Ripe for Pleasure

CHAPTER 22   



The 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.”

“And Leo, they will cross. I can guarantee it.”

Beau laughed and came to take Charles’s arm. “Nonsense, Augusta. You simply like to arrive early so you can spy on everyone else as they arrive. Admit it!”

“Must you be so vulgar?” Lady Glennalmond glared at them all, clearly wishing she weren’t forced to associate with them.

Beau’s reply was drowned out by Leo. “It’s Beau. Of course she must. If only to infuriate you. May I escort you to the coach, my lady?” He held out his free arm and Lady Glennalmond, very much on her dignity, took it.

“Your sister is-is—” Augusta seemed unable to utter whatever horrible term sprang to mind.

“Is none of your damn business, Augusta,” the dowager said with a hint of annoyance. “And so I’ve told you time and again. Content yourself with having soured Glennalmond past all hope.”

Charles found himself grinning. Beau giggled softly and gripped his arm. “You’d think my dear sister-in-law would have learned by now not to attempt to remonstrate with me, at least not in front of Grandmama,” Beau whispered. “Oh, and that reminds me. I have a question for you. About Leo. Well, about his mistress, really.”

Charles glanced down at her. He was not at all loath to enlighten her if it would cause further problems for her brother. “Certainly, Cousin.” He put his hand over hers as they descended the stairs.

“Who is she? No one will tell me.”

Charles smiled. Beau was like a loaded gun with a hair trigger, liable to go off at any moment and likely to cause all kinds of damage when she did.

“I don’t know that I should tell you, dearest.”

She gave him a fake pout. “But you’re going to.”

“Am I?”

“You know you are, Charlie.” She grinned up at him, eyes squeezed nearly shut with glee.

“I suppose I am,” he agreed, heaving a dramatic sigh for Beau’s benefit. Just how many foxes could he fling into this particular henhouse? “I’m a bit worried about poor Leo. You see, he’s become entangled with a very mercenary widow, and I very much fear he’s going to be wounded when she throws him over…”