Outrageously Yours (22 page)

She conjured a scowl that rivaled his own best efforts. “Blast you, Simon de Burgh.”

“Can’t say it, can you?” He gave her neckcloth a playful tug, his loins tightening at the notion of pulling the knot free, of undoing the buttons and laces that confined her body. “We have a dilemma, then, don’t we?”

He seized her hand and brought her to sit on one of the benches overlooking the sad excuse for a pond. Leaning close, he blew against the curve of her ear, causing her to tremble and arch her neck in response. Simon gave her earlobe a lick, a nip. The wiggle of her body against him and a soft whimper let him know he’d discovered a thing she particularly liked, a thing that silenced her arguments and left her shivering in his arms.

And that, he discovered, was something
he
particularly liked.

But she cut their enjoyment short with a sudden shove at his chest. “Stop it. I don’t appreciate being rendered helpless.”

Her hand lashed out, and Simon braced for a slap. Instead of striking his cheek, however, her fingers slid into his hair and closed in a less-than-gentle grip. Having effectively anchored him in place, she leaned close and set about ravishing his mouth. The stroke of her tongue sent desire streaking blindly through him.

Above their heads, birds swooped and squawked and darted through the trees. A rustling beneath an old hawthorn hedge revealed the activities of some small creature, a squirrel or rabbit or chipmunk. Simon was struck by how entirely alone they were, so far removed from reproving eyes. His insides heated at the notion of how easily he might blanket the ground with their coats and draw her down beside him. . . .

Astonished at the madcap turn of his thoughts, he pulled up short and broke the kiss. “Ned ...”

He didn’t need to say more. With a horrified gasp she released him, her bruised lips falling open in a pout of dismay. “Oh . . . I . . . Good heavens.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t. I don’t know what came over me....”

Simon’s guilt reared. Gingerly he touched her shoulder, her hair. “It was my fault. Entirely mine.”

“No,” she repeated softly. More forcefully she said, “It was not your fault at all, so do not attempt to steal the culpability that is rightfully mine.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What I just did might be wrong and entirely out of character—which I assure you, it was—but I did it. I shall take responsibility for it.”

Lust motes. That must be the problem. Like dust motes, except that these floated about inside his head and distorted his perceptions. Only that could explain why his attempt to shoulder the blame for their indiscretion seemed to have angered her.

After all, wasn’t assuming the blame what men did? And didn’t women typically let them?

“Ned, see here—”

“That’s it exactly!” He winced at her outburst, but her fervor continued undiminished. “Since coming to Cambridge, I have been Ned. You even persist in calling me Ned. And unlike Ivy, Ned may go where he wishes, say what he wishes,
do
as he wishes....”

She placed her palm against his cheek. “And, however wrong, I did wish to kiss you very much. In that instant, I suppose I forgot that I am not truly Ned.”

She paused as a blush stained her cheeks. The fact that the kiss lasted rather longer than an instant ran through his mind but fortunately didn’t exit from his mouth. Likewise, the idea of her losing herself in her male identity—in that of all instants—was so absurd he nearly burst out in roars of ironic laughter. Luckily he again reined in the impulse.

With a surge of affection that brought an ache to his chest, he raised her hand and kissed it, then held it against his heart. “I call you Ned because that is how I have come to think of you. Beautiful, brilliant, desirable Ned, with your big eyes and your short curls and your endless legs that fill a pair of trousers as no man’s ever could. I call you Ned, and too often think of you as
my
Ned, but not for a single moment have I forgotten that you are a woman. All woman.”

She said nothing, but the light that entered her eyes made him inordinately glad he’d made that confession. Butterfly’s soft nickering reminded him that they must return to the house, that they dared not linger in this secluded place any longer. He brushed his lips lightly across hers for a final taste. “If we are doling out blame, I am afraid we’ll each have to accept our share.”

“That I can live with,” she said with a smile. “It is the thought of being passive, of being kissed against my wishes, that I find degrading in a way I cannot abide. At least I can say I played an active part in my disgrace.” She wrinkled her adorable nose. “Does that make sense?”

He shook his head. “Not a bit. Nothing in this past week makes a lick of sense.”

“I know.” She laughed. “It’s been the most extraordinary week of my life.”

“Mine, too, Ned. Mine, too.”

H
aving arrived back at Harrowood after her extraordinary ride with Simon only minutes ago, Ivy stole out to the iron garden table beyond the library to read the letter from her sister.

The opening paragraphs assured her that Holly and Willow both presently enjoyed good health, although Willow had suffered a bit of a cold the previous week. Of late their book emporium had seen a brisk business, a fortunate circumstance that nonetheless made Ivy cringe when she thought of either of her younger sisters attempting to balance the books. Of the Sutherland sisters, Ivy alone possessed an aptitude for numbers.

While the Eddelsons continued to see to their needs, the couple was becoming increasingly out of sorts the longer Ivy stayed away from home. Holly feared they’d soon become suspicious of Ivy’s story of having gone down to Thorn Grove at their cousin’s request to sort through more of Uncle Edward’s belongings.

And that brought Holly to a matter that, as she put it, weighed most heavily on her mind. A letter had arrived from Laurel imploring her three sisters to stay close to home, and if they did stray beyond William Street, to please do so only in Mr. Eddelson’s company.

Ivy glanced out over Harrowood’s gardens. “Oh, dear.”

“Oh, dear, what?”

Simon’s query made her jump. “I didn’t hear you come out.”

“No, you were too absorbed in your letter. Not bad news, I hope?”

He strolled to the table and placed his hands on the back of a chair. With the removal of his coat and the absence of his neckcloth, he might have been hard at work in his laboratory. Except that he wasn’t. Here in this very public part of the manor, where a servant might happen by, Simon’s dishabille seemed uncommonly—her breath caught—intimate.

Yet it wasn’t his attire, really, that sank a weight of awareness in her belly; it was the memory of their stolen kisses at the Grecian folly, and of passing last night in his bed, in his arms.

Oh, one could construe Laurel’s warnings any number of ways, but Simon’s broad-shouldered stance, with his sleeves pushed up to display muscled forearms and his lack of coat allowing full view of his taut waist and lean hips, had Ivy agreeing that leaving home had indeed plunged her into danger.

To his question, she gave a quick shake of her head. “No. That is . . . I’m not quite certain. Holly and Willow are fine, but Laurel has sent a rather cryptic and ominous caution from France.”

Simon circled the table and sat beside her. “What danger could come all the way from France? There isn’t another war brewing, is there?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s all rather perplexing. She says we should stay close to home and await her return. There is a postscript from her husband advising us that the very best course would be for us to take up residence in his London town house.”

“One can only imagine how they would react if they learned of your present abode.”

She quirked a corner of her mouth. “They’d be aghast. But it is my choice to be here.”

Just as it had been her choice to share his bed last night, and to kiss him today. Wrong? Perhaps, though she didn’t feel wicked or out of control. She felt . . . more like a traveler setting out to explore a new country. Whether that country would yield treasures or wreckage had yet to be determined, but she would not be deterred by obscure warnings from hundreds of miles away.

“Laurel has made her decisions,” she said with conviction, “and I happen to know that at times she has knowingly placed herself in danger. That was her right, just as it is mine now to continue my mission for Victoria, no matter the risks.”

“As it was your right to break with propriety earlier?” With his fingertips he lightly stroked the back of her hand.

His touch trailed fire across her skin and sent a shiver up her arm. “Not quite like that, no,” she lied. “What I said was that it was my right to take responsibility for my actions.”

She didn’t quite know why speaking so blatantly about their earlier encounter made her retreat into the shelter of decorum. A remnant of her old self? Or a reaction to the regret peering out at her from behind his pale eyes, a sentiment that shook her confidence and left her suddenly confused.

She resorted to the ladylike tactic of raising her nose in the air. “Those were actions I should take pains not to repeat.”

“
Will
it pain you, Ivy?”

Her heart stumbled. “You called me Ivy.”

His smile continued to hold a haunting trace of remorse. “It
is
your name.”

“Yes, but ...”

At the folly, he had explained all that
Ned
had come to mean to him, every word of it a precious gift. Was that gift to be taken away so soon? Was she to be Ivy again—banned from university, from the laboratory, from the glorious new life she’d found?

As Ivy, she must give it all up, and she must leave Harrowood immediately. Yet as Ivy, as a woman, she might be free to love . . . love a man like Simon de Burgh.

“You must decide,” he said softly. “Is it to be Ivy or Ned?”

Holding the letter to her bosom, she pressed to her feet and went to lean against the stone balustrade. She stared out at the gardens, at the fountain’s arching streams glittering in the sunlight. “I wish it could be both.”

Behind her she heard the scrape of his chair, the clipped rhythm of his footsteps over the paving stones. For one fleeting instant the heat of his hand hovered at her nape. “We both know that we cannot have things both ways. Stop appealing to thin air. Take responsibility and decide.”

Sudden anger welled up inside her. How dare he speak of responsibility when he so clearly wanted her and at the same time
didn’t
want her; when he allowed himself to be a prisoner of his own indecision rather than the master of his desires? A sudden urge to slap sense into him swung her around. Yet the instant she beheld his handsome face, his earnest expression, she wanted to kiss him, too.

Oh, she was no better at commanding her life than he. She wanted her freedom . . . and she wanted
him
. Society would never allow her to have both. As a wife she might, with a husband’s permission, dabble in the laboratory, but there could never be any hint of such activities beyond the walls of their home. A woman scientist would be an oddity to be snickered at; her husband would be considered a fool.

She turned back to the gardens. “Let it be Ned, then.”

He came to stand beside her at the rail. “As you wish.”

The breeze fluttered the edges of the letter. Simon took it from her and scanned the page. “Your sister’s warning concerns me. Does she give no specifics about why you should exercise caution?”

“Look toward the bottom. She alludes to a disturbing incident in Bath and promises to tell us more when she arrives home.”

Simon held the letter at arm’s length, and Ivy realized that without his spectacles he had trouble reading the script. “This man she warns of. Henri de Vere. Do you know him?”

“I’ve never heard of him before. She claims he has some connection to our family, but I don’t see how. We have no French relatives that I know of.” Ivy shrugged. “Laurel never mentioned a word of any of this when she came home from Bath, and if she did act a bit peculiar at times, the rest us of believed it to be the result of her sudden engagement. Honestly, if she has concerns, she should share them and stop hedging. Puzzles I enjoy. Guessing games I do not.”

She tapped her fingers on the rail as she thought back on the past several months. “This does perhaps explain the Eddelsons.”

“The whom?”

“The couple that lives with us and sees to our needs. My brother-in-law hired them. They are not what one would expect of a housekeeper and a man-of-all-work.”

Turning toward her, Simon leaned against the rail. “How so?”

“Oh, they’ve been unfailingly sweet to us, but on one occasion
Mr.
Eddelson bloodied a man’s nose for nearly bumping Willow into the path of a delivery wagon, and
Mrs.
Eddelson has a singular talent for knife throwing.”

His eyebrows surged. “Obviously your sister has neglected to convey some pertinent information.”

“Obviously.”

“Are you going to let her know where you are?”

“Certainly not. She’d order me home immediately.”

“I’m not altogether convinced you shouldn’t go.”

Ivy didn’t like the look on his face. She’d seen it before, on Uncle Edward, and on Laurel’s husband, Aidan. It was the universal expression of a man about to make decisions for the women in his life, neither consulting those women nor gaining their consent.

“If anything,” she said quickly, “I should be safest here. No one but Holly, Willow, and the queen have any idea that I’m not in Surrey visiting our childhood home.”

“Hmm. Perhaps you’re right.”

“I am.”

“I suppose I’ll have to keep an extra-close eye on you from now on.”

Ivy scowled. “I am not a child.”