by Isobel Carr
Viola gasped for air and blew out a long breath. He was going to wheedle and tease until he got his way. She was done for. “Have you ever taught a woman to ride? Do you even have a lady’s saddle here? And what am I to wear for this adventure? I’ve no habit, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to learn in this.” She waved one hand to encompass her simple Chemise a la Rein.
“No, I’ve never taught a woman to ride, but I was present when my sister learned.” He ticked off one finger. “Yes, we have several ladies’ saddles here, as all the women in my family ride.” Another finger bent to his accounting. “Also in consequence of which, I’d be willing to wager that at least one of them has left behind a habit or two you can make use of—and no, you certainly shouldn’t make the attempt to learn in that wisp of a gown.” He made a sweeping flourish with the hand upon which he’d just counted off his points.
Viola wrinkled her nose. “But I’m not your mistress. You said so yourself. So my lack of equestrian skill shouldn’t matter in the least.”
Leo gave a shout of laughter. “Minx. You’re not getting off that easily. Are you afraid of horses?”
She shook her head. “I’m not afraid of the horse itself; it’s the fall.”
“Then don’t fall.” He looked perfectly serious. As though it were really that simple.
“You perch five feet off the ground, clinging to a scrap of leather with your knees while the animal it’s attached to moves of its own accord, and then we’ll talk about not falling.”
“Is that a wager?”
Viola narrowed her eyes. “Is what a wager?”
“If I can ride sidesaddle, you’ll learn?” His slow grin set off a burning sense of indignation deep in her chest. If he didn’t already know for a fact he could do it—and she was almost certain he did!—he wasn’t the least bit worried about attempting it.
“If you can do it just as I’ll have to, I’ll attempt it,” she agreed. He wasn’t the only one who could turn a situation to his favor.
A sudden crease appeared between his brows. She saw comprehension flare, followed by amusement and something indefinable that must be whatever it was that prompted men to wager on everything from raindrops racing down a windowpane to who could seduce the latest ballet dancer.
“You mean to put me in skirts, do you, vixen?”
“I do, my lord. I should have to wear them after all.”
“What if I put you in breeches instead? You wouldn’t be the first. Doesn’t Mrs. Bing make a spectacle of herself in them regularly?”
Viola shrugged. “Either way, my lord. Me in breeches or you in skirts.”
Leo grinned evilly. “I think I rather like the idea of you running around in breeches. Such a lovely view of your otherwise hidden charms… but for now, let me show you something you’ll like far more than the folly.”
“It’s hard to imagine that the estate has anything more beautiful than this view to offer.” She pushed herself off the wall and turned her full attention to the vista that spread out from the tower. Rolling hills, speckled with sheep. A group of thatched cottages in the distance. Dense woods beyond them and the gleam of flowing water twisting through it all.
“You’re correct. The view couldn’t possibly be more beautiful.” His voice brought her back to the fact that he was staring at her, not the landscape, as he spoke. “But you’ll like my surprise all the same.”
She eyed him warily. He looked too pleased with himself to trust him entirely.
“Come.” Leo held out his hand. She hesitated for a moment, then allowed him to lead her down the stairs. The warm leather of his gloves slid against her naked hands with a seductive softness. She forced herself to ignore the sensation and the thrill that coursed down her spine. When they reached the bottom, he caught her about the waist and pressed in for a kiss.
His mouth met hers with an urgency that belied how lightly he held her. Viola sagged back against the stone wall for support and Leo followed, hands splayed out beside her, caging her in.
He moved to her jaw, traced a searing path to her ear, sucked hard on the sensitive spot where neck and jaw met. Her hands crept inside his coat, slid around to his back, sliding between the layers of silk with ease.
She—they!—were going to ruin her dress, and she couldn’t find it in herself to give a damn. A gown was a small price to pay. The knowledge that he was every bit as susceptible, every bit as powerless, was priceless.
CHAPTER 13
Leo broke off the kiss as Viola’s dog nudged into them with her head, knocking him off balance. Pen sneezed, blowing petals off the roses, and grinned up at him. Her tongue lolled out the side of her mouth, spilling from beneath an impressive display of teeth.
Leo steadied his hand, flexing it against Viola’s tightly corseted waist. “You’re a damn inconvenient beast,” he said to the dog. Her grin widened, and she rocked back and forth on her front paws. He reluctantly stepped back from Viola, taking her hand and pulling her along toward his horse.
“Tell me again why you insisted on keeping her?”
Viola shook her head, tossing her loose curls away from her face. One curl slid back, and she tucked it behind her ear. “Because she needed rescuing, and you can’t tell me, in this of all settings, that you don’t know a damsel in distress when you see one.”
A frown pulled at Leo’s mouth. He forced a smile instead. This entire trip to Dyrham was nothing but a ruse. A fantasy. The fact that she thought him a hero ate at him like a canker. At least his conscience was clear where the dog was concerned. “Take your shoes off and dip your toes in the water.”
“What? Why?” She didn’t look as though she trusted him in the slightest. Somewhere deep down, her instincts were correct, but not in this instance.
Leo shook his head. “It’s a surprise.” She narrowed her eyes and shot him a quizzical glance. Her hair, gloriously loose, swung around her shoulders, tips bouncing about her hips. “Trust me. It’s one of the best parts of Dyrham.”
She rolled her eyes, but stripped off her shoes and stockings all the same. Naked, familiar feet padded through the grass. She gathered up her skirts, exposing limbs like those of a statue, long, beautifully molded, and pale, save for the love bite he’d left just above the inside of her knee.
She stepped carefully off the bank, toes disappearing into the water. “It’s warm.” She twirled about, eyes wide enough for him to drown in, lips parted in surprise. The hem of her skirts trailed in the water as she waded in.
“There’s a hot spring on the estate. If you look upstream, you’ll see the real surprise. It’s a bathhouse. You’ll never be satisfied with a tub in your room again.”
Water spilled from a stone pool into an enormous soaking tub before swirling away down a sluice and out of the building. Steam rose off the pool’s surface. Light poured in from the glass roof. Viola sat on the pool’s edge, skirts damp and filmy, clinging to her thighs, feet dangling in the water.
“If I owned this, I’d never leave.” She splashed her feet in the water, sending waves sloshing over the edge and into the tub. “I’d put a bed in one corner and a table in the other and I’d live right here.”
“Like a sultana in a harem?”
“Why not.” Viola sighed and stretched her neck, face going soft and dreamy. “I don’t think I can imagine anything more wonderful than endless, everlasting hot water.” She pulled her feet from the water and stood. The wet linen of her skirts plastered itself to her legs. Leo swallowed hard. Why was something almost visible infinitely more alluring than something fully exposed? He’d seen her naked, but somehow this was far more exciting.
“Stay and enjoy it then. I’ll send your maid.”
Her brow furrowed, and her lips compressed into what he was coming to recognize as her secret smile. “Only if you’d rather not join me, my lord.” She tilted her head, chin raised just enough to emphasize the challenge in her declaration.
Leo grinned. She did so like to have the upper hand. Almost as
much as he did. “Not today, my dear. Today—though it breaks my heart to say so—I have a meeting about a horse. But we’ll have plenty of time to play the sultan and the concubine while we’re at Dyrham. In fact, while I’m gone, you can pick out a spot for that divan. But for now”—he pulled his watch from his pocket and thumbed it open—“yes, for now, I really must leave you to your own devices.”
Leo sketched a small bow and strode out of the bathhouse. Viola was clearly not pleased. For a woman who had made her living pleasing men, she apparently had little skill masking her anger. It was possible that none of her former protectors had ever provoked her, but—knowing his own kind as he did—that seemed unlikely. Perhaps it had been the other way around, and they’d been the ones who made every effort to please? Having one of her select set in keeping was considered something to brag about. Losing such a woman was certainly an embarrassment.
Viola’s dog raised her head as Leo emerged from the bathhouse. She gave him a long, penetrating look before laying her head back down upon her paws with a protracted and almost artfully woeful sigh. Whatever inconveniences might arise from her adoption, at least he need never worry that his cousin could slip in unnoticed. Pen had clearly set herself the task of guarding her mistress, so Charles would never get past her.
Leo took Meteor by the reins and led him toward the stable. Squire Watt should be arriving at any moment. The man had cast a covetous eye toward several of Leo’s hunters last season, and Leo could think of nothing better than having the legendary man spend the upcoming season mounted upon an animal from his stable. It would be good for his reputation, and that in turn would be good for business, crass as it was to admit.
And Dyrham was going to have to be a business. It didn’t have the vast acreage necessary to support itself. There was no coal or iron or other valuable resource. What it had was location and reputation. It was in Melton territory, prime hunting all around it, and at the moment, he had one of the best strings of hunters anywhere in England eating their very expensive heads off in his stables.
It had been one thing for his grandfather, the duke, to support such an establishment. It was something else for him to try to do it without the resources of Lochmaben to draw upon.
If he could maintain the estate for a few years, he could set himself up as a breeder and trainer. Most of his hunters were worth more than a pair of perfectly matched carriage horses, more than your average vicar, barrister, or doctor made in a year, more than the grooms who cared for them made in a lifetime.
But in order to make such a dream a reality, he had to have money, far more than his younger son’s portion. Without the prince’s treasure, he’d have to sell off all those magnificent horses, might have to sell off Dyrham itself in a few short years.
His first attempt to search Viola’s house had been interrupted by the fire in the mews, and though he’d tasked the League to make a more thorough attempt, he’d received no letter announcing success.
He’d have to invent an excuse to return to town sometime in the very near future, an excuse that would allow him to leave Viola safely—and ignorantly—tucked away at Dyrham.
CHAPTER 14
A loud, repetitive, and most determined thumping echoed through the house. Charles smiled to himself and continued to explore Mrs. Whedon’s bedchamber.
The footman must have regained consciousness. His men had overpowered him with a blow to the head and locked him in the kitchen’s small cellar. They’d reinforced the door with the large chopping block after shutting it. There was very little chance of Boaz getting loose anytime soon.
There was nothing here in her room. No secret panel in the wall. No hidden passageway behind the clothespress. There wasn’t even anything worth stealing. No silver brush set. No jewelry. The house had been quite carefully packed and closed before she’d left.
The sound of a large piece of furniture being shifted caught his attention, and Charles wandered down the corridor to find his men dragging a large bookcase away from the wall. Books were scattered in piles across the room, open, closed, pages bent and torn. His uncle, the duke, would have apoplexy on the spot.
“Nothing, sir,” Cooper said.
Charles turned slowly about, looking the room over. She obviously used it as a study. A small writing desk sat under the window, framed by curtains. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A watercolor of some ancient Mediterranean ruin hung above the fireplace.
“You’ve checked behind them all?”
“All the ones as ain’t built in, sir.” Cooper’s partner, a shambling ex-pugilist whose name escaped Charles, pointed at the chaos they’d created.
Charles raised one brow. “And which of them are built in?”
“Them two.” The pugilist pointed to the small shelves flanking the fireplace.
Charles crossed the room and ran his hands lightly over the seams where both cases met the wall. There was a slight gap around the left one. It could be nothing but poor craftsmanship, or it could be something more. No, there it was, an almost imperceptible draft.
He tossed all the books over his shoulder and ran his fingers slowly over each shelf, looking for anything that could be a trigger. Nothing.
Charles set his shoulder and shoved. A groan, but no movement. There was something there.
“We could rip it out of the wall, sir,” Cooper said.
Charles brushed off his hands and stepped back. “It may well come to that, but let’s not be hasty. If the trigger’s not in or on the case itself, it must be close by… No, not one of the floorboards. Not the baseboard either. Nothing behind the painting. No bell pull in the room. That would be too damn easy, wouldn’t it? No, but it really has got to be close.”
He cocked his head and studied the fireplace. No fanciful carvings. No roses or roundels to make a button out of. He ran his fingers under the mantel, behind the small lip. Yes, there it was. A knob. He fiddled with it until it moved, sliding to one side. There was a distinct snick, and the bookcase wobbled slightly.
Charles pushed it with his foot, and it slid back into the wall. Cold, musty air flooded out. He slipped in, shoulders scraping the sides of the narrow passage. A few steps and he was in a small room. A dark oubliette.
“Fetch a candle,” he yelled back over his shoulder.
A few minutes later, a wavering light licked past him, shivering over the dusty room and its scant contents. It was nothing but a priest’s hole. Large enough to have contained a strongbox, but if it ever had, the box and its contents were long gone.
Charles cursed and flung the candle down. The room pitched into darkness. He thrust Cooper out before him, nearly sending the smaller man sprawling.
Damnation. So close. He’d felt success burning just beneath his skin. If it wasn’t there now, it certainly had been. It had to have been.
He lashed out with his foot, sending a book flying across the room. It fell facedown, open, pages bent out at odd angles. Charles stamped on it for good measure.
Leo and his whore weren’t going to win that easily. If the money was no longer here, and Leo was still dangling from her apron strings, that could mean only one thing: She had it.
Charles glanced around her well-appointed study. Someone had spent a small fortune on this house, its furnishings, and maintenance. And Mrs. Whedon had quit the field quite abruptly, if his memory served.
Almost as though she’d come in to some kind of windfall.
He picked up the poker and swung it at the wall. Plaster gave way like the chalk cliffs at Dover. Charles swung again, raining dust down onto the books.
Damn her. He swung again, and again.
CHAPTER 15
Viola clamped her arm to her side, pinning the unruly skirt of her habit up and out of her way, and resolutely walked down the path that led to the stable block. She’d been so sure of her plan to wear breeches, but one look in the mirror had laid that plan to rest.
Leo’s buckskins, nobly handed over the night before, had clung to her
thighs but sagged about her waist and hips, and the less said about the baggy horror of the seat the better. She was well aware that breeches were always somewhat full in the backside, but clearly they needed to be matched up with the posterior for which they’d been cut and paired with a coat for cover.
As she reached the stable block, she could see Leo running his hands over a gray with a long tail tipped in black. The horse swung its head to look at her, ears swiveling about.
Leo turned. His eyes widened, and his lips quirked with mirth. “No breeches?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t think for a moment that I’m going to put on skirts because you changed your mind.”
Viola wrinkled her nose at him. “God’s honest truth? They didn’t fit.”
“Vanity won out, did it?”
Viola dropped her skirt and gestured down the length of her oatmeal habit. It strained across her bust, swung about her waist, and had a stain down one side of the enormously long skirt that appeared to be a mix of ruddy earth and grass. “When I tell you this is better, you’ll understand the full implication of what I mean when I say the breeches were worse.”
He grinned widely. “Beau’s a good bit taller than you, but none of that will matter for what we’re doing today. Your maid can winkle about with it later if you don’t break your neck.”
“Your sister won’t mind if your mistress steals her habit?”
“I don’t think Beau’s worn that since she was a hoyden of fifteen. I doubt she’ll even notice it’s gone, and if she did, no, I don’t think she’d care. Come and meet Oleander. She’s a sweet-tempered little goer, and I fully expect the two of you to become fast friends.”
Viola eyed the mare. Oleander stared back, large brown eyes surveying her with clear contempt. “Do you have something smaller?”
Leo laughed, and the horse blew out a loud and derisive-sounding breath, nostrils fluttering rudely. “The only other horse in the stable trained to carry a lady is Quiz, and since my goal today is something other than cementing your affection for sedan chairs, I’ll not put you anywhere near him. Now come here and let me boost you up.”
