Page 19 of The Education of Ivy Leavold
And then as abruptly as we’d made contact, he bowed and left, not finishing his sentence or giving me any gesture of farewell. I was still staring after his surprisingly agile figure as he descended the hotel steps when Mr. Markham came up to me.
“Who was that man?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.” The man in question was now completely gone from sight, having merged with the bustling sidewalk traffic. “But it was the strangest thing; he knew who I was. He knew my name was Ivy Leavold. Isn’t that odd?”
Mr. Markham didn’t answer. But a frown creased his face and he wrapped a tight arm around me. He didn’t let me out of his sight for the rest of the day, and several times I caught him glancing over his shoulder, as if he were worried that we were being followed.
“Let’s elope to Gretna Green,” I begged as we came out of yet another store. “Let’s marry abroad. This is too much.”
He turned to me then and caught my chin in his gloved fingers. “Ivy,” he said, looking both amused and pained. “Must we have this fight every time I give you something? I’m not above taking you to the bank and showing you what is in the accounts there in order to stop this fretting about money.”
“It’s unnecessary,” I said, but he moved his fingers to my lips.
“It’s necessary to me,” he said, voice gravelly. “Think of how generous you are being right now, indulging my selfish whim to dress you like a queen.”
“But I’mnota queen,” I protested.
“You are, wildcat,” he said, and then I was pressed against the wall of the store we’d just left, his hips and chest pressing into me. “You are the queen of my mind.” He moved his hips, and even through my dress, I felt his arousal. “Among other things…”
And then his mouth moved over me, kissing my lips and my nose and my jaw and the shell of my ear, and my protests melted away.
But I didn’t forget that I wasn’t the first bride to be purchasing silks and lace for a wedding to Mr. Markham. Two women had done the same before me, one of them perhaps in this very city, at these very shops, and I sensed her, a ghost trailing her fingers over unraveled bolts of fabric and over the sweet-smelling leather in the shoe shop.
If she could speak, would she warn me away? And why was she following me, even from the streets of York, to Markham Hall? I felt her weighing on my mind as we jostled home in the carriage, as we slid our bodies together in Mr. Markham’s bed.
He had loved her, Silas had said.
And I had to know that at least with her, at least with this poor, gentle, doomed girl, that his love had not ended in violence.
“I knew I’d find you down here.”
I opened my eyes to see Mr. Markham pushing his way through the tall grass of the clearing, bluebells nodding sedately in his wake. His jacket was off and slung over his arm, and his sleeves were rolled up, exposing his lean, defined forearms.
We’d been back at Markham Hall for a couple of days, and this morning I’d decided to flee the dark corridors and brooding tapestries seeking the bright yellow sun and high blue sky, soaking in the July sights and smells before it inevitably rained. I’d even brought a book with me—Lorna Doone—but couldn’t focus on John and Lorna and Carver’s feuding love triangle. Instead, my thoughts raced from Arabella to Violet to bolts of silk and lace, until the chirruping of crickets and the calls of birds had lulled me into an uneasy peace, and I’d fallen into a warm, grassy doze.
Mr. Markham sat down next to me, his head blocking the sun, and I peered up at him, at the way the bright light framed him and cast his sharp, strong features into shadow. There was nothing about him to suggest violence or pain right now; his face was open and warm and his eyes glowed with affection. Silas’s words had done very little to reassure me, but seeing Mr. Markham like this did. I almost felt as if I could know him, know all of him and therefore trust him completely. And if I could know him, then maybe the ever-present doubts would finally evanesce and allow me to bask fully in my good fortune.
“Did you love Arabella?” I asked. I knew it was abrupt, impolite even, but I didn’t care. I had to stitch together these pieces of his past. I had to know that he wouldn’t grow tired of me, wouldn’t grow to despise me. Wouldn’t hurt me. If he had loved Arabella, as Silas had said, then maybe everything else that Silas had told me was true, and whatever secret Mr. Markham was keeping was something less horrifying than murder.
There was a flash of shock in his face, a quick downturn to his mouth, and for a moment, I thought he would shutter himself away again. But he didn’t. Instead, he rearranged his long frame so that he was lying in between my legs, his head resting on my lower stomach, and he said, after getting comfortable, “Yes. Yes, I loved her.”
“Silas said you did.”
“Silas. Of course.” He adjusted his head, putting pressure on my pelvis, and I was acutely aware of the fabric that separated his mouth from my sex. He kept talking, stroking my leg through my dress. “We knew each other a long time before we married, and we wrote frequently. When the family solicitors told me that it was time to settle down and ensure that Markham Hall had an heir, it never occurred to me not to marry the girl my father had intended. She was kind and intelligent and pretty, in a frail sort of way. I had always enjoyed her company. And yes, in those short weeks, I grew to love her.”
“I’d heard it implied that you took her to Italy to intentionally exacerbate her illness.”
I didn’t need to see him to know that his jaw was clenching, that those stubbled cheeks were tensing with anger. “If they could have seen her—so lovely even as she could barely lift her head to speak—they wouldn’t say such things. She was a saint; I could no more have harmed her than I could’ve harmed a child. We went to Italy because we had initially decided to honeymoon in Switzerland and then the doctors in Geneva thought the warm Mediterranean air would help—to comfort her at least, if not to cure her. And it did seem to help, a little. She was awake and alert, at least, in her final days.”
There was an exhale and then an uneven inhale. “Part of me died the day she died.”
The breeze had stilled and so when he said those words, they hung heavy and laden in the air. It took me a minute to identify the difference between when he talked about Arabella and when he talked about Violet, but then I saw it. It wassadness. There was no guilt or torture or haunted remorse when it came to his first wife, only the memory of young love and keen loss.
I twined my fingers in his hair. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “You deserved a happy and full life together.”
“And you deserved living parents and a competent brother to take care of you.” He turned so that he was almost prone in between my legs, his face cradled in the crease where my thigh met my hip. He peered up at me, looking so young and so vulnerable like this, and I felt my heart twist. I loved his strength and his weakness, his command of me and his dependence on me.
I loved him. I loved him to the point of the damnation of my soul.
