“The footmen only know that a gentleman said he would return the lady in his own vehicle. Do you want to ride there to fetch her yourself?”
“Most assuredly not. Let her pay the consequences. I granted her a privilege. I felt sorry about the injury to her hand.”
Carstairs coughed lightly. “Perhaps there’s a reason why she is returning with this other person. Her sisters might have wanted to come along for the ride.”
“Or the gentleman might not have wanted my servants to witness what he had planned during the drive here.”
“All will be well, Your Grace.”
“A dalliance in a carriage? Who would be so brazen?”
Carstairs chuckled. “You would—” He broke off at the lethal stare that James leveled upon him. “Most disappointing, Your Grace. She seemed like such a fine young lady.”
“And he seems like such a piece of dung.”
“Ah, yes,” Carstairs said carefully. “Well, do not fret. All will be well.”
James shook his head in disgust. “Not if my suspicions are correct.”
Chapter 15
By the end of the birthday luncheon Oliver decided that he might have fallen in love with Ivy were he capable of the emotion. There was something different about her since she’d gone into service for the duke. Her skin glowed with a sensuality that Oliver had not noticed during their first encounter. Of course one didn’t expect a woman to exude vibrance when she was lying in the street.
He had invested heavily in her heritage. He’d borrowed money he could not repay and made promises he could not keep, unless he found the treasure hidden inside this house. He had also written and sold more poems during this last fortnight than he had the entire year. She and Fenwick had inspired him, and that inspiration was in itself worth a fortune.
That Ivy treated him like a distant cousin, and that Fenwick’s treasure might turn out to be a myth, only whetted his appetite for his quest. He thrived on uncertainty. The day Oliver’s life became predictable would be the day he crawled into his own coffin and closed the lid.
“Ivy,” he said when the guests began to drift from the table and he finally had the chance to be alone with her. “Would you walk with me in the garden before you leave?”
She glanced wistfully at Lilac; Oliver thought her reluctance to accept his offer was rather insulting considering what he’d done to impress her. “It’s Lilac’s birthday,” she said in a voice that put him in his place as if he were one of her charges. “I have to spend some time with her. And Rue. Besides, the duke’s carriage is waiting to take me back to the park.”
That was what she thought. Oliver forced a smile and picked up a half-empty bottle of wine from the table. “I understand. Family comes first. We’ll have our tête-à-tête soon enough.”
* * *
Five minutes later Ivy and Rue had retreated to the orchard at the back wall, seated amidst the sun’s waning rays and the bees that swarmed around a cluster of lavender. “I don’t have much time.” Ivy searched her sister’s face. “Tell me everything. I am gone only a few days and a man sits at Father’s place? Why have you allowed Sir Oliver to act as if he were one of us?”
Rue frowned. “Lilac thinks well of him. Rosemary doesn’t. I don’t have an opinion at all. We thought you’d be pleased about the pearls and the repairs. We hoped he might save you from the duke.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“If Sir Oliver is a genuine suitor for your hand, your only suitor in England, and is willing to wait a year to marry you, provided you can fend off the duke for that amount of time, then you’ll be the first of us to have a husband.”
Ivy leaned back. “I’m stunned.”
“The duke hasn’t already forced himself upon you, has he?” Rue asked, biting her lip.
“What if he has?” Ivy swatted crossly at a bee. “What if I admitted that I’d forced myself upon him?”
“You—you wouldn’t?” Rue said, smothering a laugh.
Ivy laughed. “I don’t believe that the three of you, four counting Oliver, have decided my entire future in a matter of days. How could you allow him to change Fenwick?”
“He’s madly in love with you.”
“He’s mad.”
“Ivy, the duke has a certain reputation.”
“So does Sir Oliver.”
Rue’s humor faded. “But he wants to court you.”
“A romance based on an accident in London,” Ivy mused. “We weren’t ourselves that day, were we, Rue? Are you ever going to tell me what happened in the hotel? You haven’t been the same since.” She waited but Rue said nothing. “It can’t be all that horrible or we wouldn’t be sitting here together as we’ve done hundreds of times.”