“Your Grace?” She turned her head. “On second thought, maybe we should establish a few rules to follow.”
“Follow where?” he said absently.
She closed her eyes briefly as if asking for help from above. “Are we to speak to each other? If I accidentally walk into a room and you are present, am I to leave immediately? Shall I raise a fan to shield myself from any lascivious glances you cast my way?”
“What lascivious glances?”
“The ones you give me when I bend over to pick up an object one of the children has dropped.”
“Can you pick up objects and hold a fan to your face at the same time?”
“I’ve never had reason to try,” Ivy replied. “Are you saying that you can’t control the way you look at me?”
He gave a droll laugh. “Let’s agree we shall not remain alone in a room together nor seek out each other’s company for the week. That should remove all temptation.”
She smiled up at him. “I should have no trouble obeying those orders. I’ll be as inconspicuous as a speck of dust.”
That, he thought, would be impossible. “Then we will have no further problems.”
* * *
The rest of the day proceeded smoothly in Ivy’s view. Her irritation at the duke’s supercilious attitude buoyed her until evening. During the night, unfortunately, she fell prey to thoughts of him and by morning, she realized she showed signs of weakening. She would stand firm, however. She would not admit she looked forward to that baritone voice booming at the children to stay out of his study or at Carstairs to stop disarranging his desk.
She would submit to torture before confessing that she missed the dark eyes that followed her across the room and engendered sensual images in her mind, sometimes at the oddest moments, as today, when she was scolding Walker for putting a piece of cake in his pocket and sitting on it.
How unseemly to be wiping cream cake from a cane chair while picturing herself half-naked in the duke’s arms. Or worse, wondering what he looked like in the buff. Outwardly she might be holding up to his challenge. Inside, she was on the verge of surrender.
“The cake is gone,” Mary whispered in her ear.
“What? Oh. So it is.”
She glimpsed a flash of black tails at the door and sighed. The duke had left the room without a word.
She could not allow him to keep affecting her in this way. She felt flushed. She suffered chills. She stole glances at him like a fool. Then when he looked up, she looked away, drawing his notice to her disconcertment. He must be thoroughly enjoying himself.
On the third day she decided to give him a dose of his own medicine. She absolutely refused to look in his direction as she was leading the children to the lake with their sketchbooks and he, from what she could guess, was on his way to fish with Captain Wendover on the dock.
She clasped her pencil box and book to her chest and held her head so high that the sun momentarily blinded her. And she tripped over one of the dogs accompanying the duke.
The box and book went flying. So might have Ivy if quick-witted Mary hadn’t grasped the sash of Ivy’s gown in time to slow her momentum. The friendly dog entangled beneath her feet yelped.
Ivy pitched forward, preparing to meet the grass chin-first when a powerful arm lashed around her waist and arrested her fall. The duke straightened and stepped back before she could catch her breath.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
And he said in an expressionless voice, “Did you tear your stitches?”
And in a detached voice she replied, “I don’t believe so. They are to be removed soon, anyway. How good of Your Grace to save me from my clumsiness.”
He nodded. They broke apart. Ivy knelt with the children to collect her pencils. The duke rejoined his friend on the path to the lake.
Chapter 20
That might have been a frustrating enough start to James’s day without Carstairs bounding across the lawn after him and shouting, “Sir Oliver Linton of London is in the reception room and wishes to see you on a matter of utmost urgency!”
James glanced over his shoulder to gauge Ivy’s reaction to her other suitor’s name. But she and the children had walked out of earshot, and he was glad for it.
At least now he had a person on whom he could take out his exasperation. Finally he could meet this brash fox and put him in his place. It took nerve, he thought, to call upon a duke uninvited. It required sheer gall for a caller to leave the reception room and settle himself in the study.
He didn’t bother to disguise his contempt when he walked into his study and discovered Sir Oliver reading one of the books on his desk. “Would you mind not prying into my personal belongings?”