Ripe for Seduction

by Isobel Carr

  He wanted to chase her down, drag her into some dark corner, and do whatever was necessary to convince her that whatever she saw for herself in the future, he should be a part of it. It had begun to feel all too necessary to him that she think so. The question was, was it better to put it to her, or to let her come to that conclusion on her own?

  Olivia shook her head, hair tangling with her eyelashes as she did so. She brushed it away. “Very little of the country is as densely forested as it is here. The lighter deer fare better in open country, or that’s what grandpapa always said.”

  She reached the door to the next tower and pushed it open. The room inside was bare except for a large straw pallet covered in a rough blanket. Atop the blanket were three fully gown hounds. None of them bothered to move, not even when the pup who’d been following Olivia blundered right across them.

  “This is The Earl’s Tower,” Olivia said. “It’s the only one attached to the house itself. Papa’s rooms are just down those stairs.”

  They went through and out onto the next section of the battlement. “Next is The Steward’s Tower.” Olivia pointed. “But we should go back the way we came after I show you the view from this side. I don’t want to disturb Mr. Lanister.”

  “What was worth coming to this side for then?” Roland peered out over the wall. It just looked like more forest to him. Stand after stand of gigantic trees. It was like something out of a legend.

  Smiling, Olivia took him by the shoulders and turned him about so he was looking inside the walls of the castle. “It has the best view of the house itself and the gardens. And it’s a nice vantage point from which to watch the ravens tease the dogs.” She pointed at the far side of the lawn where several of the puppies were running in circles while an enormous black bird swooped and cackled at them. Roland couldn’t tell if they were chasing each other or the bird.

  A loud caw made Olivia jump, and Roland turned to see a raven hopping toward them like a hunchbacked jester. It paused a few feet away and cocked its head to study them with one black eye.

  It leapt closer with an audible rattle of feathers and clacked its beak expectantly. Olivia shook her head. “I should have stolen a bit of meat at breakfast. I forget what beggars they are.”

  Roland reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. He unwrapped it and tossed the contents to the bird. It snatched it midair and dove off the battlement as though it feared he might attempt to take the treat back.

  “I meant it as a bribe for the dogs.”

  Olivia smirked, looking for all the world as if she’d caught him attending a committee for the care and feeding of orphans. “Let’s go down before the others come calling, demanding their due,” she said with a laugh. “They’re almost disturbingly prescient.”

  When Margo failed to see Arlington at breakfast, she went in search of him. Maldon followed her out into the garden, but when she wandered near the stable block, he fell in with several other dogs and disappeared inside.

  Judging by the way the dogs were filtering in from all over the castle, it must be time for them to be fed. Her own dogs had always known exactly when they could expect cook to put down their bowl and clearly Arlington’s hounds were no different.

  Margo turned about slowly, trying to decide where to check next. Carlow had said something about the earl having a study in one of the towers. Though she’d been given a tour of the house the day she’d arrived, the tour had not included Arlington’s personal rooms.

  The house abutted one of the towers. She could ask one of the servants and risk being told that Arlington didn’t want to be disturbed, or she could simply open doors until she found the right one. The beauty of the house being such a maze was that she could always claim to be lost if caught.

  As she turned to retrace her steps to the house, she spotted her brother and Lady Olivia atop the battlements. Rolly threw up one hand in a careless gesture of greeting. Margo waved back and quickened her step. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up being waylaid by one of the other guests.

  Once inside, she hurried through the hall. A trio of maids were busy spreading sand in one corner while two more slowly worked it across the flagstone floor with small, stiff-bristled brooms. Margo ducked around them to get to the corridor that led to the back of the house. There always seemed to be someone cleaning the floors, which she supposed made sense given the number of dogs traipsing about the house.

  The breakfast room was quiet now, but she could hear voices coming from the billiard room. Margo stepped carefully past the door, doing her best to make sure the heels of her shoes didn’t clack against the floor. The corridor came to a T. From the sounds of things, one direction led to the kitchens. Margo took the other. The first door led to a servant’s thankfully empty room of some sort, with paneled walls and a small, heavily worn baize table. The second opened into what appeared to be a closet for household linens. A large array of irons were neatly arranged before the hearth, and a table with a work basket beneath it sat beside the only window. The final door was larger, heavier, and looked as though it might take several men to open it.

  Margo twisted the handle and pushed. It swung easily, the hinges not even making the slightest sound of protest. A set of spiraling stone stairs, exactly like those in the neighboring tower ruins she’d toured yesterday, curved away before her. Margo pushed the door shut behind her.

  She was still a few steps from the end of the flight when she was rewarded with the sight of Arlington bent over a ledger book, chewing absently on the end of his quill. He glanced up as she reached the top and stopped.

  “There you are,” she said as though he should have been expecting her. And indeed he should have, at least in her way of thinking.

  The earl gave her a rueful smile and set his quill aside. “I apologize for deserting you this morning, but I’ve had a series of letters from London that require my immediate attention. It seems that when the fawn count is concluded, I shall have to post back to London at once.”

  “Lose your fortune on change?”

  Arlington laughed and waved her in. Margo stepped forward, looking about the room with interest. It was essentially round, with stairs continuing up on the opposite side of the flight she’d just used. Two windows were cut into the stone walls, with the earl’s desk situated between them, facing the center of the room.

  “If only it were that simple,” he said as he raked his hand through his hair. A few disturbed locks fell into his eyes, and he pushed them back. “There’s a movement to oust the prime minister.”

  Margo nodded. Even though she’d spent most of her adult life in France, gossip about English politics had still reached her in almost every letter she exchanged with her friends and family at home. “Isn’t that the major sport in the Lords?”

  Arlington’s shoulders twitched with silent laughter. “Sadly, yes, and often at the expense of actually governing. So we shall have to make the most of what time we have left.”

  “Shall we?” Margo said, putting a world of innuendo into the question. She stepped away from the desk, wandering into the center of the chamber. Her shoes slid across the heavy carpet as she spun about to look at him. “I’d been hoping to do so all along.”

  Arlington stood up fast enough that his chair fell back against the wall with a sound like a shot. He rounded the desk, and Margo took a step backward. “Had you?” he said as his hand closed around her wrist. “And here I thought I was playing the gentleman.”

  Margo’s answering laugh echoed off the stone. “What did I ever do to give you the impression that I wanted a gentleman?”

  “Not a damn thing,” the earl said. He scooped her up and carried her up the stairs. “But a lifetime of training is hard to overcome.”

  A thrill shot through her. This was what she’d wanted since arriving, a display of power, a demonstration of desire, to know the earl wanted her with the same intensity that she wanted him.

  The next floor was furnished with little more than a
large four-poster bed hung with dark green damask. Arlington tossed her onto it. Margo rolled over and crawled to the center. A hand caught her ankle and dragged her back to the edge.

  Her shoe clattered to the floor. Arlington shoved her skirts up, tossing them half over her head. Margo pushed them aside and twisted to look over her shoulder as the earl’s hands settled on her hips, sliding over her bare skin. He grinned and yanked her down so that she was bent over the high edge of the bed, feet dangling, scrabbling for purchase.

  He lifted her slightly and thrust in with no prelude or warning. Margo arched and gasped, trapped between the earl and the bed. The heady sensation of invasion gave way as her body adjusted and grew wet.

  Arlington’s weight came down on her. His hands pushed under, grazing her breasts, before curling up over her shoulders so he could pull her back to meet every thrust. He buried his face in her hair, his breath hot on the nape of her neck.

  “Ungentlemanly enough?”

  Margo could only nod. She’d expected to goad him into action, but this was entirely beyond her expectations. Magnificently so.

  Arlington’s breathing changed as he found a steady, pounding rhythm. Margo forced one hand down between herself and the mattress. Her fingers slicked over her clitoris. She brushed the earl’s cock as he rocked into her. Margo pressed up, circled, and rode her hand, chasing her own release as surely as the earl chased his.

  She came with a muffled scream. Arlington paused as she pulsed around him. “My valet could walk in on us,” he said as he began again, driving himself into her with long, hard strokes. “Or a maid. Or any of the guests really. If I made you scream loudly enough, do you think they’d come running?”

  Margo bit down on the coverlet as a second climax rolled over her. The earl growled her name into her ear and spilled himself inside her. After a moment, he pulled away to fling himself down beside her on his back.

  Margo turned her head so she could see him out of one eye. “I think you like the idea of being caught,” she said.

  He glanced over at her, handsome, disheveled, and grinning from ear to ear. “I like the results of being caught.”

  “Scandal?”

  “Marriage.”

  Margo pushed herself up onto an elbow and threw her skirts down to cover herself. Arlington reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. His fingers traced over her jaw. “Afraid whatever your brother and my daughter are up to will put me off?”

  CHAPTER 37

  Margo didn’t answer him immediately. She just stared down at him with a slightly guilty expression. So she suspected something was wrong there, too.

  He’d told himself he was being overly cautious, that his daughter knew what she was doing, what she wanted, but he couldn’t get past the feeling that she and Devere were playing some sort of game.

  Philip sat up and tugged the ribbon from the remains of his queue. He shook it out, raked his fingers over his scalp, scraped his hair back, and tied it up again.

  When he was done, Margo let her breath out with a long sigh. “Frankly, yes,” she said in a purely matter-of-fact tone.

  “I forced her back into society before she was ready, and your brother and whatever scheme they’ve been playing at are her revenge.”

  The comtesse climbed down out of his bed and smoothed her hands over her skirts. Philip fought down the urge to toss her back in and keep her there. The room felt suddenly cold.

  She looked about for her shoe and wiggled her foot into it. “Revenge might be too strong a word,” she said when she was once again fully shod. “I’d say my brother is her foil. Her defense against the ton. Or he was at the beginning.”

  Philip buttoned the fall of his breeches. “And now?”

  Margo chewed on her lower lip. He could almost see the cogs turning in her head as she weighed her response. “Now I think he’s in earnest. No”—she stood up a little straighter, clearly about to make a confession—“I know he is. I think it’s your daughter who still needs convincing.”

  Philip nodded. He’d come to much the same conclusion watching them over the past few weeks. It was the only reason he’d let the farce continue. “Then I say we leave it in your brother’s hands and see if he can bring her round.”

  Olivia stopped directly in front of him, and Roland nearly bowled her over. “Shhh,” she said over her shoulder as she crept forward. “There’s a small herd just behind that next stand of trees. I see three does and at least four fawns.”

  Roland craned his neck. He could just make out the dark bodies of the does. The speckled fawns were harder to find in the shady gloom. “I think I see five fawns.”

  “Two nursing, one at the base of the tree, and one wandering closer to us,” Olivia said, ticking them off on the small square leaf of ivory that hung from a chain at her waist.

  “There’s another one just there.” Roland pointed beyond the does. “You can’t see it now because one of the does is in the way.”

  Olivia shot him a look that said she didn’t quite believe him, but she added it to her tally. The bridle trail wound past the small thicket where the does and fawns were grazing. Lord Hynde and several other guests were up ahead, heads bent together as they pointed and counted.

  “Let’s go this way,” she said, turning off the clear, main path and pushing her way through the encroaching underbrush.

  “Is this even a path?” Roland watched the ground carefully as he followed in her wake. He’d already snagged his foot on a protruding root once. He’d be damned if he ended up breaking an ankle out here.

  “Barely. Mr. Lanister needs to get the paths seen to or there’ll be no getting through here by autumn.” She stopped to free the skirt of her habit from a trailing branch before marching on.

  Roland had wondered at her appearance when she’d come down to luncheon in a well-worn camlet habit of an indeterminate color somewhere between mud and moss. Her choice made complete sense after he’d seen her leave the path and fight her way to any small opening where she thought she might have seen a deer.

  His sister must be in a rage by now if her own habit were snagging as often as Olivia’s. But Olivia seemed to relish all the effort it took to actually find and count the fawns.

  She put up a hand for him to stop. “Two more over there.” She ticked them off. “Lots of twins this year. Oh, look.” She waved him forward and, when he reached her, directed him to a small cathedral grove. “We’ve got a white one. Those don’t crop up all that often in our herd.” She turned her ivory sheet over and made a tick on the backside. “Papa will want to know about that one.”

  “Will you cull it?”

  “Yes, but not in the autumn hunt. Lord Sykes has a white herd in his park. He’s always happy to receive another from elsewhere to strengthen the blood.”

  “Won’t it be hard to catch?”

  She tossed him an amused glance. “Haven’t you noticed that they don’t run, even when they see us? Fallow deer aren’t timid.”

  “Doesn’t that make hunting them somewhat awkward?”

  “Oh, they run from the dogs quick enough,” she said as she continued down the nearly invisible track. “And the hunt is tradition. Our dogs are deerhounds. They’d have no purpose without the hunt.”

  “You love it, don’t you?”

  She turned to look at him, framed by towering oaks, hair a tumbled riot. “The hunt?”

  “Holinshed.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. The afternoon sun hit her face in tiny beams as it shot through the leaves, sparking off her eyes and hair. She had a streak of mud high on one cheekbone and what looked like a bit of bracken caught in one trailing curl. She’d never looked lovelier, never looked more herself.

  Roland took a quick step toward her and kissed her hard and fast. When he broke away, she kept her fingers interlocked at the back of his neck.

  “I asked you what you picture for yourself,” he said, “and I’ve yet to receive an answer, but I want to make a simple suggestion: include m
e in it.”

  Olivia’s brow puckered, and he bent his head and kissed her again. She sagged into him, becoming a heavy weight in his arms. Roland rested his forehead against hers. “I mean it, Livy. I think you should marry me.”

  A crackling in the brush followed by a loud curse announced the presence of other participants on the narrow track. Livy broke away from him. She picked her way carefully through the brambles, moving swiftly away from whoever was about to intrude upon them. After she’d gone a short distance, she paused and turned back to look at him.

  “Is that really what you picture for yourself?” She looked perplexed. The small crease between her inquiring brows made him want to kiss her again until it faded away.

  Roland strode after Olivia. When he caught up with her, he pulled her behind the gnarled trunk of an immense oak, putting the tree between them and the path. Olivia ran her fingers along the lapel of his coat as if she were ascertaining that he was real.

  “Just think about it, Livy.”

  “I have been.” She leaned back against the tree, her grip firm on his coat. “Believe me, I have been.”

  Devere’s smile widened into a grin and he kissed her again, his mouth hot and urgent as it covered hers. Livy’s heart was hammering as though she’d run a long distance, and her legs felt unsteady.

  She had been thinking about what she wanted. In fact, she’d thought of little else since their trip to Bankcroft. The comtesse’s rather pointed questions on their journey here had merely served to goad Livy into accepting that in any life she pictured for herself, Devere had become an integral part, a necessity.

  “Do you love me?” he said.

  “Yes, you’ve won that bet, too, horrid man.”

  He chuckled, clearly taking her abuse as a compliment. “But just think,” he said as his lips traced her ear. “You’ll have a lifetime to make me wish I were dead. Surely that alone is a fine inducement to marriage.”