Read The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) for Free Online Page B

Ivy. Are you holding your relationship to your rubric or to the rubric you think you should have?”
    I frowned.
    “How fully do you want to live your life? With all parts of yourself awake and feeling? Or with only the parts that some people think are decent? Jules woke you up—all of you—and now you’re trying to go back to sleep. Do you really think that’s the wisest?” Silas took a final pull off his cigarette and then flicked it onto the ground. “I hope to see you at the Baron’s.”
    “I’ll think about it,” I said faintly, turning his words over in my mind.
    Was I really trying to go back to sleep?

    The envelope burned a hole through my dress as Esther and I rode home. I was wrestling with this massive, planet-like question as we rolled through the London streets. Had Julian really woken me up? Was this a part of me that had always been around, simply waiting dormant for the right stimulus?
    And if so, was it even possible to disown that part of myself?
    “I heard the best gossip about your ex-fiancé today,” Esther confided.
    My ears perked up, but my mind was still fumbling with these questions that Silas had raised, all while I felt impossibly conscious of the envelope poking my corset through my dress. The choice to embrace the wild, sensuous Ivy. It was literally pricking at me.
    “Well, it’s not so much about him as about his first wife, Arabella Whitefield. Do you know of her?”
    I thought of her sad-eyed miniature in the library. “Yes, I know of her.”
    “One of the wealthiest families in Yorkshire. Anyway, apparently, her father Josiah Whitefield was quite the philanderer. Bastards sprinkled all over the North. And before he died, he was raising one of them in his house . Can you imagine? Poor Arabella. Growing up next to a bastard.”
    Arabella had had much bigger problems, like being fatally ill, but I didn’t mention that to Esther. I just made a neutral noise, which she took as encouragement to keep talking. I mostly ignored her, now that I knew the gossip wasn’t about Mr. Markham, and debated about going to the party. Because it was a difficult debate. I wanted to go more than anything. And I didn’t want to be a spectator. I wanted Mr. Markham to fuck me there. I wanted mouths and hands on me. I wanted people to watch me and I wanted to watch other people while Mr. Markham’s face was between my legs.
    But I shouldn’t want those things.
    And there was the crux of the problem. Silas claimed that I was trying to force myself back to sleep, but I wasn’t sure. It was more like standing at the edge of a cliff and deciding whether or not to jump. Because with Mr. Markham, I couldn’t be sure if I would survive or be dashed against the rocks.  And once I leapt, it wasn't something I could take back.
    “…and after they died, the estate got sold off, and the bastard got shunted somewhere else without a cent. Isn’t that shocking?”
    Esther had been talking this entire time. Reluctantly, I turned my attention to her. “It is sad to be sure. But shouldn’t Mr. Whitefield have provided for him in the will, if he truly wanted to protect him?”
    Esther nodded vigorously. “But they say after Arabella died, he lost his senses with grief. He doted on her, you see. And so he died not soon after. Pneumonia, the doctors said, but really everyone knows it was of a broken heart.”
    It was dark, so Esther couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “I don’t see what’s so shocking about the story. I just assume almost every man of stature has a bastard child somewhere.”
    “You’re right,” Esther said. “But it’s our job to balance the unfairness of all this philandering with knowledge. Men may be free to do what they like without getting in trouble with the church or the courts, but a woman’s chief weapon is her tongue, and we can make sure no man escapes unscored by it.”
    Sometimes I really liked Aunt Esther. “It’s a wonder you’re still unmarried,” I said, but I