by Isobel Carr
“Leave, with no leverage? With no guarantee that you’d not play me false yet again? I think not, Cousin. I think I’ll hang on to the one thing I know you value—lord knows why—and let you do the fetching. I’ll see you at the Three Swans in Dover a week from tomorrow. If you bring the prince’s treasure, I’ll tell you where to find Mrs. Whedon.”
“So I’m to trust you, where you’d not trust me?” Leo felt each word scrape past his teeth. He flexed his hands and shifted his weight. If only Viola had stayed safely in bed.
“I’m not the one who’s been lying here, Cousin.” Charles’s lips were pursed as he glared at him. He turned his attention to Viola, gesturing with the gun. “Come, Mrs. Whedon. Out we go.”
Leo took a step back, as though making room for Charles to walk past him. His hip hit the dressing table and the pitcher rattled unsteadily, the sound of pottery on wood almost like a bell in the silence. And then he was bringing it down on Charles’s head, no memory of having picked it up, no time seemingly elapsed between thought and action.
Charles toppled. Water flew in every direction, soaking his cousin’s coat and making the floor slick and treacherous.
The gun went off, and Viola screamed. Charles lashed out with his foot, sending Leo crashing down beside him. A fist connected with Leo’s head, making his ears ring. His fist caught his cousin in the mouth, knuckles and teeth meeting with bloody results on both sides.
His cousin cursed and clawed at his face. Leo twisted his head aside to keep his eye from being gouged out. Charles attempted to roll away, catching Leo hard in the stomach with his booted foot.
Leo scrambled after him. He couldn’t have Viola. Couldn’t be allowed to so much as touch her. Never again. Never. Leo slammed his fist into his cousin’s face. Blood poured out Charles’s nose, and he went reeling back. His cousin’s feet slid out from under him, and his head hit the stone hearth with a sickening crack.
Leo staggered toward him, but was pulled back. He shook the hands off, only to be grabbed again and hauled practically off his feet.
“It’s done, boy. It’s done.” His father released him, and Leo braced himself on the wall. He shook water and blood out of his eyes, air rattling in and out of his lungs like a bellows.
His father knelt beside Charles’s prone form. His mother and Beau were swirling about Viola, voices sharp with anger. His brother stood in the doorway, a candle in one hand, something between guilt and horror washing over his face.
Leo’s hand shook. “Viola?”
“I’m fine.” She sounded as though she were anything but, voice thready and pitched too high.
“She’s not fine.” His mother’s voice cut through the room. “But I don’t think we need to fetch a doctor for a mere graze. Just clean the wound and bandage it up.”
“But for Charles?” Glennalmond still stood in the doorway, as if what was transpiring were a play on a distant stage, removed from the reality of the audience.
“He’s not breathing.” The duke stood up, water staining his nightgown where he’d knelt on the wet floor. “Nothing a doctor can do for him either. Glennalmond, see to your brother while your mother tends to Mrs. Whedon. We have very serious arrangements to make in the next few hours, and it’s best if we involve as few of the servants as possible.”
CHAPTER 35
Leo held a piece of raw beef to his eye. He’d killed his cousin. Some might say murdered him, though he wasn’t going to stand trial for it. His family would see to that. The world outside Skelton Hall would never know what had really happened, though his fellow League members might well guess. Thane had said it was a mistake to let Charles live—and he’d been proven right.
His father and brother had hauled Charles’s body into the spare room while his mother did her best to make it appear they’d been caring for an injured man. All to keep Leo’s neck from the hangman’s noose.
Charles had been put into one of Leo’s nightshirts and placed in the bed. The scene had been set: The rags and water and bandages used to treat him and Viola were scattered about, giving a quite convincing impression that every care had been taken to treat Charles’s injuries. One of the grooms had been sent to fetch the doctor, who would arrive to find his skills sadly unnecessary.
Beau had been assigned the role of nurse and was having no trouble whatsoever looking every bit as distressed as one would have expected. Though if one knew her, it was obvious that anger more than grief was fueling her distress.
What a family they were. Glennalmond had even apologized for his behavior and sworn never to breathe a word of the truth to his wife, who they all agreed couldn’t be trusted to hold her tongue.
Pen whined and licked Leo’s hand, forcing him to stop brooding and turn his attention to her. Viola had locked the dog in with him that morning, then disappeared with his mother to await the doctor. Leo sighed and tossed her the piece of meat. She caught it in midair and promptly sank to the floor to gnaw at it noisily.
While the dog made a mess on the newly cleaned hearth, Leo washed the stink of the meat from his face and hands. Charles had left him with an ugly scratch near his eye, but it didn’t seem to be swelling or turning black.
The handle of the door rattled, and Viola slipped into the room. Her gown and artfully arranged fichu hid her bandaged shoulder.
Leo stood. She smiled wanly and hurried across the room to hide her face against his chest. Viola wrapped her arms about his waist, clinging tightly to him, as though she were afraid to let go.
“Take me home.” Her voice was muffled by the silk of his banyan. He caught her chin and tipped her head up. Her eyes were shadowed, the skin beneath them almost bruised in appearance. “Promise me, as soon as the funeral is over, you’ll take me home.”
“Mother will never allow it.”
“She suggested it. We can’t possibly be married as your cousin is laid in the ground. The vicar would have kittens. He’s upset enough as it is. He practically called it a judgment upon us.”
A familiar resentment crawled through his veins. “How did Her Grace take it?”
“She growled, called him a mewling old woman, and told him to keep his opinions to himself or find a living elsewhere. He spent the next few minutes sputtering and tripping over his tongue in his eagerness to explain that she’d misunderstood what he meant. The duchess sent him out the door with a flea in his ear, then she swept out to discuss dinner with the housekeeper and I made my escape.”
“He can keep his sensibilities and his blessings. I’ll get a special license, and we’ll be married from Dyrham. The vicar there won’t care for anything beyond the fact that we give a good breakfast afterward. A good breakfast and a good hunt, that’s about the sum of his worldly desires.”
Viola nodded and buried her face in his chest again. He dropped his head so that her curls tickled his nose—sunlight and grass. No matter what else might be awry with the world, Viola smelled of sunshine, grass, and happiness. He pushed his nose a bit deeper into her hair and inhaled again.
“Your mother says they’ll be down in October for cub hunting. We can have the wedding then.”
“You’ll never keep the boys out. You know that? If we have it at Dyrham during hunting season, we’ll be overrun with men in dirty boots with dogs at their heels.”
She gave a watery laugh, and Pen barked, attempting to nudge them apart and claim their attention for herself. Leo rubbed the dog’s head and kissed Viola on the nape of her neck.
Viola wiggled out of his loose embrace and leaned back so she could stare up at him with damp eyes. She ignored Pen’s grumble of protest as the dog was once again cut out.
“Regardless of when or where we marry, I rather expect that hordes of men with dirty boots are an inevitable part of my future. In fact, I’m counting on it. I may even make you write a promise of such into the settlements.”
“Settlements?”
“Oh, yes.” She met his gaze, a hint of her usual saucy nature in her expression. “I want
the money from my memoir tied up for whatever children we might have. Lord knows any daughter of ours is going to need it—”
“And something for the younger sons?”
“That, too.”
“Shall there be anything left for us to live on when our horde of children are grown and married?”
“Only if we find the prince’s treasure or I continue to make my way as an authoress. I do think that at this point I have quite enough experience to write a horrid novel every bit as good as Mr. Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.”
“Yes,” Leo agreed. “I rather expect you could. Am I in the next volume of your memoir? I assume I must be, but whatever you wrote would have to have been pure fiction.”
She smiled tremulously, then caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I could hardly leave you out, but yes, those chapters are almost entirely fictional. The truth, even what little I knew of it at the time, would hardly have been safe to print.”
“Shall you write a third volume?”
Viola shook her head. “If people want to read about a whore redeemed, they can read Moll Flanders.”
Viola pushed a few errant hairs back from her face, fingering them into place as they clung to her damp skin. Summer had arrived in London with a vengeance while they’d been away in Scotland. Those with the means and leisure to flee to the coast had done so. She had both, oddly enough, the unexpectedly lucrative profits from her memoir providing for the former, and her future as Lady Leonidas ensuring the latter.
It was amazing what an engagement to a duke’s son and the ensuing scandal did for book sales. Everyone wanted to know just how appalled they should really be, and she had provided them with plenty of exquisitely outrageous exploits to factor into their decision. Though she hadn’t included her time with Leo in her book.
Leo had taken to collecting the rude caricatures that filled the print shops and was threatening to decorate the library at Dyrham with them. Just yesterday, his friend Sandison had stopped by to deliver a particularly rude one showing her in bed with Lord Doneraile, with all her subsequent protectors standing in a line outside, awaiting their turn. Leo had been delighted and had pointed out that an illustrated copy of her memoir would make a fortune.
She had a sinking suspicion he hadn’t been joking when he’d said it either. Trust a duke’s son to find such a scenario amusing, and trust a younger son to see the profit in it.
Before she and Leo packed up and abandoned London for the remainder of the year, she wanted to get the garden’s resurrection under way. If she had to come back to a muddy disaster filled with weeds in the spring, she might never want to return to town again.
Between the rain and the horses that’d been stabled there after the fire, there was almost nothing left of what had once been a very pretty garden indeed. The low herbaceous borders were gone—trampled or eaten—as was the small lawn and all the deliciously decadent flowers that had once made the garden her jeweled oasis. One of the two benches had been knocked over and broken, as had two of the three statues that decorated the back wall. Only the one held in place by creeping vines had survived the equine assault.
As she surveyed the space, Leo wandered out of the house, an enormous straw hat in one hand and Pen at his heels. “Put this on before you cook your brain.”
Viola grinned and took it from him. “It’s not that hot.”
“You’ll freckle.”
“And we can’t have that, can we?” She settled the hat on her head, the shade provided by the brim instantly welcome. She’d be damned if she’d admitted it to him though.
“A freckled wife? No, I really don’t think we could.”
Viola shook her head, amusement bubbling up in her veins. “I rather like the spray you have on the bridge of your nose, but as we know, I have appalling taste.”
Leo rubbed his nose, face set into a theatrically tragic mien. “You needn’t remind me I’m not as pretty as you. Now just what are you doing out here in the noonday sun?”
“Trying to decide what to do with the garden. I could simply replant it the way it was, but as Lady Ligonier pointed out when she was here yesterday, it was awfully fusty and old-fashioned.”
Leo nodded, pinpoints of light leaking through his hat and scattering across his skin as he moved. “What were you thinking of doing instead?”
Viola tilted her head and squinted at the ruins with one eye, trying to picture what might suit the long and rather narrow space. “I don’t know… maybe something like the wilderness at your parents’ house? I love that little walled garden, and I think we might achieve something of the sort here.”
“The statues would have to go.” He wandered down the steps and tipped one of them over. Pen snuffled along behind him, nosing through the few gallant sprigs that were trying to reassert themselves. The nymph’s broken arm and jug lay where the statue had fallen as Leo rolled it over.
“That could only be a further inducement, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never liked those dancing nymphs, and I can’t even tell what nymph or goddess that one”—she gestured to the one still standing, encased in vines—“is supposed to be. I thought for a long time they were the three graces, but I’m not even sure that’s a woman.”
Leo picked his way through the detritus and pulled the vines away from the statue. “There’s an inscription at the base, but it’s all but illegible. If we did a rubbing, it might be easier to decipher.” He let the vines fall back into place and dusted off his hands.
Viola shrugged. “If you think it worth the effort. I’d say we have enough mysteries on our hands. Have you found nothing more in the letters?”
Leo shook his head. “You can have a crack at them if you like. I know them by heart, but staring at them for hours on end is beginning to make me question my mental acumen.”
Viola grinned up at him. “That’s all right, darling. You’re pretty enough that I can forgive you for being a touch dim.”
“What more can a man ask for than forgiveness of his weaknesses and forgetfulness when it comes to his failings?” He swept off his hat and made her a grand leg.
“Faithfulness?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s more something a man demands.”
“Not all men.” The corners of her mouth begged to curl up into a smile, but she pressed her lips together to hold it back. Teasing him was too fun, especially when he knew it was all a game: nothing but an avenue to flirtation. “Were you expecting faithfulness? You picked a very poor candidate if you were.”
“Baggage.”
She smiled and batted her lashes. “You could always make sure I’m too busy to indulge my—what was it they called it in the print you love so much?—my wanton nature?”
“You can indulge it all you like…”
“With you.” She made a rude little noise to show him what she thought of that solution.
He tried to maintain his composure for a moment longer, but ended up laughing. “Come inside and indulge it now. What could be more wanton than taking me to bed before luncheon?”
“Keeping you there all day?”
“As if you could.”
“Is that a bet, my lord?”
“Call it a challenge.” His green eye twinkled.
“Ah.” Viola sighed and looked him up and down. He was breathtaking, as always. All sharp lines and harsh planes. His full lower lip stretched into a wicked smile.
“You know the difference between a bet and a challenge, of course?” His grin widened.
“A bet has a winner and a loser…” Her hands began to tingle as heat pooled in her belly and her heartbeat redoubled between her thighs.
“But a challenge can be won by all parties concerned.”
CHAPTER 36
Leo spread the rubbing of the statue’s engraving across the floor and shooed Pen away from it. He’d brought it with him from town, but he was damned if he could make it out. The dog huffed at him and crossed the room to throw herself down at Viola’s feet.
Viola absently rubbed the dog with her foot as she paged through the cache of letters. They’d been making a detailed study of them together during the run-up to the wedding, but so far they’d come up with nothing new. She set the last one aside and turned to her notes. “So we know Mr. Black, owner of Dyrham, fled to America with the money your grandfather gave him for the property. He would hardly have needed it if he’d had the prince’s treasure.”
“And we know Mr. Connall, owner of number twelve at the time, was adamant about leaving it hidden and holding it in trust. We also know he died shortly afterward, and the house was sold to pay his bills. So his widow must not have known about the treasure either.”
Viola blew out her breath, setting her fringe dancing. “And then there’s Mr. Thaddeus, purported guardian of the money. Do you think he could have taken it?”
“Well, if he did, we’ll never find it. But from the tone of the comments about him, I’d wager he wasn’t the type to abscond with what was clearly a sacred trust. Did you find anything that sheds any light on where the money might have been hidden?”
She shook her head and tossed her notes down atop the pile of letters. “No, and it’s quite irritating, too.” She stretched and wandered across the room. She stopped behind him, hands on his back, chin resting on his shoulder as she peered over it. “Any luck with the inscription?”
“Well, I’ve ascertained that it’s in Latin. Not that it was a large strain upon my mental capacity to do so. I think the first word is either sps or spe, but the last one is hopelessly degraded.”
“What did you say?” She stiffened, raising her head to study the inscription more closely.
“That the first word is hope.”
She shook her head, as though trying to clear her thoughts. “No, the other bit: hopelessly. Hopeless. Sps, spem, spe, sp.” She ran off the declensions as though responding to a don. She circled the paper on the floor, then stopped and shook her hands out. “I can almost see it. It’s maddening. I know it means something…”