Forbidden to Love the Duke(63)

“What if he dismisses you?”

“Then you will soon be arguing with another governess.”

Ivy heard the girl’s apology but did not linger to acknowledge it. She hurried to her room and from the window witnessed the duke canter into view on his gray. His cloak billowed out like a black sail. The two heavyset men riding in his wake enhanced his dashing, devil-may-care appearance.

Ivy felt an irrational urge to open the window and demand to know what he had been doing at this hour. Perhaps it was at this unguarded moment of emotion that the green-eyed monster of jealousy crept into the chamber and, finding a disquieted soul, offered to keep her company into the night.

She would have been better off with Mary’s precocious honesty or Walker’s fears. Her uninvited guest tormented her with sly dialogue.

Where would the duke have gone so mysteriously, in the middle of the night?

He could have gone to visit a neighbor, Ivy reasoned. Or a tenant who had taken ill after supper. That was a decent landlord’s duty.

He could have gone in search of the sexual gratification you refused him. Do you not remember how his reception room overflowed with women on the day of his interview?

Ivy could hardly forget.

But he had chosen her—as a governess.

He kissed you at a masquerade ball five years ago. Twice you have let him go now.

Ivy stood firm. He’d probably gone hunting. She had heard gunshots fired.

Indeed, the voice mocked her. And his prey begged to be caught. What do you know of the games that sophisticated lovers play?

Ivy drew back into the curtains. As James drew nearer, he swayed unsteadily in the saddle and then slid to the ground without his customary agility. One of his companions dismounted and hastened to his side.

Ivy’s heart raced. Had he been shot? It didn’t seem possible that anything could diminish his vitality. He had been injured at war and survived to return to the ruling class. Still, he was mortal, no matter how everyone had come to place him on a pedestal.

He’s been fighting over a woman, the voice taunted in glee.

“You wicked man,” she said, wanting to pound her fist on the window and run to his aid at once. The sinner. Risking his life over a woman who wasn’t Ivy or even the lady from London he invited to sin with him in his exquisite home.

Fickle, the voice said in the silence.

Amoral.

Passionate.

She wished she could ask her sisters’ opinion instead of listening to this plaguesome voice in her head. Her sisters might try to confirm her first suspicion, that the duke had merely been out hunting.

But for what at this time of night? Or whom? And why did he need assistance to dismount? Was he drunk?

Rosemary would advise her to ask him in the morning and not lose any sleep over what was only speculation tonight. But Rosemary had never been kissed by a charismatic duke at a masquerade ball or swept off to his bed in what would have been a romantic moment except for the hideous gash on her wrist and the presence of Elora in the adjoining room.

Ivy wasn’t going to question him in the morning about his late-night rendezvous. He would only consider her curiosity a sign that she could not stop thinking about him if put to another test, which was obviously true. But Ivy needn’t give him another reason to gloat.

She said her prayers and went to bed, resolved to find out discreetly from the other servants what mysterious activities the master had committed during the night.

Except he looked so haggard the following day she decided she would rather remain in ignorance. His eyes brooded with secrets. Deep lines of fatigue drew his face into a forbidding mask.

Evidently the duke had exerted himself to the brink of physical exhaustion in some nocturnal mischief. If his dissolute appearance was the result of an assignation, Ivy doubted she would survive a love affair with the scoundrel.

Still, in her heart she believed that his ominous deportment had less to do with romance than it did with an issue infinitely more dangerous.


* * *

For the next four nights the disturbing pattern continued. Elora had left them before Ivy could ask her if she heard anything unusual after she retired. Ivy moved Mary and Walker to rooms across the hall and they slept fitfully from the moment she settled them into bed. The duke no longer appeared for evening prayers at all, and Ivy thought this was for the best.

He was short-tempered with the staff. He avoided Ivy. And when he walked through the house, an indelible darkness followed in his wake.

Even his appearance had changed in the past week. He’d lost weight and his elegant clothes hung on a chiseled frame that was strangely beautiful to behold. As far as Ivy could tell, he spent most of his daylight hours fencing, boxing, and in archery contests with Wendover and his two younger brothers, who were soon to join the navy. If Ivy hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the duke was preparing for battle himself