The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) (7 page)

The smart white house on Eaton Place was a popular destination that next morning. After Esther’s carriage stopped in front, having just pushed its way through the interminably slow traffic around Belgrave Square, I exited the cab and found myself in a swarm of suits and cigar fumes. There was a cacophony of muttered pardons and cleared throats and half-hearted offers to help me up the stairs, but I managed to dodge all of them and reach the front door, where I rang the bell.

I was bade to sit in the front parlor while the butler went to inquire if the mistress was available. As I did whenever I was trapped indoors and participating in an empty social ritual, I fantasized about running away. Simply disappearing and avoiding all of the subtle pits and traps of polite conversation, finding some more useful and productive way to occupy my time. But this morning was different. This morning I had woken up with Mr. Markham’s words still looping in my mind, and I knew that he was right. He was right about my preconceived notions of what was natural and what wasn’t, and he was right about my needing to be ready.

I had realized, as I had tried to go back to sleep, that what I wanted more than anything was somebody to talk honestly to about all this. I wanted to lay all of my fears and ecstasies in front of someone and not have them gasp in scandalized shock. Of course, this eliminated most of the people I knew. Esther was out of the question, not the least because I didn’t want to shatter her fledging respect for Mr. Markham by telling her about some of his more particular tastes.  

Our
 peculiar tastes.

There was always Silas, but although I knew he would be able to comfort me and convince me that all would be well if I went back to Mr. Markham, that wasn’t necessarily what I wanted today. Today I wanted honesty. I wanted the truth with all its serrated edges and cold surfaces. I wanted someone who had loved Julian Markham and lived to tell about it.

Which was why I was at the London residence of Molly O’Flaherty, a woman I’d met early this summer at the same time I had met Silas. She was also a former lover of Mr. Markham’s, and even though I knew they were no longer together, part of me was still fantastically jealous of her.

As if summoned by my envy, she appeared in the doorway, talking to a man as she walked in. “And send a letter to Gibbs straight away. If the board makes a move, it won’t be without every lawyer in the city knowing about it. Hello, Ivy.”

I knew that it would be appropriate to stand and drop a small curtsy, but Molly and I were beyond that. Beyond being falsely courteous to each other. She seemed to think so as well, because after dismissing her servant, she sank into the chair across from me without so much as a handshake.

“Why are you here?” she asked bluntly.

“I wanted to talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. Is it about Mr. Markham? No, don’t answer, of course it is.” She leaned back in the chair, and the change in light illumined the red lining her eyelids.
She’s been crying
, I realized. I hadn’t thought Molly was capable of tears, but when I looked at her closely, I could see the way her nose was chafed, as if by repeated swiping with a handkerchief. I could see the way her sapphire gown had uncharacteristic wrinkles in the silk, as if she’d been wringing her skirt under a desk or a table where no one could see.

It wasn’t my place to say anything, but she really did seem upset. “Is everything okay?”

I expected her to snap at me or to ignore me. Who was I, after all, to ask her about her life? It had been clear to me since this summer that we would never be friends.

But to my surprise, she answered honestly. “No. No, nothing is okay.”

She stood and walked over to a low credenza, where she unstoppered a decanter of whiskey. The habit was so like Mr. Markham’s that I felt another pang of jealousy. They were such a good match in so many ways…

She poured herself a glass and then poured one for me without asking. She handed it to me and then sat back down. “The board of my company is trying to force me to marry.”

“Why?”

“Fuck if I know,” she said, taking a practiced sip of her drink. “I suppose they think that they’ll have more luck controlling me if I have a husband who’s on the board as well.”

“I was under the impression that your company was doing quite well under your leadership.”

“It is,” she said fiercely. “It’s doing more than well. But that’s not enough for those vampires. They want more, more,
more
, and at a human cost I am not willing to deliver on. They forget that I am the daughter of a dock-worker before he worked his way up, and I refuse to pay those men a penny less than what they’re worth. As a consequence, we have a workforce of strong, experienced and loyal employees. If they think they can threaten me into submission, if they think they can come into my home and demand I take the yoke of some man so I’ll be more
docile
…” Her voice shook with barely repressed anger and she turned her head away. But not enough that I couldn’t see a tear well over and spill down her cheek. She ignored it, letting it fall into her glass.

I flashed back to the men pouring out of her front door. “They were the men outside.”

“Yes, they were,” she said bitterly. “They’ve all banded together, apparently, in some last ditch effort to ‘bring me under control.’ They plan to sell their shares and abandon the company if I don’t fall in line.”

“But surely they don’t want to do that—the company is so profitable. I imagine it would be hard to walk away.”

“Yes, which is why they are trying to force me into capitulating instead leaving. They want to stay. But they want me neutered if they do.” She was silent for a moment, then burst out, “God, I wish I could haul them back in here and wring their necks!”

I didn’t know what to say. There was no comfort to be offered, really, nothing that I could say that would be something she hadn’t thought of on her own. But I felt like it would be rude not to address her agitation. So I offered my honest observation. “You seem like the type of woman who gets what she wants. I have no doubt that you’ll get the best of them. Somehow.”

“Somehow,” she repeated, staring at the window past my head. And then her eyes refocused, regaining their usual acuity. “And I’m quite sorry to have confessed all this to you. You don’t have any stake in this mess, and it’s apparent to me that you don’t care—and you don’t need to care because we’re not exactly friends, are we?”

I shrugged. I did care, actually, in some strange way. Maybe Molly wasn’t a friend, maybe I would always be jealous of her past with Julian, but she was in my sphere and I didn’t wish her anything but success. And there was something satisfying about seeing another woman wrestle her way into the world of men with nothing but sheer force of will.

“Regardless,” she said, “I do feel a peculiar kinship to you right now. It’s Julian, I suppose, but perhaps it’s more than that. You also seem like the type of woman who gets what she wants, although maybe you don’t know it yet. Perhaps we are both cut from the same cloth.”

“That’s actually why I came to visit,” I said. “I need to know if I am. Cut from the same cloth, that is.”

Molly finished her drink and set her glass on the table. Artfully looped curls trailed along the silk shoulder of her dress. “And how exactly do you think I can help you?”

I couldn’t think of a response to that because I didn’t know. Coming here, all I’d held in my mind was the vague impression of Molly’s confidence, her surety, the way she didn’t seem to carry any guilt or shame about being the kind of woman preachers railed against on cold Sunday mornings.

I wanted to know how she could fuck so freely, how she could let herself be fucked in all the ways she wanted, without worrying about being subsumed by the darkness that seemed to accompany these tides of lust. It was hardly the topic for polite conversation, but I didn’t have it in me to equivocate or dissemble. So again, I chose honesty.

“I love Julian,” I said. “I love everything about him. His thoughts, his company, even his fits of melancholy. And I love the way he fucks me. But you know what he’s like. He’s…”

“Dark?” Molly supplied. “Overwhelming? Volcanic? Excruciating? Consum—”

“Yes,” I cut her off. “All of those.”

“Sorry,” she said and then examined her fingernails. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

“But the thing is that I love that too. I
need
it. He’s…” I hesitated, but then forged ahead—if there was one woman who wouldn’t be shocked by this, it was Molly. “...he’s done things to me that should frighten me. He’s pinned me down and fucked me, he’s pushed me, he’s chased me, he’s done things to me that I’ve never even known were possible—and I have loved every minute of it. Even the worst thing he’s done, the very worst thing…in my secret moments, it arouses me. Tell me that’s not sick. Tell me I’m not twisted.”

She cocked her head, letting her eyes slide slowly to mine. “You are sick, Ivy Leavold,” she said. “Sick with something that doesn’t have a cure. Of course, most of us don’t want a cure, so there’s that.”

“But how do you live with it? Aren’t you afraid of what you’re capable of? Of what you’ll let someone be capable of doing to you?”

She laughed. “Afraid? No. I promised myself as a child that I would not feel fear as a grown woman, and I have not. But, my dear, you and I are two different breeds of the same species. Do you think that Silas fucks the same way Julian does?”

I knew for a fact that he didn’t, actually. My cheeks warmed, thinking of the three of us that night in York.

“It’s the same with you and me. I quite enjoy the feeling of having power over a man. But I don’t like being dominated and I refuse to feel afraid. You, darling, are the opposite. You want that fear. You want to have someone that you can surrender some part of your life to. Perhaps it’s because you had no one to take care of you growing up, or perhaps it was encoded in your cells from birth. What does it matter?” She shook those perfect copper curls. “You are too smart to want that surrender in all parts of your life; you don’t want to be some meek hausfrau who faints whenever someone mentions the pollination of flowers. You want to have your life and your mind to yourself. But you still need the surrender, don’t you? So what is a woman to do?”

She answered her own question. “You find a man who matches your needs. A man who will cherish you tenderly, who will respect you in all ways, but will insist that somewhere, somehow, in some part of your life, you totally and wholly capitulate to him. And you’ve found him. I’ve never seen a man so besotted as Julian is with you. He wasn’t even this way with Violet. He will give you everything you need.”

“But who am I that needs such things?” Tears choked my voice now, and I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly so upset, but I was and I couldn’t hide it. “I don’t know if I like this woman.”

“You don’t have to like her,” Molly said, standing. “You
are
her. You keep waiting for some epiphany, but the epiphany is the moment you realize that you don’t need one. Face it: you are this way—whether born or made, it makes no difference. It’s who you were meant to be. Imagine that you finally succeed in alienating Julian. That you never see him or anyone like him ever again. What happens then? You marry some man who cannot even begin to please you, or even
know
the real you, and you spend the rest of your days desperately unhappy—”

I was already shaking my head. No, no, I would never marry. Not if it wasn’t to Julian.

She continued as if she hadn’t seen my response, “Or you spend the rest of your days alone, also unhappy, and for what? For who? Who will be so rewarded by your denying yourself that it could make such an existence worthwhile? You will not be, because you will only be half a self, a husk. Society will not care—if you married Jules, that would be good enough for them. You think that by nursing these doubts that you are some kind of saint? What does God care about how you like to be fucked? David lay with Jonathan, Solomon had concubines upon concubines, think of Hagar, Rahab and Tamar, and yet all of these people contributed to ultimate action of God’s will. False holiness will get you nowhere in life. But living it with those you love, following your heart—that is how you become the self you want to be. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a business to run and a board to punish. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

The day was chilly and wet, and a low layer of fog hung over the Serpentine. I leaned across the bridge, thinking a thousand thoughts—mostly having to do with Ivy naked—and so I didn’t see my summoner until she was next to me.

“Mr. Markham,” she said curtly.

I could barely hide my surprise. It was my housekeeper. My
housekeeper
of all people.

“Brightmore, what the hell are you doing in London?”
And not at my fucking house doing your job?
I pressed down this last thought. It was the kind of thing that my father would have said, and I usually tried my best to be as different from him as humanly possible.

“First of all,” she said, “have you been followed?”

“I don’t believe so.” I cast a glance around me, frowning. “And why does it matter? Brightmore, this is really most irregular—”

“I know it is,” she interrupted. “Which is why I’ll be as brief as possible. But I couldn’t wait any longer to speak with you about this, especially if you bring another bride home.”

God, I hope I did.

“See, I realized—” Her voice stopped.

“Mrs. Brightmore,” Gareth said from behind me. “Mr. Markham. Hello.”

I ignored him and gestured for her to keep going. But she pressed her mouth shut.

“Sir, Mr. Cecil-Coke is looking for you,” Gareth said. “He is ready to visit Miss Leavold.”

“Of course.” I looked at Brightmore. “Would you like to finish?”

She shook her head brusquely. “We can discuss the household accounts later, Mr. Markham. And I will continue with my shopping for new upholstery.”

Household accounts? Upholstery?
But then she gave me a sharp look and Gareth an even sharper one. Sparks, as if from metal grinding on metal, seemed to flash between the two of them, sparks of dislike or even hatred. For whatever reason, she didn’t want him to know she was here. And while I disapproved—of her sudden presence here in London, of her need for secrecy, of the ever-brewing animosity between my valet and my housekeeper, I also trusted her. She’d been loyal and discreet the entire time she’d worked for me. I had no reason to doubt her now.

I gave her the slightest of nods. Brightmore turned on her heel and left, her solid footsteps reverberating throughout the bridge.

“Most unusual for Mrs. Brightmore to be here in London,” Gareth remarked casually as we walked back to the hotel.

I kept my voice authoritative as I lied. “I asked her to come down to London to examine new fabrics for Markham Hall. If I do indeed bring Miss Leavold back home, I want her to be living among nothing but the best.”

“I see,” he said, although suspicion still laced his words. I turned to examine him.

“Is everything quite all right, Gareth? You’ve seemed distant lately.”

“Everything is fine,” he said. “Or at least in a few days it will be.”

“Good.”

And I didn’t say anything more because I was going to see Ivy today and that was all that mattered.

The next two days passed in a quiet blur. Ivy was subdued and pensive when I visited, but yet, more receptive to me somehow. She let me run my fingers over her hand when her aunt wasn’t looking, and yesterday, when I politely made my goodbyes and left, she caught up to me in the street.

I don’t know what I’d expected—a kiss, a slap—anything was possible with Ivy Leavold. But instead she’d slid her hand into my jacket, her fingertips running over the soft cotton of my shirt, running from my chest down to my abdomen. My stomach had tightened involuntarily, and I knew that if she kept touching me, no matter how innocuous it actually was, I would probably do something we both regretted. I had been growing harder by the second, all of me so starved for her touch, and then she’d lifted her fingers and reached into the pocket inside my jacket. She’d pulled out the leaf I had put there earlier this week.

“You really did keep it,” she’d whispered.

“I mean the things I say, Ivy.”

She’d nodded then, as if hearing confirmation of something she already knew, and then replaced the leaf. When she’d turned to leave, I’d caught her hand.

“Are you coming to the party tomorrow?”

“I think…” she smiled at me and it was like watching the sun come out from behind the clouds. “I think I would like to.”

“I’ll be waiting.” And then I’d kissed her hand and let her go.

And so, with these quiet advances in my mission, it was the day of what I considered the final test. The day of the party. I knew that if Ivy came, she was mine, that I would finally be able to claim her for once and for all. And I had every reason to believe that she would come…so why was I so anxious?

“You are giving me a headache,” Silas complained as we rolled toward the Baron’s mansion outside the city. “She’ll be there.”

“I think so too. But what if she isn’t? What if I lose her forever?”

“Well, you can’t change it if you do lose her. As you kept reminding her, it’s her choice. Therefore: out of your hands. Now relax and have a good time. If she doesn’t show, you know that every woman and even some of the men in that house would give their eyeteeth to go to bed with you.”

“I’m not going to bed with anyone besides Ivy,” I growled.

“Relax. I was joking. No one wants to sleep with you anyway. They’ll be too busy sleeping with me.”

I didn’t respond, but I stared stonily out of the carriage window.

“Did your housekeeper ever find you again?”

I shook my head. Brightmore had left a note this morning for me to meet her tonight, again at the Serpentine, but there was no way I could miss the chance to meet Ivy, no matter what Brightmore had to say. “I asked Gareth to stay at the hotel, so he’ll come get me if she needs something urgently. Otherwise, whatever she has to tell me can wait until tomorrow.”

“I always thought there was a screw loose with her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I said tightly. “Or my valet. Or anyone else in my life.”

“Christ, you are tense today. You need a good fuck, Jules, or barring that, a stiff drink.”

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I’m sorry. You’ve done nothing wrong, and I shouldn’t be taking these things out on you.”

“I’m used to your brooding, old boy. Now you better put your mask on. You know how the Baron gets.”

I brought Esther to Lord Gravendon’s. It may not have been wise, but I didn’t see how I could hide it from her, short of sneaking out of the house, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Not when I was so uncertain about tonight as it was.

Besides, when I mentioned that I had an invitation to the most exclusive party in Britain, she showed nothing but unfettered glee. She had even insisted that we shop that very day for masks, and she wouldn’t stop talking about how
shocking
she heard it all was, and also how delighted she was to go.

“But you mustn’t gossip about what you see,” I’d reminded her firmly. “The people at the party wish to protect their identity, I’m sure.”

“Oh darling, I’m not planning on gossiping. I’m planning on
participating
.”

A surprised giggle had forced its way out of me. “Esther!”

She’d given me a look. “Being an old spinster like me confers certain privileges, you know. And being wealthy. No future bridegroom of mine would ever fuss about unstained sheets on our wedding night. Now, do you want the Persephone mask or the Aphrodite mask?”

But even having Esther with me wasn’t enough to quell the nervousness bubbling in my chest. Ever since talking with Molly, I’d known I was ready to choose, ready to go back to the man I loved. But I knew him and I knew myself, and I would be lying to myself if I pretended that tonight wouldn’t test my limits, emotionally and physically. Because he was my teacher, and I his pupil, and he had proven over and over again that he took that role very seriously.

There would be punishment. There would be discipline.

And I was wet just thinking about it.

“Ivy, stop fidgeting. You’re making me nervous.”

“Sorry,” I said and she patted my knee affectionately.

The Gravendon mansion was lit up magnificently as our carriage approached, gas lamps mingled with torches along the gravel drive, every window limned with golden light. When the wheels stopped, Esther bustled quickly out of the carriage, eager to get inside, but I waited a moment. I could hear the music and laughter from out here, and I wondered if one of those voices laughing was Mr. Markham’s. I wondered how I would feel riding home in this carriage tonight, after the party, or if I would indeed even ride in it. Perhaps I would go home with Mr. Markham.

“Ivy, come on! It’s freezing out here.”

I crawled out of the carriage, forced to accept help from the footman due to the voluminous dress my aunt had forced me into, and joined her, making sure my Persephone mask was still tightly tied around my head. Esther smiled at me under her partial mask and together we walked up to the door.

Inside, it was just as loud and as bright as I’d expected. People laughed and danced, servants milled, and every corner was awash in bright colors, in gold and silver, in flashing jewels and gleaming glass. The guests and the house seemed one and the same, melded together by their vibrancy and wealth, and the two were inseparable to me as we walked further inside. These happy faces, these expensive silks, these large mirrors and these glittering chandeliers—it all seemed like a dream, too vivid to take in, too fantastic to believe. A fairy world that emerged only at certain twilight times, only to evanesce and vanish in the face of day.

The Baron stood near the stairs, marked by his scarlet sash and air of authority. He was a tall man, with very broad shoulders and a very narrow waist—an athletic frame. A strong frame. He didn’t seem to be any older than Mr. Markham, but so much power and raw maleness rolled off him that one could not doubt that he was experienced. With money, with women, with life.

He came towards us at once, and part of me wanted to step back, to bolt and run, rather than have to talk to this man, but Esther strode right up, all curves and satin and dangling blond curls. She looked beautiful, and the Baron did not miss it. He took Esther’s hand and kissed it, letting his gaze linger, and even with the mask, I could see the blush creeping up Esther’s face.