“I wanted to know if I could claim a slot on your dance card tonight, if it’s not already filled.”
The question was so unexpected and also so politely placed, so within the bounds of normal etiquette, that it took my mind a minute to catch up. Mr. Markham and I had never conducted our interactions within the bounds of etiquette. Ever. And he wanted to dance with me? I hated how pitifully happy the thought made me.
“I don’t dance,” I said.
“I’ve heard.”
He stepped forward into a pool of lantern light, and I could see that the boutonniere pinned to his jacket was none other than a sprig of bluebells. I sucked in a breath. Bluebell was our signal, the word I would use when I needed space from him. And at that moment, I realized I hadn’t used it when I’d ended our engagement. I hadn’t even thought to.
As if reading my mind, he said, “You never spoke our signal, Ivy. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said breathlessly.
“Would you like to say it now?”
My body hummed at the closeness to his while my mind reeled with the same thoughts that had been reeling for weeks. I should say it. I should deploy the one thing I knew that he would respect. He wouldn’t follow me then, and I’d never be at risk of marrying Mr. Markham again.
But I was so tired of missing him. I was so tired of running away from it all.
“No,” I said softly. “I don’t want to say it.”
Even in the dark, I could see Mr. Markham’s wide smile. I expected him to grab me, to kiss me, maybe even to fuck me right here in this garden, but instead he only asked, “So may I have that dance after all?”
Holding Ivy in my arms was the most delicious kind of torture. I was determined to show her my restraint, my decorum, my tenderness, but it was nearly impossible when I could feel the slope of her back through her corset, when her slender fingers were circled tightly around mine. All I wanted was to press against her and to feel every curve of hers pressing back. I wanted to nibble and suck every inch of exposed flesh from her temple to her collarbone, and I wanted to kiss the delicate spot where her pulse flickered on her neck, kiss it until she could feel my kisses coursing in her veins along with her blood. I wanted to kneel at her feet and kiss my way up to her perfect pussy.
I wanted to worship her in every way she deserved to be worshipped.
That wasn’t all, though. We were not one of those quotidian couples that could be satisfied by kisses and caresses; even if I could restrain myself from my darkest impulses, without them, Ivy would wilt and fade. She would drift away from me and from us, and if I won her back, I would not allow that to happen. If I won her back…the thought fed on itself, unfolding into entire scenes in my mind. She would have to be punished, I decided. Punished for breaking my heart and even more so for breaking her own heart, a heart that was still trusted to my keeping and instruction. It wasn’t hers to do with as she wanted, it was mine, and I would show her that with every hot inch of myself stroking the inside of her ass. Or perhaps with my palm hitting her flank over and over again. Or perhaps I would bind her hands and feet with rope, make her watch as I lazily pumped myself to an orgasm she wouldn’t be able to touch or taste.
Yes. I wanted to worship her the way she deserved, but she also deserved punishment, my recalcitrant wildcat, and if I brought her back to me, I would score her with every bite mark and handprint she deserved.
But she deserves this too, I reminded myself. She deserved to be courted. She deserved to be flattered and pampered and wooed and I had done none of those things at Markham Hall. I’d been so obsessed with protecting her from myself, and then when that became an impossibility, I’d lost any sense of control or boundaries. I lost everything to find her, and for a while it was perfect.
Perfect things never last.
We met and came apart and then met again, spinning wide circles on the floor. Ivy was unfamiliar with most of the dances since her worthless brother had never bothered to make sure that she had a proper upbringing, but I found I was resenting him less and less for that. For one thing, I didn’t give a fuck if Ivy could dance or embroider or play an instrument. For another, her brother’s neglect had allowed her to grow up unspoiled by the shallow pretensions of society. She had just grown up as her. She was all the more Ivy because it had only been her and her moldering library and her sea cliffs and her trees, and the thought of her any other way brought me acute pain.
She looked up at me then. “I’m sorry I have to fumble my way through the steps,” she apologized. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”
She was thanking me for letting me hold her again? Fuck. I didn’t deserve that.
I didn’t deserve her. Even outside of the awful things I’ve done, I still couldn’t reach her level of existence. She’s something rare, the kind of girl you read about in books or fairy tales. Ivy Leavold belongs in a primeval forest somewhere, shrouded in fog, face painted with woad, with ritual fires and otherworldly spirits glinting around her. Even here in this ballroom, she is so obviously other and apart from these two-dimensional Londoners that they cannot keep their eyes off her. Does she notice, I wonder, how they watch her every move? How every smile and step is followed by a hundred stares?
They were trying to figure it out. What was it that set her so above the other ladies present? She was quite pretty, of course, but there were other pretty women here. She had darker coloring than most English girls, but in London there were enough visitors from the Continent to erase the novelty of that. Though she didn’t speak often, when she did speak, what she said was arresting and intelligent, if sometimes unsettlingly direct…but again, she wasn’t the only intelligent woman in the room. No, it was something too ephemeral to name, an unfamiliar quality that these carp hardly ever saw in their fetid pool of dances and luncheons. It had taken me weeks to realize it, and I’d had the advantage of months alone with her.
Ivy wasn’t tame. She was here dressed in the same clothes, wearing the same manners as everybody else, but they no more hid her true nature than the bars of a zoo cage. And the same way that people were drawn to the tigers stalking agitated circles in their pens, they were drawn to Ivy. Women wanted to be her, men wanted to domesticate her, and everybody was fascinated by her.
Mine.
My grip tightened on her momentarily and then I forced myself to relax. No, I was not going to win her back that way. I couldn’t stay away from her, but I could also give her space and time. This had to be her decision. She had to want to come back to me. And I would honor whatever decision she ultimately made. Because while it frustrated me that she wasn’t soft and pliable like every other girl I’d been with, that was what I loved about her. Her strength. Her wildness.
And I was foolish enough to believe that maybe I could have them both—her love and her unbroken nature.
“May I visit you at your aunt’s house?” I murmured in her ear.
She flushed, whether from the proximity of my mouth or from the memory of what we had done in her aunt’s front room, I didn’t know. “Yes,” she said. “You may visit.”
God, she looked so delicious right now. Even with the circles un
