Outrageously Yours (19 page)

Like a burning wind, over and over he spoke her name against her neck, then across her belly until it quivered. Not her true name but the one by which only he called her, like a secret code that freed her dreams and unlocked the yearnings of her heart. She yearned now as she wrapped herself around him, as she gave herself over to the pleasure of his hands and solid limbs and the wall of his heated, pulsing torso. With a hushed urgency that blended with the murmur of the winds riding over the house, he bade her to trust him and then breathed a question against her sensitized flesh.

Her answers were
Yes
, and
Yes
, and
Please
, and then a wordless cry she could not contain.

A cry that echoed palpably in her ears. Her eyes flew open and the startling details of a room that was not hers filled her view . . . and a shocking realization lashed through her that those strong arms and seeking hands were not imagined, but firm and solid and still upon her, and the heights of pleasure to which he’d taken her had been no dream but provocative, torrid reality.

 

For Simon, the night became an excruciating test of both his fortitude and his honor, as he held Ned—
Ivy
—in his arms and gritted his teeth against the throb of an erection that could be allowed no release.

Each time he gained control over his rampaging lust, she would move in her sleep and unwittingly wiggle her sweet little bottom against his thighs, or she’d roll and sigh a caress across his cheek, one that bore the breathless syllables of his name.

No, not his name, his title. More than once, he’d have sworn she whispered an impassioned
Lord Harrow
and
sir
. Eventually his resistance had crumbled and he’d gathered her to him, claiming as much of her as he dared without claiming
all
.

It hadn’t helped that they’d slept in their clothes, each of them having removed only boots, waistcoat, and neckcloth. With that last he had helped her, standing temptingly close as he worked the knot free, his fingertips grazing her chin and throat, and she staring up into his face with those large, almond eyes full of questions and doubts that mirrored his own. The only difference was that beneath her uncertainties a light of trust blazed, a trust in which he himself dared put no faith.

Because even through their clothing, the heat of her body inflamed him, until he could not stop envisioning her naked breasts in a silver wash of moonlight. Until he ached to have those small, perfect orbs in his hands, the dusky nipples between his lips.

Why had he asked her to stay? Even as he had made the mad suggestion, he had predicted with stunning clarity the torment her presence in his bed would cause him. Had he wished to make himself suffer? Oh, suffer he did. With each whimper his wandering fingertips had coaxed from her lips, he suffered by not sharing in her ecstasy, by being left only to ponder what wonders her touch might have wrought on him.

Yet not once did he consider unwrapping his arms from around her and moving to the leather chaise at the foot of the bed. The thought of leaving her had been more torturous than nuzzling against her squirming form and filling his lungs with the scent of her lust. A perverse sort of challenge? If they could get through the night without his ravishing her, then they could get through anything, including continuing her charade until they located his sister.

Ah, but he
had
ravished her . . . or very nearly. As near as he dared without treading into the territory of permanence. Because nothing—
nothing
—in this life could ever be trusted to be permanent.

The touch of dawn against the windows brought him as much relief as it did dismay. Relief because she would leave him now, hasten back to her own room. The servants must not find her here or what would they think? What tales would they spread about their master and his assistant?

Dismay, too, because along with the morning’s pallid chill came the reaffirmation of all he knew to be true and cruel about life, about his own existence, destined for precious little happiness. It simply wasn’t in his stars.

With his sweet assistant he might perhaps find temporary respite for his grief, but as soothing a salve as she might be, she could not heal his battered soul. Loss would always be there, lurking in the back of his mind, a pitiless reminder of what he had endured, and what he could endure again if he dropped his guard.

Drawing in her fragrance one last time, he slowly exhaled and released her, then smoothed his fingers across her cheek. “Ivy?”

She stirred and blinked. Her eyes fluttered open. At first she didn’t move, but lay gazing up at the ceiling, then the posts at the foot of the bed. With a gasp she bolted upright. “Where—?”

“You’re in my room.” He sat up beside her. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I thought it best to wake you now.”

She glanced down at herself, then over at him. Her hand went to her shirt, still tied at the neckline but loose at the waist. With apprehension claiming her features, she peered beneath the bedclothes and released a breath of relief. Her trousers were still very much fastened. Simon hadn’t needed to bare her there to send her body soaring.

He couldn’t help a low chuckle. “Don’t worry. We didn’t. Just as I promised we wouldn’t.”

“Was it a dream?” Her voice was so soft he felt the question burrow inside his chest, rather than heard it with his ears.

Lying seemed the wise choice, but he knew he couldn’t, not to her. “No,” he said, and waited for her rebuke.

Instead, her hand closed around his sleeve. “I am glad it wasn’t.”

For half a heartbeat every ounce of control he’d mastered over his emotions slipped from his grasp. All his bloody effort of self-preservation, gone in a split second of weakness for this wisp of a girl, this marvel of a woman, who was able to strip his defenses with a press of her fingers.

And she witnessed it all in the fleeting but unpreventable contortion of his features. A tear formed in her eye; her hand went to his cheek. “Oh, Simon . . . why?”

His insides clenched—with joy and despondency both—as she spoke his given name for the first time. “I’m sorry,” he said inadequately. “I suppose I’d hoped to prove we could be together without . . . driving each other insane. Sadly, I was wrong.”

She pulled closer, her lips near enough to warm his own. “No. Why did you grant my pleasure but not take your own?”

He groped at the air, then let his hand fall with a slap against his knee. “Because nothing right could have come of it. Because I could not now be looking you in the eye.”

“Is that all?” She studied him as though stripping him naked and analyzing every inch of bare skin, until he felt the urge to squirm, even as she had squirmed beneath his touch. “There is something else, something holding you back, preventing you from ...”

Don’t.
He only thought the warning, but it must have shown on his face for she immediately fell silent.

“Whatever it is,” she continued more quietly, “you’ve proved yourself correct, haven’t you? We may continue as we were without worry of impropriety. We have passed the test.”

“Have we?” Somehow he managed not to vent the uproarious, cynical laughter pushing against his throat. And because he didn’t have the heart or the courage to wipe the trust from her countenance, he nodded.

Resting her elbows on her knees, she plowed her hands through her hair, peeked up at him, and gave him a crooked smile. “What a tousled pair we are, as if so deep in our cups last night we mutually passed out. We’d best have a care or the dean of students will gate us both.”

Her jest reminded him of a much more pertinent matter. “It isn’t being gated that worries me. Servants talk and rumors spread like wildfire in an academic community. It’s time to get you back to your own chamber.”

“Good heavens, you’re right.” She scrambled to untangle herself from the bedclothes. “Mrs. Walsh already abhors me.” Finding one of her boots, she shoved a foot inside.

“We’ve nothing to fear from Mrs. Walsh, Ned. Nothing that happens in this house would ever be spread abroad by her lips. But lesser servants come and go, and their loyalty is far less certain.”

He found her silk waistcoat over the arm of the easy chair. Bringing it to her, he bade her turn around and helped her on with it. Then he turned her again and began doing up the buttons. “Mrs. Walsh doesn’t abhor you, by the way. She is confused. She suspects something amiss, but can’t put her finger on what. It’s her perplexity she abhors.”

“All the more reason to avoid her this morning until I’ve made my bed appear slept in.” She reached for her coat.

“If we do encounter anyone, we’ll simply behave as if we’ve been up all night working on calculations. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Her cheeks were still flushed from sleep, her eyes heavy-lidded, her lips moist and red. A languid air hung about her, telling a tale that would be difficult to deny.

“Come,” he said. “We’d best get you to your room.”

“You’re coming with me? Shouldn’t I simply hasten to my chamber as quickly and quietly as possible?”

He had to agree that that would look more natural to any of the servants who might already have ventured abovestairs. But simply opening his door and bidding Ned a quick good-bye would have been tawdry and slapdash on his part; only a cad sent a young lady, albeit one dressed in trousers and a waistcoat, off alone to face the possibility of having to explain herself along the way. The Mad Marquess of Harrow might be many things, but a cad was not one of them.

“I’ll see you to your door. With any luck, no one has been in yet. What time does Ellsworth usually bring your hot water and shaving soap?”

She peered at the bedside clock. “Not quite this early. Did you know he keeps offering to shave me himself?”

This produced a grin Simon tried unsuccessfully to hide. “As a matter of fact, it was I who suggested he do so.”

He could not deny that he thoroughly deserved the
whop
of Ned’s coat hitting the side of his head.

L
ater that morning, in a well-appointed drawing room on St. Andrews Street at the center of Cambridge, Ivy found herself in the middle of a standoff, one she half expected to erupt into violence at any moment. She darted a wary glance from Simon—as she had come to think of him since waking in his bed—to the stately town home’s owner.

Anger and evasiveness flashed in Lord Drayton’s hooded gaze. The fourth member of the Galileo Club, Colin Ashworth, Earl of Drayton, presented as unscholarly a figure as Simon himself: youthful and dashing and filled with the same electrifying energy she sensed in Simon. Now the two men, one as dark-haired as the other was blond, faced each other like two negative charges about to collide with a volatile hydrogen molecule. Ivy braced for a blistering exchange.

“I asked you a straightforward question.” Simon’s voice plunged to a threatening rumble. “If you had an ounce of honor in you, you’d stop hedging and answer me.”

“The answer is not nearly as simple as you would have it.” His chin protruding, Simon’s fellow scientist presented a wall of stubborn resistance.

Simon’s anger propelled him forward. Ivy flinched, expecting an impact, but he abruptly halted a yard or so away from Lord Drayton. “You had best
make
it simple. Has my sister been to see you, or not?”

Lord Drayton’s nostrils flared. As the tension mounted, Ivy conducted a hasty survey of the room for an object she might use to separate the two should they come to blows. A sofa cushion? A candlestick? An andiron? Could she even hope to defuse their palpable enmity?

“She is frightened of you, Simon,” the earl said. “And who can blame her?”

“Frightened of me, her own brother?” The bark in his words and the ruddy color that flooded his face made Ivy a little bit afraid of him herself.

Her heart pattered against the confining silk strips around her breasts, making her feel slightly faint. Stepping between the men, she gestured to the armchairs and settee grouped near the bay window overlooking the garden. Gardens were peaceful and soothing; the view might help. “Perhaps we should all have a seat and calm down.”

Lord Drayton swung in her direction as if just becoming aware of her presence. “Just who the blazes are you?”

She deepened her voice a notch. “Lord Harrow’s assistant.”

“And what business is this of yours?”

“Leave him alone, Colin,” Simon’s warned. “This is about Gwendolyn. I came here on an educated assumption. Your prevarication is turning that guess into a conviction. When did you see her?”

Lord Drayton all but spat his reply. “All right, yes. Gwen was here. Briefly. Almost two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks? And you chose to say nothing? Did it not occur to you that her sudden appearance in Cambridge meant she was in trouble, and that she needed my help? Whatever else she may or may not have done, abandoning her position in the queen’s household is no small matter.”

“She begged me not to tell you. She said she feared what you might do if you learned she’d left Buckingham Palace without the queen’s permission.”

“And so you simply let her go on her way?” Simon’s hands swung upward, curling into fists. “A young girl, all on her own.”

“I made her promise she’d return to London immediately.”

Simon flicked a silent question in Ivy’s direction. She replied with an infinitesimal shake of her head. If his sister had returned to London, Ivy would have known about it by now. Victoria would have sent a special messenger racing across the sixty miles that separated London from Cambridge; a single rider could have made the journey in two days.

Simon scowled at the other man. “Either you’re a fool to have trusted her with that promise, or you’re lying and Gwendolyn is still here, hiding somewhere in this house.”