To Ivy and Julian’s earliest fans—thank you so much for taking a chance on corsets and parlor games.
“I want you to be my wife,” Julian Markham pronounced. Julian Markham: owner of Markham Hall and owner of my heart. And possible murderer of my cousin two months since.
Panic—swift and sharp—seized me, squeezing my ribcage, making my heart pound. All I could feel was how small the library had become, how low the ceiling, and how I needed to get outside, away from this—from this overwhelming thing and this overwhelming man who summoned such strong emotions within me. Love and desire twined together within my panic, grating against the doubts, the worries, the incredulity.
His mouth twisted at the corners, amusement lighting along his eyes. “You look so surprised.”
A sharp retort came to mind, but it never made it to my lips. Of course I am surprised. Surprised and flattered and terrified. For one thing, someone like me couldn’t marry someone like him; he needed to marry someone in his social station, someone wealthy and distinguished. Surely he knew this.
For another, there were the frightening things I had learned from the polite police officer in Scarborough—that my cousin Violet had been pregnant when she died, that the baby was almost certainly not Mr. Markham’s, and that the entire narrative pointed to Mr. Markham’s guilt.
Practicality and fear warred with emotion, and I looked away so that he wouldn’t see the tears pricking at my eyes. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. The vise around my chest continued to squeeze and press.
A beat passed, then another.
“Wildcat,” he said. “Say something.”
“We can’t marry,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the pain from my voice.
“And why can’t we?”
“Because—” I was dangerously close to sputtering. “Because! It’s not right!”
This I meant in light of Violet’s death, in the light of his role in it, that it wouldn’t be right for me to place myself at his mercy when I didn’t know if he had any.
But he misunderstood me.
“You don’t want to be my whore, but you balk at becoming my wife? You are more feral than I thought. Are you so afraid of being trapped?” He took my wrist in his hand, his thumb pressing against my pulse, and I vividly remembered the first night we met. “Haven’t I shown you that some restraints can be freeing?”
He had. Oh God, he had. And just like that, lust spiked through me, all the sweeter for the doubt surrounding it.
Julian Markham. My lethal forbidden fruit.
“It’s more than that,” I continued, trying to summon logic in the midst of the hurricane inside me. “Violet died only two months ago. We haven’t been in mourning long enough to honor her memory—”
“We can remember her just as well if we were married as if we were not. And as for honor, she has no family left that I know of and neither do I. This choice is ours and ours alone. Honor be damned.”
“But—” I didn’t finish my thought out loud. But what if you killed her?
Suddenly, he was in front of me, kneeling on the carpet, his hands on my knees. “Every moment away from you today was a torment. All I could think about was the way your eyes looked when I fucked you by the stream. The way you run through the woods at night like a fox. The way you are so unspoiled by worldly things, yet so eager for pleasure.”
There were tears burning at my eyelids now. I did everything I could to will them away.
“We fit together, Ivy. All my life I have been looking for you, you who are so wild and willing and yet strong enough to withstand even my fiercest urges. You are what I thought I saw in women like Molly, what I thought I saw in Violet. I’ve known this for a while—since our night here in the library perhaps—but I truly realized it last night after I couldn’t find you. I need you. I need you in my life, completely and totally. I want to be the husband I was pretending to protect you for.” His eyes searched mine. “Hasn’t it been obvious? I love you.”
“You do?” It sounded so weak, so insecure, but in that moment I needed to know if he was telling the truth. I needed to know that he was as absolutely consumed by me as I was by him.
“You are perfection. You are made for me, with your independence of spirit and your resilience. I never have to worry about frightening you or breaking you. How could I not love you?” He grabbed my hand and pressed it against his chest. I felt his heart beating, steady and sure. “You belong in here, my love. You belong in my bed, in my house, and you belong there with the right to own me. To own my time and my attention. Say yes.” He pulled my fingers up to his lips and began kissing them, one by one.
