Ripe for Pleasure (28 page)

She could get no peace. The Bible had dour things to say about a kingdom divided. How much worse to be a person divided against
oneself?

She retrieved the magazine from where it had fallen and ran her fingers over the cover as though she could somehow bring it
to life, force it to speak, to give up Leo’s secrets.

If he were plain Mr. Vaughn with two thousand a year and a cottage in Cornwall, she could almost have married him without
a qualm. But he wasn’t, and even if he were, the undercurrents that swirled between them, as dangerous as Scylla and Charybdis,
were impossible to dismiss.

Viola threw herself back into her chair and buried herself in
The Gentleman’s Magazine.
She was halfway
through the article and busy composing a rebuttal in her head when the door to the parlor opened with enough force to rattle
the paintings on the wall. Pen hackled, and the woman standing in the doorway, looking very much like Medea triumphant, shushed
her with unmistakable authority. Pen cocked her head, her stub of a tail twitching against Viola’s skirts.

“Well, I see some of the tale I’ve been told is true.”

Viola scrambled to her feet, magazine falling from her shaking hands. She curtsied and darted a glance at Leo’s butler. Pilcher
hovered behind the new arrival in a dither that could only be explained by a supreme calamity: welcoming the duchess into
a house where her son’s mistress was currently resident.

The expression in the woman’s blue eyes would have told Viola everything she needed to know, had she been in doubt as to her
identity. Everything she’d ever heard about Lord Leonidas’s frosty gaze was more than true of his mother. Viola’s heart struggled
to beat as her blood chilled. She was sinking into an icy pond with no hope of rescue.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace.” Her voice came out surprisingly calm. “Your son is away at the moment.”

“So I told Her Grace,” Pilcher said from the doorway. “It isn’t fitting—” His words choked off as the duchess threw him a
quelling glance.

She turned back to Viola, resolution in her spine, determination in the set of her shoulders. “I’m well aware Leo is elsewhere
today. I came to see you, Mrs. Whedon. But since servants
who should know better by now,
” she said loudly, in a tone that promised dire consequences,
“seem to be able to do nothing more than quake and hound me when they
should
be offering me refreshments, I propose you join me in my carriage before I have my say.”

She adjusted her hat upon blond curls shot with silver, and spun about, Viola’s acquiescence clearly assumed. Viola motioned
for Pen to stay and followed the duchess out. The last thing she needed was Pen in a closed coach with Lord Leonidas’s mother.
Whether the dog loved her or hated her, the duchess’s spangled silk wouldn’t have survived the encounter.

Viola tasted bile at the back of her throat. There was something truly frightening about the way the duchess carried herself.
A threat was implicit in every motion. That she was used to giving orders, and to having them obeyed, was beyond question.

A coachman, two footmen, and a prodigious mountain of baggage sat atop a glossy coach-and-six emblazoned with the ducal crest.
Viola followed the duchess into her carriage without gloves or hat, feeling oddly bereft without them, like an unarmed gladiator
thrown to the lions. She took the rear-facing seat and spread her skirts about her as though this were no more than a friendly
drive in Hyde Park.

No matter what the duchess had to say, Viola refused to cower. But the door shut behind them with a
click
that made her jump. Without a word or motion from the duchess, the carriage rolled into motion. Viola searched for calm,
forcing herself to meet the duchess’s gaze unflinchingly. She’d faced down angry relatives before, though never under circumstances
such as these.

She had done nothing wrong, had nothing to apologize for, nothing to explain. The duchess couldn’t even accuse her of being
mercenary, as not so much as a ha’penny had changed hands between her and Lord Leonidas. All the same, she could feel an anticipatory
quake of nervous energy low in her belly, and it took all her self-control to prevent her foot from shaking and her knee from
bobbing.

The duchess pushed the curtains more fully open and continued to simply stare at her in the bright light of day. Viola stared
back. Let her look. Let her study every bruise, memorize every mark.

Finally the duchess sighed loudly and said, with something that might have been a smile curling up the edge of her mouth,
“My daughter said you had bottom.”

Viola’s mouth dropped open, and she shut it with a snap. The duchess glanced down as she smoothed out her skirts, shaking
them out so they hung perfectly over her knees, as though sitting for a portrait.

“So unlike my boy to become entangled with a courtesan. If I’d heard he’d eloped with one of his friend’s wives, I’d have
been less surprised… I hear I owe you a deal of thanks for getting Beau out of a scrape. And for that I
do
thank you. Daughters are something of a trial, and I say that having been an enormous trial to my poor papa. Beau is my just
deserts, it would seem.”

The older woman sucked in one cheek and continued to study her, as though something would announce itself or reveal itself
if she just looked hard enough. “I’d like an explanation for the state I find you in from your own mouth, for I’ll go to my
grave swearing that my Leo couldn’t have done that to a woman—any woman, regardless of the
provocation—and you don’t strike me as the kind to take such treatment lightly.”

Viola caught her breath and held it. Her hands crushed the fine linen of her petticoats. She swallowed thickly. Was it possible
to tell only part of the story? How much did the duchess know already?

“I can assure Your Grace that it wasn’t your son.”

The duchess arched a brow. “You should know that London is rife with rumors. One version says my son caught you with another
man, murdered you both, and smuggled your corpses out of town—I’m relieved to see that’s blatantly untrue. Another says you
and he had a row, and after beating you half to death, he then dragged you away and locked you up as though he were a Bluebeard.
My personal favorite is that he fought a duel over you and nearly killed a man.”

The duchess watched her very carefully. Viola struggled to breathe normally. Did the duchess know about her nephew? And if
so, what had she been told? Viola’s hands began to shake, and she balled them into fists.

The coach rocked as it made a sharp turn, and the sound of a whip cracking was followed by the unmistakable sensation of speed.
Outside, the avenue of limes that marked the entrance to Dyrham was quickly receding.

Leo’s mother slid the length of her parasol across the door as though she were barring the gates of a castle. “When I travel,
I don’t like to waste time.”

“Travel? But—”

“Whatever the truth of the matter”—the duchess cut her off, eyes flintier than ever—“am I safe to assume that whoever
did
do that to your pretty face has been dealt with?”

“Yes, Your Grace, but really—”

“Should the duke and I be making plans to save our son from the gallows?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace. I don’t think so.” Panic set her pulse racing. How did you prevent a woman with such knowing eyes
from stripping the flesh from your bones until she knew every secret you’d ever had? It felt as though the knowledge of what
Leo had done, and why he’d done it, was writ across her face as clearly as the bruises his cousin had put there.

“Very well, keep your secrets. I’d have bet the ducal rubies that no child of mine was fool enough to dawdle here in England
if he had reason to flee, but I hadn’t thought to add you to the equation.”

“And now that you have?”

The duchess smiled, and a shiver traced its way up Viola’s spine. This was not a woman to tangle with, and she was very, very
angry behind that placid demeanor. “Well, my dear Mrs. Whedon, now that I have, I find I need to know more before I can draw
any conclusions.”

“Hence my abduction?”

“If you choose to call it that, so be it.” The duchess shrugged, eyes continuing to dissect her with unnerving directness.
“Let us simply say that I desire to make your acquaintance.”

“My acquaintance? Let us lay our cards on the table, Your Grace. You desire that I should remove myself from your son’s protection,
possibly from England entirely. Correct?”

“Not exactly, my dear. Though it may come to that in the end.”

•     •     •

Pilcher met Leo at the door with a pained look on his craggy face. He seemed to have shrunk beneath his wig, like a snail
withdrawing into its shell. A howl erupted from behind the closed doors of the sitting room.

Leo threw his butler a wary look and strode down the corridor. Inside the sitting room, he found Pen guarding a damp copy
of
The Gentleman’s Magazine.
The note he’d left tucked between its pages had run and blurred under the influence of the dog’s drool, and the cover was
sadly mangled.

He set the magazine on the table and glanced around the room. Nothing else seemed amiss. He headed back to the hall, Pen at
his heels, whining.

“Pilcher, have you seen Mrs. Whedon today?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Leo studied his butler, noting his evasive eyes and the hunch of his shoulders. He stood as though he expected a beating.
“Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

The man swallowed hard, darting a quick glance upward to meet his eye before ducking his head again. “She said I wasn’t to
give you the note until dinner, my lord.”

The bottom fell out of Leo’s world. The checkerboard of the hall floor spun before righting itself. She’d left him. Just like
that. Snuck off the first time his back was turned.

Pen circled, her whine rising into an extended grumbling harangue. Leo’s pulse settled. Pen was here. Viola would never have
left Dyrham without her dog. Never.

He took a deep breath and watched his butler shift uneasily from one foot to the other, hands fretting about
his pockets like a pensioner searching for his tobacco pouch.

Leo shackled his temper and held out his hand. Yelling at Pilcher wasn’t going to help things. The man looked fagged to death,
like he’d been pursued by harpies. After a bit more searching, Pilcher produced a folded piece of foolscap sealed with a large
blob of red wax, an all-too-familiar image sunk deeply into it.

Not harpies, Hera. The avenging mother. Leo gave him a sympathetic glance. The poor man. No wonder he looked as though he’d
been sucked dry. Her Grace tended to have that effect on people when she was on the march. She’d been wasted as a peeress.
If she’d been in charge of Horse Guards, the American colonies would never have been lost.

His gut twisted as he broke the seal. The idea of a confrontation between his mother and Viola was horrifying. Nothing good
could come of it, and neither was likely to break or give ground. It would be a
battle royale.

His mother’s command, for he could hardly call what she’d written anything else, was clear and to the point: She’d take Viola
to the family seat in Scotland; he was not to show his face for a fortnight. Then, and only then, he would find out what she
and Mrs. Whedon had worked out between them.

Oh, there were plenty of pithy comments about his intelligence, his morals, and his duty to his name scrawled across the page
as well, with an added soupçon of guilt for involving poor Beau in his sordid doings and leaving her to explain the gossip
swirling about them all. There were also several dire threats involved were he to disobey her.

Leo barked out an order for a bag to be packed and a fresh horse saddled, then he returned to his letter. Poor Beau indeed.
This must be the first time that their mother had styled her so. Beau would be livid when he showed it to her, if he didn’t
throttle her instead.

Damn interfering little brat. Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut? The sound of a carriage brought his head up. His
mother had returned. That didn’t bode well. He’d be lucky if one of them hadn’t drawn blood.

How exactly did one tell one’s mother to shove off?

Leo stepped out onto the porch, prepared to retrieve Viola from his mother no matter what the cost. He wanted some magical
path to family harmony to appear, but he knew—bone deep and impossible to deny—that Viola was more important than his mother’s
opinion or consent.

He stopped dead in his tracks as he stared at what appeared to be a rented conveyance. A mismatched team was harnessed to
a coach with faded, peeling wheels. The door sprung open, and his sister came tumbling out, looking half wild.

“Leo! Mother, she’s—I’m sorry—it’s not my fault—I swear to you.”

He blinked, his brain refusing to process the scene before him or his sister’s disjointed attempts at explanation. Beau latched
on to him like a dying sailor finding the last spar of a shipwreck. “Please, Leo. Pay these men. Then come inside and let
me explain.”

“You have no idea what the past week has been like,” Beau began. “Don’t you
dare
yell at
me.
It’s all over town. You and Mrs. Whedon, various
horrible
rumors about the
two of you, about a fight, a duel. Some people are saying you murdered her. Mother’s enraged. Augusta—”

“There’s no reason to tell me about our brother’s wife’s reaction. I can well imagine.” And he could. Augusta always did make
bad worse.

“And to add to it, Charles sent a letter that made Mother angrier than I’ve ever seen her. I’ve never actually been afraid
of her before; I always thought people were being silly or overly dramatic when they said they feared to cross her. She smashed
the Ming vase in the hall and burnt the letter. Then she abandoned me to
Augusta.
”

Leo nearly chuckled at the intense sense of outrage and loathing her tone conveyed. Whatever calamity had occurred in the
world, nothing could make Beau accept with equanimity being left in the charge of their sister-in-law.