Forbidden to Love the Duke(26)
“It’s the wolf!” Mary cried. “Run!”
James growled at her. “And I’m going to eat you for ruining the reading, not to mention giving me away.”
Mary’s eyes widened as if she wasn’t sure he was only teasing. The truth was he had been enjoying himself. He didn’t often catch Ivy unawares. She was different with the children, her defenses down. Now she had to worry about a wolf.
Or perhaps two. James might be overreaching, but he had reason to suspect that she had another admirer.
“Let’s get the wolf!” Walker shouted.
Ivy closed the book, giving James a look. “Stop it, children. These dramatics are not appropriate. You’re too old to behave like this.”
Walker vaulted over Ivy’s lap, snatching a willow branch on his way. Ivy started to rise from the blanket, only to be lifted without protocol to her feet. In the process she bumped against James’s hard chest and he refused to budge an inch.
“Walker. Mary,” he said to the children, but he was staring into Ivy’s eyes as he spoke. “Go inside the house. I must speak to Lady Ivy alone.”
“Is she going to be dismissed?” Walker inquired, his willow branch drooping.
Mary sighed. “Elora must have arrived.”
* * *
“Go inside,” the duke said, his stare so forbidding, Ivy knew that her dismissal could be the only explanation.
She hadn’t lasted as long as the least valued of Henry VIII’s wives. She’d be happy to leave with her head, not to mention her heart and virtue, intact.
“Have I done something wrong, Your Grace?” she asked, running through any actions on her part that might have offended him. Perhaps she had not fallen into his arms as he expected. Perhaps she had been meant to serve as an unwilling lover until a voluntary one appeared. All his talk of fulfilling her contract, and—he looked a little annoyed. What could have happened?
“You have been sent a gift,” he said in an accusing tone, his left hand behind his back.
“A gift? Sent here to me?”
“That is what I said. And I believe you said that you did not have any present admirers to distract you from your duties.”
“Well, I don’t. This gift is most likely from my sisters.”
He lifted his eyebrow. “It was sent from London. Do you have another sister in town that you’ve forgotten to mention?”
“Of course I don’t.”
Ivy forced herself to meet his stare. Her last journey to London had reinforced her sense of loss and defeat. “Are you going to give it to me or not?” she asked, not caring how discourteous she sounded. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t need to be so abrupt. Why on earth should he resent her receiving a package?
“Here.” He produced a black velvet oblong box wrapped in a scarlet silk ribbon.
Ivy took the box reluctantly. “How do you know it came from London?”
“A footman from Fenwick brought it here this morning. Evidently it was sent to you at the manor and your sisters opened the outer wrapping. Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Do you need to watch?”
“Not if you have something to hide.”
“What would I have to hide?” she asked, feeling guilty without knowing why. She and her sisters had never received gifts, only bills, after their father’s death. She didn’t know anyone well enough in London who would send her a present.
Did this have anything to do with Rue’s disappearance that night in the hotel? She had an awful sense that night would come back to haunt them.
“Would you like me to open the box for you?” the duke said, looking for all the world as if he wanted to.
Ivy frowned at him. “I’ll open it myself, thank you.”
“Then, unless you suspect it contains some embarrassing or unsavory contents, I suggest you do so.”
Her mouth pinched, she untied the ribbon and stared at the diamond-and-pearl necklace carefully pinned to the bottom of the box. “This belonged to my mother,” she said, biting her lip. “I sold it as a last resort.”
He stared at the necklace, his eyes narrowed in speculation. For a moment Ivy thought he understood more about its reappearance in her life than she did. At length he said, “Perhaps there was a mix-up, after all. Could your sisters have sent it to you as a token of family affection?”
Ivy shook her head, afraid to voice her suspicion. She could only assume that Mr. Newton had discovered the pearls to be paste and had sent the necklace back, demanding a return of the money she had already spent.
Still, she couldn’t imagine her mother in artificial pearls, unless these were a copy she’d had made of the original necklace to foil potential thieves.