Ripe for Pleasure

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.

“I hope Mrs. Whedon’s servants are enjoying their holiday. We certainly can’t risk them coming home early to find this.”

Sandison nodded his pale head. “Would you like to see the priest’s hole? It had a few interesting items, but no strongboxes full of gold. We’d already removed the contents before MacDonald’s visit.”

Leo followed his friend into the drawing room and watched with interest as Sandison ran his hands under the mantel. One of the two bookcases slid back into the wall, revealing a narrow passageway that led to a small, shelf-lined room with a tattered footstool as its only furnishing.

“So what was here?”

Sandison laughed. “A few candle stubs, a crumpled letter, a shagreen case containing a crystal heart, a psalter and rosary, a pair of garters with a Jacobite slogan woven into them, and a child’s leather horse. Nothing of import. I’ve brought it all back. I knew you’d want to see it regardless.”

“Lead on, Macduff.”

“Lay on,” Sandison said with a disbelieving shake of his head as he descended the stairs.

“Lay on?” Leo grinned and poked him with a finger wielded as a sword.

“And damned be him who first cries ‘Hold!’ ”

“No,” Leo assured him. “I don’t think that’s it at all.”

“It is, you undereducated cretin,” Sandison said as he held open the door to the drawing room. “And highly appropriate to the present circumstances you find yourself in. Everything we found in the priest’s hole is there on the table, except for the raggedy footstool, which you’ve already seen.”

Leo studied the letter first: a hastily scrawled note advising the recipient, a Mr. Boutin, to flee the country. The spidery handwriting angled across the page and was signed only with a large, fanciful C. He picked up the crystal heart and held it up to the light. Inside, pale hair and gold wire were twisted into the prince’s initials.

“A pretty bit of treason, that bauble,” Sandison said.

Leo nodded and put it back into its case. “My grandmother used to tell stories about all the Jacobite ladies in Scotland wearing Stewart Hearts to show their support of the prince’s claim to the throne, but I’ve never seen one.”

“It’s doubtful we’ll ever see another.”

“Put it back where you found it,” Leo said. “Most of them must have been thrown away or destroyed after the Jacobites lost at Culloden. This one deserves to survive to tell its tale.”

The candle guttered in its socket, the flame dying in a pool of wax. Leo moved closer to the remaining one, eyes straining in the bare light of a single candle.

He’d been well and truly engrossed in the first volume of Viola’s memoir. She had a lively style. It read more like a novel than a lurid confessional. And the novel in question was more Tom Jones than Fanny Hill.

Leo flipped back to the beginning and read the opening sentence again: At the age of nineteen, I became the mistress of the Earl of D—. I shall not tell you the why’s or wherefore’s of what came before, for they are of no interest to any but myself. Not a word about what had led to her estrangement from her family. Nothing about how she’d come to be a courtesan. She’d written it as though she truly had sprung from nowhere, fully formed, a goddess to be worshipped.

The only hint to Viola’s origins was a single comment that she’d been introduced to the earl by one of his friends, a man who’d been so enraged by her decision to accept the peer’s extramarital offer that he’d ceased speaking to them both.

It was the only bittersweet moment in the entire book. Otherwise it was a parade of decadence and delight. A tale of friendships and rivalries. She’d embraced the life she’d chosen, or that had chosen her. Wholeheartedly, unreservedly, unashamedly.

Such immodesty ought to disgust. Leo searched his emotions, forcing himself to confront every niggling response. No disgust. No derision. Not even mild contempt. There was abundant curiosity, dawning respect, even a smidgen of admiration. Whatever Viola was, whoever Viola was, she was no one’s victim.

Viola looked up from her manuscript to catch Nance thrusting something furtively into her pocket. Her maid blushed as Viola raised a brow. What was she up to?

“Nance? Why so mysterious?”

“It’s nothing, ma’am. Just hair from your brush.”

“But why is it in your pocket?”

The pretty little maid blushed furiously. “It’s for the Midsummer-men.”

“The what?”

“Midsummer-men, ma’am. You take a pair of orpine cuttings, and you wrap one in your hair and one in your lover’s hair—if you can get it—and you tie them together and put them up in the rafters. If they bend toward each other, he loves you. If they bend away, he doesn’t. Or that’s what the girls in the village told me after church last Sunday.”


“And you’re making one for me?”

“And his lordship.” Her blush grew even more furious.

“Have you made one for yourself?”

Nance nodded and fled through the adjoining door into the bedroom. Viola gave into the mirth bubbling through her. Nance was city-bred, but clearly she was taking to the country. There were several of the footmen who could be in contention, and perhaps even a groom or two. Nance had certainly complained about Leo’s footman Sampson enough to indicate a clear inclination.

Viola scratched out the paragraph she’d been working on and bit her lip as she puzzled out what to write next. Usually the words just flowed, but Sir Hugo’s chapters were turning out to be slow going. She could find nothing witty to say about him, but neither could she leave him out. She needed the pages, and after the incident at the theatre, people would be expecting something very juicy indeed.

She tossed her quill aside and capped the inkwell. She needed a ride to clear her head. Riding, she’d discovered, provided a wonderful stimulus to her thought process. It was as though the motion of the horse jogged her muse and memories to life.

Viola followed her maid into the bedroom, and Nance assisted her into her habit. Well, into Lady Boudicea’s habit. Viola brushed her hands over the oatmeal linen. She was going to have to procure a habit of her own, though Nance had done a splendid job of altering this one to fit her.

Viola topped her curls with Lady Boudicea’s straw cocked hat and grabbed her crop. As she descended the stairs, her heart sank into her stomach with a sickening lurch. Her readers would be expecting something about Lord Leonidas. Did he realize that? Was he prepared for it?

Her life had been so dramatic, so incendiary since he’d erupted into it. She could hardly fail to mention the last few weeks. Especially when Lord Leonidas’s story overlapped that of Sir Hugo.

When Viola reached the stable, she asked for Oleander to be saddled and took a deep breath. She let the scent of dust and straw and horse invade her senses until her nerves settled.

She didn’t want to write about Lord Leonidas.

He was hers. This entire experience was hers, in a way that nothing had been since Stephen, and she didn’t want to share it.