Forbidden to Love the Duke(61)

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

Ainsley returned to his chair in relief. James leaned back. This was no coincidental offer. Had the acquisition of Tudor manors become the latest rage among London’s aristocracy? Or had the mystery of four beautiful sisters sparked interest in another type of procurement? All James knew was that he felt compelled to guard their privacy from young poets and old fools and probably everyone ill-intentioned who fell in between.

“How did you hear about Fenwick?”

“I can’t remember,” Ainsley said, blinking at the change in James’s tone. “Must have been at the club.”

“Odd topic of conversation for gentlemen gamblers in London, don’t you think?” James asked, his eyes boring into Ainsley’s.

Ainsley slid to the edge of his chair. “No. No, we’re always boasting about who has inherited or won the largest acreage. Distressed properties with that much potential don’t land in one’s lap every day.”

“Perhaps you read about it in the news,” James suggested.

Ainsley’s eyes lit up. “That’s it, of course. I’m always dipping into papers that passengers leave in their coaches. My wife brings them home by the basket when she takes the stage to visit her mother.”

James started “Your wife?”

“Yes. Alvina.”

“Why the deuce are you asking about marrying vulnerable young ladies when you have a wife?”

“I only asked if the marriage were a condition of sale,” Ainsley said, clearly miffed. He came so swiftly to his feet that he knocked his cane across the floor. “On second thought, perhaps it would all be too much for me to manage.”

“What? The manor house or the Ladies Fenwick?” James picked up the cane and handed it to the gentleman, who seemed in a sudden rush to leave.

Ainsley backed out the door, bowing awkwardly. “Good to see you again, Ellsworth. Hope we meet soon at the club.”

James followed the man to the hall to demand further explanation, but the instant Ainsley slipped outside, another visitor approached, commanding his complete attention.

Ivy had scraped her lustrous hair into a lopsided knot and changed into a bleached white dress with blue ribbons banded beneath the modest bodice. Her mouth looked dark and swollen from their kisses, a sight that immediately emptied his mind of everything but lustful hope. Or hopeful lust. She turned him inside out.

“I want a moment of your time, please, Your Grace,” she said. “If it is not inconvenient.”

He ignored the crispness of her voice, the rigid lift of her shoulder when he stepped closer to her. “Would you prefer we spend this moment together in the Chinese Room?” he asked, his smile impudent. “And it’s no inconvenience at all.”

“That will not be necessary.”

She moistened her bottom lip. Right then he could have handed her the keys to Ellsworth Park. She was the woman that had eluded him all his life. “No? You mean—do you want our encounter to take place here, now?”

Her eyes met his. “Not that sort of encounter, you single-minded knave. I’m not going to let you deceive me again.”

He studied her. “I deceive you?”

She was breathing fast, her skin shone, and her hands were clasped behind her back, not in modesty, he realized. But in restraint. She wasn’t aroused at all. She looked ready for a bout of fisticuffs.

“I didn’t lose fairly,” she said.

He grinned. “It doesn’t matter. I won, and I don’t care whether it was fair or not. You fell into my arms.”

“I won’t fall that easily in future. I don’t like losing to a cheater. I was only doing my job. That incident shouldn’t have counted. You’ll have to be at death’s door for me to make a mistake like that again.”

James frowned as if listening intently to every word she said. Which he wasn’t. Her message, however, he understood. She was angry at him, and it wouldn’t last. He adored her. That was enough for a man to assimilate in one day. He wasn’t ready to admit it to her. But he couldn’t deny the truth to himself.

“At death’s door,” he said. “That is an unkind sentiment. I am hurt to the quick. What did Shakespeare have to say on the subject, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful governess’? To think that I saved you from the windowsill.”

“And I appreciated that.”

“You don’t sound appreciative.” As a matter of fact, she sounded as if she wanted to murder him. And he wanted to keep her in this house for the rest of their lives. He saw the future clearly: Ivy arguing with him in the doorway and him giving her orders afterward that had nothing to do with domestic affairs. Ivy, in his bed, inviting him to take pleasure in her body. Ivy, reading to their children.