The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) (13 page)

Oh, and she was holding a gun. A shot cracked through the air and plaster rained down, showering the room in granules of white dust.

Gareth froze behind me.

“Brightmore,” he said, his breathing labored from his sprint across the room.

She walked farther into the room. “Sit down,” she told me. I reluctantly obeyed. I wanted to keep running, I wanted to beg for help. I wanted to take her gun and shoot Gareth, but I sensed the wisest course was to make myself as quiet and as easy to forget as possible, so I sat, keeping my feet firmly on the floor as I did in case I got a chance to run again.

“Don’t you want to know how I found out?” she asked Gareth. “That it was you?”

“I don’t care,” he said honestly. “It makes no difference now.”

“I always recognized you,” she said, continuing on anyway. “I knew you the moment you came to work at Markham Hall. But I didn’t say anything. If you didn’t want the master to know that you were Josiah Whitefield’s bastard, that was nothing to do with me. But still—I watched you. You were a sneaky thing as a child, all dimples and bows for the lords and ladies, but devilish and cruel when they were out of sight. I knew what happened to those cats that ended up drowned. To those outbuildings that mysteriously caught fire.”

Gareth sounded impatient again. “I. Don’t. Care. What. You. Know.”

Brightmore didn’t stop. “See, I thought the mistress was unhappy simply because of her marriage to Mr. Markham. But then I realized it was you. You were the one who made her unhappy. Who made her desperate for help.”

Gareth shook his head. “She didn’t give me a choice, Brightmore.”

“She wanted to stop interacting with you. Wisely. But of course, you wouldn’t let her stop, would you?”

“What did you do?” I asked, unable to help myself.

He looked down at me. “I did what I had to.”

“He threatened to kill her. And the rest of her family—which is you,” she pointed out looking at me, “and she cared enough about you, for whatever reason, to comply.”

Gareth took a step toward her. “How did you know that?”

“The same way I finally figured out that it was you who tampered with the saddle. Who’s always awake in the middle of the night? Who is running inside and outside, up and down stairs, from three in the morning until nine at night?”

And then Gareth visibly paled.

“The kitchen boy,” Brightmore said with cold satisfaction. “The police talked with Wispel, but they never spoke with him. And I began to wonder, what did you do after the master caught you that night? Where did you go? The kitchen boy had seen it all, running firewood inside the house. He saw you go into the sables. And he heard you threatening the lady all those nights. As soon as I spoke with him, I made plans to come to London. Mr. Markham needed to know.”

Gareth was only a couple of steps away from her by now. “Why do you even care?” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Everything to do with my master concerns me.” And in her eyes was the burning fervor of a religious convert. She raised the gun. “And while I don’t care particularly what you do with the whore—”

It took a second to realize she meant me, but her words drowned out my noises of protest.

“—I do care that you tried to have the master arrested. And that you might try to kill him.”

“It is a pity then,” Gareth said, “that you won’t be there to stop it.” And he grabbed for the gun.

The moment I realized what he was about to do, I tried to stop it, flinging myself toward him. Another bullet fired, sending a wave of fear through me, and both the housekeeper and the valet fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs and skirts. There was shouting and grunting and the roll of heavy bodies on the floor.

I was on the floor now too, on my side, my breath forced from my body, all my weight on my arm, facing away from the struggle behind me. All I could see was smoke. The gray veil of smoke as the fire leapt from fireplace to hearth to rug. The house was catching fire.

The noises behind me died down, as if the struggle had stopped. I felt my chair move as Gareth stepped around me, gun in hand and blood running from his nose. He wiped at it with his shirtsleeve as he aimed the gun at me. “I was going to let the fire do its work,” he said. “But now I think I shouldn’t leave it to chance, don’t you? We’ve had enough unexpected variables this afternoon—”

I kicked out viciously with my leg, making contact with his knee. He cried out and dropped and I kicked again, determined not to die passively. If I couldn’t run, I would fight.

I kicked again and again, landing two or three good ones before he managed to force himself to move through the pain, and then I heard an unearthly scream from behind me, like a banshee or a ghost caught by the sunlight away from its grave. A scream and then a roar as Brightmore came off the ground and charged at Gareth like a woman deranged.

He’d still been reacting to my kicks and so he didn’t have time to duck or to dodge, and they both went flying backwards as their bodies collided, right into the trail of the fire.

Instantly, they both lit up, human pyres in a dark room, like ancient sacrifices in a wicker cage. The light was almost too bright to look at, searing and intense, and I could smell the distinct smell of burning hair and clothes and something sweet and meat-like that had to be flesh.

Gareth was screaming and Brightmore was still fighting him, even aflame, hell bent on destroying the man who would destroy the only person she cared about. They were one indistinct pillar of fire now, and with a final scream that would haunt me until my dying day, the two of them careened toward the wide front window, crashing through the glass and to the sidewalk below.

Heart pounding, the sudden silence almost worse than witnessing the immolation itself, I squeezed my eyes closed and gave myself five seconds. Five seconds to be horrified, to want to run, to want to claw the very images out of my mind. Five seconds to be both grateful and confused and grateful again that this woman who hated me had sacrificed herself to save me—all for a love that would never have been returned.

Five seconds.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

I opened my eyes. The fire still burned, though now the smoke poured through the open window. But that wouldn’t stop it from creeping toward me, no, I still had to get out. With a deep breath and a grunt, I started rocking the chair, straining to roll onto my front, so that I’d be on my knees. After several attempts, I managed it, my head knocking against the floor as I did and I finally managed the awkward half-standing position and moved out of the room.

Brightmore had left the door open and I emerged into the outdoors, where the sun had broken behind the clouds. The world was a brilliant blue, mild and breezy, October at its finest. All around me were leaves rustling, fine houses in the distance, and the still-smoldering corpses of the man who’d killed my cousin and the woman who’d stopped him from killing me.

What I felt when I finally made it to my Hampton house and saw the smoke and the swarms of police carriages, I don’t recall. I remember panic, and more panic, and then rage at my delay in figuring out where Gareth had taken her. (Where else, once I’d thought about it. Where else would he have a key, where else to send a message to me?)

And what I felt when I leapt out of the Baron’s carriage and saw my wildcat—her face covered in soot and tears, and two bodies covered with sheets beside her—but alive, yes, so, so alive.

Well, I still felt it. Every minute, every hour, a tidal wave of relief and thankfulness to whatever god still deigned to watch over me.

We’d waited two weeks to marry. Ivy was shaken after her kidnapping, and even though we didn’t speak the thought out loud, it seemed strange to marry in the shadow of Brightmore’s death.

Brightmore.

Even now, as I sat on the plush hotel bed in Paris, listening to the music of the city, I felt the weight of Brightmore’s gift to us. Her death, her painful and absolutely unnecessary death. If only I had bothered to listen to her, to find her again! It was a self-flagellation that I couldn’t stop. If only I’d been less careless, less selfish, Ivy would have never have been in danger and Brightmore would be alive.

She had killed herself to save my wildcat. Because she cared for me.

And there was no way to repay her.

We’d decided to elope, out of England, somewhere far away from the painful memories that hung over us. But even though I’d told nobody where we were going, when we stepped into the small Breton chapel, I was still greeted by Silas’s grinning face, by the Baron’s serious but approving eyes. In the end, all of our friends—and Ivy’s aunt—had joined us, even Molly, who actually seemed happy for us. And then we’d taken the train to Paris, to spend our wedding night there. Despite the tragedy of this month, I was starving for Ivy’s body. Through all the arrangements and the sorrow, there’d been no chance for us to reconnect physically, and I had to admit, there was something prosaic about waiting until our wedding night.

But I’d done enough waiting.

Ivy stepped out from behind the screen, her wedding dress abandoned. She was completely naked, her breasts full and round, tipped with hard pink buds, her slender waist flaring into perfect hips and a taut ass. My cock, already half-hard with anticipation, surged at the sight. God, I wanted her. I wanted to be inside her. I wanted to be biting her, sucking her, pounding into her…

I stood, but as I approached, I slowed down.

It had been a couple weeks since I’d seen her naked, but even at the Baron’s, there’d been only candlelight and my mind had been…occupied with other things. But now, alone, in the light of late afternoon, I could see something was different about her body.

“Turn around,” I ordered.

She flushed with pleasure and complied, spinning in a slow circle. I walked up to her as she stopped and took her breasts in my hands, examining how ripe and heavy they were. Her breasts had always been perfect to me, but they were normally a little more than a handful. Tonight, they seemed much bigger.

I ran my hand down her stomach, normally so flat and smooth, and felt where it swelled ever so slightly, just above her pelvis.

“When was the last time you cycled, Ivy?”

She looked up at me, confused, her flush now one of embarrassment. Such things were hardly ever spoken of, even between man and wife, but I didn’t care.

“I’m your husband,” I said, letting a little sternness creep into my voice. “Your body belongs to me. I will know everything about it, no matter how shameful you think it is. Now answer my question.”

“It comes and goes…it’s never been regular, ever since I started,” she said, her cheeks burning now.

“Of course not, because you are terrible at taking care of yourself,” I murmured, circling her body again. She hardly ever ate, she spent hours exerting herself, all things that women who wanted to conceive were counseled against.

Yes, from this angle I could easily see the small, firm curve of her lower abdomen.

“I suppose…this summer, maybe? I remember cycling before we had the visitors.”

I was behind her now, and I slid my arms around her, letting my hands meet over that curve, my heart beginning to stutter with excitement. An excitement I never thought I would be able to have for my own. “I think we should send for a physician tomorrow.”

“No,” Ivy said disbelievingly, finally realizing which way my thoughts tended. “No, it can’t be. I would have known, wouldn’t I?”

I shrugged, moving around her again. I was only familiar with the barest parts of pregnancy, mostly from Silas’s sister-in-law, who was constantly pregnant.

“Although…” she hesitated. “I have been feeling tired. And sick. Since I arrived in London, but I thought it was simply heart-sickness. Oh, God, Julian, a child…”

I stopped in front of her and then dropped to my knees. My face was level with her belly button, and I touched my forehead against her belly, breathing in and out as something so foreign I couldn’t name it soared inside me, expanded until I thought my chest would crack open with it.

Happiness. It was happiness.

Unadulterated, untainted. Pure, blissful happiness.

I pressed my lips against her stomach, and she laced her hands through my hair, holding me there, and I suddenly felt like a penitent knight kneeling before a saint. My saint—my salvation—my perfect wildcat who now carried the most precious and tiny thing imaginable. In just a short month or two, I would be able to feel the child. I would be able to feel the kicks and the flutters.

“Julian,” Ivy said, and I realized I was crying. No, weeping, my shoulders shaking, my breath hitching, completely undone by the most basic and elemental fact of life.

I kissed her belly, trailing my kisses down, suddenly desperate to show her exactly what it meant to me to have my child growing inside her. She had to know—had to
feel
—how happy and raw and grateful beyond words it made me…

I reached her bare cunt, pausing for a moment to breathe over the sensitive flesh. Tears still fell from my face, and when I looked up at her, she was crying too, but crying and smiling, and then I lowered my head and pressed my lips to her soft skin.

She shivered and I increased the pressure, parting my lips to flick my tongue across her clit, exposed and swollen. She sighed, and I nudged her legs apart, suddenly greedy for more. I smelled soap and a delicate smell that was all her own, and then I buried my face between her legs, sucking and kissing and laving her until I could feel her legs shaking around me.

I didn’t relent, didn’t let up, and kept going until she let out a soft cry and came on my mouth, the tender flesh quivering deliciously against my lips. I waited until the tremors subsided, then I stood and scooped her into my arms and carried her to bed.

I loved her like this, post orgasm, where she was so loose and sated that she could barely move. I loved that I made her that way. And I loved that the moment I started stoking her fire again, her hunger would return, more avid than before, and that’s what happened now as I lowered my body over hers. She tugged and tore at my clothes and I undressed as quickly as I could, eager to feel my body against hers.

I took her mouth, stroking into it with my tongue, and then I rubbed my bare cock against her sex, shuddering the first time it made contact. I flexed my hips, sliding the length up and down her folds, not allowing myself to plunge in—yet. No, I wanted her desperate before I did. I wanted her to come so hard that everyone in the hotel could hear it.

I lowered my head and sucked a nipple into my mouth, sucking until she gasped and squirmed and then I moved my attentions to the other one. I didn’t stop until it was a stiff peak that brushed against my chest as I moved over her, and then finally, I notched the head of my cock at her entrance.

She lifted her hips to me, and I impatiently pushed them back down. She caught my hand with hers, her fingernails digging into the flesh of my wrist, and the bite of pain was what undid the last of my control, and I shoved into her as hard as I could, almost passing out from the feeling of her wet heat around my cock after so long.

I pulled out to the tip and then pushed in again, not fast but hard, just the way she liked it.

“Anything you want,” I panted, so caught up with lust and love and the fucking amazing sensation on my cock. “Anything you want and I’ll give it to you. Let me do it to you.”

She looked up at me, eyes full and deep. “Punish me,” she whispered.

Fuck.

I pulled out and knelt between her legs. She looked perfect like this: legs spread, cunt wet, hair tangled. How would I manage to get anything done with her as my wife? I could barely bring myself to leave her now, to go get what I needed to continue fucking her.

“Don’t move,” I said hoarsely. She didn’t, but her bright eyes followed me as I moved off the bed and toward the changing screen. I picked the dress off the floor, a very simple white affair that she’d chosen herself. I tossed it aside until I found her corset, with its long lacings, which I tore from their grommets. At the last minute, I picked the dress up again and divested it of the decorative ribbons that laced up the back.

When I returned to the bed, Ivy hadn’t moved, but she trembled when she saw what I had in my hands. I made her sit up and then I tied her wrists to the bed, and then her ankles, leaving a little slack so that I could then wrap a length of ribbon around each of her thighs and then tie those ribbons to the bed frame. She was now completely tied up, immobilized, tied so that her legs were splayed open and her perfect cunt defenseless.

My cock was so hard it hurt, but I was determined to give her exactly what she asked for, so instead of plunging back inside her pussy, I moved up and knelt in front of her, angling my hips down so I could fuck her mouth. She opened her lips willingly for me, and I slid in. I waited until I knew she had consciously relaxed herself, and then I started going rougher, harder, driving in and out until her eyes started to water. I fucked her mouth until I heard noises, choking noises, and then I pulled out.

“Had enough?” I rasped.

She shook her head. “More,” she said.

God, this woman. “I’m going to fuck your pussy now,” I said. “And you’re going to have no choice but to take it.”

“As if I would want to do anything else.”

I wasted no time once I got in position. I let go of all thought, all reason, and all inhibition, and I sank my cock into her as deeply as I could. I stayed there and then ground my pelvis against hers, putting an almost cruel pressure on her clit, rubbing and rubbing and watching her as she tried to squirm away and towards it in turns, watching her brow knit as she reached that place where she couldn’t tell the difference between pleasure and pain any longer. Then I let go of everything all together and just fucked. As hard and as fast as I could. Hard enough to make her grunt and squeal and fast enough to strain the ties against her limbs.

I drank in the feeling of her soft thighs welcoming me, the sight of her tits bouncing frantically, the sound of her animal noises resolving into wild cries as she came around my cock.

My own release was coming, an explosion coiling tighter and tighter at the base of my spine. I was going to fill her with my cum, I was going to fill her full of it, this cunt that had only ever known my cock, this cunt that I’d been the one to take first. I drove into her so relentlessly that tears sprang anew in her eyes and she was pleading for me to stop or slow down but she didn’t say our safe word and so I kept going, reaching down to rub her clit into another climax. I was greedy. I wanted more from her. I wanted it all, everything, every atom of this woman’s flesh, and she came again, crying openly now, and I was right on the edge.

“Come inside me,” she begged hoarsely. “I need you to. I want to feel it.”

“It’s all yours, kitten,” I said and then I inhaled sharply as it took me, an orgasm from hell, my cock convulsing so hard that I saw stars and my body was frozen in place, my muscles locked, and I realized I was growling through it all like an animal.