The Awakening of Ivy Leavold Read online

  Copyright © 2014 Sierra Simone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. References to real people, places, organizations, events, and products are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real.

  Cover by Date Book Designs, 2014

  To Laurelin, who asked me to write a sexy book.

  And to the girls at the retreat, who gasped in all the right places.

  “Almost to Stokeleigh,” the driver told me. “Markham Hall isn’t far beyond that.”

  The clatter of hooves and wheels on the road prevented me from answering. Instead, I continued to watch the landscape roll by outside, thick woods and shallow vales punctuated by narrow streams and low stone bridges. Dusk fell quickly; by the time I had marked the long shadows and impenetrable murk growing between the trees, dark orange and purple streaked the sky. And by the time the carriage rolled through the small hamlet, it was almost completely dark. Only the faintest lavender remained in the night sky—the last breath of daylight—and against it was the silhouette of a house, large and tall, with a square tower at one end. It sat on a hill high above the vale of Stokeleigh, the only space cleared of trees for as far as the eye could see.

  “Markham Hall,” the driver shouted. I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.

  I busied myself with straightening the pleats on my skirt and checking my hair. I’d never been to Markham Hall, and it had been many years since I’d been to any house as fine as this. Seven years, in fact.

  The carriage stopped and the driver hopped down to open the door. I climbed out with his help, and a servant emerged from the house, helping the driver unload my single trunk and bag.

  “Is this all?” the servant grunted.

  “Appears that way,” said the driver.

  Seven years without parents had taught me to accept frugality, to be proud of it in a strange way, but now that my brother was also dead, I was in the strange position of being poor and at the mercy of strangers. When my cheeks burned, they burned not for the single battered trunk, but for the entirety of this situation. If the solicitor responsible for dispensing my brother’s meager estate hadn’t been able to track down Mr. Markham, my late cousin’s husband, I would have been forced to apply for a position as a governess with some family or another. Solicitor Wickes had made the owner of Markham Hall sound like the proper old country gentleman, twice widowed and mourning the loss of his young wife, but that didn’t make the prospect of accepting his kindness any less daunting. I may have been frugal, but I was also proud and used to being solitary, to claiming my time as my own. Lodging with a lonely old man sounded like its own kind of work.

  “This way,” the servant said, and I followed him to the entrance, a massive stone arch set with two ancient-looking doors. Black bands of iron bound the door together and the knocker was a snarling bear of tarnished brass. “Inside,” he said.

  The entranceway was nearly as black as the outdoors—more so, for there were no stars here. I blinked owlishly while the servant manhandled the door shut again. The driver spoke softly to the horses and the carriage rattled away.

  Wait! I wanted to shout. Don’t leave me here!

  But it was too late. The carriage was gone, the door closed and I was alone in the dark. I heard the grunt and shuffle of the servant lugging my trunk somewhere.

  “Where should I—”

  “The housekeeper will come for you. Soon.”

  So, I waited in the dark, shifting my weight from foot to cold foot, suppressing my irritation at being made to wait like a stranger and at the overall lack of hospitality Markham Hall seemed to present in general. You’re only technically family, I reminded myself. Be grateful that Mr. Markham offered you a roof over your head at all…

  A dim glow appeared—a bobbing, flickering glow—and as it came closer, it was clear that it was attached to a rather severe figure dressed in black. The telltale ring of keys jangled at her hip.

  “You must be Miss Leavold.”

  I made a low curtsey and was about to deliver my prepared speech of gratitude, but she was already turning away, shoes clicking sharply on the floor. A spike of indignation at her rudeness shot through me, but like my brother had always implored, I kept my mouth shut. Silently, I followed her.

  The lamp she carried only illuminated the barest glimpses of the house. A grim tapestry here, a frowning portrait there. We climbed the wide staircase.

  “I’m sorry for the lack of light,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “When Mr. Markham is away, we generally keep early hours. We are not used to having guests so late.”

  “I apologize for my lateness too. Though we set off before dawn, it’s still a long drive.” I was keenly aware that I didn’t sound sorry, but I did not care. I didn’t see how the hour of my arrival was any more my fault than the hour of the sun setting.

  She unlocked a room and led me inside. No fire had been lit and from the damp smell, I supposed it hadn’t been aired out either. I certainly didn’t mind diminished conditions—it appeared to be my lot in life, after all—but one glance at the housekeeper’s pinched face told me that this discomfort had been deliberately calculated.

  Determined to undermine whatever trap she had laid, I declared as cheerfully as I could, “What a lovely room. I am so grateful for your care and effort.”

  She made a noise that indicated nothing other than an acknowledgement that I’d spoken. “Owain brought your things up already. We’ve long since supped, but if you feel it necessary, you can rouse the cook from her bed to tend to you.”

  Of course, that wasn’t a real option. I made a demurring sound.

  She continued. “Breakfast is early here, perhaps around six-thirty, although Mr. Markham generally eats later, perhaps around ten. I suppose there might be a chance that you are asked to dine with him.” She sniffed, letting me know what she thought of this supposition. “He is away frequently, and I am very busy tending to the house. There are no other residents here, so you will need to occupy yourself or walk to Stokeleigh if you cannot.”

  She didn’t know of the years I’d spent alone in my dead parents’ house, with no one except the servants to keep me company, while my brother gambled away the last of our money in London. Years spent roaming the countryside, sitting by the sea, reading all the ancient books in the library. And besides, at nineteen I was no longer a child.

  “I will endeavor to amuse myself,” I said. “As I have done since I reached adolescence.”

  Another sniff. “Well. Good night then.”

  “Good night, Mrs…?”

  “Brightmore.”

  She left, and by the thin trickle of moonlight, I found matches and a lamp by my bedside, which I lit. But despite the long journey and the protracted weeks of grief and uncertainty since my brother’s passing, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t care that it was dark as pitch and that the servants were abed—I wanted to see more of this Northern house that I would call home.

  I shed my cloak and bonnet and left my room, careful to tread as quietly as possible. While I didn’t think there would be anything improper about me walking about the house, I felt certain that Mrs. Brightmore would disapprove.

  My corridor was lined with similar doors, all closed and presumably locked, so I went downstairs with my lamp inste
ad. The yellow pool of lamplight did little to drive back the shadows, but I still made my tentative way into the receiving rooms of the first floor. First to the dining room, dominated by a large table and a massive iron chandelier, then to the drawing room, filled with more feminine furniture, armchairs and chaises of a lavender damask, all of it looking almost black in the darkness. In the far corner of the drawing room hung a large portrait set into an elaborate gilded frame. I walked closer and lifted the lamp. It was my dead cousin, Violet Leavold.

  Violet Markham. She would have been Violet Markham when she died.

  We’d met only twice, in those dreamy, peaceful years when my parents had still been alive. She’d been a few years older than me, and I vividly remembered how worldly and feminine her fourteen years had seemed to my ten the first time she’d visited. She had stayed the summer, and in those months, I had become convinced that there was no girl brighter or more lovely or more knowledgeable than Violet. The second time she came, I was twelve, and she came with the secret knowledge that only girls of sixteen had, knowledge of men and of dancing and of what happened in the secret corners of ballrooms. I’d been fascinated.

  But we hadn’t spoken since that last summer—not a visit, not even a letter. She had gone on to live the life befitting a beautiful girl of means and I had gone on to live like a wild thing, alone and strange and wary.

  Her yellow hair seemed like burnished gold in the lamplight and the portraitist had managed to capture the preternaturally blue eyes that had always seemed so daring, so bold. A gauzy shawl revealed ivory shoulders and a long, elegant neck. The blue silk gown revealed a small but shapely bust and a slender waist. Even rendered in paint, Violet’s beauty and glamour were unmistakable. Life and fertility and vibrancy radiated from every curve and line of her body.

  And she was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. Thrown from her horse, the solicitor had said. And I hadn’t even known that she’d gotten married. And to think, there might be a portrait of another dead wife in this house… I shivered.

  I turned to leave and found myself face to face with someone in the dark.

  “Mrs. Brightmore…” My voice trailed off. It was patently not Mrs. Brightmore. It was someone tall and trim and most definitely male.

  “Not Mrs. Brightmore,” the man said, echoing my thoughts. I raised the small lamp, throwing his face into the light. A square jaw, straight nose, clear green eyes. Dark stubble and tousled hair told me that he’d been traveling, but the silk waistcoat and well-worn riding boots told me that he was a gentleman.

  He had to be Mr. Markham, yet surely the country gentleman Solicitor Wickes had described was much, much older.

  “Pardon me,” I said. Apology always seemed like the best course of action. “I was having trouble sleeping and…”

  He didn’t answer. He walked over to a low buffet in the corner and rang a bell. A quiet but uncomfortable minute followed where I wondered if I should speak again, if I was in some sort of trouble, and then Mrs. Brightmore appeared, holding her own lamp with her bloodless mouth already puckered in rage. She saw me first and her eyes narrowed, clearly assuming that it had been me who had roused her so imperiously from her bed, but then the gentleman stepped into the lamplight.

  “Mr. Markham!” she exclaimed. “But we weren’t expecting you home until next week.”

  “Change of plans,” he said shortly. His voice had a hint of a rasp to it, a huskiness that set it apart from the normally smooth and polished voices one heard in large houses. Only the barest trace of a Yorkshire accent spoke to his roots here in Dalby Forest. “A fire, Mrs. Brightmore. Supper too.”

  “Of course, sir,” she said. “Cook is probably asleep and we dined several hours ago…”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” With a serrated glance at me, she left the doorway.

  Within minutes a fire was lit by a servant, a handsome young man I hadn’t seen before. He smiled at me before he left the room. Mr. Markham poured himself a glass of port at the buffet.

  “Care for a drink?”

  A lady would say no. But I’d spent these last years unchaperoned and as my own mistress, drinking brandy in bed and hauling bottles of champagne into treetops so I could taste the sweet fizz at sunset. I was accustomed to drinking, and on a chilly night in an unfamiliar house, a glass of port sounded like perfection.

  “Yes, please,” I said. He turned to pour another glass and then handed it to me without a word. There was no judgment or reprobation in his face, but there was something. Curiosity, perhaps.

  He settled himself in a chair across from me, his long legs stretched out, his face reflective. “I imagine you are my late wife’s cousin.”

  Here was my chance to get it done and over with, the great thanking endeavor, which my lack of social grooming almost ensured I’d be clumsy at. Yet it had to be done. “Yes, sir—”

  “Don’t sir me,” he said darkly.

  “I apologize—”

  “Don’t do that either. Are you Ivy Leavold or not?”

  “Yes, Mr. Markham. And I wanted to give you my most sincere thanks—”

  “I don’t want your thanks. This is not going to be an easy place for a young woman to live. It’s dark and hardly modern, and I’m afraid that grief and isolation have turned me into a creature of baser needs, not capable of entertaining young ladies and certainly not capable of polite company.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “My condolences for your loss.”

  He leaned forward suddenly, eyes glittering like glass. I noticed his port was drunk; I raised mine to my lips and savored the sweet, spicy taste. “Did you know her well?” he asked. “My late wife?”

  “No.”

  He leaned back in his seat. “I see.”

  “We met as girls. I remember her being lovely and…vivacious.” That was the kind word for girls who smoked cigars and kissed village boys, right?

  He stood abruptly, going to pour himself another glass of port. “Vivacious. Yes. She was that.”

  “Mr. Markham, please allow me to express my gratitude for your hospitality. Were it not for your kind offer, I would have nowhere to go.”

  “No other family at all?”

  “There was talk of a half-aunt in India, but she never answered our letters and it wasn’t known if she was even still living. At any rate, I’d never met her and she didn’t know me from Eve. I don’t know that she would have taken me in even if she were still alive.”

  He sat again. “So you would have had to work.”

  No sense in dissembling. “Yes.”

  “As a governess?”

  “Yes.”

  “And would you have detested it?”

  I took another sip. “Yes. But not for the reason you are thinking. I am not afraid of work. But I am afraid of being trapped.”

  “Trapped?”

  I made to answer, but then Mrs. Brightmore entered in again, clad in a nicer, newer dress. In the better light, I could see that she was younger than I originally supposed; like Mr. Markham, she seemed to be in her early or mid-thirties. It was the severity of her face and mien that made her seem so like the middle-aged housekeepers from the dour modern novels that my brother had loved to read.

  “Supper is ready, sir,” she said.

  “I’ll take it in here.” Mr. Markham kept his eyes on me the entire time he spoke. For some reason, I felt pinned by that gaze, unable to move or look away.

  “But, sir—”

  “In here, Mrs. Brightmore.”

  She glared at me, as if Mr. Markham’s dinner preferences were somehow my fault, and left in a swish of starched fabric.

  I found my port glass refilled.

  “So, Miss Leavold. You would feel trapped by employment?”

  “I didn’t mean to make myself sound indolent. It’s only that I’m used to keeping my own hours, my own company. Having my life be at the whim of another’s would be almost unbearable.”


  “And yet there are those who find more solace in imprisonment than they ever have in freedom.”

  “Show me such a person,” I protested, then stopped. Here I was, only a few moments into meeting my benefactor, and I was contradicting him in precisely the sort of way that used to vex Thomas so.

  “Is not marriage like this? Strictures and bindings that can become pleasurable?”

  “Are you comparing love to imprisonment, Mr. Markham?”

  Something stirred in his eyes.

  “For some, perhaps.” He reached across the low table between us and grasped my wrist. His fingertips were surprisingly rough for a gentleman, but the feeling of them against the thin skin of my wrist left me agitated somehow, as if he had trailed hot coals across my flesh instead of his fingers.

  “Here,” he said quietly, “I have your wrist captured in my hand. You cannot move it unless I let you, you cannot touch it unless I let you. Complete confinement. But…” His fingertips made light circles—swirls, eddies—around my wrist, skipping lightly over the pale blue veins and the delicate tendons, drifting from my palm to the edge of my sleeve. He slowly unbuttoned the buttons of my sleeve, sliding it up past my elbow. Gooseflesh rose on my arms, on my neck, even on my breasts under the thin wool of my dress. It felt so close to being undressed, to being exposed.

  His fingers continued their work all while he stared intently at me. “And how does this constraint feel now, Miss Leavold? If I allowed you to withdraw your wrist now, would you?”

  “No,” I said, my breathing coming faster. “I would not.”

  He bent low, as if to study my wrist, except his mouth was so near my skin, and then I was suddenly aware of my pulse pounding, of my lips parting, of the flush that was spreading on my face.

  “Your dinner, sir,” Mrs. Brightmore said, entering the room. The handsome servant wheeled a tray behind her, and the covered silver dishes and glassware rattled as he rolled it across the thick carpet to the armchair where his master sat. Mr. Markham didn’t let go of my wrist at first—I tugged and he arched an eyebrow and I tugged again and he finally let it drop.