Ripe for Pleasure

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.