the arm of the overturned chair to push onto her feet. There wasn’t time for her to even turn around. In one lithe move, James sprang upright and walked her into the wall.
She stood against the ancient tapestry she’d admired only a minute ago. “You promised me this wouldn’t happen.”
“But you made it happen,” he said, loosening his cravat. “I’m only a man, after all. How can I resist when you throw yourself in my lap? I was almost asleep, and vulnerable to your wiles.”
“My wiles, indeed.”
“You’re full of them.”
She pursed her lips. “Are you accusing me of attacking you?”
“That’s what it felt like. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I just wanted to keep our facts straight.”
“If it didn’t count when you caught me falling over one of your dogs,” she said, “then why should this?”
“I came to your rescue. Again. And we weren’t alone. I didn’t throw myself at you in a moment of weakness.”
She could feel a vein throbbing in her temple. Perhaps she was the one who’d hit her head on the floor. “I thought you were Mary and Walker.”
He raised his brow. “Do I look like Mary and Walker?”
“Not in the least.” She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. “And if you don’t believe that I was playing with them, then I suggest we find them together and you will discover the truth.”
The dark intensity in his eyes mesmerized her. A moment later his mouth slanted over hers and Ivy decided she didn’t care if he thought she had broken their pact. He was kissing her again, and she was kissing him back as if it had been months and not days since they’d sworn never to be together again.
She succumbed to his expertise.
He rewarded her surrender with kisses that unwound her like a skein and slowly drove her wild. He bit her neck and blew gently on it to soothe the sting. His hands shaped her breasts and he ground his bod
y against hers until her blood pulsed in need. Her muslin dress proved no hindrance to his quest. She doubted a coat of armor could safeguard her from his talents. And she wished—oh, how wicked of her—she wished for each of them to be standing naked against the other.
“James,” she whispered, one hand hooked around his neck, the other motioning to the scarlet damask couch across the room.
“Hmmm?”
“Why don’t we—” The deep thrust of his tongue inside her mouth made her forget she’d meant to suggest they sit down together. He grasped her bottom in his hands and drew her into the hard ridge of his arousal.
“Why don’t we what?” he asked hoarsely, sucking hard on her lower lip.
“I can’t remember—oh, yes, I can. The couch.”
He lifted his head, his eyes hooded. “Would you like me to carry you to the couch?”
She struggled to recover from his kiss. “It’s either that or we return to decency and go about the rest of our day.”
He shook his head, leaned down to lift her as his answer, then froze.
A peal of children’s laughter chimed from the door of the music room. Ivy smoothed her dress and looked into the duke’s disgruntled face as he straightened.
“She’ll never find us in here,” Walker crowed above the muted sounds of furniture scraping across the wooden floor.
“She will if you knock over that harp,” Mary cried. “And why are you blocking all the doors? How will we get out if we hear her coming?”
Ivy gave James an I-told-you-so stare. He subjected her to a long hard look, put a finger to his lips, and pointed to a second door beside the fireplace. “I’ll go out through the anteroom. You can leave through the main door.”
“But I’m the one who has to catch them,” she whispered.
He brushed a kiss against the back of her neck before he bent to right the overturned chair. “Our pact is broken. We might as well become partners. Between Mary’s penchant for beheadings and Walker’s for building fortresses, we’re liable to need each other as allies in the future.”
She drew away in reluctance, still under the influence of his powerful masculinity. “I believe I can manage the children, Your Grace.”
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