I stopped by the window, looking out over the street. Silas was right, but I didn’t know that it made a difference. Ivy had made a decision, and even though it would kill me, I loved her enough to abide by it.
“Listen to me,” Silas said, standing to join me. “This is not her saying that she doesn’t love you. This is her saying that she’s scared to.”
“I know all this. But I can’t force her to see that.”
“Who said anything about forcing?” He turned and leaned back against the windowsill so that he was facing me. “Look, I’m just saying that you show her that you are still here, ready and waiting for her if she changes her mind. Show her that your devotion is unabated and that it can actually survive if you two aren’t constantly fucking.”
I frowned. “I don’t like the idea of hovering around, being a menace. She wanted space away from me. Trying to insert myself into her social life to prove that I love her seems like the opposite of what she wants.”
Silas held up his hands. “I’m not talking about stalking her every move. You have standing invitations to most of the places she’s going to, correct? Go there in your own capacity, socialize with your own acquaintances. If she’s there, then ask her if you can dance with her, dine with her, speak with her. Let her know that it’s not a promise, it’s not a contract. It is just your time and company, with no strings attached. If she says no, then you have your answer. But she may say yes.”
“But she may say no.” But then I remembered something just then, something she said when she had left Markham Hall.
I’m not using our signal…
She hadn’t three weeks ago either. And even though that may have been an oversight, I realized that we were still within the boundaries we had set with each other this summer. I was still her teacher, she was still my pupil.
She was still mine.
I lifted my head. Christ, why hadn’t this occurred to me before? I had made it clear that until she had spoken it, our word, then I was free to do with her as I pleased.
This realization must have shown on my face, because Silas smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit! After all, what do you have to lose?”
If I had ever regretted not having a proper debut in town, I didn’t now. The last three weeks had been a flurry of afternoon teas, dinner parties that lasted well past midnight, and balls that lasted even longer than that. Not to mention the dress fittings, visits to the haberdasher and milliner and the endless hours I spent being prodded and primped by Esther’s staff of capable maids.
I’d tried to beg off. I was tired, I wasn’t feeling well, and I could barely hold a conversation longer than five minutes. But Esther was a formidable opponent, either ignoring my complaints or arguing with them until I was worn down—which admittedly wasn’t difficult. I’d felt so bled dry after ending the engagement, as if severing myself from Mr. Markham had in turn severed something essential in me. I was a machine that no longer worked properly, a watch without cogs, a compass without a magnet. Esther moved me from place to place and changed me from dress to dress like I was a doll, and I let her, because inside I felt just as vacant and inanimate.
When I had seen Silas two nights since, I had almost wept with relief. Talking to someone who knew Mr. Markham, who would see him again, who reminded me so much of him—it was cathartic. And awful. And wonderful.
So now, at whatever terrible ball Esther had brought me to tonight, I felt a similar feeling of relief and excitement when I saw Silas across the room, bracketed by the blond pillars of beauty that were Rhoda and Zona.
“…Which is precisely why Oxford is making a mistake letting the women in to study.” I realized the speaker of this sentence was talking to me, one of the foppish young men that seemed all to eager to seize onto Esther’s introductions. They seemed so soft—all striped pants and coiffed mustaches. The kind of men who, when married, would roll on top of their wives once a month and blindly poke for less than a minute before squirting and then falling asleep. My lip curled a little. These men were so unlike my Julian had been. I would never marry one.
Mustache mistook my expression as sympathetic disgust for his chosen conversational topic. “Exactly! You seem a reasonable woman, Miss Leavold. The fairer sex does not have the strength for that kind of rigorous study.” His chest swelled. “That is of course, why they should be shepherded into the care of a husband directly after leaving home. To leave home for school and then spend several unmarried years studying…it seems like such a dangerous undertaking.”
My eyes were following Silas from across the room. I had to go to him, I had to know if he had spoken to Mr. Markham since the other night. I was so hungry for any mention of him, even just his name would be a kind of psychic salve.
“Girls do it for boarding school, do they not?” I asked Mustache politely, my gaze still on Silas.
He smiled at me as if I were simple. “But a boarding school is not in such close proximity to a boys’ school, Miss Leavold. The collegiate scholars will all be on the same campus—it seems a risky proposition.”
“For what? For a girl’s virginity?”
Oh, if Thomas could see me now. He’d always hated how direct and tactless I could be with my words, and I could tell by Mustache’s slack jaw that I’d really outdone myself. Nobody ever even alluded to such things in polite company. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about Mustache’s good impression or the good impression of anyone in this room. I just wanted to find Silas and fill my empty heart with crusts of memories and stale news.
“Miss Leavold—” Mustache stammered.
“Excuse me,” I said, leaving him to be shocked alone.
But when I pushed my way past a cluster of guests, expecting to see Silas on the other side, I found that someone else had come to the ball. Someone else stood, leaning against the wall, talking to Silas and the women and another clump of people I didn’t know.
His black evening jacket stretched across his broad shoulders, narrowing into tails that highlighted the slender torque of his waist. The matching trousers clung temptingly to his thighs, and his long fingers twitched at his sides—the only sign of restlessness that I could detect. His posture was easy, and I could hear his laugh booming across the floor—a sound that made my heart flip not once, but twice.
He hadn’t seen me, not yet, and while I should have been able to think rationally through this, I could not. All I could think about was getting away, fleeing for cover.
I backed up, eyes only on Mr. Markham, bumped into a matron and her half-blind husband, and then turned and fairly ran for the door. There was a terrace here, I knew, a small paved area that led out into a pleasant cluster of trees and flowers, and I needed to be outside. I needed to breathe.
Outside, the September air was cool and moist, a light fog rolling in from the river to fill in alleys and niches and the hidden spaces in between trees. There was hardly anyone out here, just a handful of women fanning themselves after an exerting dance and a couple trying to steal a moment away from their chaperones.
Mr. Markham was here. Here. With me.
But not for me. I chewed on my lip. He hadn’t come and found me, he hadn’t written ahead of time to tell me he was going to be present. In fact, it seemed almost as if he had just come to be with his friends. Had he?
Why was I so disappointed at that thought? I had been the one to walk away, to claim that we needed separate lives. So could I really be upset that he was indeed living a separate life?
Yes, I thought fiercely. Yes, because I had spent the last three weeks in torment, in agony, and it looked like he had barely thought of me at all.
Yes, because even though I kept telling myself I had done the right thing, the safe thing, I wasn’t sure that I had. In fact, I had the unnerving suspicion that I hadn’t done the right thing, for myself or for him.
But what could I do? How could I make myself feel okay with what he was—with what I was? No. As always, it was easier to run. Ea
sier to hide. And now I wanted to run from here altogether. I would find Esther and demand to go home, and then I would force myself to sleep and to forget that I had seen his face once again.
I turned to go back into the silk and noise of the ballroom, but there was someone in my way. Someone tall and lean and with green eyes that glowed like northern lights in the dark.
My breath left me at the same time a jolt of want shot through me, making my cunt pulse. My body knew what it wanted, my body had no reservations. It wanted to be taken roughly in hand, kneaded and licked and fucked. And just the thought of it drove out all other thoughts.
“Miss Leavold,” he said, inclining his head. His voice was formal and distant. I cringed inwardly at the sound of it, hating that we had this new distance between us.
“Mr. Markham,” I whispered.
“I wanted to know if I could claim a slot on your dance card tonight, if it’s not already filled.”
The question was so unexpected and also so politely placed, so within the bounds of normal etiquette, that it took my mind a minute to catch up. Mr. Markham and I had never conducted our interactions within the bounds of etiquette. Ever. And he wanted to dance with me? I hated how pitifully happy the thought made me.
“I don’t dance,” I said.
“I’ve heard.”
He stepped forward into a pool of lantern light, and I could see that the boutonniere pinned to his jacket was none other than a sprig of bluebells. I sucked in a breath. Bluebell was our signal, the word I would use when I needed space from him. And at that moment, I realized I hadn’t used it when I’d ended our engagement. I hadn’t even thought to.
As if reading my mind, he said, “You never spoke our signal, Ivy. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said breathlessly.
“Would you like to say it now?”
My body hummed at the closeness to his while my mind reeled with the same thoughts that had been reeling for weeks. I should say it. I should deploy the one thing I knew that he would respect. He wouldn’t follow me then, and I’d never be at risk of marrying Mr. Markham again.
But I was so tired of missing him. I was so tired of running away from it all.
“No,” I said softly. “I don’t want to say it.”
Even in the dark, I could see Mr. Markham’s wide smile. I expected him to grab me, to kiss me, maybe even to fuck me right here in this garden, but instead he only asked, “So may I have that dance after all?”
Holding Ivy in my arms was the most delicious kind of torture. I was determined to show her my restraint, my decorum, my tenderness, but it was nearly impossible when I could feel the slope of her back through her corset, when her slender fingers were circled tightly around mine. All I wanted was to press against her and to feel every curve of hers pressing back. I wanted to nibble and suck every inch of exposed flesh from her temple to her collarbone, and I wanted to kiss the delicate spot where her pulse flickered on her neck, kiss it until she could feel my kisses coursing in her veins along with her blood. I wanted to kneel at her feet and kiss my way up to her perfect pussy.
I wanted to worship her in every way she deserved to be worshipped.
That wasn’t all, though. We were not one of those quotidian couples that could be satisfied by kisses and caresses; even if I could restrain myself from my darkest impulses, without them, Ivy would wilt and fade. She would drift away from me and from us, and if I won her back, I would not allow that to happen. If I won her back…the thought fed on itself, unfolding into entire scenes in my mind. She would have to be punished, I decided. Punished for breaking my heart and even more so for breaking her own heart, a heart that was still trusted to my keeping and instruction. It wasn’t hers to do with as she wanted, it was mine, and I would show her that with every hot inch of myself stroking the inside of her ass. Or perhaps with my palm hitting her flank over and over again. Or perhaps I would bind her hands and feet with rope, make her watch as I lazily pumped myself to an orgasm she wouldn’t be able to touch or taste.
Yes. I wanted to worship her the way she deserved, but she also deserved punishment, my recalcitrant wildcat, and if I brought her back to me, I would score her with every bite mark and handprint she deserved.
But she deserves this too, I reminded myself. She deserved to be courted. She deserved to be flattered and pampered and wooed and I had done none of those things at Markham Hall. I’d been so obsessed with protecting her from myself, and then when that became an impossibility, I’d lost any sense of control or boundaries. I lost everything to find her, and for a while it was perfect.
Perfect things never last.
We met and came apart and then met again, spinning wide circles on the floor. Ivy was unfamiliar with most of the dances since her worthless brother had never bothered to make sure that she had a proper upbringing, but I found I was resenting him less and less for that. For one thing, I didn’t give a fuck if Ivy could dance or embroider or play an instrument. For another, her brother’s neglect had allowed her to grow up unspoiled by the shallow pretensions of society. She had just grown up as her. She was all the more Ivy because it had only been her and her moldering library and her sea cliffs and her trees, and the thought of her any other way brought me acute pain.
She looked up at me then. “I’m sorry I have to fumble my way through the steps,” she apologized. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”
She was thanking me for letting me hold her again? Fuck. I didn’t deserve that.
I didn’t deserve her. Even outside of the awful things I’ve done, I still couldn’t reach her level of existence. She’s something rare, the kind of girl you read about in books or fairy tales. Ivy Leavold belongs in a primeval forest somewhere, shrouded in fog, face painted with woad, with ritual fires and otherworldly spirits glinting around her. Even here in this ballroom, she is so obviously other and apart from these two-dimensional Londoners that they cannot keep their eyes off her. Does she notice, I wonder, how they watch her every move? How every smile and step is followed by a hundred stares?
They were trying to figure it out. What was it that set her so above the other ladies present? She was quite pretty, of course, but there were other pretty women here. She had darker coloring than most English girls, but in London there were enough visitors from the Continent to erase the novelty of that. Though she didn’t speak often, when she did speak, what she said was arresting and intelligent, if sometimes unsettlingly direct…but again, she wasn’t the only intelligent woman in the room. No, it was something too ephemeral to name, an unfamiliar quality that these carp hardly ever saw in their fetid pool of dances and luncheons. It had taken me weeks to realize it, and I’d had the advantage of months alone with her.
Ivy wasn’t tame. She was here dressed in the same clothes, wearing the same manners as everybody else, but they no more hid her true nature than the bars of a zoo cage. And the same way that people were drawn to the tigers stalking agitated circles in their pens, they were drawn to Ivy. Women wanted to be her, men wanted to domesticate her, and everybody was fascinated by her.
Mine.
My grip tightened on her momentarily and then I forced myself to relax. No, I was not going to win her back that way. I couldn’t stay away from her, but I could also give her space and time. This had to be her decision. She had to want to come back to me. And I would honor whatever decision she ultimately made. Because while it frustrated me that she wasn’t soft and pliable like every other girl I’d been with, that was what I loved about her. Her strength. Her wildness.
And I was foolish enough to believe that maybe I could have them both—her love and her unbroken nature.
“May I visit you at your aunt’s house?” I murmured in her ear.
She flushed, whether from the proximity of my mouth or from the memory of what we had done in her aunt’s front room, I didn’t know. “Yes,” she said. “You may visit.”
God, she looked so delicious right now. Even with the circles un
der her eyes, even with the frame that I could tell had grown thinner since she’d left our home.
I wanted to make her better. I wanted to heal her.
I also wanted to fuck her ass until she begged for forgiveness.
But. Restraint.
“I’d also like to extend an invitation. The Baron is having a party this week, and I think it would be lovely if you joined me.”
She met my eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Is this the infamous Baron that Molly and Silas went to visit this summer?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “What will the party be like?”
I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell her that it would be safe and sedate. But I had decided to invite her because it was precisely the opposite of those things. Because while it was important for me to show her that I would respect her need for physical and emotional space, it was just as important that I show her who she really was. She was like me. And like me, she wouldn’t be happy until she accepted that part of her.
“It will be wild,” I told her. “It will be debauched. And it will make anything you’ve seen at Markham Hall seem very proper in comparison.”
There. I saw it before it vanished—the faint wave of arousal at the very thought. Her pupils had dilated and her lips had parted. “I…do I have to participate if I go?”
“Not at all. You may merely enjoy the spectacle if you’d like.”
“Will your friends be there?”
“Yes.”
She bit her lip. “I’ll think about it.”
I withdrew a scarlet envelope from my jacket and pressed it into her hand. “There’s no obligation to go. But if you choose to, simply present this at the door and you’ll be allowed in. The address and time and dress code are specified inside.”
Irritation colored her face. She didn’t like rules or constraints. Unless of course, I was the one constraining her. My cock stiffened at the memory of knotting her wrists with my tie. One day, I’d like to blindfold her again. Yes, one day soon. The anticipation made me grow even harder. I needed to go soon before I ended up fucking her right here on the dance floor.
The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) Page 3