Forbidden to Love the Duke (9 page)

“Does it concern the children?”

He looked directly into her eyes. “Yes. Walker went into hysterics when he discovered you had gone.”

Doubting this, she perched on the edge of the bed nonetheless. “What happened?”

“I ran around being his horsey until I wanted to cry. Cook plied him with treacle all day until he felt sick and fell asleep. Mary is convinced you met the man with the pearls. I'm worn-out.”

“Oh, honestly,” Ivy said, putting her hand over her eyes.

Her heart was pounding. The intimacy between them had built into an inevitable confrontation. It was the end of a trying day; he had granted her no chance to rally her defenses. He looked too comfortable, too confident sitting in her small bed. He should not be here. This was a conversation that should take place between a husband and a wife.

Had no one ever taught the duke that he couldn't behave exactly as he liked?

Why was she not more shocked to discover him lying in wait for her? Had she become completely detached from convention or so attached to him that nothing else mattered? In his presence Ivy felt as if she had taken leave of her senses.

“
Did
you meet him today?” he asked, after an interlude during which her anxiety escalated until she feared her heart would burst.

She felt him uncross his legs, his body leaning into hers. How foolish to pretend that if she couldn't see him, he could not threaten her. His knuckles slid from her ear to her throat, an unsubtle declaration of intent to seduce that she responded to against her will.

“Ivy,” he said, his touch dipping boldly into the deep cleft of her breasts. “There was a male visitor today at Fenwick.”

She stole a glimpse at him through her fingers. A grave error. His eyes studied her with a wicked fascination that made her wonder what he saw in her that she didn't. “How do you know?” she asked, lifting her hand to his wrist to thwart his next move.

“Carstairs drove by on an errand.”

“No one drives by Fenwick on an errand. You sent Carstairs after me.”

“I was worried that your coach would not survive the journey. How you traveled in that contraption to London is frightening to contemplate. I half expected Carstairs to come running home with word he'd found a pumpkin and liveried mice on the bridge to your house.”

His fingers continued to caress her—soon, she knew, she must object—as he recited what she judged to be a well-rehearsed although not implausible explanation. Sensual instincts and conflicting emotions warred inside her. He was a bewitching man. She knew that at any moment he would make a bolder play. This was no time to engage in a battle she could never win. Her body was defecting to his side, urging her to surrender.

Should she run from the room?

She sensed he wouldn't stop her. Where could she hide wearing a shift and a cloak? She'd be the one who would look mad. Perhaps she could talk reason into him.

“How do you know that my visitor wasn't a male relation?” she asked, reminding herself that one simply didn't push a duke off a bed, no matter how dangerously desirable he made one feel.

His smile provoked her. “If you had any male relations, they would have claimed Fenwick the day your father died.” His thumb stroked the shape of her breast through her secondhand cotton shift. “He left you unprotected.”

“He didn't expect to die.”

“No. I'm sorry for that. And I'm sorry that you've had no one to take care of you.”

The cotton abraded her nipple; an intense stab of pleasure pierced her belly. His lightest caress rendered her weak and wanting. She leaned her shoulder back against the bedpost, missed, and would have fallen to the floor had his other hand not lashed around her waist.

He gathered her into the core of his body. Her stomach fluttered in pleasure at the sensation of hard strength that embraced her. “Where is your lover?” she asked in one last bid to distract him. He was breathing unevenly, and she could hardly breathe at all. But it didn't seem to matter as long as he held her in his arms.

He buried his face in her neck. “I wrote her a letter and asked her not to come.” His firm lips moved with maddening slowness to meet the hand caressing her breast. Her heart was beating too hard. His touch felt illicit and essential. “It's better that way.”

She needed to escape. She needed his kisses. The anticipation of not knowing which she needed more, of wondering what would happen if she chose him, reduced her to nothing. Instinct made the decision for her.
She brought her hands to his large shoulders and felt the deep sigh of satisfaction he exhaled against her skin. “Why did you ask her not to come? I thought you were desperate.”

“Oh, I am,” he admitted with a laugh. “But not for her.”

She wasn't about to ask him to explain that remark, although it tantalized her. “That sounds rather cruel.”

“It was a kindness for both of us.”

“Won't she be upset?”

“I'll find a way to soothe her feelings. She's fond of jewelry.”

She reminded herself that he had just dismissed the woman who was meant to be in his bed. That didn't mean he could sleep in hers. But the words wouldn't come. He had gained the advantage. She wondered what he expected in return. He hadn't given much thought to deciding his mistress shouldn't visit. Ivy surmised that the woman wouldn't view his decision as kindness.

“You realize that I'm about to kiss you?” he asked, as if there were any chance she would refuse when she'd already lifted her face to his and gripped his shoulders in anticipation. “I take that as consent,” he said, his eyes dancing with promise.

“I'm not consenting to anything.”

“Then let me know when to stop.”

“I don't want you to think for a minute that I'm willing to replace your mistress.”

“Did I ask you to?” he said with a provocative smile.

Before she could answer, he turned her onto her back and pinned her with his body to the bed. She gasped as if a marble statue had toppled upon her,
except that James happened to be gloriously alive, a warm-blooded man to the last angle. His black hair fell across his face and partly concealed the dimple in his left cheek. Beautiful, privileged, on the verge of an arrangement with another lady. What was she doing lying beneath him and secretly reveling in her imprisonment?

The situation felt entirely unfair. She might have been his had it not been for the war and her father's missteps. But then an innocent debutante could not have kept the heart of a dashing heir to a dukedom for long. He would have broken hers.

He still could.

“Why did you send her away?” she asked, the heat of his body spreading through hers, draining her will to resist him. She might have been naked for all that the unfastened cloak and shift protected her against his hardness.

“It's difficult to explain. I want to kiss you all over. Do you mind?”

“Yes.” But she didn't. Quite the opposite. She wanted the kisses he had asked for. She parted her lips the moment his mouth covered hers. His tongue stroked hers, gently at first, and his fingers walked down her throat to her stomach. He was kissing her face and throat, and repositioning his body so that she lay snugly beneath his right arm.

“Ivy,” he said starkly, giving her an instant to breathe before he kissed her on the mouth again, and his fingers slipped inside her shift to rub across her tender nipples. Her breasts swelled. “I want to do more than kiss you.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she said, slipping deeper under his spell.

“This is what desire does to a man.” He lowered his
head to her breasts and caught a nipple between his teeth. Her back arched. “Believe me, it doesn't always happen like this. I don't think I've ever felt this desperate. I'm mystified by what you've done to me and completely at your service.”

Desire did inexplicable things to a woman, too, she thought, closing her eyes. She couldn't look at his face and follow what he was doing to her body. His hand drifted down her side and eased beneath the hem of her shift. A pulse began to throb in the place between her thighs. His fingertips brushed her hidden flesh and instead of flinching, she felt herself dampen, open to his possession. She inhaled as he probed her folds with his thick fingers.

“Have you ever been touched here before?” he asked, stroking her so slowly she wanted to cry with pleasure.

“Of course not,” she whispered, afraid of what he would ask her next. Or what she would ask of him. She was aware of a mounting tautness in her belly, a need that he appeared in no hurry to alleviate. How had he stolen her composure so completely? She managed to lift herself an inch before subsiding at the rasp of his voice.

“One day I'll do more than touch you, Ivy. I'll make you mine.”

“Will you dismiss me if I deny you?” she whispered, opening her eyes.

“I don't think you understand what I just said. You won't deny me. I think you want this even more than I do.”

She felt his shoulders tense and realized she was holding him so tightly that her fingers had gone numb. He stared at her, his eyes unfathomable, before he lowered his gaze to the juncture of her thighs where his
fingers played her. She should have been ashamed that he would see her unraveling bit by bit, but her pleasure only mounted, a tautness inside her that he seemed to control.

“Tell me how badly you need this,” he said in a low wicked voice.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

“Tell me or I'll stop.”

“I need . . . you—you—”

He laughed in delight. Her hips twisted, and then they both lost control. Her belly clenched, and a power rose from inside her that plunged her into oblivion before she broke into fragments and knew vaguely that when she was put back together she would never be the same Ivy Fenwick again.

She swallowed a sob and felt the pulsations of pleasure ebb from her body. The duke did not say a word. He merely withdrew his hand, sighed deeply, and rolled to his feet. Ivy drew up the shift and cloak to cover herself, still shaking from what he'd done to her.

He paced at her side, debonair to her tousled muss despite his disheveled fine linen shirt and black pantaloons. She hoisted the cloak over her shoulders.

“That was quite bad of you, James,” she said with a broken sigh. “I don't ever expect to find you lying in wait for me in my room again.”

*   *   *

He hadn't expected her to find him, either. How could he explain that an attack of nerves had ambushed him when he'd searched her room and realized she hadn't returned? And then, because the children had exhausted him, he had stretched out on Ivy's bed, intending to rest his arm, and had fallen asleep?

“I would have been fine if you hadn't taken off your clothes,” he remarked as she picked up the dress she had discarded.

“Then it's
my
fault that you brought the children in here and broke the screen? That you didn't announce yourself to me as soon as I walked in the door?”

“I didn't say I wasn't at fault for that.” He frowned. “I hope you don't go to supper, looking that—that disarrayed.”

She bent at the washstand, talking again to his reflection. “Well, who disarrayed me, James?”

He watched her pat water on her cheeks and wrists. He was beginning to feel like a damned fool. He'd never touched a servant in his life, and she wasn't acting anything like one now. Still, he wanted to kiss her sweet mouth and punish her for her ability to bewilder him with a show of power. He had always believed himself to be above such abuse.

But his body was pulsing with intense urges he had never known. He wanted to throw her onto the bed and fill her with his cock. “I don't know what happened to me just now,” he said crossly. “I was asleep, susceptible to you.”

She splashed a little arc of water back his way. “As if it's never happened before.”

“Not like this. I told you.”

“Susceptible? Tell me more. You said I didn't understand what you meant. Well, explain.”

He couldn't. He wasn't sure now what he meant. An arrangement with a governess? Never. Set her up as a mistress? Unlikely. Marriage? His mind evaded an answer.

She patted her face and décolletage dry with a
second towel that hung on the washstand and retreated into her small dressing room. When she returned, he could see that she hadn't correctly laced her gown. The imperfection would bother him all night, not due to any obsession for neatness on his part, but because he knew how beautiful she was underneath her clothes. He would look at her and remember how her soft body had cushioned him when he should not be thinking of her at all.

Her voice underscored his lapse in attention. “Am I going to be dismissed, James?”

“You will if you refer to me by my first name outside this room. Not that
I
mind. But the servants will think it peculiar.”

“Since we will not be alone together in here again, I will only use your title from now on. Or perhaps I shall refer to you as ‘His Disgrace.'”

He narrowed his eyes. “Of course I won't dismiss you.”

“Then I won't resign.”

“You can't resign. Our contract is binding. Besides, I understand you need the wages.”

She brushed around him. “I'll go about my duties now if I have your permission.”

“You might want to look at the front of your gown before you do,” he said smugly. “You haven't laced it correctly, and that wouldn't have happened if you'd asked for my help.”

*   *   *

The following day Ivy stayed true to the pact she had made with herself to let nothing distract her from her work. Her charges, in turn, appeared to have made a pact with each other to drive her to distraction. At the
start of their morning lesson, she motioned to Mary, whose wide-eyed innocence Ivy was soon to discover hid the strategical genius of the ancient general Hannibal.