by Isobel Carr
Viola suffered a moment of pure panic as Leo grasped her about the waist and tossed her up into the saddle. She wobbled, and his grip tightened, shoring her up.
“Get your knee around the pommel. Yes, like that. Now other foot in the stirrup.” He let go of her waist, hands sliding down her hips and legs, and guided her foot into place. “You want to keep the pommel firmly between your knees and the ball of your foot balanced across the bar of the stirrup.”
Leo took the reins from the metal ring they’d been looped through. “Just hold on. Get a feel for the rhythm. No, no. Don’t twist about. You’ll unbalance yourself and tumble over.”
Viola blew a drifting curl out of her eyes and glared at Leo. “Whoever invented the sidesaddle should have been murdered on the spot.”
Leo laughed and set her firmly back into position. Blood pounded in her ears, making it impossible to think.
“You can thank Good Queen Bess for having taken a shine to them.” His hands pushed up under her skirt, found the naked flesh of her thigh, and checked the placement of her knee over the pommel with ruthless efficiency. Heat flooded through her, bringing a ridiculous surge of longing. The man had bewitched her. They’d made love twice the previous evening and again after breakfast and still she wanted more.
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 mo
uth 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 Caesar’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.”
Viola raised her brows. “Your sister has read the Earl of Rochester?”
“Beau has read a lot of things a properly brought-up girl oughtn’t to have. It comes from having scholars for parents. They shudder at the idea of censoring books. And Sandison is supposedly the illegitimate descendant of the disreputable earl, so it stands to reason he’s proud of the man’s debauched poetry.”
Viola took the book back from him, opened it, and began to read, “Our dainty fine Dutchesse’s have got a Trick, To Doat on a Fool, for the Sake of his Prick, The Fopps were undone, did their Graces but know, The Discretion and vigor of Signior Dildo.” She shushed him when he choked and rapped him on the hand when he finally gave way to outright laughter.
“I prefer his less vulgar works,” Leo said. “Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms, I filled with love, and she all over charms; Both equally inspired with eager fire, Melting through kindness, flaming in desire.”
“Are you saying you don’t find dildos erotic, my lord?”
“Are you saying you do, my dear Mrs. Whedon?”
Viola bit her lips, but the grin still curled up the edges of her mouth. “I can’t say, as I’ve never had to resort to one.”
Leo grinned back at her. Viola leaned in, lips meeting his in a feather-light caress.
“See that I don’t have to, my lord,” she whispered.
“Is that a threat?”
“Well,” she smiled down at him, “it’s certainly not me begging.”
Leo stood and backed her into the desk. “Shall I see if I can make you?”
“Beg for a dildo?”
Leo nipped her earlobe. “If you like, though that’s not what I meant.” He put her hand over the fall of his breeches and held it there as his cock flared to life. Her hand flexed, cupping his already ridged shaft.
“Is that you begging, my lord?”
Leo chuckled as he lifted her onto the desk and stepped between her thighs. “Not yet, it isn’t.”
Viola slid her hand along his erection, stroking it through the fabric of his breeches. She squeezed a bit harder as she reached the head, then pushed back down along its length, fingertips dancing over his testicles. Leo pressed himself into her palm.
“Do you really think it’s that easy?” Leo pushed her skirts up and out of his way, dragging his nails lightly up the naked flesh of her thigh. The cleft between her thighs was already slick; his fingers were wet as he slid them inside her.
Viola dragged in a quick breath. “Why shouldn’t it be?” Her hand continued to stroke him. “And don’t say, ‘Because I said it isn’t.’ ” She opened the fall of his breeches, and this time he didn’t stop her.
His cock pulsed in her hand, blood rushed through him, leaving him dizzy. He gripped her hi
ps, moving her forward to the edge of the desk. Viola guided him into place, a low purr in the back of her throat.
Leo thrust in, stretching her, filling her. She arched, rocking until her hips met his, until they couldn’t get any closer. Leo pushed her back onto the desk, reached across, and gripped its far edge for leverage.
Viola matched his rhythm. She clung to his shoulders, tugging on his coat, wrenching it half off him. Her body was wet and willing and open, inner muscles pulsing.
Her feet cupped his buttocks, pressing him against her as she bucked up off the desk. One hand twisted in his hair, pulling hard, but with a slow, steady pressure that brought pleasure with the pain.
His release engulfed him, washing him over a precipice to where nothing else existed. His world was the heat of her skin against his, the wet embrace of her body, her shuddering gasps.
He lay still for a moment, drifting. He’d come, but his erection would last a few minutes more. Long enough to pitch her over into insensate bliss. He rocked his hips, rubbed against her, bit softly just below her ear. She struggled, pushed, rolled her body beneath his, then finally cried out, the sound dying away to a series of incoherent sobs.
Leo rested atop her, listening to the frantic beat of his own heart. It slowly steadied. Viola stirred beneath him, hands caressing his back, one foot idly tracing along his thigh.
He kissed the hollow of her throat. “And that, my dear, I think even our wicked earl would call a conflagration.”
CHAPTER 17
Plaster dust drifted through the air and caught in the beams of light pouring through the windows. Leo rubbed his eyes and surveyed the destruction. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, but it clearly hadn’t been done to unearth the prince’s treasure.
Sandison had already had someone in to fix the floors, and the plasterers were hard at work on the walls. It was still all too evident that Charles had taken his temper out on the house, which meant he most certainly hadn’t found the money, or anything that might lead him to it.
