Page 36 of The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
They said he murdered Violet. That he possibly murdered his first wife.
Was I in danger of more than having my heart broken?
The night brought no answers, no comforts, except that my restlessness and confusion had enough space to breathe. I paced the moonlit path by the stream; I swam; I tried to rest in the grass, but peace was elusive. I couldn’t go back to the house—not now. I couldn’t face his empty bed—or mine. Instead, I listened to the owls and bats flapping through the dark, to badgers and foxes rustling through the woods, to the water spilling its eternally cheerful spill.
Perhaps these doubts were galvanizing. They were all pointing to something—that either my heart or my life were in danger, and that perhaps I should leave. But where? I would have to search for employment, and at that, I balked. Being a governess was the most respectable thing I could think of, but to be shackled to the caprices of a wealthy family, my time no longer my own…
And I didn’t want to leave Mr. Markham and his dark, somber house. No matter how bad he was for me, I couldn’t truly fathom extricating myself from him. I craved him too much.
The sky darkened and lightened, finally blushing slightly at the edges of the horizon, and I decided that I should go back up to the house. I was cold and stiff and weary, and there were no answers out here. Only more doubts.
As I took to the path once again, I heard footsteps. I froze, my mind flashing to old stories of highwaymen and ghosts, but it was Mr. Markham who emerged out of the gloom, breathless as if he’d been running.
“Oh thank God,” he said hoarsely, coming to me and drawing me fiercely into his arms. “I thought you’d left. Oh God, I thought you’d left.”
There was ragged desperation in his voice, and its intensity both thrilled and frightened me. “Where would I go?” I asked honestly. “This is the only home I have.”
“Even so, I thought maybe I had driven you off, pushed you away by fucking you.”
And before I could answer, he crushed his lips to mine, parting my mouth with his own, as if he was trying to claim my body once again with a kiss. His hand reached inside the dressing gown and he was palming my breast, my nipples growing hard against his touch, and then he was ripping the gown off of me, pushing me to the ground. He unfastened his trousers with one hand, lowering them just enough to free his member, which was already hard and ready.
I saw his face, saw the hunger in his eyes, and I knew that this was the darkness he had referred to, the possessive and unmerciful darkness that had disturbed Violet, and I knew that this time would not be gentle or tender. I should have been wary, scared even, but instead heat blossomed below my navel and my pulse raced. I wanted this—him, all of him, rough and hard. I wanted him to own my body and own me; I wanted him to claim it, and I had never wanted anything more.
He unceremoniously spread my legs and I felt the heat of him pressing against my pussy.
“Oh, please,” I murmured, and that was all he needed. He pushed his way in, and despite the soreness, despite my unreadiness, my body responded, rising up to meet him. He pulled out to the tip and then thrust in again, hard, and I moaned.
“You are mine,” he said as he began driving in faster. “You are completely mine. Only mine. Your cunt and your lips and your heart—they belong to me.” The darkness in his words was underscored by something anguished, something desolate.
He drove into me, harder and harder, as if urgently trying to reassure himself that I was really here, that I was really his. Over and over again he buried himself, hitting that place inside that stoked such wild delight within me, and then he reached down to brush against my bud. It took mere seconds, and then I was seizing around him, crying out, the pain making the orgasm stronger and deeper, longer even, and I was still riding the choppy waves of it when he pulled out.
“I thought you had left,” he whispered. His cock glistened in the dim light, and it only took one stroke of his hand before he spilled himself, long spurts lacing my skin as he ejaculated onto my belly and onto my wet cunt.
We breathed there for a moment, breathing with the trees and the water and the coming dawn. The lust didn’t bank in his eyes as he gazed at me, naked with leaves in my hair, his seed marking my skin. Indeed, his cock stayed mostly erect as he picked me up and carried me into the stream, where he washed me once more, and then fucked me in the summer-warmed water until my cries stirred the forest leaves.
I slept most of the day, in my own bed, since Mr. Markham had to attend to a problem on a tenant’s farm. When I emerged, the late afternoon sun was beginning to sink and the smells of dinner wafted through the halls. I dressed—one of my old ones, since I felt strange donning one of the new ones if I was to be alone for dinner—and walked downstairs, passing Mrs. Brightmore carrying a hamper.
It was full of the sheets from Mr. Markham’s room. I flushed and looked down, hoping that we would continue in our habit of not addressing one another, but I heard a muttered word as I passed.
“Slut.”
Now I flushed for a different reason, anger pulling at every part of me. “What your master does in the privacy of his own room is none of your business.”
She turned to me, harsh lines around her mouth. “You are not the first, you know. And you won’t be the last. He was wild before he married Arabella and he’s been wild ever since. You are nothing to him but a way to pass the time.”
The fury that rolled through me was all the stronger for the fear that birthed it. “I wouldn’t expect you to know anything of how he feels.”
“You think so?” She stepped closer to me, and once again I realized how young she was, younger than her bearing and plain clothes made her appear. “I’ve worked in this house for years. He handpicked me from another house because he was so impressed with me. You think that you—a charity case—can do any better than his late wives, both beautiful and wealthy? And even they could not capture his heart. He is destined for someone better. I’ve always known it. Better than that whore, Violet Leavold, and better thanyou.”
It was in the way that she said it, the way that her shoulders straightened and her chin lifted, that I realized the truth. “You’re in love with him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The heart of her spite had been laid bare, and we both knew it. I turned away from her and walked away, wanting to rage at her, to scorn her, to strike her, and knowing that none of these things would be helpful to me or Mr. Markham. And I couldn’t scorn her.
How could I, when I wasn’t entirely sure my own love wasn’t as hopelessly misplaced as hers?
“You’ll be gone soon enough,” she called after me. “Just like the late Mrs. Markham!”
