Chapter 23
Ivy watched Odette and Opal fence and called out pointers, but her mind was in London with the Dove.
She had written to her explaining that in the past two years, Owen had only visited England once to broker a deal with the Duke of Houndsbury.
The Dove had written back that she would corroborate Owen’s story with other sources, and expressed equal confusion over the number of reports that had claimed to spot him in London on multiple other occasions.
Whether he is responsible for the hysteria or not, I still have reason to believe there is a connection to Lord Brackley that we have yet to uncover.
Keep a close eye on the viscount, and be extraordinarily careful, Miss Bennett.
Until we know what his part is in all this, we must continue to tread lightly.
~The Dove
Ivy was worrying her lip when a cold voice cut through the air. “What the bloody hell is going on here?”
Odette and Opal froze, their jaws unhinging, and everyone turned in dreamlike horror to find the viscount atop his horse, his jaw shadowed and tense, his eyes taking in the scene with a flat expression.
Oh, no.
“I… I…” Ivy glanced at the girls, who were staring at her with wide, blue eyes. For once, even Diane was subdued as she reached for Ivy’s hand and squeezed.
“Miss Wixby, please collect the wooden swords and take the girls inside. I need to have a word with Miss Bennett.”
Diane opened her mouth to protest, but Ivy shook her head. The girls hurried to collect the swords and the real fencing foil Ivy had discovered in a dusty closet. Then, with guilty and worried looks, they followed Diane out of the woods like a line of chastened ducklings.
Owen swung down from his horse and stalked toward her, his advance slow and silky. Ivy held her ground even though it felt like a large, wild cat was approaching her. “Prayer circle?” His voice was deep and soft.
He came so close that she had to tilt her chin to keep eye contact. There was no point in answering: He already knew she had lied to him.
“Tell me one thing, Miss Bennett.”
It did not seem a good sign that he was back to calling her Miss Bennett.
“The night the highwayman shot me and I swore I saw you knock him to the ground, you told me I was feverish and hallucinating. But I was not hallucinating, was I?”
“No,” she said through numb lips. Oh, heavens, she was in deep trouble.
Little girls were supposed to be taught decorum and how to pour tea and balance guest lists.
Their governesses were most certainly not allowed to teach them the best way to strike a person in the face, especially when said little girls were sisters of a viscount.
Ivy’s father had made the difference between the sexes clear when he had forbidden her brothers from playing with her.
She knew she had been taking a risk teaching the girls self-defense, but she had not truly thought she would be caught.
Her arrogance, in hindsight, made her burn with misery.
She should have been more careful, more mindful of Owen’s habits.
She knew he liked to be outdoors and that it was a possibility he would one day run across them, only she had still thought he was in his sickroom.
She did not believe for a moment he would punish the girls, but it was possible he would call off their charade or dismiss Diane.
Ivy’s actions did not affect only her. She had positioned her charges and her dearest friend directly in the viscount’s warpath with her actions.
Owen prowled around her, his eyes burning into the side of her face, until he stood at her back, and her pulse was in her throat. “What have you been teaching them?”
Ivy did not turn around. It was easier to admit to her sins this way. “Fencing and self-defense maneuvers.”
She could have sworn she felt his breath stir the hair on her nape, but she stared ahead at a half-bare maple and tried to slow her heartbeat.
“Why?”
“They need to know how to defend themselves, my lord. Men like to tell women it is unnecessary, but it is so often men that women need protection from.”
That was definitely his breath she felt on her skin now.
Goose bumps raced across her shoulders, which the gaping shawl had exposed to the air.
She had meant to snatch her cloak before she went outdoors, but she had spotted little Ollie tugging a wooden sword across the grass through Owen’s window, and had hurried out to help her conceal it before she could be caught.
“What did I tell you about calling me ‘my lord’?”
“You just called me Miss Bennett.”
“Hmm.”
The wind buffeted around them in cool contrast to his heat at her back.
She sensed something dangerous in him, something raw and not quite bridled.
She had sensed it a few times before, but never in the wilds of the woods, with the October wind tunneling through trees and leaves whipping around their ankles.
Here, it felt right. Something tense and delicious pulled her taut despite her worry.
“Are you angry?”
“That you lied to me about what happened with the highwayman? Yes.”
She shivered. “No, are you angry about what I have been teaching your sisters.”
He stepped closer, his coat brushing the back of her shawl. “Am I angry that you have been teaching my defenseless sisters how to protect themselves from cads and thugs?”
She peered over her shoulder and up at him. He was staring down at her, the green of his eyes almost swallowed by his pupils. “No, Ivy,” he said softly. “I am not angry about that.”
Some of the tension eased from her body, even as she frowned a little, because he was most certainly riled. Was he truly so upset that she had lied about what happened with the highwayman?
“Do you know how that memory has haunted me?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
His hand drifted down, skimming her hip.
Accidentally? On purpose? “I watched you disarm the highwayman, so adept and sharp and skilled, like a warrior princess, and I burned for that version of you. My only comfort was that it was a hallucination. Although I lusted for that woman, she was but a figment of my imagination. A fantasy. Now that I know it was not a hallucination, I find myself in the untenable situation of realizing I was not lusting after a figment of my imagination, but you. The real you. That is a problem, would you not say?”
Before she could reply, her heart hammering in her chest and her mouth dry, he added, “I am not angry about the lessons, Ivy. I am angry to discover how much I have desired a version of you that appears to be all too real. This is a pretend arrangement, darling, and there are certain lines that must not be crossed, even in my fantasies and dreams.”
“Right,” she breathed, facing the maple again and swaying back just enough to feel him against her shoulder blades.
He had fantasized about her? About the real her, not the version she presented to society?
It seemed so unfathomable, so unlikely, and yet he had freely admitted to it.
Her blood roared through her veins and her skin prickled.
He had called her darling.
“Right,” he repeated. “The way I see it, we have two choices. The first choice is I climb back onto my horse and we keep this faux courtship entirely proper. I take you to London and present you to Lord Hartford, and we remain courteous and distant. I wrestle my desires back into the depths of my soul.”
“What is the second choice?”
“The second choice is you let me kiss you, my own Athena.” His voice lowered, and he bent his head so that his lips brushed her ear. “One time. You let me put a taste to the vision in my head. You let me command you, you who commands so many of my dreams and waking hours.”
Her knees went uncharacteristically weak. How was it possible that he desired her? He had made it abundantly clear that this was nothing more than a charade.
But then Ivy recalled the way he had crouched at her feet in his sickroom, and how he had held her waist outside the library.
She remembered the countless times she had felt the heat of his gaze and heard the slight possessiveness of his words, and she wondered if perhaps the viscount had been saying one thing all along, while his actions had been saying something else.
He pulled back a few inches. “It is entirely your decision.”
She knew what she should choose and that he would not fault her for it, but when she opened her mouth she blurted, “I choose both.”
“Both?”
“Both. I want to continue the charade and have you kiss me. You can make kissing lesson number four. The truth is that I have not had as many love affairs as I implied earlier.”
“Not as many?”
She huffed. “I have kissed but a few men, and I want to learn how to do it better. You could teach me.”
Her first kiss had been with a boy whose lips were stiff and unyielding, his tongue poking through her tight mouth like a worm. She had written to Diane about it, and Diane had written back that it was not supposed to be like that, but Ivy’s second experience had been similar, albeit much wetter.
She instinctively knew that a kiss with the magnetic man behind her would be different. There was a dark edge to him that promised sin and skill. Would the firm, yet gentle way he handled his horses translate into how he would handle her? A shiver tripped down her spine at the thought.
Owen’s calloused palm closed around the side of her neck, and he said softly in her ear, “For the second time, I must ask that you do not talk about kissing other men in front of me.”
“Why not? You cannot fault me for a few stolen kisses.” She frowned. “Or mayhap you are one of those men who does?”
“No, I do not fault you, but that does not erase my irrational jealousy.”
“Jealousy?”
“I am courting you, am I not?” His thumb dragged up the back of her neck.
“False courting.”
“Mine, all the same.”