Free Ripe for Pleasure by Isobel Carr Page B

trigger lock for a secret door when the commotion
     in the mews had intruded. He’d yanked on breeches and shirt, thrust his feet into his evening pumps, and gone to see what
     was happening. After the past week of deadly maneuvers, something that raised the entire neighborhood boded ill.
    He couldn’t be sure his cousin had set the fire—a groom coming home from a late night might have just as easily overturned
     a lamp—but he wasn’t fool enough to believe it a mere coincidence. Leo walked across the room, checking boards for telltale
     squeaks and looseness as he did so. He couldn’t possibly allow Viola to stay in London. Not with his cousin clearly willing
     to do whatever it took to best him. And that meant that it truly was time to bring the League into things.
    “So you’ve finally decided to include us in your adventure.” Devere yawned behind his hand and slouched lower in his chair,
     balancing his booted feet on the fender as though preparing for a nap.
    Sandison rolled his eyes and ignored him. “Shall we invite the entire membership, or just Thane and de Moulines?”
    Leo pulled the packets of letters from his coat pocket and handed them over. “When you’ve read these, I think you’ll agree
     that this is one adventure best kept within our smaller circle.”
    Without comment, Sandison untied the bundle, unfoldedthe first letter, read it over—turning it about and squinting to make out the crossed lines—and then, with a low whistle,
     passed it on to Devere. When he reached the third letter, he began to shake his head and click his tongue. When he finished
     the last one, he sighed and downed his untouched glass of brandy in a single gulp.
    “You’ve got yourself into some very dangerous territory there, Vaughn.” His incongruously dark brows were pinched over his
     nose. Leo could practically see the clockwork of his brain whirling behind his eyes.
    Leo nodded. You could always count on Sandison to understand just where all the pieces stood in any important game. Thane
     kept the coolest head, and Devere was often first to act, but it was Sandison who saw things clearly. “There’s nothing to
     link my family to the plot—”
    “Thank all that’s holy for that,” Devere said,
sotto voce.
    “But,” Leo said loudly, cutting off his friend’s mumbled comment, “it’s always risky to cross paths with treason, even a generation
     later.”
    “Especially when you’re not the only one who knows about it and the other party is—how shall I put this?—not entirely friendly.”
    “Not entirely sane,” Devere said, folding the final letter and dropping it onto the table as though it were scalding his fingertips.
    “Charles isn’t mad. He’s just decided he’s entitled to take what he wants, whatever the cost, and he’s not willing to share.”
    “And just how determined are you?” Sandison cut straight to the heart of the matter, his query as sharp as a knife.
    For the barest moment, Leo felt a flicker of greed and shame burn within his chest. Things had already gone further than they
     should have. He’d already failed Viola and his own sense of honor. “I won’t kill for it.”
    “And your cousin already has.” Devere looked unusually somber, his dark hair and dark eyes sliding from deepest brown to black—a
     mere trick of the light, as a cloud passed over the sun, but chilling all the same.
    Leo nodded. “Not Charles himself, but his men, yes. They killed Mrs. Whedon’s footman, and you both saw what they did to the
     lady and myself.” He waved a hand over his face, past the mottled bruise around his eye and the split and swollen lip.
    Sandison tied the letters back up and handed them over with a hard look. “Burn these. There’s nothing in them we’ll need to
     revisit, and they’re dangerous.”

CHAPTER 9
    V iola fumed inside the velvet cocoon of Lord Leonidas’s well-sprung coach. Her maid dozed on the opposite seat, the ruffles
     of her cap swaying. Leo