Ripe for Pleasure (15 page)

He gave the horse a smart slap on the shoulder, and the mare turned to nuzzle his shoulder. He absently rubbed her head, large
capable hands caressing the horse’s jaw and ear.

“Don’t poker up so. Relax.”

“I could happily get down now and never ride again, my lord. In fact, I fear I’m going to slither off at any moment.”

Leo shook his head, clearly not taking her words at all seriously. He really couldn’t grasp that someone might
not
want to ride. Just like a man, to assume his own passions must be shared by everyone.

“Nonsense, my dear. You’ve found your seat. Now all you have to do is maintain it. Keep your weight to the left. Lean into
the pommel, grip it with your knees, and relax.” He made a tsking sound, and the horse ambled forward. Viola clutched at the
mane, knees gripping the silly, curved pommel until her thighs shook.

The horse stopped. Her ears went back flat, and her coat twitched in a horribly disconcerting way. “Relax. You’re upsetting
Oleander.”

“
I’m
upsetting
her
?” Indignation bubbled up, choking her.

“Yes, a horse knows what its rider is feeling, and you’re telling her that something’s wrong. Do you feel the slight hump
of her back? Do you see the set of her ears? She doesn’t understand why you’re so stiff, and she doesn’t like it. So relax.
I’m not going to let anything happen to you. And neither is Oleander, no matter how much you annoy her.”

Viola glared at him again and attempted to do as he bade her. She sat up straight, let go of her death grip on the horse’s
mane, and took several deep breaths. She felt the mare do likewise, and then the hump left her back and her ears flicked about
as though she were awaiting a command.

“See? Now try and keep that position while Oleander begins to walk. We’re not going to do anything faster than a walk today.
I just want you to catch the rhythm. To learn to feel secure. That’s right. It’s all right to let your body shift with the
horse’s. It’s preferable in fact.”

“I just feel as though I’m liable to tumble over the side at any moment.”

“But you won’t. Oleander here is too much a lady to tip you off. Even my sister, madcap that she is, has never come off her,
much as she’s tried. Beau prefers Quiz. Mostly because I think she’s trying to break her damn neck. Oleander knows her own
limitations. Quiz doesn’t think he has any, and neither does Beau.”

“
Does
the daughter of a duke have limitations?”

“You should know she does.”

“Me?”

“Lady Sarah Lennox’s birth didn’t preclude scandal and ruin, did it? In fact, I’d be prepared to argue that having so far
to fall made it worse. And poor Beau, much as she might argue otherwise, is subject to gravity, just like the rest of us.”

Viola bit her lip. She’d never thought about it that way. She herself hadn’t had all that far to fall, but yes, many of her
friends, in particular the members of The New Female Coterie, had learned the hard way that their birth provided little protection
if their relatives abandoned them.

If a woman’s family was powerful enough, and if they backed her, she could brazen through almost anything. But how many of
her friends had discovered too late that their families were afraid of scandal and wouldn’t stand by them?

Her own family had certainly abandoned her when she’d been fool enough to elope. Though at the time she hadn’t cared, and
perhaps still wouldn’t if Stephen hadn’t died. It hadn’t mattered until then. She’d been too happy to care that her letters
had been returned unopened. And she’d assumed she had all the time in the world to bring her parents around.

“I see the secret to making an Amazon of you is to distract you from the fear of falling.”

“What—”

His laugh cut her off, and Oleander’s step faltered, causing her to slip precariously. Leo caught her before she could fall
and he propped her back into place.

“To distract you and not startle you,” he added with one of his infectious grins. “Clearly when you’re talking, you’re too
busy to worry about falling. You’ve made seven circuits of the area with nary a problem, but the second you thought about
what you were doing, you nearly tumbled off.”

“So I’m to somehow
not
think about what I’m doing?”

“I think what’s vital here is that you not think about the consequences of what you’re doing. And eventually, all the little
actions that keep you in the saddle will become second nature.”

Viola raised her brows, doubt pinching them together. What he said was nonsensical.

Leo slipped the reins over the mare’s head and held them out to her. “Here, keep your hands busy, too. I’ll stay beside you,
not to worry. Grasp the reins so.” He arranged her fingers on the narrow strips of leather. “Relax your fingers forward when
she’s moving, and curl them back to stop her. If you keep her softly on the bit, there’s no need
to saw at her mouth or yank on the reins like a drunken squire.”

He stepped back slightly, and Viola eased her grip on the reins. The mare began to walk, and Viola tried to fall back into
the rhythm. The mare balked, ears going flat again. Viola dropped the reins and grabbed hold of the horse’s mane.

“No, don’t try, don’t think about it. Pick up the reins again and talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Is there nothing you can do without thinking about it? No game you played as a child? Swinging a cricket bat? Hitting a shuttle?
Conkers?”

Viola laughed, and the mare sped up into a trot. Viola kept her shoulders squared but allowed her hips to follow the new pattern.

“See there,” Leo said with a hint of pride, quickening his pace to keep up with them. “Ease back on the reins, and she’ll
fall back into a walk.” Viola did as he directed, and as promised, Oleander dropped back into a more sedate pace.

“It’s like magic.”

“No, it’s simply a skill, and you just mastered your first lesson. Let’s keep at it for a bit longer though. Tell me why the
subject of conkers should make you laugh?”

“Conkers were a great passion among my siblings and me. There was an enormous chestnut tree in the village green where we
lived when I was small. We used it much as you used your grandmother’s folly. It was our Sherwood, our playhouse, and the
provider of the largest, toughest conkers in all of Nottinghamshire.”

“So, a childhood filled with epic battles?”

Leo couldn’t stop himself picturing her as a wild Maid Marian, armed with a mighty chestnut on a string. She laughed, fingers
inching up on the reins, seat secure. She’d passed the hardest fence—that of fear—but the light had gone out of her eyes.

“Of one sort or another, yes. Epic battles seem to have been something of a family hobby,” Viola said, her mouth tight and
hard.

Leo gritted his teeth. He shouldn’t have asked. She wasn’t one of the bits-o-muslin who’d risen from humble origins, and however
pleasant her childhood, some unfortunate event had led to her present circumstances. The fact that he wanted to know the particulars,
that he cared at all, was a very bad sign. Caring made the pleasure of their idyll all too real, all too dangerous.

“Isn’t that the rule in most families?” Leo said. “Spats among siblings are as natural as those between cats and dogs.”

Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to control her breathing. A muscle quivered in her cheek, betraying the suppression
of some strong emotion.

“I never fought with my brothers. At least not over anything but whose conker would be king.”

Leo nodded, trying to appear as if her answer closed the subject. He’d bet Dyrham itself she was the product of some stalwart
Tory bastion of respectability and rigidity.

Had hers been a transgression of epic proportions, or had she been cast out for some small slip that his own family would
have glossed over with money and power?

“Lucky brothers. I fought with mine like two dogs
locked in a kennel with only one bone. Still do, in fact, when the occasion calls for it.” Leo smiled at her, but she didn’t
smile back.

Her expression was shuttered, cold. He wanted the light back, badly.

Without a word, she tightened her grip on the reins and tsked, imitating the noise he’d made to set Oleander into motion.
The mare’s ears perked, and she broke into a trot. Viola maintained her seat with obvious effort, but she kept the pace for
a full circle before reining the mare in.

Oleander came to a full stop, and Viola gave Leo a wavering smile. The bleak tightness that gripped his chest loosened its
hold. Whatever happened between him and Charles, he was going to make damn sure she wasn’t hurt by it. She deserved a better
hand than she’d been dealt, that much had become plain.

CHAPTER 16

A
stack of letters lay waiting for Leo on his desk in the library. One from his mother, two from Beau, one from his family
solicitor, Mr. Grimble, and one franked by Thane, though it was addressed in Sandison’s hand.

Leo cracked the plain wax seal and spread his friend’s letter out on the desk. A quick perusal told him everything he needed
to know. Charles and his men had overpowered the footman set to guard Viola’s house and had pretty much ransacked the place.
They’d moved all the large pieces of furniture, opened several walls, and even pulled up some of the floorboards. But they
hadn’t found anything, or at least they hadn’t carted anything off, according to Boaz, who’d come to in time to see them leaving.

Now he really did have to go to town, if for no other reason than to see that Viola’s house was restored to order before she
herself returned. He read his mother’s letter: His brother’s wife was pregnant, again; his father and the vicar had fallen
out—as with the first bit of news, this was no surprise; and a drunk, Italian prince had come all
the way to Scotland to sing under Beau’s window, and the duke had nearly set the dogs on him.

His sister’s letter was quite predictably filled with the very same news, albeit with a very different tone. Beau thought
the Italian prince deserved the dogs, if for no other reason than the fact that his singing was more the croak of a frog than
the song of a nightingale. She also thought it disgustingly redundant of their sister-in-law to have fallen pregnant a fourth
time after already adding three hearty new Vaughns to the family tree, and she wholeheartedly took their father’s side when
it came to his disagreement with the vicar (which seemed to have arisen over the propriety of bonfires at midsummer; the duke
being for them, the vicar firmly against such pagan goings-on).

Leo laid the letters aside and opened the one from Mr. Grimble. It was a simple piece of business, but it did require his
presence and signature, and it would give him all the excuse he needed to make a quick run to London.

He was rereading Beau’s letter, and chuckling over her description of her love-struck prince, when Viola wandered into the
library. She smiled, glanced at his letter, then turned her back and began to study the volumes that filled the tall cases
lining the walls.

Leo let the letter fall to the desktop. Viola paced slowly along the far wall, pulling out first one book and then another,
sometimes stopping to glance at a page or two, other times replacing the book unopened.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

Viola craned her neck to look at him while she slid her most recent selection back into place. “I was reading Cae
sar’s
Commentarii,
but I forgot to bring it with me. You have quite an eclectic collection here. Everything from
Aristotle’s Masterpiece
to
Tom Jones
to the plays of Shakespeare and the poetry of Donne. Did your grandfather build it, or did it come with the house?”

“A little of both, I’m afraid. To tell the truth, it’s the family dumping ground for whatever they drag with them on their
trips here.”

Viola took a few more steps along the bookcase and pulled out a slender volume bound in blue leather. “And who left this?”
She crossed the room and handed him the book in question.

Leo glanced at the title and found himself smiling. “That had to be either Sandison or my sister.”