Ripe for Seduction

by Isobel Carr

  “That, my lord, was splendid,” she said with a languorous purr.

  Philip rolled off her and threw himself down beside her on the bed. He pulled her over to him, curling his body around hers, not wanting to give up touching her for even a moment. He buried his face in her hair, his head swimming with the sweet scent of her perfume.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  Margo stirred in his arms, adjusting the arrangement of her limbs. Philip’s fingers idly circled one of her nipples. The softness of a woman’s skin was always a marvel, something that never grew old, never failed to enchant.

  She caught his hand, trapping it. One of the candles guttered in its socket, hissing before going out.

  “I mean it, Margo.” He nuzzled the back of her neck, arm tightening about her. “Marry me.”

  Margo took a shaky breath and pushed herself up, one hand braced on the bed beside him. Philip forced his gaze from the sway of her breasts to her face.

  She smiled, but shook her head. “No.”

  Philip flopped onto his back, trying not to scowl. Annoyance, with himself and with her, flooded through him. He’d made a tactical error. He should have waited to bring the topic up.

  Margo leaned over him. She kissed him softly. Philip dragged her down, gripping her arms so hard she winced. He let go. Still sprawled atop him, Margo smoothed one of his brows with her thumb and then propped her chin on her fist and simply stared at him.

  “No?” Philip said, unable to let the topic go. “Nothing more? Just no?”

  Margo sighed, rolled away from him, and reached for her dressing gown. Philip caught her and pulled her back to the center of the bed.

  “I’m barely seven months into my widowhood.”

  “Which you wouldn’t let stop you for a moment if you wanted—”

  Margo stopped him with two fingers pressed to his lips. Her dark eyes glittered in the candlelight. “You really don’t want to marry me,” she said. “I was a horrible wife.”

  Philip kissed her fingers and removed her hand from his mouth. “I don’t believe you.” He tugged her closer.

  “Of course you don’t,” Margo said with a sad shake of her head. “Which is why I can’t marry you.”

  “Afraid you’ll disappoint me?” he said bluntly. “That I’ll bore you? That we’ll both regret marrying in haste?”

  “All of that and more, you lovely, deluded man. I’m fickle, inconstant—”

  “Do you love me?”

  She made an inarticulate sound of annoyance, her brows pinching into a frown. “At the moment? Yes.” Her hands smacked down on the bed. “But who’s to say I’ll still do so in a month?”

  Philip stared at her. She was being ridiculous. The silence stretched, broken only by the distant, plaintive call of a peacock. Margo’s eyes searched his face, begging for understanding, for capitulation.

  “I’ll make you a bargain then,” Philip said.

  Margo swallowed hard, her expression distressed. Guilt swamped him. He hadn’t meant to upset her. His proposal had seemed, in the moment, the most natural thing in the world.

  “I won’t ask you marry me again,” he said, “at least not until you’re out of mourning, but”—he held her gaze—“if you find yourself with child, there will be no prevarication or denial, we will wed.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Come for a walk,” Devere said as Olivia ladled ginger preserves onto the final slice of toast. ���Or a ride, if you prefer. Margo won’t mind if you borrow one of her horses.”

  Olivia popped the small piece of toast into her mouth and chewed slowly, regarding him as though he’d asked her to ponder one of the great issues of the day. And he had.

  Everyone else had already breakfasted and left. His sister and Lord Arlington had set off in the comtesse’s whiskey to pay a call on the Duke of Northumberland and tour the wonder Capability Brown had made of Syon Park. His mother and sister-in-law were already buzzing about the house preparing for the dowager’s birthday ball, and his father and brother were closeted with the estate’s books. The rest of the guests weren’t due to arrive until that evening, for the party itself.

  “Let me change my shoes,” Olivia said as she wiped her hands on her napkin.

  She came back down a scant ten minutes later shod in a pair of dark green half-boots and with a large, straw portrait bonnet to keep the sun off her face.

  “Where shall we begin?” she said as she adjusted the angle of her hat.

  “With a call on the dowager,” Devere said with a smile that she didn’t quite trust. “It never pays to be in her black books. She’ll most likely be taking tea in The Orangery at his hour.”

  He ushered her out of the house via the main landside entrance, and Livy could clearly see why he’d said the house was meant to be seen from the river. This entrance, which surely was the one most visitors saw, was a bland double staircase that met in a large terrace before a tall door.

  To their left was the stable block, to their right, a well-scythed lawn split by a flagstone walkway that led unerringly to what could only be the dowager house and its attached orangery.

  “It reminds me of the stories I’ve heard about the Prince de Condé’s Hameau de Chantilly,” Olivia said as they approached it. In direct opposition to the main house’s simplicity, the dowager house was a two-story brick cottage built of red, yellow, and black bricks set into an elaborate pattern.

  Devere nodded. “It’s the finest cottage orné in all of England. Don’t let the thatched roof fool you. It’s merely ornamental.”

  They were admitted by an ancient, stooped butler who led them ponderously through the house, his wig shedding powder with every step. The ornate entry hall opened to an elegant drawing room. Both were decorated with a profusion of white plasterwork.

  “Is the entire house decorated like this?” Livy whispered, staring at what looked like violins set onto the walls flanking the doors.

  “You have no idea,” Roland said. “I’ll have to give you a tour if the dowager is agreeable. Each room has a theme. The entry hall, as you’ve seen, is dedicated to the bounty of the farm: baskets of fruit, sheaves of wheat, branches of blossom-laden trees. The drawing room is musical. There are violins, horns, even flutes all dipped in plaster and mounted on the walls.” He pointed to one of the violins, set beside the door, with trailing ribbons and a curling sheet of music.

  The door between the violins was thrown open by the butler, and the sweet, humid air of The Orangery washed over them. “Master Roland, my lady. And Lady Olivia Carlow,” the ancient servant said.

  “Roland.” A small, dark-eyed woman glanced up from perusing the newspaper with the aid of a lorgnette. Her expression wasn’t exactly welcoming. In fact, she very much reminded Livy of her first encounter with Devere’s father. “Come here, boy.” She held out a hand.

  Devere made his way to her side in three long strides and bowed over her hand. When he’d kissed the fingers left exposed by her embroidered mitts, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek as well. “Hallo, Grandmamma. I see Booth is still with you.”

  The dowager didn’t bother to acknowledge his observation or return his greeting. Her gaze slid past Devere and locked on Livy. Dark and intense, it was like being assessed by a raven. Devere waved her forward, and Livy sketched the dowager a polite curtsy before strolling across the flagstone floor to join them.

  “Good morning, my lady.”

  Devere’s grandmother raked her eyes up and down, studying Livy from head to toe and back again. “She’s pretty enough, Roland, dear—takes after her father, who was always a very pretty boy—but I’m not convinced it’s a wise match.”

  Devere winced. “Grandmamma,” he said, his tone full of embarrassment and reproach. It was as close to pleading as Livy had ever heard from him.

  “What?” the dowager countess said, not looking or sounding at all apologetic. “Would you prefer I coddle you with polite lies?”

  Livy caught a burst of laughter behind her t
eeth, returning the old woman’s appraisal. It was hard not to appreciate her position. Livy felt the same way herself. She was a questionable prospect.

  “Infinitely,” Devere said with feeling.

  His grandmother sighed and refreshed her teacup from the pot resting on a tray on a small table. “Unworthy,” she said before taking a sip.

  “It’s what polite society does,” he pointed out.

  “And it’s what I do when dealing with the hoi polloi, but it’s not what we do among ourselves.” Her tone brooked no challenges. “Lady Olivia, which would you prefer? To be aware of our concerns or to be kept in the dark like an idiot child?”

  Livy smiled. “I prefer the world with the skin off.”

  The dowager shot her grandson a triumphant look. “Well, that’s a mark in her favor.”

  “One of many.” Devere met Livy’s gaze over his grandmother’s head, and Livy bit her lip to keep herself from smiling back at him.

  “Face, form, and fortune. Yes, yes, but with a notorious scandal attached as well.”

  “Fifty thousand pounds not enough marchpane to make the scandal go down easily?” Livy said. If the dowager was going to be brutally—rudely—honest, there was no reason she shouldn’t do the same.

  The dowager countess gave a cackle of laughter. Her dark eyes flashed like the raven she so resembled. “It’s certainly a start. Roland,” she commanded, “take Lady Olivia for a ramble about the grounds before she’s forced to throw your sister’s misadventures in my face.”

  Roland gave his grandmother another kiss on her papery cheek before taking Olivia by the arm and practically dragging her from The Orangery. If he’d been capable of blushing, his grandmother would surely have pushed him to it.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said, “exposing you to her without an audience to keep her in line.”

  As they rushed past a doddering Booth, who was quietly puttering about the hall, Olivia laughed and squeezed his arm. “It’s rather hard not to like the dowager countess,” she said. “Even if the feeling isn’t mutual.”

  “Oh, it’s mutual.” Roland waved Booth off as the old man started to rise from his chair. “We’ll see ourselves out, Booth.”

  He yanked the door open and then dragged it shut behind them with a loud, reverberant clang. “If she didn’t like you, she’d have let you throw Margo in her teeth and then explained in excruciating—and unintelligible—detail why Margo’s many lapses in decorum aren’t comparable to your situation.”

  “Well, they’re not, for—barring you, and I’ll grant that’s a large lapse indeed—I’ve never had any lapses in decorum.”

  “I’m honored to be your first,” Roland said, the urge to laugh nearly choking him. He had no doubt Olivia and the dowager would have become fast friends if the betrothal were real. The idea was almost enough to make him wish it were.

  “As well you should be,” Olivia said, every bit as haughtily as his grandmother could have.

  “Minx.”

  Olivia grinned, her eyes sparkling under the wide brim of her hat. “Show me your favorite childhood haunt.”

  “My favorite?” Roland ran his childhood adventures through his head. They all involved his siblings: boating on the Thames, riding their ponies across the fields after imaginary foxes, swimming in the small tributary that cut through the woods. He eyed her, his brain whirling with ideas. “That would be the stream we played in on hot days.”

  “You mean like today?” Olivia said, lifting her hair from her neck, trying to capture the nonexistent breeze on her skin.

  Roland nodded. It was considerably warmer today than it had been yesterday. Much warmer since the last storm had blown through. It was not yet noon, and he could feel sweat pricking his brow.

  “Come along,” he said. “The woods should be shady at the very least, and we can cut through them to get to the village, where we can have nuncheon at The Boar’s Head, thus avoiding my family for as long as possible.”

  “A sterling plan, to be sure,” Olivia said, linking her arm through his and allowing him to lead her past the stable block and the home farm and into the woods.

  “I’m imagining the woods here are different from the forests you’re used to. We’ve very few oaks. It’s mostly beech and hawthorn and, as you can see, great quantities of bracken as far as the eye can see.”

  Olivia nodded as they stepped into the shade and Roland steered her toward an almost invisible bridle trail that cut through the deep sea of ferns.

  “Stay out of the bracken as much as you can,” he advised as Olivia took a misstep.

  “Are there adders?” She shivered visibly and rubbed her arms. “We lost a hound to an adder bite last year. It was horrible.”

  “Yes, but I was thinking more of the skylarks and the bluebells. In all our romping through the bracken as children, none of us were ever bitten. I can’t think of anyone who ever has been. Besides, they’ll be sunning themselves on a day like today, not lurking on the bridle path.”

  Under the tree canopy, it was cooler, and the damp, loamy scent of the woods seemed to filter down with the dappled light. They walked in silence for a good while, Roland leading the way on the narrow path.

  “When was the last time you came this way?” Olivia said as she stopped to disentangle her petticoat from a protruding thicket.

  “I can’t even begin to remember,” he said. “Years, certainly.”

  “As you guessed, it’s very different from what we have at Holinshed. Our woods are more oak and ash, and the trees aren’t nearly as close together as these.” She took two steps and stopped to tug her skirts loose from yet another snag. “Why do I feel as though I’ve wandered into one of the Grimm brothers’ horrible stories?”

  “I suppose the dowager does make a rather good witch.”

  “I have a feeling she was more in the nature of a fairy godmother when it comes to you and your siblings.”

  Roland pulled his hat from his head and ran his handkerchief over the back of his neck. “Yes, well… I can’t say that when I’ve found myself in the basket she wasn’t occasionally the one who rescued me.”

  Olivia clutched her skirts tightly about her legs. “One should always know whom to turn to in a pinch.”

  “And for you, that’s your father.”

  Roland took several more steps before he realized Olivia was no longer right upon his heels. He glanced back to find her standing on the path in a beam of sunlight, mouth working as though she couldn’t breathe.

  “Olivia?”

  She cleared her throat, blinking rapidly. “Yes, it was always my father. But that ended when my marriage did.”

  She stepped toward him, but Roland held his ground. This was something he didn’t want to know. He was almost positive. “It doesn’t seem that way to me,” he said as she pushed past him. From what he’d seen, they appeared to be the best of friends.

  She shook her head, but didn’t look back. “You’re friends with my former husband’s brother, and you no doubt were privy to all the sordid details. Perhaps you even know some that I don’t. Well, he—my father—refused to take me in when the scandal hit. He made me stand by Souttar, left me marooned with his horrible family.”

  Anger was clear in the set of her shoulders as she quickened her pace and marched off ahead of him. A sudden burst of horrified guilt flooded through him. She’d been betrayed by every single man who should have taken care of her. It was monstrous, and it made him monstrous, too.

  “But you’ve forgiven him, surely?”

  She stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “He meant it for the best, so yes, but I haven’t forgot that when I needed him, he put propriety first.”

  “Do you really think that’s what it was? Propriety?” Roland caught up to her and reached out with one hand to touch her arm, slowly, softly, as you would with a frightened child. “You don’t think, perhaps, that he was playing the odds? Looking to achieve the best outcome possible for you?”

&
nbsp; Olivia blew out a long, slow breath as she turned and began to once again make her way down the path. “Of course that’s what he was doing, but that’s not what I needed him to do. Just like I didn’t need him to force me back into Society.”

  “But if he hadn’t done so, we never would have met. Or it would have been under circumstances that wouldn’t have been at all conducive to your letting me anywhere near your person.” Roland gave her his best rakish grin. “And I think that would have been a very great shame.”

  “Of course you do,” she said dryly, clearly having mastered herself again. “Oh—” She stopped abruptly as the bridle path dropped off in front of them. “No wonder you said it was a favorite spot.”

  Roland stepped carefully past her and then helped her descend the rough patch where the earth had washed away, leaving nothing but exposed rock and tree roots. It was just as he remembered it. The stream cascaded down a small waterfall and into a large, deep bowl. The water was clear, the rocks at the bottom of the pool distinct and easily seen. It was surrounded by large boulders, except where it flowed away toward the Thames, where the boulders gave way to smaller and smaller rocks.

  He crouched down and trailed his fingers through the water. It was cool, but not unpleasantly so, especially on a day like today, when even in the shade he could feel sweat beading on his skin.

  Olivia wandered slowly up toward the top of the small waterfall, glancing about as she went. Roland shrugged out of his coat and sat down on an outcropping of rock to watch her. She threw out one hand, braced herself on an encroaching tree, and clambered up the last boulder.

  She smiled down at him and Roland’s breath caught in his chest. She really was ridiculously lovely. That he was growing to like her only made her all the more attractive.