I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (20 page)

“Why did you do it?” He sounded genuinely curious.

She inhaled, exhaled at length.

“I suppose it’s that I have a lower tolerance for bullies than I ever dreamed. My brother’s wife Cynthia once told me I had a good heart. Don’t.” She held up her hand to ward off witty remarks. “I was as surprised to hear it then as you are now.”

He was laughing softly now.

“Do you know what she said to me?” she asked after a moment. Curious about his facility with languages.

“Oh yes. My French is fortunately quite good. She called you a rude whore. And you riposted by saying that you believed the pot was calling the kettle black.”

Violet sighed. Really, when she heard him repeat what she’d said, even she was appalled. And yet in that moment it seemed she’d simply had no choice. She’d been peculiarly unable to bear it. He’d born it often enough. It seemed he was forever defending someone. Someone needed to defend him.

She was still rather surprised it had been her, however, and not eager to look at the reasons she’d done it.

They were quiet for a moment.

“Thank you?” he offered dubiously.

“I suppose you’re welcome. I hope I haven’t caused any lasting…riffs.”

“Fear not. The viscomte knows what he married and he…enjoys her…nightly. He’s a practical man when it comes to business.”

A silence, more easy than awkward, but a little of both. And they were both amused. It seemed easier to speak on the shadowed terrace, when one seemed little more than a shadow one’s self. Words were safer here; it was like speaking in a dream.

He leaned back against the vine-trailed wall and took a look around, at the fountain, the sky, the bench where Violet sat. He breathed in the heady, heavy scents of jasmine and honeysuckle. Like a great powerful animal, she thought, taking in his surroundings, deciding upon a defensible position.

“I like it better out here than in there,” she volunteered tentatively.

“So do I. But then I generally do like it better outside than inside. Particularly if there’s a ball or a social occasion demanding social graces on the inside. Though I’m capable of graces. They do not come naturally,” he confessed. “I have to try.”

She liked him for the confession.

“I’ve never really been given a choice in the matter of balls. Then, I can’t say I entirely dislike balls. It’s just that there’s all there ever is.”

“You poor, poor dear.”

“I defy even you to endure a London season without developing elaborate defenses. My brother would make comparisons to how animals adapt. Growing fur coats or sharp spines that make them untouchable and the like. Irony is my defense, I believe.”

“That, and threatening to cast yourself down wells?”

She sighed. Did everyone in the world know about the well? And yet her company and approval was still endlessly sought by society. Such was the perversity of the ton.

“I imagine you’re right,” he conceded. “Regarding the fortitude attending endless balls and parties requires. Then again, as captain of a ship and as an earl and a man, I seldom need do what I don’t wish to do.”

He’d trumped her, naturally, with arrogance and station and gender, so she decided to punish him briefly with silence. But only briefly, because he’d said it good-humoredly and deliberately to tease her. And because she knew he’d earned every single one of those things, apart, perhaps, for the gender.

“Have you ever been in love, Miss Redmond?”

Well. That was one way to startle her into speaking. What on earth had prompted the question?

“I’ve heard of love,” she said gingerly, the way one might say, “I’ve heard of the Griffin.”

Acknowledging its possibility and its rarity while implying truly sane people would treat it as a myth.

He laughed softly again. The sound was so companionable, so intimate, so strangely earned. So part of the night.

And the entire night was a caress. The air so thick with soft warmth she thought she might simply stand and lean back and be cradled by it, and like an opium addict happily just breathe in the perfume given off by flowers heated mercilessly all day long.

“How did you know about…‘savage’?” he asked softly. Genuinely curious.

“Lavay.”

“Mmm.” The earl took this in noncommittally. And was silent again.

“Did you know a Gypsy girl shouted his name to me only a few months ago? We’d gone to have our fortunes told in Pennyroyal Green, and out she pops with the word Lavay. Just shouted it. A non sequitur. I think she even frightened herself. But my brother Jonathan thinks she’s a lunatic.”

“Did a Gypsy say that?” he said mildly. It sounded as though nothing Gypsies did surprised him. “Never say it’s why you boarded that ship. Or that she told you you’d be taking a long journey over water.”

“Very well, then. I won’t say it.”

He smiled. Teeth a white flash in the dark. He turned toward the house. She took the opportunity to study his profile. It was a strange, painful pleasure to run her eyes over the strong, singular lines of his face.

What is happening to me? She felt as though she’d been given wings but denied flying lessons.

“He’s a good man, Lavay,” the earl allowed after a moment.

“He told me you won him in a card game.”

“Did he tell you why he was playing too deep?” As if he’d heard the story before.

“He said you heroically rescued him.”

“His family lost his money and much of his lands in the war. They weren’t overfond of aristocrats during the revolution, as you may know. He was a bit desperate, and he played too deep, because he needed to take care of his mother and sister, ensure his sister had a dowry. She married well, thanks to him. A good man, Lavay. A very good man. Looks after his own.”

She reflected, but didn’t say, that the pot again was calling the kettle black. It surprised her to realize it.

Was the earl fishing to discover what she thought of Lavay? Was he pressing Lavay’s suit for him?

She said nothing. She’d said for now all she’d meant to say about Lavay. Flint reached up a hand and idly snapped off a single white jasmine blossom from the vine, then held it up absently before him, as if to ascertain that it did indeed match the moon in color, or deciding whether he wished to install it in the sky along with all the stars.

“Why aren’t people like flowers?” she wondered. “If you heat flowers long enough, they smell wonderful. People simply smell if you heat them overlong.”

“Profundity from Miss Redmond. Is that a slur against my hardworking crew? I won’t have it!”

he teased. “Men invariably smell. Perhaps you should ask your brother Miles, the explorer. He’d likely shed light on his phenomenon.”

“Likely,” she agreed. But then, Miles would likely tell her she was mad and fetch her home. Like the recalcitrant pet her family believed her to be.

“Do you think your brother Lyon genuinely loves this Miss Olivia Eversea? Or loved her? That he’s out for revenge of some sort?”

Interesting question from the earl. That’s why he’d wanted to know about love. She felt a little deflated.

She hesitated, dragging her fingers over the smooth warm stone of the bench, enjoying the sensation. “I will confess to something I have never said aloud to anyone.”

“You have killed a man!”

“Don’t tempt me, Captain. I will say that…Olivia Eversea is…tremendously passionate about things. For instance, she is involved with the anti-slavery society. You spoke of slavery this evening…she would have known more about it than any of you. She’s very pretty, mind you…for an Eversea,” she sniffed. “But I’ve truly no doubt she broke Lyon’s heart. She said something to send him off. I just know she did. It’s just this…sometimes I feel so angry with Lyon for leaving that I believe Olivia is just an excuse we all use…just something we prefer to believe, rather than think he left because he couldn’t bear the weight of being the family heir. Very uncharitable, but there it lies.”

“Do you suppose there’s any truth to it?”

“I don’t know. Who wouldn’t want to be Father’s heir?”

This for some reason made him smile, too. “A pity you were not a son, and the like?”

She nodded, as if this went without saying.

“Well, you see, in my family, Miles, he has always taken care of everyone, and Jonathan, he will go into Father’s business, and I’m simply there, it seems. But Lyon was heir. Granted, a good deal was expected of him. But he was everything a father hopes for in a son. He seemed to revel in it, too—the attention, being the best at everything. So handsome, so charming, such fun, so bloody arrogant, too. We were all quite proud of him. And then love destroyed him,”

she said darkly.

“‘Destroyed,’” he mimicked with dark humor. “How very melodramatic. How do you know he was destroyed? Perhaps Lyon is quite content. Perhaps he’s found his calling, with the so-called piracy, and it’s all because of love.”

She snorted inelegantly.

“Perhaps you believe this about Lyon simply because you’ve never been in love, Miss Redmond.”

She looked up sharply. “How do you know I haven’t?”

“Have you?”

He sounded so unflatteringly skeptical it grated. She would have preferred him to sound possessive; she would have preferred him to be wrong.

She would have preferred not to discuss it, in truth, unless he could provide her with some answers about love, because she was genuinely suffering over the question.

“No,” she said, managing with some effort not to sound defensive. “I do unquestionably love my family. I suppose I am very particular. An argument can be made for my own singular character and the challenge in finding a suitable match for me.”

“What a very lengthy and elegant way to call yourself a piece of work, Miss Redmond.” He was insufferably amused.

She shrugged. “People do marry without love. Out of affection or duty or convenience or mishap. Perhaps it’s wiser to have the decision taken out of the hands of people irrational enough to fall in love. Perhaps love is an affliction or aberration, and all the sane people avoid it.”

He sighed almost contentedly, leaning back against the garden wall, and twiddled the flower’s stem slowly between his fingers. Back and forth. Back and forth. Looking very much like a man enjoying himself, enjoying a rare peace, rather than a man hunting a criminal. His peace became her own for a moment.

“Some might say that treating men as pets or servants,” he mused, “is a marvelous way to keep them at a distance.”

She went motionless. Stunned as he’d stepped toward her and knocked her flat. She stared at him almost helplessly.

She’d no map for the truth. Just a knack for dodging round it. Only with this man was she ever at a loss for words.

“It…frightens you,” he guessed his voice low and slow and odd. Sounding like he was having an epiphany.

“Said the pot to the kettle,” she answered, her own voice low and taut. The flower froze in its revolutions.

She regretted saying it instantly. Because she sensed, somehow, she’d torn a strip from him and hadn’t meant to.

She wanted desperately to unhurt him.

How tremendously odd that it should hurt her to hurt him.

“Oh, what nonsense,” she revised with a quick, feigned nonchalance, and a little laugh, to save both of them from anything so uncomfortable as truth. “You love Fatima, don’t you, after a fashion?”

It took him a moment to recover from their collision with honesty. He studied her, head tilted slightly, for a moment of silence.

“She’d think your name exotic, too, you know.” Sounding amused.

“Why did you just say that?” She was irritated.

“It’s the way you say her name. You make it sound as though your lips can scarcely form it for the sheer exoticism of it. And I know of a certainty it’s not a struggle for you. It’s very common name in her land, you know. Like Anne in yours.”

She fidgeted. It was an uncomfortable observation.

“Oh. Are you in love with her?”

Out that question had come. She didn’t want to know. Oh, that was a bloody lie. She wanted to know desperately. No she didn’t. What manner of woman would a man like this choose to love? Was Fatima his choice simply because he wasn’t a gentleman born, because he felt more comfortable with someone as exotic seeming as he was?

Or was he afraid? This man with no family, no ties. Why wouldn’t he be afraid to love when he’d been abandoned?

“I think loyalty far more important than love,” he said very formally. “I’ve never known a woman more steadfast.”

“Steadfast. How very romantic.”

“Said the pot to the kettle,” he said.

She acknowledged she deserved this with a tip back of her head, then brought it down in a sage nod and a slight smile, as though they were two barristers exchanging arguments.

“And she has other talents,” he added, predictably.

“Oh yes. I’m certain Fatima knows the meaning of ‘work.’”

His grin was a quick, wicked, crooked crescent in the dark. He was pleased with her. She said nothing. She watched the flower twist in his fingers, lulled by his seeming ease, by the whimsy of a big man who seemed, for the moment anyhow, happy to be precisely where he stood.

“But is not one a result of the other?” she asked. “Love and loyalty? I cannot see how could you prefer one to the other.”

“No. My crew is loyal to me, but I shouldn’t think but two or three of them actually love me.”

She laughed at that, and she saw him smile, and wished he stood closer so she could see the dimple.

“Rathskill certainly didn’t.”

“Of a certainty that’s true. He’s responsible for your presence, after all.”

“And I am a trial.”

“Your words, Miss Redmond.”

“Whereas you are a stroll in Hyde Park.”

“‘Definitely not a pet,’” he quoted somberly.

She was smiling a little too often in his presence, and he in hers, and suddenly she felt as aloft, as softly glowing, as that moon. Dangerously, deliciously unmoored. She waved her fan beneath her chin, simply because her hands wanted something to do, and a bead of perspiration was working its way between her breasts and her dress was silk and she’d no abigail to see to getting spots out.