Outrageously Yours (28 page)

“Lowbry?” From outside, a call echoed against the building fronts and intruded upon the quiet room. “Lowbry? I say, you up there, old man?”

“That’ll be Ascot.” Jasper rose and went to lean out the window. “Cease your caterwauling, I’ll be down directly.” Turning back into the room, he explained, “Preston and I have a supervision to attend. Spencer Yates is meeting us there. The two of them will be at the consortium, too, though only to observe and act as notetakers for Mr. Quincy and the Earl of Drayton. Are you acquainted with them?”

“I should say so, since they are colleagues of Lord Harrow.” Ivy came to her feet and retrieved her hat. “I won’t make you late. Lord Harrow will be coming to collect me soon anyway.”

“Remember. Stand firm. Don’t let the old boy brush you off.”

Ivy didn’t respond, didn’t say that it might already be too late.

Outside, Preston Ascot paced up and down the leaf-strewn courtyard. Spotting Ivy and Jasper exiting the building, he came to an abrupt halt. “Ivers?”

Before Ivy could respond, the young man burst out laughing and charged, his coattails flying as his pocked features bore down on her. He caught her with both arms around her middle, the force lifting her feet from the pathway. Her hat bounced off her head and dried leaves crunched as her back struck the grass. The remaining breath whooshed out of her as Ascot collapsed with the whole of his considerable weight on top of her. Stars danced before her eyes.

Jasper’s laughter bounced off the building front and skipped across the quadrangle. “Preston, get off the poor lad before you crush the life out of him.”

From somewhere beyond the heap Ivy and Preston Ascot had become, footsteps pounded toward them. A pair of gloved hands closed over Preston’s shoulders. Ivy glimpsed black hair and the fierce glare of a familiar scowl.

“Simon, don’t!” she cried out as he hauled Preston’s sturdy frame off her as if he were made of straw. The youth’s coarse features registered shock as he was tossed roughly to the ground onto his back. His assailant leaned close, seized a handful of his coat, and drew back a fist.

“No!” Blinking, Ivy sprang up and grabbed Simon’s sleeve. “Lord Harrow,
no
! I’m quite all right, sir. It was all in fun. No harm meant....”

At first it seemed he didn’t hear her. His arm strained to be loose, to complete the intended blow. It was only by summoning all her strength that Ivy was able to hold on. Then his resistance began to ebb. He looked up at her, his pale eyes filled with anxious concern, with confusion, too.

“I’m
fine
,” she said. Actually, a sharp pain stabbed her lower back, but she wasn’t about to mention it.

On the ground at their feet, a befuddled Preston sputtered. “It’s . . . a wrestling move....”

Simon released him and straightened. As Preston pushed unsteadily to a sitting position, Simon offered him a hand up, which the young man warily accepted after a brief hesitation.

Leaves swishing around his feet, Jasper made his way over to them. He slapped Preston’s back. “We haven’t seen this much excitement since old Ivers here left us.” He handed Ivy her hat and nodded sheepishly at Simon. “Lord Harrow, sir.”

Simon ruefully returned the greeting. Turning back to Preston, he ran both hands over the boy’s lapels, causing Preston to flinch back a little. “My apologies, lad. I thought a fight had broken out, and Ned here being my assistant, I couldn’t allow him to be injured.”

“I . . . understand, milord.” Frowning, Preston rubbed at his broad side. “We, er, really should be going, Lowbry, or we’ll be late.”

As if to affirm the claim, a window across the courtyard slid open and another familiar face peered down at them. “Lowbry and Ascot, you’ve got exactly thirty seconds to get your arses up here or Mr. Markham says he’ll lock the door on you.” Spencer Yates’s spectacles flashed a sunlit warning down at them. A ribbon of smoke from a cheroot curled about his face.

“Right. Our calculus don can’t abide tardiness.” Jasper gave Ivy’s hand a firm shake. “I hope you’ll stop by again soon, Ivers, but if not, we’ll see you at the consortium.”

“Oh?” The curt syllable came from Simon.

“Yes,” Ivy told him, “Messrs. Lowbry, Ascot, and Yates”—she pointed up at the reedy young man staring down at them and holding out his pocket watch—“will all be at Windgate Priory. Jasper will be assisting your colleague Benjamin Rivers. Just as I will be assisting you. Sir.”

She waited for him to concur, but he only stood silently brooding, still peeved, no doubt, at her refusal to accept his proposal of marriage. She supposed she should have been grateful, delighted . . . amenable. To what? A halfhearted offer to make her an honest woman, prompted by good intentions but not by love. He’d behaved admirably, yet beneath his protestations that they do the proper thing, his palpable relief had assured her that she had been correct in declining his offer.

Preston mumbled a final apology, and the two men set off across the quadrangle. Ivy chose a direction at random and began walking.

“Where is the carriage?”

“Outside the gates.” Simon pointed in the opposite direction and she pivoted to change course. “Ned, wait.”

Feeling confused and out of sorts, and wishing matters with Simon had not grown so deuced complicated, she kept going, picking up speed as she strode through the passage into First Court.

In front of the steps of St. John’s Chapel, she stopped and spun about. “Oh, it’s
Ned
again, it is?”

 

“Of course it’s
Ned
.” Darting a gaze around him, Simon lowered his voice. Students and dons, some in scholarly robes, others in day attire, strode along the paths or sat with open books on tree-shaded benches; no one seemed to be paying them any attention. “You know it must be Ned whenever we are in public,” he said with hushed emphasis.

Rebellion flashed in her eyes. “What difference if I am to be sacked and sent from Harrowood?”

“I have decided no such thing.”

She took off again at a brisk pace. “Then what
have
you decided, other than to vent your frustrations on innocent university students?”

“I’m sorry about that.” He caught up to her and set a hand on her shoulder. “But that lout might have broken your neck or—”

“Or what?”

His answer stuck in his throat as images of a hurt, crippled Ivy filled his mind, as he acknowledged her vulnerability beneath her man’s persona. His hand fell to his side. He had interrupted simple roughhousing of the sort he had once engaged in, but it was life’s sundry other calamities, and his inability to protect her from them, that rendered him nearly immobile with fear and with a sense of past failure destined to repeat itself.

Grown silent, Ivy stared up at him,
into
him, if that were possible. Whatever she saw, whatever she came to understand about him in those pensive moments, gradually softened her expression. “Never mind,” she said gently. Her fingertips brushed his sleeve. “I wasn’t hurt, and neither was Preston.”

Minutes later, the carriage stopped outside Ben’s office. “I forgot my hat earlier,” Simon explained when she questioned him. “Wait here.”

She slid along the seat after him. “I’m coming with you.”

“I’ll only be a minute.”

She remained adamant. “Each chance I have to be part of this academic environment is a gift, one that must sustain me for the rest of my life.”

As she spoke those last words, his chest constricted painfully. The rest of her life—spent somewhere else, without him. Shouldn’t that come as a relief? When she completed her mission and left Harrowood forever, she would no longer be his concern or responsibility. He need not spend his days worrying about her happiness, her welfare . . . good God, whether she lived or died.

Yes, he should be thoroughly, ecstatically relieved to have escaped such a burden. So then why this awful ache inside him?

Ben hadn’t returned from his meeting with the trustees; his office door was closed but unlocked. Inside, Simon retrieved his top hat from where he had left it on the sofa, nearly crushing the brim as his fingers fisted far too tightly around it. He relaxed his grip, but as he moved to leave, he saw that the bookcase had captured Ivy’s attention. Her forefinger running along a shelf at eye level, she scanned the titles, her face alight with interest.

Simon waited for her by the door. “You do realize that I’ve many of these same volumes at home, and you’re welcome to read any of them there.”

“Perhaps, but how often am I able to examine the reading material of a dean of natural philosophies?” She continued her scrutiny. “But what’s this?”

Reaching the corner where the bookshelf met the room’s outer wall, she plucked something from atop the row of books. In her hand lay a folded paper. “It seems I am not the only female to venture inside these hallowed halls.”

Simon moved closer. The notepaper bore a scalloped edge and an embossed monogram he couldn’t quite make out. Ivy brought it to the desk and smoothed it open. A crease forming above her nose, she traced a finger over the letters. Her eyebrows arced. “Simon, these initials. They are your sister’s.”

“L
et me see that.” In an instant Simon crossed the space and took the notepaper from Ivy’s hands. His stomach all but dropped to the floor.

At the top of the page, an uppercase
G
linked with a swooping
B
, with a lowercase
de
poised above them. Five words had been scribbled in smeared ink across the ivory paper.

That was all. In frustration he held the unfinished letter closer, as if he could discern more, perhaps detect the imprint of a message written in disappearing ink. “This
is
Gwendolyn’s. But blast it, why didn’t she continue? What was she going to tell me?”

Ivy searched his face. “She must have been interrupted.”

“Yes, but by whom? When I was here earlier, I asked again if anyone had heard from her. Colin and Errol repeated their denials of yesterday. Ben, on the other hand, acted thoroughly surprised to hear of her departure from London.”

“Perhaps it’s been here since before she went away.”

“That was months ago. Someone would have noticed it before now. The charwoman . . . Ben himself. It could not have lain there all this time.” He held the paper out for Ivy to see. “It isn’t particularly dusty. She must have been in this room quite recently.”

“Could Ben Rivers have been lying?”

“No. At least . . . I hope to God not.” Ivy’s question sent a chill across his shoulders and triggered a decision. “It is time to call in the authorities.”

“Simon, the queen—”

“Indeed, let us consider the queen. She has accused Gwendolyn of theft, a criminal act, meaning that merely finding Gwen will not resolve the issue. She is in a great deal of trouble, both to her person and her reputation. I believe the time for discretion is well past. The queen made a ridiculous demand of you with this oath of secrecy. She behaved more like a moonstruck child than a monarch—”

“That isn’t fair.” Ivy squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Victoria is a lone woman surrounded by men, many of whom find fault with her solely on the basis of her being a woman. Do you know what a scandal could do to her reign? She has pledged her life to the service of this country, and in return she wishes one thing for herself: to marry her cousin Albert.” She drew herself up taller still. “Your sister’s actions have jeopardized that wish. I am sorry Lady Gwendolyn is missing. I will do everything in my power to help you find her. But I cannot allow you to destroy the only personal dream Victoria has left to her.”

A quality in Ivy’s tone led him to realize they were discussing not only the queen but Ivy herself. He understood her wishes and her frustrations, too. He supposed her aspirations were in large part what had prompted her to shrug off his proposal. But while he hadn’t shaped the society they lived in and would have made changes if he could, he could not ignore the realities—not as they affected the queen, his sister, or Ivy herself.

“The queen endangered her own wishes when she went behind the backs of her advisers and ministers to conduct a secret love affair.” A squeak of outrage issued from Ivy’s throat, but he headed her off by continuing, “Just as my sister’s brash actions have endangered her freedom and welfare.”

Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose you’ll say that I’ve endangered my own welfare by venturing from home alone and taking on a man’s role.”

“Haven’t you?” He should have added that she had endangered them both by walking into his open arms. She had lost her virginity, while he had lost the walls of safety he’d erected around himself at Aurelia’s death. But those were things that couldn’t be changed.

“Blast you,
Lord Harrow
.” Ah, the return of sarcasm. Ivy scowled. “You fail to grasp the most vital point of all. The point of
me
.” With both hands she slapped her lapels.

His forehead began to throb. “And what point would that be?”

“That endangering oneself is not always a thing to be avoided. That men are encouraged to do it every day of their lives, from when they are boys and jump their horses across streams and over rock walls.”

She came closer, until they stood toe to toe, almost nose to nose, so close the fragrance of her hair and skin mingled confusingly with the manly scents of her woolen coat and starched cravat, a tantalizing blend that made following her convoluted logic that much more challenging.

“Has it not occurred to you that perhaps Gwendolyn had a damned good reason for doing as she did? That ill-advised though her actions were, they were incited by desperation and the insurmountable frustrations that go along with being female?” She had the audacity to poke his chest with two fingers, as though he personally had caused Gwendolyn’s frustrations . . . and Ivy’s, too.