Outrageously Yours (16 page)

Heaven help her, she relished all of it, his taste, his scent, the feel of him. Caught in a surging storm, Ivy hung on and let herself be kissed, losing herself in swirling heat and the aching desire that had been mounting inside her since she first set eyes on the man.

And then, as quickly as the kiss had begun, Lord Harrow’s mouth hardened and he broke away. Straightening, he towered above her and took her chin in his hand. She looked dazedly up at him, at the emotions storming in his eyes. Then the full shock of what had happened struck her as if with a physical blow.

Lord Harrow released her. Her trembling hand went to her lips, her tousled hair, back to her lips. They were hot to the touch, moist, and swollen. She shut her eyes. “You know.”

“Of course I know.” She opened her eyes to see a vein pulsing against his temple, a muscle throbbing angrily in his cheek. Then his features softened in a way that discomfited her more than his ire. A brush of his fingertips along the line of her jaw sparked her skin. “I realized it almost from the first. Since that day when I met you here in the garden, I knew.”

“But . . . why didn’t you say anything?”

His hands convulsed into fists, then relaxed. “I thought you deserved a chance to prove yourself. To have the opportunity denied you because of your sex. And because ...” Nostrils flaring, he gazed out over the gardens, his profile stony against the misty foliage. “Because you have talent. Vision.” He turned back to her, his eyes fierce. “Come with me.”

At a brisk pace he led her into the house, up the curving tower stairs. He walked so quickly Ivy had to trot to keep up. By the time they reached the laboratory, she was rendered breathless.

Her trepidation about his intentions made her dizzy. The lingering heat of his kiss left her giddy and baffled, hungering for more, and fearful of what might happen if he reached for her again. More than once, she considered turning back, retreating to her bedchamber, and packing her belongings.

But he had been correct. She
had
betrayed his trust. The truth of it tore at her, rending her loyalties in two. Victoria . . . Lord Harrow. She saw no means of being faithful to both. Did she
wish
to keep faith with both?

She crossed the threshold and stopped, her anxiety rising as Lord Harrow headed straight for the armoire, then pivoted. “Come here, Ned.”

She shook her head.

His pale eyes traveled over her. Then he retraced his steps, clamped a hand around her wrist, and forced her to walk or be dragged. In front of the armoire, he plunged his free hand into his coat pocket and pulled out his keys.

“Please, this isn’t necessary,” she insisted. “What you do is none of my business. I should never have opened these doors. . . .”

“Hush. I know why you snooped. It’s because you are like me. Your curiosity is insatiable, and your patience severely limited.”

She wanted to protest that he was wrong, that her curiosity had been more than sated and if she didn’t witness another marvel of science for the rest of her life, it would be too soon. Fear kept her lips clamped as, with one hand, Lord Harrow unlocked the doors and threw them wide. His other fist still firm around her wrist, he sank to his knees and drew her down beside him.

His determined gaze met hers. “If I release you, will you stay put?”

Gruesome images ran rampant through her mind. She hesitated, and then gave her pledge with a shaking nod.

With a doubtful expression he opened his fingers. Then he reached inside to drag the dreaded box to the front of the armoire. In another moment he’d unlocked and raised the lid. Ivy shut her eyes.

“O
pen your eyes.”When Ned trembled at the curt order, Simon made an effort to smooth the anger from his voice. “Please open your eyes, Ned. You won’t understand until you see the truth of what lies in this box.”

Her features were pinched, her breathing labored. Her eyelashes fluttered open. As if gathering her courage to look upon the devil himself, she angled a fearful gaze at the box.

“Now, then.” Simon reached inside and lifted the first item. The liquid inside the jar sloshed; the contents undulated.

Ivy’s hand went to her throat. Her color drained; she looked close to being ill. Necessity pushed Simon on.

“Do you know what this is?”

Her answer could barely be heard. “A heart.
Her
heart.” Horror blossomed on her face, turning fear to disgust. “How could you?”

“I was asked to. Begged to.” Her glaring disbelief fueled his frustration. “You
have
been listening to rumors. Do you believe I’d truly carve open my deceased wife?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Not long before she died, a colleague of mine, Nelson Evans, passed away, a victim of his own failing heart. This heart. In his final years, he had devoted his experimentation to discovering a means of regenerating a dying heart, and of restarting one that has stopped. On his deathbed, he begged me to continue his research, and to that end, he bequeathed me his own heart.”

“Oh!” The transformation in Ned’s expression was akin to the clearing away of thunderheads. She peered into the jar, at the heart with its attached skein of wires and electrodes. “And have you found a means of restarting it?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I am afraid we are still a long way away from such a miracle. But I am convinced that electricity is the key. Luigi Galvani proved with his frog experiments that electrical impulses in the nervous system power the body’s muscles. Well, the heart is a muscle, too, and in theory an electrical current should stimulate a beat.”

“Your generator?” She twisted around. With a glance over his shoulder, Simon regarded his invention, draped in sheets.

“No, that one is much too powerful. Originally, I did experiment with different-sized generators in the hopes of ascertaining the correct voltage needed to achieve Nelson’s dream. But this particular generator is intended for another purpose entirely. Something I stumbled upon accidentally.”

Her eager look invited further explanation.

“Not yet, my Ned. We’ve still other matters to attend to.” He gestured at the box, at what lay inside. “Go on. Touch it. Or do you believe the second item to have been harvested from my wife as well?”

Trepidation tumbled back across her features. “I’d prefer not to lay a finger on
that
.”

“Not lay your finger on my
artificial
fingers?”

“Artificial?”

“A wax and rubber amalgam bonded to linen and stretched over a skeletal structure composed of wires, rods, and ball-and-socket hinges.
Et voilà
, one has a hand. Remarkably lifelike, no?” He held it out to her. “Go on. Hold it.”

Cradling the appendage in the crook of her arm, she used her forefinger to swing the artificial fingers up and down. “Remarkable does not begin to describe it. I never dreamed it could be anything but real. I wondered how you kept it so perfectly preserved.”

He said nothing as she examined the web of wiring and electrodes that entered through the wrist and wound around the metallic skeleton of each finger.

“Does it work?” Excitement bubbled in her voice.

“Depends on your definition of
work
. I devised this purely as a model to help me understand how the nervous system conveys electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body, to be interpreted in terms of voluntary movement.”

She glanced up at him, eyes fever bright. “You are a genius.”

He smiled. “No. What I am is willing to toss aside conventional thought in the pursuit of
what if
. At the time I constructed this hand, I was also desperate.”

“I don’t understand.”

He put the hand, along with Nelson’s heart, back inside the box. Then he stood and helped Ned up. “Do you wish to know the truth about my wife?”

She placed her hand in his and kept it there all the way down the spiral stairs to the first-floor gallery. Together they walked past several generations of de Burghs, all staring down at them from their canvas domains. Simon marveled at his actions while the reasons for them continued to elude him. Why speak of Aurelia? Why open himself up to the pain?

He knew only that he desperately wanted Ned to understand about his past. About
him
, the Mad Marquess of Harrow. Once that was done, it would be Ned’s turn to reveal some truths.

In the corner of the gallery just beyond the door of his own suite, he stopped. As breathtaking as ever, Aurelia smiled down at him, loving, patient, ever tolerant of his foibles. “This is her. My wife. Aurelia.”

The unfamiliar act of speaking her name aloud produced a pain in his chest.

Her lips compressed, Ned studied the portrait. “She was . . .”

“Buxom, yes.”

“I was going to say beautiful.”

“Yes. She was beautiful. Can you see what else?”

Ned took another step closer. “I detect a keen intelligence in her eyes.”

“Yes, if anyone was brilliant, she certainly was. But that isn’t what I meant. Do you see the chair she is sitting in?”

Ned shifted her gaze to the wood and brocade seat back framing Aurelia’s shoulders. She gave a slight shrug.

“If you look closely, you can just make out the shadow of a handle on the right side.” He pointed. “Just there.”

“Oh . . . a wheelchair?”

His throat tight, Simon nodded. “A disease of the nervous system had slowly robbed her muscles of strength. It began before we were married.”

Ned turned to him, her eyes grown large with comprehension, and with sympathy, too. Those Simon could accept. He released a breath of relief when no trace of pity hovered in Ned’s expression.

“How ... ?”

“How did she die?”

Ned nodded.

“An accident. Aurelia spent much of her time in the conservatory, among her plants. There is a door there leading down to a cellar, where the seeds and fertilizers were kept. One day, the servant assisting her left the door open. Aurelia happened to back up too far, and her chair went over the threshold. She fell twenty steps to a stone floor.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Ned’s hand came down featherlight on his coat sleeve. His first instinct was to shake it off, but he didn’t. He suffered her touch, then found comfort in it, then felt the pain inside him ease, if only a fraction. “What happened to the servant? Did you ...”

“Sack her? No. I found a place for her on another estate.” He recalled how difficult that decision had been, how he’d had to dig deep inside himself for the strength not to lash out and punish the brokenhearted girl. “It was what Aurelia would have wanted.”

Placing his hand over Ned’s, he drew her to a nearby window that faced the lawns beyond the west wing of the house. Beneath the wide stretch of a maple gilded by the autumn chill, a stone wall encircled a small plot of graves. “She is down there, with my ancestors. More recent de Burghs have been buried at Holy Trinity in the city, but I wanted her here, where she would be close.”

“Why don’t you tell people this?” she asked softly.

“You mean lend dignity to the rumors of the Mad Marquess by acknowledging them?” He shook his head. Warm sunlight poured through the windowpanes, heating the alcove in which they stood. “The people who matter know the truth.”

The implications of that statement zinged through him. Ned knew the truth. By Simon’s own logic, that meant that she mattered. He could not deny that he had feelings for her, intense ones. But he could deny,
did
deny, welcoming those feelings. He could and
would
deny allowing those feelings the opportunity to tear his life apart all over again.

He had his work. He had his memories. That would suffice.

Her hand still rested on his arm, and her fingers tightened around his sleeve. As if she had read his thoughts, she asked in a whisper, “Now what?”

The question traveled to his core to interweave with the loss and sorrow that had made him the man he had become. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, letting it linger there before he lowered it to her side and released it. “Now, my Ned, you must leave Harrowood forever.”

 

His words filled Ivy with more dread than that brought on by his preserved heart or artificial hand. She could think of only one response to that horror.

She dug in her bootheels. “No.”

“Ned, you must listen to reason.”

“Stop calling me Ned. My name is Ivy.” Panic rose up. She was about to fail in her mission for Victoria, but more than that, infinitely more, she couldn’t bear losing all she had achieved this past week working at Lord Harrow’s side.

She couldn’t bear losing
him
. “You cannot simply throw me out.”

His features implacable, Simon gazed at some point beyond her shoulder. “I am not throwing you out. I’ll arrange transportation for you to go anywhere you wish. Even back to Cambridge if you like.”

“I wish to stay here.”

“You cannot.”

“Why not? What has changed?” An invisible fist clenched her heart. “Am I not still the same person you believed in? Have I lost my talent? My vision?”

“You don’t understand. You were Ned then—”

“I wasn’t. You
knew
I wasn’t, yet you were willing to pretend.”

“That is correct. As long as we were both pretending and keeping that barrier between us, you could stay. But we aren’t pretending anymore, Ned. Ivy.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Have you any idea what your presence here could mean for both our futures?”

“I am willing to risk it.”

“I am not. Not for you, not for myself, either.”

“Please . . . I can’t give this up. Have you any notion what this past week has meant to me?”

He sighed, a sound full of regret. “I believe I do. It is the very reason I allowed you to remain.”

“Then what difference does the truth make?” Desperation nearly made her reach for him. Only pride—pride acquired through the past week’s accomplishments—prevented her from clutching his arm and begging to stay. “If we could pretend before, why not now?”