Ripe for Pleasure (33 page)

“It’s done, boy. It’s done.” His father released him, and Leo braced himself on the wall. He shook water and blood out of
his eyes, air rattling in and out of his lungs like a bellows.

His father knelt beside Charles’s prone form. His mother and Beau were swirling about Viola, voices sharp with anger. His
brother stood in the doorway, a candle in one hand, something between guilt and horror washing over his face.

Leo’s hand shook. “Viola?”

“I’m fine.” She sounded as though she were anything but, voice thready and pitched too high.

“She’s not fine.” His mother’s voice cut through the room. “But I don’t think we need to fetch a doctor for a mere graze.
Just clean the wound and bandage it up.”

“But for Charles?” Glennalmond still stood in the doorway, as if what was transpiring were a play on a distant stage, removed
from the reality of the audience.

“He’s not breathing.” The duke stood up, water staining his nightgown where he’d knelt on the wet floor. “Nothing a doctor
can do for him either. Glennalmond, see to your brother while your mother tends to Mrs. Whedon. We have very serious arrangements
to make in the next few hours, and it’s best if we involve as few of the servants as possible.”

CHAPTER 35

L
eo held a piece of raw beef to his eye. He’d killed his cousin. Some might say murdered him, though he wasn’t going to stand
trial for it. His family would see to that. The world outside Skelton Hall would never know what had really happened, though
his fellow League members might well guess. Thane had said it was a mistake to let Charles live—and he’d been proven right.

His father and brother had hauled Charles’s body into the spare room while his mother did her best to make it appear they’d
been caring for an injured man. All to keep Leo’s neck from the hangman’s noose.

Charles had been put into one of Leo’s nightshirts and placed in the bed. The scene had been set: The rags and water and bandages
used to treat him and Viola were scattered about, giving a quite convincing impression that every care had been taken to treat
Charles’s injuries. One of the grooms had been sent to fetch the doctor, who would arrive to find his skills sadly unnecessary.

Beau had been assigned the role of nurse and was
having no trouble whatsoever looking every bit as distressed as one would have expected. Though if one knew her, it was obvious
that anger more than grief was fueling her distress.

What a family they were. Glennalmond had even apologized for his behavior and sworn never to breathe a word of the truth to
his wife, who they all agreed couldn’t be trusted to hold her tongue.

Pen whined and licked Leo’s hand, forcing him to stop brooding and turn his attention to her. Viola had locked the dog in
with him that morning, then disappeared with his mother to await the doctor. Leo sighed and tossed her the piece of meat.
She caught it in midair and promptly sank to the floor to gnaw at it noisily.

While the dog made a mess on the newly cleaned hearth, Leo washed the stink of the meat from his face and hands. Charles had
left him with an ugly scratch near his eye, but it didn’t seem to be swelling or turning black.

The handle of the door rattled, and Viola slipped into the room. Her gown and artfully arranged fichu hid her bandaged shoulder.

Leo stood. She smiled wanly and hurried across the room to hide her face against his chest. Viola wrapped her arms about his
waist, clinging tightly to him, as though she were afraid to let go.

“Take me home.” Her voice was muffled by the silk of his banyan. He caught her chin and tipped her head up. Her eyes were
shadowed, the skin beneath them almost bruised in appearance. “Promise me, as soon as the funeral is over, you’ll take me
home.”

“Mother will never allow it.”

“She suggested it. We can’t possibly be married as your cousin is laid in the ground. The vicar would have kittens. He’s upset
enough as it is. He practically called it a judgment upon us.”

A familiar resentment crawled through his veins. “How did Her Grace take it?”

“She growled, called him a mewling old woman, and told him to keep his opinions to himself or find a living elsewhere. He
spent the next few minutes sputtering and tripping over his tongue in his eagerness to explain that she’d misunderstood what
he meant. The duchess sent him out the door with a flea in his ear, then she swept out to discuss dinner with the housekeeper
and I made my escape.”

“He can keep his sensibilities and his blessings. I’ll get a special license, and we’ll be married from Dyrham. The vicar
there won’t care for anything beyond the fact that we give a good breakfast afterward. A good breakfast and a good hunt, that’s
about the sum of his worldly desires.”

Viola nodded and buried her face in his chest again. He dropped his head so that her curls tickled his nose—sunlight and grass.
No matter what else might be awry with the world, Viola smelled of sunshine, grass, and happiness. He pushed his nose a bit
deeper into her hair and inhaled again.

“Your mother says they’ll be down in October for cub hunting. We can have the wedding then.”

“You’ll never keep the boys out. You know that? If we have it at Dyrham during hunting season, we’ll be overrun with men in
dirty boots with dogs at their heels.”

She gave a watery laugh, and Pen barked, attempting
to nudge them apart and claim their attention for herself. Leo rubbed the dog’s head and kissed Viola on the nape of her neck.

Viola wiggled out of his loose embrace and leaned back so she could stare up at him with damp eyes. She ignored Pen’s grumble
of protest as the dog was once again cut out.

“Regardless of when or where we marry, I rather expect that hordes of men with dirty boots are an inevitable part of my future.
In fact, I’m counting on it. I may even make you write a promise of such into the settlements.”

“Settlements?”

“Oh, yes.” She met his gaze, a hint of her usual saucy nature in her expression. “I want the money from my memoir tied up
for whatever children we might have. Lord knows any daughter of ours is going to need it—”

“And something for the younger sons?”

“That, too.”

“Shall there be anything left for us to live on when our horde of children are grown and married?”

“Only if we find the prince’s treasure or I continue to make my way as an authoress. I do think that at this point I have
quite enough experience to write a horrid novel every bit as good as Mr. Walpole’s
The Castle of Otranto.
”

“Yes,” Leo agreed. “I rather expect you could. Am I in the next volume of your memoir? I assume I must be, but whatever you
wrote would have to have been pure fiction.”

She smiled tremulously, then caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I could hardly leave you out, but yes, those chapters
are almost entirely fictional. The truth, even what little I knew of it at the time, would hardly have been safe to print.”

“Shall you write a third volume?”

Viola shook her head. “If people want to read about a whore redeemed, they can read
Moll Flanders.
”

Viola pushed a few errant hairs back from her face, fingering them into place as they clung to her damp skin. Summer had arrived
in London with a vengeance while they’d been away in Scotland. Those with the means and leisure to flee to the coast had done
so. She had both, oddly enough, the unexpectedly lucrative profits from her memoir providing for the former, and her future
as Lady Leonidas ensuring the latter.

It was amazing what an engagement to a duke’s son and the ensuing scandal did for book sales. Everyone wanted to know just
how appalled they should really be, and she had provided them with plenty of exquisitely outrageous exploits to factor into
their decision. Though she hadn’t included her time with Leo in her book.

Leo had taken to collecting the rude caricatures that filled the print shops and was threatening to decorate the library at
Dyrham with them. Just yesterday, his friend Sandison had stopped by to deliver a particularly rude one showing her in bed
with Lord Doneraile, with all her subsequent protectors standing in a line outside, awaiting their turn. Leo had been delighted
and had pointed out that an illustrated copy of her memoir would make a fortune.

She had a sinking suspicion he hadn’t been joking when he’d said it either. Trust a duke’s son to find such a scenario amusing,
and trust a younger son to see the profit in it.

Before she and Leo packed up and abandoned London for the remainder of the year, she wanted to get the garden’s resurrection
under way. If she had to come back to a muddy disaster filled with weeds in the spring, she might never want to return to
town again.

Between the rain and the horses that’d been stabled there after the fire, there was almost nothing left of what had once been
a very pretty garden indeed. The low herbaceous borders were gone—trampled or eaten—as was the small lawn and all the deliciously
decadent flowers that had once made the garden her jeweled oasis. One of the two benches had been knocked over and broken,
as had two of the three statues that decorated the back wall. Only the one held in place by creeping vines had survived the
equine assault.

As she surveyed the space, Leo wandered out of the house, an enormous straw hat in one hand and Pen at his heels. “Put this
on before you cook your brain.”

Viola grinned and took it from him. “It’s not that hot.”

“You’ll freckle.”

“And we can’t have that, can we?” She settled the hat on her head, the shade provided by the brim instantly welcome. She’d
be damned if she’d admitted it to him though.

“A freckled wife? No, I really don’t think we could.”

Viola shook her head, amusement bubbling up in her veins. “I rather like the spray you have on the bridge of your nose, but
as we know, I have appalling taste.”

Leo rubbed his nose, face set into a theatrically tragic mien. “You needn’t remind me I’m not as pretty as you. Now just what
are you doing out here in the noonday sun?”

“Trying to decide what to do with the garden. I could
simply replant it the way it was, but as Lady Ligonier pointed out when she was here yesterday, it was awfully fusty and old-fashioned.”

Leo nodded, pinpoints of light leaking through his hat and scattering across his skin as he moved. “What were you thinking
of doing instead?”

Viola tilted her head and squinted at the ruins with one eye, trying to picture what might suit the long and rather narrow
space. “I don’t know… maybe something like the wilderness at your parents’ house? I love that little walled garden, and I
think we might achieve something of the sort here.”

“The statues would have to go.” He wandered down the steps and tipped one of them over. Pen snuffled along behind him, nosing
through the few gallant sprigs that were trying to reassert themselves. The nymph’s broken arm and jug lay where the statue
had fallen as Leo rolled it over.

“That could only be a further inducement, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never liked those dancing nymphs, and I can’t even
tell what nymph or goddess that one”—she gestured to the one still standing, encased in vines—“is supposed to be. I thought
for a long time they were the three graces, but I’m not even sure that’s a woman.”

Leo picked his way through the detritus and pulled the vines away from the statue. “There’s an inscription at the base, but
it’s all but illegible. If we did a rubbing, it might be easier to decipher.” He let the vines fall back into place and dusted
off his hands.

Viola shrugged. “If you think it worth the effort. I’d say we have enough mysteries on our hands. Have you found nothing more
in the letters?”

Leo shook his head. “You can have a crack at them if you like. I know them by heart, but staring at them for hours on end
is beginning to make me question my mental acumen.”

Viola grinned up at him. “That’s all right, darling. You’re pretty enough that I can forgive you for being a touch dim.”

“What more can a man ask for than forgiveness of his weaknesses and forgetfulness when it comes to his failings?” He swept
off his hat and made her a grand leg.