Chapter 21
Owen was lounging in the chair like any leisurely lord, his shirt open at the neck and his hair mussed, one big, calloused finger sliding up and down the side of his glass in a way that made her warm and itchy.
She was grateful he was not still in love with Heidi—only because it would make their ruse more complicated if he were—but she did not like that he would not let her in deeper, that he was still treating her as her brothers did.
So she said something that she thought would shock him into considering her an equal. She had not counted on his reaction.
Owen’s finger stilled and his eyes cut to hers, suddenly so blazing that her cheeks felt scorched. The atmosphere in the room thickened, and his voice lowered, brushing against her nerves like black satin. “I knew you had kissed a man before, but have you also had love affairs, Sunshine?”
The question sounded dangerous, as if there was a right and wrong answer, but she did not know which.
She swallowed and lifted her chin. He did not need to know she had only experienced a few tepid meetings of lips.
All that mattered was that she broke down this barrier of civility between them.
She did not know why she felt the need to throw herself against it, only that she sensed it was the key to getting to know the real Owen. “If I share, will you?”
“This is not a school game.” He stood, and she knew by the look on his face that whatever pain he felt from the motion was the farthest thing from his mind. She started to rise as well, but he shook his head, rounded the table, and crouched in front of her, bringing his face eye level with hers.
“Wha—what are you doing? You will hurt yourself.” Her face flushed at the image he made. His muscled body was so large and hot that she could feel the heat radiating from him as he practically knelt at her feet, and his green eyes were so piercing that she physically could not look away.
“We need to get one thing straight before we continue with this charade. You are a good girl, and I am a bad man. We will not be discussing affairs, relationships, or lovers again.”
She could smell the tea on his breath, pleasant and light, and her eyes fell to his mouth. He was so close that she could lift her hand and trace those firm, scowling lips if she wanted to. What would he do if she touched him like that?
“Do. Not. Even. Think about it.”
“What?”
“Whatever just made your eyes go hazy. Remember, you want Lord Hartford as your husband, not me. Does your brother know about these men?”
“The men I have kissed? Probably as much as I know about the women he has kissed.”
His hand wrapped around the leather ankle of her boot, and even through the material she felt the heat of his palm and the gentle yet firm feeling of being trapped by someone much larger.
“Do not talk to me about the men you have kissed. Not unless you want every single one of them to be erased from your memory.”
She did not know what possessed her to blurt, “I wonder if Lord Hartford is up to the task.”
“Now that is just mean, darling.” His thumb slipped beneath the hem of her gown to stroke over the leather. “No one kisses what is mine, not even Hartford—not until he has asked for your hand. And until he does, and as long as we are in this ruse together, you are mine.”
“Does that mean you are mine as well?”
The question was so soft she was not sure he heard it, until he leaned forward a fraction and breathed, “Entirely.”
Before she could think of a response, there was a knock at the door.
Her eyes met his unamused gaze. He had crouched at her feet in order to make his point, like she was an unruly child, and his hand was still underneath her dress and wrapped around her ankle.
It looked entirely, completely scandalous, and it would definitely count as a compromising situation if they were caught.
“Give me a moment!” he shouted as he stood, his jaw clenching from the pain in his shoulder. He rounded the table and sat again, lifting one of the gossip rags and setting it on his lap as if to appear he was reading it.
A moment later the door swung open and Barnes appeared. “I hope you are decent because I do not want to see your bare ar—Ivy! Why is the door closed? I assumed you had left already.” He looked suspiciously between them.
Ivy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and as casually as she could manage said, “The wind shut it. What are you doing here?”
He held up a letter with an all-too-familiar crest. “Father wants to meet with Brackley.”
Anger caused a flush to rise beneath her skin. Her father wished to meet the viscount, but he had not once expressed a desire to see her after he had been removed from the house. “That is a waste of time, as this courtship is a facade.”
“I know, and I shall put him off for as long as I can, but you know father. He is nasty in his persistence.” He narrowed his gaze on Owen. “Do you know that Ivy has a very small dowry? She would not be able to contribute much to an estate.”
Ivy’s cheeks heated further, but for a different reason.
Owen’s expression went flat. “Careful, or one might think you are disparaging your sister.”
“Pardon me?”
“Your sister has far more to contribute to a marriage than a dowry, which no matter how large it was, would never equate her worth.”
Ivy was not sure if she was more stunned by the compliment or Barnes’s lack of rejoinder. Instead of his usual cut, Barnes looked at Owen with a strange expression on his face.
“I tire.” Owen stared pointedly at Barnes, who gave a jerky nod and held out his hand for her.
Since she needed fresh air anyway, she took it. Before she left the room, she glanced down at the gossip rags and said, “Enjoy your gossip, my lord.”
The look he gave her at deliberately using his proper form of address was dark and filled with promise.
Over the next two days, Ivy asked Owen unassuming questions so that she would not spark his suspicion.
“When did you know you wanted to work with horses?” was met with, “Always.” And then after some glaring on her part he grudgingly told her how his love for the beasts had angered his father on more than one occasion.
“He wanted his heir to be an aristocrat in every sense of the word: a lord who would show up in ballrooms with exquisitely tailored clothing and glossy compliments on his tongue; a lord who would be invited to all the most prestigious events and bring honor to the title. He did not care about the details of financing that lifestyle, or anything else that remotely smelled like work.”
His gruff admission had held more than a tint of bitterness, so Ivy had steered to the topic of his sisters soon visiting.
The next afternoon, after the girls had left Owen exhausted and slumped in his chair, his eyes half open in the slanting sunlight, Ivy had asked him about his time at Harrow.
“It was fine,” he had said, and no matter how much she had cajoled, he had had nothing more to say on the topic.
So much for determining what had caused the rift between him and Barnes.
The day after that Ivy slipped into Owen’s chamber and found him pacing in front of the lit fireplace, the warm glow giving his pristine shirtsleeves an orange hue.
There had been a frost on the ground that morning, and the crackling flames were welcome in the drafty, ill-kept house.
His short hair was curly and tousled as if he had been outdoors, even though she knew he had not, and he was driving everyone mad with his bad temper over it.
His boots squeaked on the hardwood as he paced back and forth, back and forth.
“You should not be standing,” she admonished as she closed the door behind her.
“There you are!” he snapped, spinning around. His eyes were restless and hungry. “I have been cooped up indoors all day with nary a person of interest to visit.”
“You have seen the nurse, the valet, and your business manager—and those are only the people I know of.”
“Exactly.”
“I am not your personal entertainment,” she said, staying by the door. He seemed in a dangerous, reckless mood that afternoon.
It was the wrong thing to say, because his eyes flared and made a languorous perusal of her, from the tips of her boots to the top of her head. Ivy’s breath left her lungs with a stutter of air. “If the circumstances were different, you would keep me entertained quite nicely.”
Ivy shook off the touch of his voice, determined not to let him know how he affected her. “But circumstances are not different.”
“They are not,” he agreed. He made a noise of frustration and threw himself into the chair. “I cannot take this confinement any longer. I have to leave this room.”
“Let me distract you.” She edged toward the seat beside him. “With a question.”
He flapped his hand. “Fine.”
“When you were in Prussia, how often did you visit England?” She asked the question as casually as she could manage, trying to arrange her features into a bored, uncaring expression even as her heart flailed against her rib cage.
“On occasion.”
That was not going to be enough to satisfy the Dove, so she pressed. “You never visited Brackley Estate?”
“And voluntarily see my father? No. Whenever I returned for business, it was mostly contained to London.”
“When was the last time you went to London?”
He gave her strange look. “Two years ago. Donnelley deals with most of our English business, and that freed me to focus on the horses. Very occasionally I was needed in person. Two years ago, we had a particularly large request from the Duke of Houndsbury, who wished to outfit his entire stables with the best horseflesh money could buy, and he would only deal with me directly. Why exactly are you asking, Sunshine?”