Outrageously Yours by Allison Chase Page B

Could she possibly have won the challenge? There had been that brief, glorious moment when she had believed she had answered Lord Harrow’s questions with singular brilliance. But no sooner had she handed her papers to Mr. Hendslew than she had realized how parochial and downright idiotic she must have sounded in comparing science to poetry.
    She had approached this challenge not like a scholarly gentleman, nor even like a woman, but like a silly, sentimental girl. Her skin ran hot with shame at the memory of the drivel she had composed.
    And yet . . . Lord Harrow was here, and he was staring at her.
    “Are you Ivers?” His cape flaring out behind him, he bore down on her, prompting her to back away until her heels struck the wall beneath the window. She might have tumbled out had Lord Harrow’s hand not shot out and snared her wrist. “Careful, lad. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t have you plummeting to your death. You are Ivers, are you not?”
    Her head trembled as she nodded.
    “Good.” Lord Harrow released her, stepped back, and gave her a terse looking over. “You’re the hand-raiser,” he accused.
    Ivy nodded again in short, jerky motions that made the Mad Marquess dance in her vision.
    His lips drew tight, and Ivy felt sure he had come to disqualify her from the challenge. A frantic apology ran through her mind, but then he gave a nod of his own. “Come with me.”
    With that, he turned and strode from the room, tossing out a brisk “Gentlemen” as he went. After an instant’s hesitation, Ivy took off after him.
     
    Simon made his way out to St. John’s Second Court. The chapel bells rang out the noon hour, a familiar, comforting sound. He had been a St. John’s man himself, although his rooms had been in the residence halls of the First Court.
    The boy’s rapid footfalls echoed from inside the stairwell. A moment later the lad stumbled outside—literally. As if his feet had tangled in an invisible web, young Ivers barreled through the doorway and sprawled headlong, breaking his fall with his hands and narrowly saving his chin from the ravages of the paving stones.
    Then he simply lay there, stunned and out of breath. A torrent of laughter spilled from above. When Simon shot a glance upward, a circle of flushed faces in the window scattered out of sight.
    He walked to the youth and leaned over him. “I say, Ivers, you seem remarkably intent on killing yourself today. Any particular reason why?”
    “No, sir,” came a slightly muffled reply. Ivers sniffed and slowly levered himself off the ground. Once he had achieved a sitting position, Simon offered him a hand up. “Oh, er ... thank you, sir.”
    The contact of the youth’s slender fingers against his own sent a peculiar sensation through Simon, not entirely unpleasant but nonetheless disconcerting. He pulled his hand away. “Are you injured?”
    Ivers brushed dirt and small bits of leaves from his coat. The fine-boned face turned upward, and in the bright daylight Simon saw that his eyes were not as black as he’d previously thought, but the shape and color of almonds. That he should notice the boy’s eyes at all was disquieting, all the more so when he glimpsed the sheen of a tear.
    The youth averted his face. “No, sir. I’m not injured.”
    Some unnamed instinct sent Simon a foot or two away, a distance that strangely felt more comfortable. “Tell me, are you typically this clumsy?”
    “Sir?” Flustered or perhaps insulted, the youth hitched his small nose defiantly into the air.
    “It is a necessary question, Ivers. Surely you can grasp the dangers of having an accident-prone assistant in a laboratory filled with electromagnetic equipment.”
    “Oh . . . quite right, sir. And no, sir . . . not typically. It’s ...” He glanced down his length, perplexity blossoming across his milky-smooth brow. “It’s the boots, sir. They’re new, not yet broken in.”
    Simon’s gaze followed Ivers’s tapering trousers to where the