She was in his bed again. With him? She couldn’t seem to fully awaken. “Your Grace . . . please.” She reached out beside her and her fingers touched soft hair. Was it Lilac? Was she home?
“It’s me, my lady. It’s Mary. I’m ever so sorry.”
“It was an accident.” Her eyes refused to stay open. Minutes or an hour passed. She couldn’t tell. She drifted.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Mary whispered, and Ivy jolted awake again. “I always wanted to behead Henry.”
“So did Rosemary.” Ivy’s wrist throbbed. Now she recalled that the physician had given her eight stitches and a dose of laudanum. She managed to pull her hand to her chest. “She’s one of my sisters.”
“May I meet her?”
The bed-curtains parted, and Ivy felt another presence in the room. A husky voice said, “What are you doing in here, Mary? Haven’t you caused enough trouble today? Go back to your own bed.”
The pressure lifted from Ivy’s ribs. A cool hand stroked her cheek. She wanted to rouse, but then the caress would stop. “Does it hurt?” he asked her gently.
“Mmm, no. It feels wonderful.”
He laughed, his face close to hers. “I meant your wrist. But I’m happy to act as a substitute to ease your discomfort.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips. She floated away again, compliant, lost, her last sensation one of contentment until later in the night, when she stirred again, her hand aching, and realized she was alone.
* * *
James sat with Elora at breakfast the next day, feeling like a simpleton for not realizing the obvious. She had loved Curtis all her life. She might have considered him as a suitor if a married rake hadn’t ruined her the night of the masquerade ball. Of course she hadn’t advertised the news in the papers. She would have done everything in her power to hide her disgrace. But she was discovered by a pair of debutantes, and their malice had marked her for life.
Elora considered herself only good enough to become a man’s mistress, and the man she had chosen was the brother of her true love, who presumably was as oblivious to this imbroglio as James had been.
“How did Ivy help you?” he asked her over the plate of buttered toast the butler passed across the table.
“She was the only debutante at the ball who stood beside me. We knew each other from boarding school. I never met her again after that night.”
He tried to hide his sudden eagerness to see Ivy and casually pushed back his chair. “She should be awake by now. It’s only courtesy that I check on her. After all, she could have fallen out the window.”
“She’s been up for hours, James. You’ll find her upstairs with the children.”
He attempted to look detached. “Well, that’s fine, then. I don’t see what I was worrying about.”
“You worry about everything. I know your secrets. Do you still suffer that terrible pain in your arm?”
“Do I act as though I’m in pain?”
She stared at her toast. “Not at all. But before you escape, I would like your permission to take the children to my sister’s house for a few days. She has two sons of her own, and it would be good for Walker to play with the other boys. I’d like the chance for the children to know me as something other than the woman you were considering to be your bedmate.”
He flushed. “Now that everything is out in the open, the idea sounds a little obscene.”
“What we had in mind certainly was.”
He laughed at her teasing tone and left the room, in the best mood he could remember since he had returned to Ellsworth. It was a fine house, he thought, large enough in which to lose one’s way. It took an eternity to cross through the corridors to the staircase that climbed upstairs. On the way he passed so many Ionic columns and Greek statues he could have been in Athens.
At last he reached the stairs, only to be flagged down by Perris, the butler. “Your Grace! Your Grace!” Perris said, bending over to catch his breath. “A letter has arrived.”
“It can wait. No. It can’t. It might concern my brother Curtis.”
The butler handed him the letter. James tore open the seal before realizing it was addressed to Ivy. “Perris, this is not for me.”
“I never said it was, Your Grace. It was sent to our poor Lady Ivy, who went through such an ordeal yesterday. A footman from Fenwick Manor delivered it only a minute ago. I wonder if her family has heard of her horrendous accident. . . .”
James looked first to the signature to verify that the message hadn’t been written by Ivy’s admirer. He quickly scanned the letter while Perris, the biggest gossip in the house, droned on. He felt like a kitchen girl for reading it. But then word could arrive any day from Curtis or his faithless wife.