I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (40 page)

What had she found inside?

He held that box, and suddenly knew his entire plan was farcical. He’d thought to assemble a life from pieces. He thought of the things he’d kept in his cabin on the ship. A painting. A chessboard. Trophies of the regard of other people. And all of it seemed foolish to him now, mere paste imitations when held up to the light of real love, like Violet’s love for her brother. And his love for her.

His whole life would now be a paste imitation of life without her. Violet was the only person with whom he’d ever truly belonged. Devastation held him motionless.

Next he found the foolscap message.

Forgive her? He was temped to crunch it in his fist and hurl it across the room. He smoothed it tenderly over and over, irrationally. It may have been the last thing she touched.

He’d all but handed her the opportunity to betray him: He’d told her about the crew searching in the Plaza de Mina. She was no fool. She’d found something in that box, and the ever-startlingly resourceful Violet would have found a way to warn her brother that Flint and crew would be coming for him. In a sense, he suspected he wanted to see what she would do with the opportunity to betray him.

He had no right to use the word betrayed.

He wandered like one punched in the head into the bedroom, the battered box in one hand. He sat down hard for a moment on the edge of the bed. Distantly, among the emotions that swamped him, he found one he wanted to court: fury.

He held it focused in the beam of his mind, coaxing it into full flame, until it drove him to his feet and got him into his clothes. Still stuffing his shirt into his trousers, pushing hair back with one hand, he strode furiously down the halls hammering on the inn doors to wake his men. She might have chosen to do what she thought was right.

But it didn’t mean she’d succeeded yet.

Flint’s crew had been thorough in both their pleasure seeking and in their questioning in and around the Plaza de Mina, and they learned that when in Cádiz Mr. Hardesty could often be found in Los Tres Pescaderos, a pub of sorts on the Plaza de Mina. The Three Fish was a graceless, shadowy, low-ceilinged room built of brick and propped up on thick splintering wood pillars he needed to dodge as he entered. Smoke—cigar, cooking, pipe—commingled, obscuring faces. Everywhere men were slumped over drinks or sprawling in easy conversation. It was a splendid place for sub rosa meetings. But when he saw, even through the smoke, deep in the shadows near the bar, the line of a particular spine, the elegant curves of a profile. Flint’s heart leaped into his throat. In seconds he was almost airborne with joy.

And then the smoke migrated away, clearing like clouds.

He’d been wrong.

He turned to Lavay. “Wait for me outside. I’ll call if I need you.”

Lavay hesitated, then gave a curt nod.

He’d unlocked his pistol before he’d arrived. Heart a dull hammer in his ears, he casually wended through the crowd of unsuspecting strangers to the straight-backed man sitting at the shadowy table.

His Redmond profile turned away from him.

He stood until Lyon Redmond, not the least surprised, looked up at him and lifted eyebrows in welcome. He’d been expected.

Handsome devil, indeed, as Musgrove had accused. He had his sister’s blue eyes, vivid even in the dark. The aristocratic angles in the face were an echo of hers, too, only his were hard and masculine and stubbled.

“Good day, Captain Flint. Are you going to attempt to arrest me? Or shoot me? Something more dramatic?” He sounded as though he were proffering a menu of options. Flint stared down at his grail.

And Lyon languidly stretched out a leg and pushed the chair across from him away from the table. Inviting him to sit.

Flint sat. He pulled the chair close into the table, close enough to hide the pistol he slid from his coat to lie in his lap. He swept a hand in the air to signal the barmaid over. She’d perhaps adapted to her environment like the creatures who live in caves, for she saw him straight away. She sauntered over, skirt swinging like a bell over her hips that might as well have been on hinges. She had flare.

“Dark, por favor.”

Lyon was motionless. He didn’t even his drum his fingers. He didn’t appear particularly tense. The two men said nothing at all until she brought the ale to him and he’d taken his first long sip.

“I thought Violet would try to warn you I was coming,” Flint began. This amused Lyon. “Try? You ought to know her better by now. She succeeded in warning me. I had a note from her this morning. Succinct and revealing. She’s resourceful, my sister. She paid someone on the docks to row the message out to The Olivia, and one of my men made sure I received it. They always know where to find me.”

Flint wasn’t surprised. She’d talked her way aboard his ship, after all.

“But…then why are—”

“—am I here? I’m here because of the postscript she wrote on her message, Captain Flint. I decided I needed to see you for myself. And as for Violet, she is even now on a packet back to England. I arranged for her passage. She’ll be home in two days, lest she take it into her head to foment more mischief.”

Flint nearly reflexively stood. She was gone, and he knew where!

Then stopped himself when he realized what he was doing.

He saw Redmond tense, almost infinitesimally, and knew the man was likely every bit as armed as he was. That he likely cradled an unlocked gun in the hand resting in his lap. He forced himself to remain seated. He was here to collect Lyon.

“You ought to know that ten armed sailors are waiting outside to take you the moment I say the word, Redmond.”

“Hardesty,” he corrected with cool politeness. “If you would. In this place, anyhow. You do have Mathias? The boy? Is he safe?”

“He’s with us. He was impressed by the Portuguese pirate who boarded my ship. We kept him on. He proved useful.”

“Abrega. I hear he’s been claiming to be me.” Ironic curve of a smile. Flint could hardly bear to look at Lyon, and yet it was impossible to tear his eyes away. He looked so bloody much like his sister it was a torment.

“Abrega won’t make that claim anymore.”

“Ah.” Lyon’s brows twitched up appreciatively. He understood it was an oblique way of saying Abrega was dead.

They were quiet again.

Flint regarded his quarry curiously. “Why did you do it?”

Lyon stared at him for a long time with a half smile. And then he jerked to attention.

“Oh! My apologies. You expected I’d actually answer that question. To confess all. And yet I’d heard you were clever.”

He toasted his stalker, lifted his tankard of ale to his lips and sipped, turning casually in his chair.

“Here is the thing, Captain Flint,” he began almost apologetically. “I waited for you, rather than racing ahead of you yet again. For a reason. But if you choose to attempt to take me, I will not go without a fight. And I assure you that one of us, if not both of us, will be dead thereafter. No matter what.”

The two men sat across from each other in silence. On the surface of things, they appeared to be two friends, two acquaintances, two exceptionally well-made gentlemen sharing a conversation.

Beneath the table, two pistols were unlocked, balanced on knees, gripped in white-knuckled hands.

“So be it,” Flint said easily.

“So do you love my sister?”

Flint made a small sound. Shock or pain; he couldn’t control it. And at this Lyon Redmond swiveled in his chair and sat bolt upright. “You do love her.”

He sounded startled at the realization. And so much like a sibling for an instant Asher was both amused and envious of the long, deep history, the taken-for-granted love between Redmonds. He heard Lyon Redmond inhale; he heard a creak as he leaned back in his chair. He glanced up, and his profile—that stubborn chin, the straight nose—was so reminiscent of Violet that Asher felt stabbed clean through. He breathed in deeply, took in only old and new smoke. Tried to find anger and resolve. To buoy himself against the sensation that he’d been shot in the hull and would sink and sink.

Flint remained stubbornly quiet on the topic.

“May I ask you something, Captain Flint?”

Flint nodded warily.

“Why do you love her?” He sounded again so much like a sibling that Flint almost laughed, even as he bristled.

“What do you mean?”

“I love her. I have to love her. She’s my sister. And I do. But I love her in spite of herself, bless her heart. I know she’s willful, capricious, and I fear far too spoiled to be a proper wife to any man, and like as not it’s the fault of my parents and my brothers. She’s funny and insightful and desperately clever, though God knows she’s never applied her intelligence to anything in particular. I would kill for her, and I would kill any man who hurts her. I have had, shall we say, reason to question her judgment in the past, if not her tenacity. She’s my blood. I want to know why you love her.”

Flint still couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud. Whether or not he loved Violet was a matter between him and Violet, and perhaps it was moot now. And still…this was a man who shared her blood. Who’d had the privilege of knowing her his entire life. When he spoke, he spoke for Violet’s sake.

“I’ve very little experience of what they like to call the finer emotions, Mr. Redmond. I haven’t your talent for grander expression…I can only tell you…”

How in God’s name to describe Violet? It was like trying to describe his own heart, which naturally he’d never actually seen. It was an idea, his heart; he felt it beat inside him, sending life coursing through his veins. He needed it. It was everything.

“You don’t know her, Mr. Redmond, any more than you can say you know your viscera. She’s part of you. I had to…learn her. She had to learn herself. And Violet…she has a…magnificent heart. A fierce warrior’s heart. Nothing…small…would ever do for her. Not a life in Sussex, not the usual domesticated English aristocratic husband, not a life of needlework and managing the servants, though this could very well be what awaits her anyway. She came across the sea to find you, and by God she did what no one in your family, and no one else who has diligently hunted you, could accomplish. She persuaded me to allow her to do it. This, I assure you, is very nearly impossible.”

“Violet is persuasive,” Lyon said ruefully.

“And I am impossible,” Flint said grimly. “It’s why the King chose me for this mission. She loves her family, but none of you know her heart. She, I believe, found everything she needed in me, on this journey. She was afraid to love in part…because of you. But for love of you, she gave me up. She did it for you.” He heard weariness in his voice. He stopped a moment.

“That’s Violet. That’s who she is. And that’s the choice you forced her to make. You ought to be proud.” The words were so sharp, so bitter, he could nearly taste them.

“May I point out an irony?” Lyon said.

“I doubt I can stop you.”

“You likely wouldn’t know her at all if not for me.”

Flint took this in slowly. Inhaled at length. Exhaled. But said nothing.

“You’re welcome,” Lyon said ironically.

“It doesn’t change what I came here to do.”

Lyon ignored this. “I can almost see it,” he said reflectively, after a moment of studying Flint.

“I can almost see why the two of you could love each other without…incinerating each other. You’re certain she loves you?” He sounded unflatteringly skeptical.

“She killed a man to save my life. She was the one who killed Abrega.”

Lyon’s expression didn’t change at all. But he did go strikingly still. His fingertips pressed so hard into his tankard of ale they went bloodless. “Did she?”

He didn’t sound as surprised as he ought to. His voice was steady enough, but it had gone soft. His eyebrows winged up then; he drummed his fingers against his tankard. And stopped. After a moment he smiled a smile so bleak, so full of loss and ache that Flint all at once understood the cost to him of his exile.

“Violet,” Lyon finally said. That single soft word rang with love and exasperation and memories and regret.

Flint suddenly recognized something critical, and possibly deadly: Here he faced a man possessed of control equal to his own. But Lyon Redmond had come by his strength in ways unique to his journey and his history. That elegance, those manners, the demeanor, the spirit—all were fashioned of finely wrought steel, and honed like a blade. Lyon Redmond was either a man on a pilgrimage in search of salvation, or a man out to burn on the pyre of his own love for a woman.

Regardless, he still suffered.

Flint wasn’t unaffected.

And yet when another silence fell, Flint shifted his pistol in his lap, preparing for the inevitable. But Redmond was thoughtful. He seemed to be contemplating how to begin a story. He shifted slightly.

“Tell me—what wouldn’t you do for Violet, Captain Flint?”

Flint didn’t yet know the answer to this. Though he was perhaps closer to knowing.

“I haven’t yet been tested.”

Lyon smiled slowly at this, and shook his head. “Ah. Clearly you haven’t a soul of a poet, then, sir. You cannot be lured into hyperbole: ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do! Nothing!’ And etcetera. I can. I like hyperbole. Don’t fear it, Flint! Believe me, there’s some truth to all the purple words that surround love, you know. When you love someone more than life—and it is indeed possible to love someone more than life, or otherwise poets wouldn’t have gone on and on about it over the centuries—and you know, you know, you were born for only one person…imagine you cannot have them without tearing everything else you know asunder. Without hurting and disappointing all the other people you love. What then would you do?”

“Well, naturally, I’d go out and sink ships.”

“Witty, Captain. Would you settle for less than what you want?”

“I have never settled for less than what I want.”

Implicit in that statement was the fact that they both knew what Flint wanted: to bring Lyon Redmond, Le Chat, to justice.

“Very well. Let’s say then you’ve made the decision to tear the life you know asunder in order to be with this person you love. A difficult decision to be sure. Putting it lightly. Because you cannot imagine a life without her, and the alternative left to you is a lifetime of desolation, as you don’t intend to don a hair shirt or join a monastery or fling yourself into the ocean and drown. And so you go ahead and do the unthinkable and tear your life asunder…only to discover the person you love won’t have you after all, and she actually has a reason.”