A Christmas to Remember

  His gaze darkened. The hand at her nape tightened ever so slightly. His nostrils flared and his breath rushed against her lips, but he said nothing.

  Surely something that felt so wondrous to her couldn’t have been a complete failure. Could it? Ivy closed her eyes before she asked, “Well?”

  “I’d say the experiment was a complete success. However . . .”

  Her eyes snapped open. “However?”

  “It was only one kiss,” he said with a slight lift of his brow, as if uncertain. Yet one of those creases made an appearance beside his mouth. “A scientist must experiment multiple times in order to come to a definitive conclusion. I believe we should make another attempt, for further study, of course.”

  He hesitated only long enough for her to agree with a nod before he took her mouth again. This time, he angled his head the other direction, kissing her once—twice, nuzzling the corner of her mouth. By the time he concluded, she was out of breath and clinging to his shoulders.

  “Hmm . . .” he murmured, the low sound vibrating through her. “Another successful experiment.”

  She moved closer, her hands sliding down from the breadth of his shoulders beneath his coat to wrap around his torso. This new position molded her body to his. Beneath the solid wall of his chest, his heart pounded. Her breasts ached and her back arched so that she felt the firm rise and fall of his breaths. And lower, she felt the unyielding, intriguing heat of him. “Though . . . perhaps further study is in order.”

  “In great depth.” His hand abandoned the shelf and settled on her hip. He shifted, his feet on either side of hers. “I must warn you—this may take a while.”

  This time, he did not wait for her response. Instead, he kissed her again. But it was more than a kiss. Their entire bodies were involved. While their mouths eagerly fused, nipped, devoured, she could not stop the impulse to arch against him. His hand splayed over her lower back and pulled her closer, lifting her. In the same motion, his stance altered, his foot sliding in between hers. Her skirts made a shushing sound as their legs tangled and their hips connected like interlocking pieces.

  “North,” she moaned, her head falling back as his kisses continued down her chin to the column of her throat. The feel of his heated lips on her flesh did terrible, wondrous things to her, making her breasts throb and ache, turning her body liquid where their hips aligned. “Or do you prefer Northcliff? You never told me.”

  “When you are in my arms, you may call me whatever you like,” he said, his lips tracing the line of her collarbone. The hand at her nape drifted down to tease the edge of her gown, nudging it off the crest of her shoulder. He stroked the newly exposed flesh with the pad of his thumb. Lifting his head, he captured her lips once more.

  At the first touch of his tongue, a soft murmur of surprise escaped her, jolting her. He drew back a fraction to look at her, as if gauging her reaction. He must have seen something that pleased him, because he grinned and slowly sampled her again. Taking his time, he delved past her lips in leisurely strokes.

  This was all new to her. She mimicked his actions, tentatively slipping her tongue into his mouth and gliding sinuously over his flesh. He issued a low, hungry groan of approval.

  The sound fed her impulsive nature and made her eager to further her own studies. She sucked the tip of his tongue, swirling hers around to feel the variant textures, from the ridged top to the silken underside. Wanting to explore more, she suckled him deeper into her mouth.

  North responded with a growl. Matching her eagerness, he tilted her head back, claiming her mouth. His hips rolled against hers. A swift shock of desire speared her, sending hot tremors throughout her body. Even her mind quivered, making her dizzy. She clung to him tighter still, her hands finding his shoulders again as the full-body kiss went on and on.

  Unfortunately, she needed to catch her breath. From the sound of his deep inhales and exhales, North did, too. The motions of his hips stilled, though he remained firmly pressed against her where the pulse of her body throbbed incessantly.

  She broke away, pressing her cheek against his, her fingertips skimming the soft, short hair at the back of his neck. “I wish you had a sofa in here.”

  “A sofa?” He laughed, the sound rough, as if it caused him pain.

  “I feel dizzy and everything inside of me is telling me to lie down. And then we could continue . . . with our experiment.”

  North’s fingertips curled over her hips, and the soft flesh waiting beneath the layers of her gown. He rocked against her once more, then eased away and released a slow exhale. “I would need hours with you, Ivy. Days. Weeks. Months . . .”

  With a nod, she rose up on her toes to kiss him. She agreed to his terms unequivocally, willing to give anything to continue just like this.

  He laughed softly, pulling back far enough to brush her hair from her forehead and to press a kiss there as he cradled her face. “Dearest Ivy, even if I were to take just a few more hours with you, I would be forced to marry you.”

  She flinched at his choice of words.

  He seemed to notice and quickly continued. “Or rather, we would be forced to marry.”

  “Forced”—as in, against his will—“I see.”

  “Perhaps expected is more accurate.”

  A gradual numbness began to settle over her as she saw his expression alter from passion to something that looked like regret. She’d seen Jasper give her that look. A ghost of the pain she felt that day came to haunt her now. “I would never force you to do anything against your will.”

  “Nor I you, which is precisely why I never should have—” He didn’t finish. Then again, he didn’t have to. Ivy already knew. I never should have kissed you . . .

  She slipped away in the space between the duke and the wall, keeping her gaze averted. When she shifted to put her sleeve back in place, she felt the tines of that frog pin scrape against her flesh.

  He stepped in front of her and grasped her arms, his gaze imploring. “So much is at stake for me. I’ve worked hard for the Fellows of the Royal Society to acknowledge me. I cannot afford to lose my head, or my heart, and behave irrationally. My entire formula is proof that none of that nonsense is necessary. Don’t you see? I could lose the one thing I want more than anything else.”

  More than anything actually meant more than I want you. North wanted his Fellowship, just as Jasper had wanted someone else. Anyone else, as it had turned out. She’d been fooling herself to imagine that the duke was one person who could want her more than anything else.

  However, she couldn’t fault him for it. Because, up until a moment ago, she hadn’t even realized that was what she wanted. Up until a moment ago, her only worry was that Lilah might be in the red ledger. Now she worried that her own name was there.

  “I wouldn’t want to ruin your chance to gain a Fellowship. Resentment would be sure to follow, and for what? A few hours of kissing that would likely never be repeated?” She shrugged, and his hands dropped to his side.

  He closed his eyes and scrubbed the side of his fist over his forehead. “Ivy, I don’t think you understand what those hours would entail—”

  “Besides, you and I would never suit,” she interrupted, not wanting to hear about what might have been if only she had never mentioned the sofa. Restlessness filled her, forcing her to move around the room or risk feeling the pain inside her heart. It was a slow pain—a terrible, squeezing ache. She knew her heart wouldn’t survive long under the pressure, but part of her wished it would just shatter in a flash so that she could be done with it. But apparently, a breaking heart had all the time in the world.

  “You need someone who will tenderly scold you about your disorganized mess of a study.” Ivy attempted a laugh in order to sound worldly, as if things like this happened all the time and she was used to it. “Yet if you were to see the chaos I left in the dressing chamber upstairs, you would realize that I would have no right or inclination to scold you. Not only that, but I would constantly want to i
nspect your inventions—which might very well lead to their destruction. Even our names are opposites. Surely a man named Northcliff should never be forced to marry a woman whose surname is Sutherland.”

  “Now you’re just spouting nonsense,” he hissed, his words clipped.

  Surreptitiously, she dabbed at the sudden well of moisture along the lower rim of her eyes. “I do that frequently. Yet another one of my flaws.”

  “Ivy . . .”

  She didn’t know what he was going to say, but somehow she knew she couldn’t bear to hear it. “Most of all, you need a person who fits into your formula, a person who possesses the qualities that matter to you. You need someone who doesn’t suddenly wish that, all along, you’d set out to disprove your own theory, to prove instead that there is more to someone’s worth than lineage, property, and wealth. And, perhaps, that matters of happenstance—like a fateful pairing of hearts in a single moment—might have been the truest answer all along.”

  She didn’t know why she hesitated at the door. Perhaps she thought he might want to stop her. After a moment, however, he didn’t say anything more. Ivy left the room without looking back.

  Chapter Eight

  NORTH CROSSED THE room and closed the door, letting Ivy go. He didn’t know what else to do. Because if he stopped her, he didn’t know what he might say. A number of irrational phrases filled his head, and he was afraid of them spilling out.

  “Don’t go. Forgive me . . .”

  “You make me question my sanity. I might already be accustomed to the madness. I crave it . . .”

  “I need you in my life. Stay. Forever . . .”

  He pressed his forehead to the door as more thoughts continued along the same vein that ran directly to his heart. They twisted knots inside his mind. The pressure within his chest now felt condensed and weighted, crushing him. He preferred the elation, no matter how uncontrolled and incalculable it was. But as he straightened and moved away from the door, he suddenly knew he would never feel it again.

  At his desk, he lifted the scale model of the ascending room, remembering Ivy’s smile of pleasure when she’d seen the changes in his design. He’d done them for her. The errand of a romantic fool. She was his inspiration. He’d worked on it without sleep for an entire day, stopping only to see her at dinner.

  He pulled on the strings to elevate the diminutive room once more. Yet the pulley string snagged. He tugged again. Then, before he could stop it, the top of the model cracked, collapsed, and crumbled.

  He stared down at the broken pieces as it fell apart in his hands. It was useless now. The entire model would have to be rebuilt. Yet this wasn’t even his invention. It belonged to someone else. North was merely modifying it. The pointlessness of it hit him hard.

  Suddenly angry, he closed his fist and crushed the model further. Yet that was not enough. So he hurled it into the fire. The flames flared, leaping up in a shock of orange, consuming the wood in an instant.

  A rush of primal satisfaction tore through him, feeding this inexplicable rage.

  Striding back to the desk, he snatched up the model of a guillotine and hurled it into the flames as well. He crossed the room to the shelves. The slipper-stretcher went next, landing with a clunk against the other logs. It was too solid to incinerate in a flash, so he began crumbling papers and tossing them into the fire. Heaps and stacks of designs and potential patents went up in flames. Everything he’d worked on for years.

  He grabbed the jar of mistletoe, his arm reeling back, preparing to smash it to bits. But then he remembered her kiss—their kiss, those moments of utter contentment—and suddenly, he couldn’t release the jar.

  “This is madness!” he shouted to the empty room. “My formula is what matters. All that matters.”

  Then, seeing the ledgers on his desk filled him with a mixture of purpose and loathing. “You need someone who doesn’t suddenly wish that, all along, you’d set out to disprove your own theory, to prove instead that there is more to someone’s worth than lineage, property, and wealth . . .”

  He gripped the black ledger, his fingertips white from the force. Then he hurled it into the flames.

  The brown one followed.

  Picking up the red ledger, he shook it at the ceiling. There was only one name on its pages. One single name that should be of no consequence. “This was a brief aberration that is over now. She was not my match. It could not have lasted. Ha! It was never meant to begin.”

  At once, he lowered his arm and stared at the red ledger in confusion. Lasted? Why had he said that? It wasn’t as if he’d given any thought to marrying Ivy Sutherland of Norwood Hill. Or any thought to spending hours, days, weeks, years . . . kissing her, touching her, listening to her ideas, having her rush impatiently into his arms, feeling elation each and every day for the rest of his life. No. Not a single thought. He was a rational, scientific man. When it was time for him to marry, he would use his formula to find a suitable candidate.

  Taking up the quill pen, he dipped it into the inkpot and worked Ivy’s equation, needing her number. He already knew it would yield nothing, because she met none of the criteria. She only had insubstantial goods to bring to a marriage. Only her vivacity, her winter-blue eyes, her warmth, her heart, her mind, her laugh . . .

  His formula was an insufficient tool to measure these qualities. His formula . . . was lacking in everything that mattered.

  Suddenly, he realized that he was a complete fraud.

  All the breath left North’s body as he sank to his knees. His formula didn’t work.

  WHEN IVY HEARD the door to the other room open, she leaped up from the window seat and rushed across the room to douse the lamp. She didn’t want Lilah to see that she’d been sobbing like a complete idiot.

  “Are you feeling better—” Lilah stopped cold the instant she spotted her. “Oh, dearest, what is the matter? You’ve been crying.”

  Ivy shook her head. “Nothing more than a headache.”

  Carefully, Lilah looked over her shoulder and closed the door to the dressing chamber. “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with the duke.”

  “Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with . . . Why would you even think that?”

  Lilah sighed. “I know you wanted me to marry him.”

  “Oh.” Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose and sat heavily on the bed, playing the part of a headache victim, and certainly not someone with a broken heart. “You must forgive me. I did not realize how foolish my notion was until this evening.”

  Apparently she was convincing, because the concern lifted from Lilah’s expression.

  “Then you have heard, as well.” Lilah tsked as she plucked her gloves off one finger after the other. “I cannot believe our host would abandon his own party. There were whispers that he rode away on his horse.”

  Ivy lowered her hand, her attention riveted. “The duke left in the dead of night?” That did not sound like something he would do.

  Lilah nodded and removed her combs from her hair, shaking it free before she sat down beside Ivy.

  “I don’t understand,” Ivy said. “Why would you think it had something to do with his not wanting to marry?”

  “Either his interests lay elsewhere, or he has no intention of marrying any of us. If he did, he would have attended his own Christmas Eve Ball.”

  Thinking of what he wanted more than anything, Ivy offered a solemn nod. “I believe you are correct on both counts.”

  “There now, it is done. You mustn’t think of him anymore, and you must stop hoping that he will marry me.”

  Ivy’s shoulders slumped forward, and she settled her face in the cup of her hands. “Lilah, I’ve been such a fool. I never really wanted him to marry you. Not since the moment we were introduced.”

  “If it’s because you thought his manners abominable, then I certainly agree.”

  “No.” Ivy shook her head and turned toward her friend. “My failing is much worse, and I hope you can forgive me.”

>   “Of course. What is there to forgive?” Lilah smiled and squeezed Ivy’s shoulder.

  “I think . . . for just a moment”—Ivy drew in a breath and slowly released it—“I wanted to marry him.”

  Lilah covered her mouth on a gasp. “You wanted to—But that means that you—Is it possible that you’ve fallen in love?”

  Not love. Whatever this was, it was much worse and it had no name, only a combination of symptoms: dizziness, exhilaration, bliss, consuming desire, misery, pain, heart-wrenching agony, despair . . . “You must know that I could never love again after Jasper.”

  “But that was not love, silly.” Lilah offered a tender smile. “That was one of those childhood dreams we hold on to for far too long. You thought of him as your Prince Charming, no matter how many times he proved otherwise. But he remained a boy who was determined to gather as many hearts as he could, filling his pockets with them until they overflowed and fell to the dirt at his feet.”

  Jasper had enjoyed women. That had been one of the reasons why his unequivocal rejection of Ivy had hurt so much. Why hadn’t he wanted her, too?

  “Right before he left with that married harlot,” Lilah continued, “I begged him to set you free, once and for all. It wasn’t fair the way he kept you . . . forever in his pocket.”

  “You asked him to set me free?” Ivy stared, agape. She replayed the set-down he’d given her and how it had left her feeling like a failure. She’d never heard Jasper sound cruel. In fact, he’d sounded more like his father in that moment. Now, Ivy understood why.

  “I suppose he did set me free,” she said. “That was his last noble act, only I was too stubborn to see it. Perhaps Jasper did love one of the women whose hearts he collected. He loved his sister.”

  “Of course he did,” Lilah said on a watery laugh, wiping away a sudden sheen of tears. “I’m an incredibly loveable young woman. And one day I might even find a man who realizes it.”