Outrageously Yours (29 page)

He peered down at the textured notepaper, which he’d unconsciously crumpled in his fist.
Was
Gwendolyn’s disappearance his fault? He had always tried to be a good brother, though admittedly he’d grown distant in those long months following Aurelia’s death. Still, if he had known of Gwendolyn’s feelings for Colin, he would not have been entirely disapproving of an attachment between them. His sister was young, and he would have insisted on a yearlong courtship at the very least before he allowed an engagement to proceed. . . .

But he’d been kept in the dark about the entire matter. Gwendolyn and his supposed best friend had sneaked about, defying every proper convention, until Gwen had been left all but ruined. After that, there could be no permitting any relationship between them. No responsible elder brother would have behaved differently, and surely Gwendolyn should have realized that he had done his best for her in placing her in the queen’s household.

“Has it never occurred to you,” he countered evenly, “that doing what is best for others, no matter how painful or unappreciated, is part of the frustrations a man must bear?” When her perplexed expression deepened, he added, “Perhaps, Ivy, you should think about that.”

He turned to go. She caught his elbow. “What about going to the authorities? Will you defy the queen’s command for—?”

At the clatter of footsteps in the corridor, he pressed his hand to her lips.

 

Ivy considered biting Simon’s finger until she, too, heard what had prompted him to cover her mouth.

A second or two after Simon released her, Benjamin Rivers stopped short in the doorway. “Simon. And Mr. Ivers, too, I see. I thought I heard voices.”

“I forgot my hat earlier. But see here, we discovered this in your bookcase.” His expression darkening, Simon thrust Gwendolyn’s unfinished note beneath the other man’s nose. “Ben, has my sister been to see you or not?”

The man regarded the item with a frown. “I told you, I wasn’t even aware that Gwen had left London.”

“Then how—” Simon’s voice surged. He paused, and Ivy perceived his effort to rein in his temper. He asked more quietly, “How did this come to be on your bookshelf?”

“I don’t know.” The dean of natural philosophies rubbed his temple, then pushed charcoal strands of hair from his brow. “I am as mystified as you are. Perhaps she came to see me when I wasn’t in....”

“And tucked a note in among your books?”

“I can’t explain what she might have done, or why.”

“Wait one moment.” Ivy turned and moved back to the shelf. “The note was just about here, tossed to the very back of the shelf. Obviously Lady Gwendolyn had wished to leave Lord Harrow a message. Perhaps she could not put into words what she felt and instead left a sign.”

“A sign of what?” both men asked simultaneously.

“Of where she intended to go next.”

Their vocal skepticism notwithstanding, Ivy began calling out the titles near where she had discovered the note. When none elicited a response from either man, she named the authors instead, many of whom she recognized from her studies. “Carlisle, Clausius, Faraday, Galvani, Granville, Guericke . . .”

“Wait.” Simon moved beside her. “Did you say Granville? Alistair Granville?”

Ivy tipped her head sideways to read the spine. “Alistair Granville. Yes, right there.” She pointed to the tome.

Simon pulled the clothbound volume from the shelf.
“Diamagnetism and the Perpendicular Forces of the Earth’s Magnetic Fields,”
he read from the front cover. He flipped the book open and fanned through the first few pages.

“It wouldn’t be unlike Gwen to leave cryptic clues as to her intentions.” He looked up at the dean. “Could my sister have meant to hint that she would go to Windgate Priory?”

“There is one way to find out.”

Simon nodded. “I was planning to visit Alistair anyway. Come, Ned, we’d best set out now if we’re to make it back to Harrowood before nightfall.”

 

Ivy waited until they climbed back into Simon’s carriage before she ventured to ask, “How much does your sister understand about your work?”

Simon placed his hat on the seat between them. “I’ve wondered that myself. Despite her impulsive nature, Gwendolyn possesses a sharp mind.”

“Do you think she grasped the significance Victoria’s stone could play in your research? And I don’t mean in general terms.”

The carriage listed as the driver turned the vehicle about and headed the team northwest, away from town. Ivy pressed both hands to the seat to prevent herself from toppling. Simon gripped the hand strap above the door. Still, his body leaned sharply until his shoulder gave hers a solid nudge. His spicy shaving soap aroused a fluttering of awareness inside her.

“Up until a couple of weeks before she went away, I’d have said no,” he replied to her question. “But after my first electroportation, it was Gwendolyn who found me. Like yesterday, I was on the floor, unconscious and far more incapacitated than I was when you found me. It took hours before my strength returned, days to fully recover.”

He paused, staring out at the passing scenery. Ivy caught a fleeting glimpse of St. John’s entrance gates, but what Simon had just admitted held the better part of her attention.

“You very nearly killed yourself that time . . . yet you repeated the experiment. Why?”

He didn’t look at her. “Science progresses in such ways.”

“No.” She grasped his chin and forced him to turn toward her. “Science need not kill or maim to progress. There are safer methods—”

“At the time, I’d have defied your safer methods.” His sudden vehemence made her snatch her hand away. For an instant his eyes blazed in the carriage’s dusky light. Then their fervor dimmed. “Even yesterday morning, I’d have laughed at the suggestion of proceeding with caution.”

“And now?”

“Now I agree with you. Now I see my folly.”

His sense of finality, of capitulation, spread sudden misgivings through Ivy’s heart. She did not wish Simon to risk his life by testing dangerous procedures on himself, yet neither did she wish to see him lose the daring courage that led him to astonishing innovations . . . and which made him so dear to her. She felt sad to think that in some way she had undermined his confidence.

“Not folly,” she whispered, and then surprised herself by adding, “You can’t mean to abandon your discovery.”

His eyebrows rose. “Isn’t that what you advised me to do?”

“No. Yes.” She shook her head. “Perhaps yesterday I believed that to be the prudent course, but I’d received a fright. Besides, you said you wished to protect
me
, not give up entirely.”

“Again, that was yesterday. This morning I reached a vastly different conclusion. Electroportation disassembles and reassembles the body’s molecules. Galileo’s teeth, Ivy, who knows what mutations can, and perhaps did, occur? How can such a process ever be safe, for anyone?”

“You’re frightening me again. I still wish you would see a doctor.”

“No need, for I emerged well enough.” He slapped a hand to his chest, over his heart. “But yes, you should be frightened. So should I. I was playing with a godlike force, something no man, not even a scientist, has the right to do.”

Part of her, the logical and practical side, agreed wholeheartedly. But the part of her that had defied convention, donned trousers, and experienced the electrical energy of his generator flowing through her own body cried out a protest.

“If your view has changed because of me, Simon, you must reconsider. I have no wish to change you, not anything about you. Impulsiveness is obviously a de Burgh family trait, one of many that set you head and shoulders above any other man I’ve ever known.”

Those words sprang directly from Ivy’s heart, but when Simon continued to face stiffly forward, lost in thought, she realized he hadn’t heard her; she realized, too, that she didn’t dare confess her feelings again.

She had given her virginity to this man and did not regret a single moment of their wondrous lovemaking. Oh,
he
was wondrous; he had been solicitous of her needs and sweeter than she ever dreamed the Mad Marquess could be. She had no regrets.

But she could not ignore what had brought them into each other’s arms: the alternating shock, fear, relief, and exultation that had resulted from his electroportation process. For several dreadful moments yesterday she had believed him dead, or nearly so. He, too, upon first awakening, had doubted his hold on life.

Was it any surprise that such a tumult of emotion would lead to a physical outpouring as well? Today, however, those emotions were well under control. Even during his proposal of marriage, he had maintained an emotional distance as well as a physical one.

Then she must keep hers, too, rather than expect from him more than he was prepared to give. In truth, in the interest of preserving her newfound independence, she had no wish to attach herself to any man. If only she knew of a scientific process to prevent her heart and her aspirations from getting in each other’s way.

She cleared her throat. “We were speaking of Gwendolyn, and how much she understands about your work.”

Some of the rigid tension drained from his posture. “She knew my injuries were the result of erratic fluctuations in my generator’s electrical current. And that my greatest challenge lay in creating a current free of those fluctuations.” He met her gaze and voiced her own thoughts. “Gwendolyn might think the stone is a source of steady power, a natural battery of sorts.”

“Her theft is not your fault,” Ivy said, voicing what
she
believed to be Simon’s thoughts. He frowned, looking as though he was about to form a denial, but his sense of guilt spoke from every taut line of his face.

His heavy sigh broke the silence. “Gwendolyn’s actions
are
my fault, Ivy, in more ways than one. And I suppose my failures as a brother may well cost the queen her happiness.”

“Whatever can you mean?”

Ivy’s wide-eyed incredulity might have made Simon smile, had the situation not been one that gnawed at his honor. And if it weren’t time to acknowledge what he had ignored for so long.

“The theft and her disappearance, and everything that happened last winter, are a direct result of how self-absorbed I’d become after my wife’s death.”

“But it’s understandable that you would have become withdrawn.”

Fingers raking into his hair, he shook his head. “Understandable, perhaps. But not excusable. Gwendolyn and I were always close, more so after the death of our parents. Oh, she was always impulsive, always landing herself in predicaments from which I had to extricate her. But when she most needed the indulgent brother she had always relied upon, she found instead a distant stranger who had no patience for her antics.”

Ivy’s hand came down lightly on his own. “Excuse me for saying so, but it sounds as though Gwendolyn has always been a teeny bit spoiled.”

At this he did smile; how could he not? “A gross understatement if ever there was one. Of course she was spoiled. What younger sister isn’t? But she’s good-natured and kindhearted as well. And innocent. Most of all that.” He blew out a breath laden with regret at how badly he’d handled the incident last winter.

The suddenness with which Ivy removed her hand prompted him to catch it and bring it to his lips. “That was not meant to draw any sort of comparison between you.”

She nodded, but her gaze darted everywhere but at him. With his free hand he cupped her cheek and turned her to him. “If anything, I wish Gwen were more like you, Ivy. Brave and a bit rash, yes, but also steady and determined and . . .”

“Yes?”

And everything he could love in a woman, if he were to allow himself to love again.

Being this close to her, in the intimacy of a moving carriage, roused his body to mutiny. In the flicker of bright autumn daylight sifting through the roadside trees, he became keenly aware of everything about her: the luster of her cropped curls, the soft contour of her cheeks, the perfect angle of her pretty nose.

Resolve became lost in the magnetic draw of her lips. Simon framed her face in his hands. Right before he kissed her, he glimpsed surprise and yearning gleaming out at him in equal measure, a mingling that made her more beautiful than ever and rendered him unable to resist pressing his lips to hers.

His arms went around her, and he pulled her into his lap, the feel of her booted, trousered legs against his own still an unaccustomed sensation, and still oddly erotic. When heady desire prompted him to sweep an arm beneath her knees and gather her closer, he reveled in the ease of doing so, and the simplicity of her own movements, unencumbered by corset and skirts and petticoats.

He loved, too, the freedom of access her attire granted him to her hips, thighs, and slender legs, not to mention the delectable curve of her bottom. Through her clothing his hands traced every part of her, raising mental images of what lay beneath until his own breeches tightened around his arousal.