Outrageously Yours (32 page)

“Time for what?”

He waved a hand at her. “Go on.”

Ivy cradled the aromatic jasmine in her arms as she climbed the garden slopes. In her room, a vase filled with water waited on the dresser. A roaring fire and numerous candles bathed the furnishings in a mellow glow. She slipped the flowers into the vase, and turned to discover another, far more startling surprise.

The candlelight glimmered on a sumptuous green gown spread across her bed. Ivy ventured closer, captured by the simple elegance of the silken garment with its delicate puffed sleeves, beribboned waistline, and abundant, sweeping hem.

Beside the gown lay a pair of filmy stockings that all but floated when Ivy touched them, a set of beribboned garters, and a diaphanous chemise that smelled of the same flowers she had brought from the hothouse. A pair of embroidered slippers that matched the emerald dress were arranged neatly on the floor beside the bed, and across the footboard she discovered a cashmere shawl, deliciously soft and warm. Finally, a pair of sleek, ebony combs completed the ensemble.

From her pillow, a note scrawled in a familiar hand beckoned:

Heart thumping, hands shaking, she hesitated. Coming to Harrowood disguised as Ned Ivers had proved more than a masquerade, more than a mission for the queen. Being Ned Ivers, wearing breeches and immersing herself in scientific experiments, had freed her and allowed her the self-expression she’d been denied all her life.

Simon knew that. He knew it and had encouraged her in ways few men ever had. Yet tonight, it seemed, he would transform her back to her feminine self. Why? What did it mean?

Her questions remaining unanswered, she lifted the beautiful gown and held it up in front of her.

H
aving dispensed with his collar and cravat, Simon perched in the embrasure of his laboratory’s southern window. A nearly full moon splashed silver across the fens beyond the property, lending unexpected beauty to the flat landscape. But then, he had always found a wealth of hidden treasures in the bogs and bottomlands, just as he alone had discerned the breathtaking beauty hiding beneath Ivy’s masculine guise.

The burden of that guise had begun to weigh on her; he knew it had. He could only imagine the daily toil of maintaining such a pretense, of constantly behaving in a manner contrary to what came naturally. In his own life, the only circumstances that came close were the days and weeks following Aurelia’s death, when he had been forced to pretend that he actually still cared about living.

This was different, of course. Ivy’s masquerade had brought certain benefits a woman would never have enjoyed otherwise. Still, he understood something about the strain she’d been living under as she juggled identities. And he’d realized tonight that he, too, had been struggling to keep the true Ivy in focus.

Oh, from nearly the first he’d seen her as very much a woman, and that perception never wavered. But there
had
been times when he’d very nearly forgotten that her upbringing hadn’t been that of a stripling nobleman, but of a carefully sheltered gentlewoman.

She had not attended Eton or other preparatory school where she would have learned to fight, both literally and metaphorically, as she established her place in the male pecking order of the upper classes. There would have been no recent year spent traveling abroad with an older male relative, during which she’d have lost her schoolroom naïveté. She had never seen the inside of a gentlemen’s club, gaming hell, or brothel, never witnessed a duel, never dabbled in seduction as though it were a sport.

He had come to see her as strong and as self-assured as any university student, but in truth she was an innocent. Or
was
, before he’d lost his head and his resolve.

Was that why he had left the gown for her? As a reminder, more to himself, that Ivy Sutherland was not the cocky youth she often appeared to be, but a sweet, genteel, very feminine young lady, who deserved his respect as much as she needed his protection? Perhaps, but the question remained, would she embrace or scorn his attempt to banish Ned Ivers, at least for a night?

His thoughts screeched to a halt. Down below, a willowy shadow fell across the terrace outside her room. His pulse sped even as his heart stood still. The outer door of the bedchamber opened and a slipper-clad foot stepped over the threshold, the slender ankle encircled by the hem of the emerald dress.

Simon pushed away from the window.

He arrived at Ivy’s door winded, his heart thumping. Before turning the knob, he paused to collect himself, to rein in his madcap desires and remember that tonight was not about seduction but rather about easing the burden Ivy had shouldered for the queen.

Besides, for all he knew, the image he’d spied from his laboratory had been merely the shadow of a cloud crossing the moon, augmented by the fancies of his imagination.

But the room, he discovered, lay empty, and the balcony door stood several inches ajar. The sweet, familiar scent drifting on the air made him smile. The note he had left her lay unfolded on the bed. The gown, shawl, and underthings were nowhere to be seen.

These signs of her consent emboldened him to cross the room. Through the gap in the open door he saw her. She stood at the rail, her back to him, the green gown falling from beneath the shawl in moonlit folds. Using the combs he had left as an afterthought, she had managed to pull her hair up and back into a curling coif; and with the gilded shadows adding depth and dimension to the tendrils, the style emphasized the kissable curve of her nape and made it appear that she had never cut her hair at all.

An ache spreading through his chest, he stepped out onto the balcony.

She didn’t turn, but a slight angling of her head signaled that she knew he was there. He moved behind her and slid his arms around her waist. She smelled of the jasmine he had asked Cecil to gather for her—gather without haste, to allow Simon time to prepare.

Of their own volition, his lips found their way to her nape, and he spoke against her skin. “I remembered that Gwendolyn ordered a gown last winter, but hadn’t had time to take up the hem before she left for London. It might have been made for you. Are you pleased?”

With a sigh, she leaned back against him. Her skirts rustled as she smoothed her palms over the silk. “Simon.” Her face tilted upward to the night sky. “What are we doing?”

It wasn’t so much a question as an acknowledgment that they were indeed doing . . . something. Something neither of them fully wanted, something neither had yet found the power to resist.

“You were sad tonight,” he said. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t resist burrowing his nose in her soft curls.

She nodded once in concurrence.

As though drawn by magnetic attraction, he pressed another kiss to her nape, a leisurely, openmouthed nuzzle that filled his soul with her jasmine-scented warmth. “I thought perhaps you were sad because you needed reminding.”

She stiffened slightly before her hands slid over his where they lay clasped across her belly. “Remind me of what?”

“Of how I see you.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her. Moonlight slanted across her face, and the full impact of her transformation struck him a stunning blow.

Everything of “Ned’s” youthful awkwardness had vanished, leaving a poised young woman who filled the gown’s proportions with dramatic grace. Against the rich emerald silk, her skin paled to alabaster, and above the wide scoop neckline her collarbones created a delicate path to the tender hollow at the base of her throat. Within the dainty puffed sleeves, her arms were sleek and softly rounded, and her breasts, though small, were high and full and formed luscious, tempting mounds where they pushed against her bodice.

She rendered him speechless, humbled. He drank her in, feasted on the sight of her, while his heart pounded against his chest wall. She didn’t move, didn’t blink as she gazed up at him, the earnest little crease between her eyebrows making her look as she did when calibrating an instrument or ciphering figures, and reminding him that in any garb she remained essentially the same.

His sweet, brilliant Ivy.

The ache inside him spread until it filled every part of him, bringing with it the knowledge that his plan was founded on an error in judgment. For it proved nothing but that he desired her, cared for her—
loved
her—in whatever guise she assumed.

“Dear God, to call you beautiful is a wretched understatement.” He swallowed to ease the constriction in his throat. He didn’t want to love her, and he couldn’t bear
not
to love her.

That funny, studious look deepened the crease between her brows. “At first I didn’t know whether to be angry or afraid. I thought perhaps you were making a statement, telling me that as a woman I should remember my place.”

“No,” he protested, the word guttural and emphatic.

With a twitch of a smile, she pressed her fingertips to his mouth, her touch as tender as a kiss. “I know.” The lovely white column of her throat convulsed. Her dark eyes glistened with tears. “Because I know you, and if you
had
wished to make a statement, you’d simply have stated it.”

“Then allow me to state this.”

In a single motion he swept her up in his arms, for the first time feeling the accompaniment of trailing skirts to her slight weight. Something about those fussy, feminine layers fired his possessive instincts. He held her close and buried his face in her neck, in the swell of her bosom. Then he lifted his head and found her lips, crushed his own to them, and pressed, deeper and deeper, losing himself to the heat of her mouth.

Cradling her in his arms, he stumbled back into the room, into the flickering light of the fire and the many candles he’d set about the room. He hoped she wouldn’t want him to blow them out. He wanted to see her. He wanted to show her she had nothing to hide from him—never from him.

Beside the bed, he set her feet on the floor but went on holding her, kissing her. The shawl slipped to the floor, and he stroked his hands up and down her arms. Where he expected her skin to be cold from the night air, it burned beneath his fingertips. He grasped a delicate sleeve between his thumb and forefinger and tugged, baring her shoulder and exposing more of her cleavage. Ah, such beautiful cleavage she had, not overly deep, but a soft, shadowed valley that offered a tantalizing prospect for his tongue.

He gazed down at it, then up at her to see a sweet entreaty shining in her eyes. Lowering his mouth to her, he gave that lovely vale the adoring attention it deserved, while he reached around her and untied the bow at the back of her dress. The laces loosened, but he didn’t strip the gown from her shoulders and arms. He wouldn’t undress her yet, for he found the teasing allure of a yawning neckline, a slowly raised hem, and the beribboned edge of a stocking as erotic as the promise of having her naked beneath him.

As he pressed kisses across her bosom, she arched her lovely neck. The moisture in her eyes spilled over, trailing reflected candlelight down her cheeks. “Oh, Simon, I
had
forgotten what it felt like....”

“To be completely feminine?”

“Yes. To be a woman.” Her arms tightened around his neck. She pressed her forehead to his cheek and whispered, “Or perhaps I never knew. Never understood. Not like this.”

Her words overflowed with emotion, with longing and sadness, and enough regret to make him wonder how so beautiful and vital a woman could ever have felt less than wanted, how she could not have known what it was to be coveted by every man around her. Surely they had all been fools, or blind.

“There is more I must show you,” he said.

Slowly raising her skirts, he grazed her knee with the backs of his fingers and skimmed the inside of her thigh, enjoying the resultant quiver of her flesh. Traveling higher along her leg, he felt her heat drawing him on. When he reached the silky curls between her thighs, he gave a stroke with a single fingertip. As slight as his touch was, Ivy shuddered.

Ah, yes, this is what he would have her know, the subtle joys to be shared between a man and woman, the trust, the releasing of inhibitions, and the surrender to mutual arousal. All along he’d been pretending both to her and to himself that he could control his desires, his heart. But the truth was, from the moment he’d recognized Ivy the woman, he’d been lost. Wholly, irretrievably lost to her beauty, her intelligence, and the purity of what he’d taken from her—her innocence.

So great a gift she had given him. For tonight, then, he would stop pretending his attraction to her stemmed from mere lust and an inability to keep his hands off her splendid body. Tonight he would show her how much she deserved, whether from him or any man. Returning his mouth to her lips, he ravished them thoroughly. As Ivy writhed in his arms, he explored the folds of her sex, already moist with desire.

Their lips fell apart as her head tipped back on a moan. Her leg slid up around his waist, opening her further, and he slid a finger inside. Her muscles, so tight and sensitive, squeezed him, an embrace of consent and pleasure. Ivy’s whimpers driving him on, he eased in deeper. The tightening of her hands on his shoulders signaled her heightening arousal.

Slowly he withdrew, and she whimpered a weak protest. He returned inside her quickly enough, adding a second finger to widen her. At her cry, a sense of both power and satisfaction sped his pulse. He increased his ministrations, until her sex convulsed around him and her back arched and her lovely mouth opened on a cry of ecstasy.

He eased out of her then and moved to swing her into his arms. She half leaned on him, and with a trembling hand on his chest she stopped him. Her breasts heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. Her fingers fisted on his shirtfront. “I made you a promise earlier today.”