Ripe for Pleasure (20 page)

She could hear Mrs. Draper’s voice, followed by Lord Leonidas’s, then the rapid sound of his boots on the stairs. She twisted
about to make it look as though she were descending.

Leo reached the landing and rounded the corner. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I’ve already made my apologies to Mrs. Draper for
ruining her supper. I was unavoidably detained.”

Relief turned to anger, quick as a hawk snatching a rabbit from a field. Viola forced herself to smile as the urge to slap
him made her fingers flex. A protector being late had never bothered her, had certainly never sent her into a rage. It was
his right to keep her at his beck and call.

But Leo was
not
her protector, by his own design. He wasn’t paying for the privilege of her indulgence.

He continued up, stopping when his eyes were on level with her own. “I truly am sorry. I meant to send a footman with a note.
The women of my family have descended like the monstrous regiment they are. There was no getting away sooner.”

One hand snaked out, and his arm slipped around her waist, pulling her down a single step so that she was brought up against
the hard wall of his chest. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

His eyes crinkled with mirth and relief. “See there, you’re halfway to forgiving me already.” He dipped his head, lips tracing
her ear, the heady scent of Bay Rum and clean skin surrounded her. Her fingers curled into his lapels of their own accord.

“Have you eaten?” Her question came out barely louder than a whisper.

He shook his head, hands sliding over her hips.

“Are you hungry?”

“No.” He pushed closer, lips finding the pulse point just below her ear.

Her breathing hitched. “Would you like a drink?”

He laughed, the sound bouncing back at them in the narrow stairwell. “Not just now.”

He kissed her hard, pressing her into the wall. Her skirts were up, and her thighs were gripping his hips before she quite
knew how it had happened. He pushed inside her, arms locked about her, one hand fisting into her hair.

She didn’t remember being lifted, couldn’t begin to explain when or how he’d freed himself from his breeches. It had all happened
at once, as though their melding was some kind of clockwork toy. A naughty version of the chess-playing Turk that had been
on display in London just last season.

And she responded as though her body—his body—knew the exact motions necessary to drive her heedlessly, helplessly toward
her release. Her hands began to tingle. Her toes curled, the arch of her foot fighting against the unyielding sole of her
shoe. And then, poised on the cusp, he came instead, his body pinning her to the wall as he pulsed within her.

Her breath came out with a sob of disappointment. She’d been so damn close. Too close to even think of pretending. Close enough
to ache with the loss of it.

“Good Lord, Vi.” He rocked gently against her, fabric
working roughly over her clitoris. She tried to catch her breath, but it hitched uncontrollably as he adjusted his position
and the angle of their joining. “There’s a bed not thirty feet away, and I’m tumbling you on the stairs like a lad having
a go at a housemaid.” He chuckled, head resting against the wall, breath stirring the curls at the nape of her neck. “I’m
not usually so hasty or inept.”

Viola smiled into his collar. Relief that he’d arrived, late or not, thrummed through her. Triumph that he wanted her so badly
was singing in her blood. She kissed his neck, lips and tongue and teeth sliding over the spot below the ear he always seemed
to favor when doing the same to her. He made a happy, rumbling sound deep in his throat, and his cock stirred within her.

“I believe you know how to find the bedroom, my lord. Make it up to me.”

CHAPTER 22

T
he previous evening’s rain had given way to a soft, foggy morning. Trees and eaves dripped; Leo’s lashes collected moisture
that had to be blinked away. Meteor shook his head, and his bit jangled, the sound seemingly muffled by the enveloping cloud.

Leo posted lazily alongside his sister as they made their way down Rotten Row. He’d returned to his parents’ house in the
predawn hours to find Beau already dressed in her habit and sipping coffee while she pored over the previous day’s
Morning Post.

Beau, in typical fashion, hadn’t so much as batted an eyelash. She’d simply blown into her coffee cup and said, “If you change
quickly and come riding with me, Mother need never know you’ve been out carousing like a tom.” Then she’d flipped up the paper
in a perfect imitation of their father’s technique and soundly ignored him.

After a hurried cup of coffee, he’d allowed her to drag him back out for a morning ride. Leo looked around the deserted park.
“No assignation, Beau?”

She threw him a saucy glance. “If there were, I certainly wouldn’t have invited
you.
I’d have brought Ezekiel, who knows very well how to keep a secret.”

“You would have, if you wanted to make a point with the poor man: Giant brother, beware ye who attempt to trespass.”

“I’ve been in town for less than a week. I’ve hardly had time to set up a flirt. I’m not
you.
Who is she, by the way?” Her voice took on a quick, eager quality. “Everyone seems to know, but no one will tell me.”

Leo shook his head. “Good Lord. You haven’t been asking people about me, have you?” Her answering laugh told him clearly that
she damn well had been. “Are you determined to brand yourself as the fastest thing Scotland has ever produced?”

Beau made a face at him. “Bah. It’s not as though I’m the one keeping a mistress—or a mister—or whatever you’d call a male
courtesan. Why don’t women keep them anyway? It seems dreadfully unfair. And the only person I asked was Sandison.” She sounded
highly disgruntled. “All he did was threaten to put me over his knee. Besides, even I know Dally the Tall is the fastest thing
Scotland’s ever produced, including poor Gunpowder here.” She gave her horse a conciliatory pat, as though he were aware he
was being disparaged.

“Beau, so help me…”

“So help you what, Brother? You’ll tell Mother on me? I’m sure she knows by now. You have a mistress, and I’m a lost cause.
Augusta was having vapors over something last night, and unless our brother has gambled away her considerable dowry or taken
a mistress of his own—
which I’ll admit is doubtful—it must be something to do with you.”

Augusta. Wonderful. His brother’s wife was devilishly high in the instep and prone to excessive displays of morality.

“You needn’t sound as if you wished he had.”

Beau made a rude sound by way of retort, and Leo couldn’t quite bring himself to disagree. What Arthur saw in Augusta he’d
never been able to figure out, but they rubbed along happily enough, as three children in four years surely proved. And they
did it mostly in Scotland, which was one of the many reasons he chose to make his home here.

“You can tell me now, or I’ll ask Charles when he comes to escort Mother and me to the theatre. And you know Charles will
tell me, if only to twit you.”

Leo’s jaw clenched. Meteor gave a disgruntled crow hop, and Leo forced himself to relax. “You’re going to be the death of
me, brat.”

She grinned, clearly aware that she’d won.

“Promise first that you won’t bring this up with Mother.”

“I promise. Now tell me, is she very beautiful?”

“Yes, very.”

“And are you terribly in love with her?”

The word
“yes”
was on the tip of his tongue. His teeth rattled with the force of holding the word back. Dear God, there was a pretty pickle.
“She’s a widow, and I like her well enough. That’s all you need to know.”

“Have I met her?”

“No, and you’re not likely to do so.”

Beau’s smile grew, and her eyes took on a roguish look that he knew all too well. “So she’s the kind of woman who’s lucky
enough not to have to behave herself at Almack’s or pretend to enjoy herself at Lady Colpepper’s soiree or Mrs. Danhurt’s
Venetian breakfast.”

“Beau!”

“Leo!” she parroted back in the same affronted tone. “I’m two-and-twenty. I’ve been abducted twice and lived to tell—or not
to tell rather—the tale. I’m not a
child.
”

“Then do stop acting like one,” he retorted, at a loss as to how else to respond. Perhaps they should have left her to Granby
that last time… if only she hadn’t stabbed him. It was rather poor form to force one’s sister to marry a man she’d maimed.

“Fine,” Beau spat out. “I suppose I’ll ask Charles after all.” With one last, defiant glare, she urged her gelding into a
canter and quickly pulled away from him. The fog swirled about her mount’s legs as though he were preternatural, a creature
of legend leaping forth from the pages of one of the tales their grandmother loved.

Leo trotted after her. Rotten Row ended not too much farther along, and she’d have to return momentarily. If he ran her down,
he was likely to get her crop across his cheek for his trouble.

Pride swirled within his chest. It was very hard not to love Beau, even when she was behaving poorly and causing scandals.
No, he smiled as she reappeared like the queen she was named for, delivered by the mist. It was
because
she behaved outrageously—as he would himself—that he couldn’t help loving her.

•     •     •

Charles handed his hat and gloves to his uncle’s butler and stepped past him into the hall. Nothing had changed since he’d
first come here as a child of four. The same ugly Chinese vase stood on a table beneath a landscape of the Lochmaben ancestral
seat in Scotland, a drafty stone pile, part castle, part Jacobean manor house. In the painting, the trees were smaller than
he remembered, but otherwise it was an accurate enough representation.

His aunt greeted him with a forced smile, but his cousin Beau leapt up, stormed across the room to kiss his cheek, and dragged
him over to sit beside her on the settee. Lady Glennalmond nodded at him over her tambor frame.

Cold bitch. She always had been. She’d made it perfectly clear over the years that she thought him an interloper. He dragged
his gaze away from his eldest cousin’s wife, turning his attention to Beau.

“Is the dowager not with you?” he asked.

“I most certainly am, Charles dear.” He turned to find his grandmother being escorted in on the arm of his cousin Leonidas.
His mouth went dry, and he swallowed thickly. Wasn’t Leo supposed to be in the country with his slut?

Charles rose to give his place to the dowager, then followed Leo over to the buffet, where his cousin was pouring himself
a drink.

“Hello, Cousin.” Leo smiled, clearly pleased with himself.

Charles gave him a tight-lipped nod, visions of pounding his cousin’s head in dancing just behind his eyes. “I’m surprised
to see you tonight,” Charles said. “I would
have thought you’d be otherwise occupied. It’s amazing how dangerous London’s become.
Nothing
seems safe anymore.”

One side of Leo’s mouth quirked up in an overly confident grin. “I know how to take care of what’s mine.”

Charles nodded again, the need to make a hit, to wipe that smile from his cousin’s face, pulsing through him. “But just what
is really yours, Cousin? It can be hard to tell sometimes, can’t it?”

Leonidas’s brow knit, but the martial light didn’t leave his eyes. Game and stupid as always, that was Leo.

“It’s all over town that Sir Hugo wants her back. Eventually she’s going to need an income again, and you’re certainly in
no position to provide it. She’s above your touch, Leo.”

The muscle in Leo’s jaw popped as he clenched his teeth. Charles smiled, satisfaction buoying him up. A hit. A very palpable
hit.

“Unless,” Charles added, unable to stop himself, “Mrs. Whedon has already found what we’re seeking, and she’s really the one
doing the keeping. Perhaps I’ll have to ask her the next time our paths cross.”

“Shall we go?” Lady Glennalmond announced loudly, breaking in upon their tête-à-tête. “If we tarry much longer, we’ll be caught
in the general press, and I do so hate being mauled by the crowds.”