The Legend of Lyon Redmond (19 page)

How had he gotten those lines?

Five years without him. He'd gotten older, bought a ship, exported wine. And now he had lines about his eyes.

And she had seen none of it.

The muscles of her stomach tightened with something like panic, for all that she'd missed. All that he'd done without her.

The panic subsided and became that unspecific, simmering anger again.

“But what made you . . . want to buy a ship?”

“From Pennyroyal Green I went to London and got work on a ship, because I wanted to go as far away as possible from England.”

They both knew the reason for that, and the statement rang by itself in the silence for a moment.

“And . . . did you?”

He hesitated.

“I went very far indeed.” He smiled slightly. It wasn't the most pleasant smile. It contained memories of things he'd seen and possibly things he'd done.

And, in all likelihood, women he'd made love to.

He'd been doing this while she was in Pennyroyal Green deflecting suitor after suitor and instructing the footman where to put flowers delivered by men who hadn't a prayer of gaining her attention.

Because they weren't Lyon.

Once they'd been able to talk about anything and everything, endlessly. He needed only speak about anything in order for her to find it fascinating.

But another chasm of silence opened up. There were too many things to say. And they had lost the knack of talking to each other.

“You were a member of a ship's . . .
crew
?” Someone of his refinement and breeding would have been painfully conspicuous.

Then again, Lyon had won the Sussex Marksmanship Trophy and more than one fencing competition.

“They'll take any able-bodied man willing to work on a ship, Olivia. They taught me. I learned. I worked. I fought. I won. I didn't need to know how to do anything that I didn't already know how to do.”

He said it very deliberately. Very evenly.

But it was very much a reference to that night in Sussex.
What do you know how to do?

In five years he'd risen from menial labor on the deck of a ship to owning and commanding one.

But then, she didn't suppose she ever truly doubted him.

She was quiet. She had a million questions for him.

She dismantled her bread, then realized what she was doing and put it in her mouth instead.

He watched approvingly. “Eat more than that. You've gotten thin.”

Her eyes flared wide.

His voice was gruff.

He'd likely been pondering how thin she was while she was wondering about the lines near his eyes.

She contemplated countermanding him. But she knew concern when she heard it, and her reflex was to take his troubles away.

So she obeyed him. The bread was crusty and coarse but delicious, and the cheese was fine. She'd never eaten with an audience, but he watched in absolute silence as she devoured two more slices and sipped her wine.

He handed her a napkin. She dabbed at her lips, then folded her napkin and looked up at him.

“Olivia?”

“Yes?”

“Why Landsdowne? Why now?”

She met his eyes.

“Why shouldn't it be him and why shouldn't it be now?” she said evenly enough.

He drained his wine and then stood, and looked down at her a moment.

“Because you don't love him,” he said idly.

She sucked in a startled breath. “How
dare
you.”

“I think you would be amazed at what I now dare.”

They locked eyes again. The air shimmered with dangerous emotions and unspoken things.

She didn't know how they would ever be spoken.

“We'll reach shore soon enough,” he said finally. “Don't attempt to leave the cabin again. None of my crew were gentle born and even if they were, months at sea without a woman tends to erode gentlemanly impulses.”

He said this so easily. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for someone of his breeding to command a crew of dangerous men apparently united in a struggle to control their animal desires.

She glanced at the print on the wall, the one in which he was simmering in a pot.

And she thought of that other print on Ackermann's wall.

Of a man with blue eyes, holding a sword in his left hand, hair rippling in the breeze.

“If you need something to pass the time . . .”

He reached into the sack and carefully placed a copy of
Robinson Crusoe
down on the desk, and followed it with
The Orphan on the Rhine.

She stared down at them. Stunned.

And suddenly, unaccountably deeply moved.

They'd been purchased at Tingle's, she was certain of it.

She looked up at him, remembering that day. How simply standing near him had been magical. Like falling and flying all at once.

He would have done
anything
for her. She'd sensed it even then.

She suddenly didn't dare look up. And then she did.

And saw in his eyes that he was remembering that day, too.

Both the beauty of it . . .

And how it had all then been sundered.

“Take your pick.” He smiled faintly.

And then he was gone.

S
HE MUST HAVE
fallen asleep again over her copy of
Robinson Crusoe
, because she started when there was a sharp rap on her door.

Olivia leaped up and smoothed her skirt and peered out.

It was Digby.

“It's time to disembark, Miss Eversea. We've arrived.”

D
IGBY LED
O
LIVIA
up to the deck while a pair of truly intimidating men passed them, touching their hats, to fetch her trunk.

Olivia emerged blinking; the dazzling lowering sun seemed to be aimed right into her eyes. She craned her head backward. A few shreds of clouds were scattered over a sky that had been brilliant but was now beginning to give way to the indigo of sunset.

Her namesake,
The Olivia
, was anchored in a little inlet created by the golden, curving horseshoe of a beach.

A caress of a breeze fluttered the hem of her dress, played in the hair that had escaped its pins. It was so serene something in her eased, and for an instant she forgot she'd been tricked into coming, and was simply grateful that she was here, wherever this was.

And then Lyon was at her elbow, and her traitorous heart gave that leap. Recognizing to whom it had once belonged. She yanked it back again. It wasn't his to command anymore.

Or so she told herself.

“Cadiz,” he said simply.

T
HEY WERE ROWED
ashore in a longboat. His crew managed to beach the craft and assist her to the beach without dampening overmuch, and she managed mostly to preserve her modesty. God only knew she didn't want to display too much stocking-covered calf to any of those female-deprived men.

She shook out her skirts and patted them and murmured thanks.

Lyon was standing on the beach, stark as the needle of a compass in dark trousers and boots and white shirt, speaking to members of his crew in what sounded like fluent Spanish and pointing toward the foot of a cliff.

She watched as one of his crew ferried her trunk away and deposited it where Lyon was directing, at the foot of what appeared to be a little road that wound up the cliff.

The men saluted Lyon and piled into the boats again and shoved them back out into the inlet.

Leaving her entirely alone on the beach with Lyon.

“Shall we?” he said simply, and without waiting for a reply from her, set off across the beach.

She turned toward the ship and froze.

The crew was raising the anchor. Her heart lurched.

“Lyon . . .” she called.

“Yes?” he called over his shoulder. He didn't stop.

She scrambled to follow him, grateful for her traveling boots.

“Why aren't they coming with us?”

“They weren't invited.”

“What are they doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Where are they
going
?”

“Away,” he said shortly.

“What do you mean,
away
?” She hated the sound of her voice. She'd been shrill more frequently in the last two days than in the whole of her life.

“They'll be back in a few days.”

That did it. She stopped and threw back her head. “Arrrrrgh!”

He whirled around and froze.

Her roar echoed around them.

Which is when she realized how very, very quiet it was. And how very, very alone they likely were.

“That was an interesting sound,” he said carefully, finally.

“Lyon Redmond. Do not make me raise my voice again. I don't like the sound of it when it's shrill. Do
not
order me about. You will inform me and engage me in conversation as if I am a guest, not an enemy captive. You will not stride ahead of me and force me to scramble inelegantly to catch up. I am now here voluntarily and you will treat me at all times with civility, unless you've forgotten how.”

In the silence the wind filled his shirt like a sail and whipped his hair up off his sun-browned forehead. And in truth, he looked more pagan than civil
at the moment. He was perhaps a little too accustomed to people doing his bidding.

Despite it all, his beauty knifed through her.

“Very well,” he said finally, with a surprising, utterly disarming tenderness. “I apologize for being insufferable. And I accept your terms.”

She was speechless.

“Have you any other terms?”

She gave her head a shake, because she didn't trust herself to speak over the sudden lump in her throat.

“May I point out
you're
now issuing orders?” he added, teasing her gently now.

“Duly noted.”

She wanted to smile. She almost did.

He wanted to smile, too, she could tell. He almost did.

And yet neither of them could yet completely give way, because the weight of years held them back.

He turned away from her again.

“Look up there, on that rise.”

She shaded her eyes with her hand and followed the direction of his pointing finger. She saw a low, gracefully sprawling house of creamy white stone, surrounded by lush greenery—flowering trees, spreading oaks, and needled pines.

A serene house, simple in line, but possessing both a sort of peace and grandeur.

The view from every window would be spectacular—ocean and sand and hills.

Precisely as he'd described to her so many years ago.

Her breath hitched.

She looked at him.

“It's my house,” he said.

Every word of that sentence thrummed with a sort of quiet, steely satisfaction.

Her heart skipped. “
Your
house?”

He wasn't looking at her. And that's when she realized his terseness may well have been because he was nervous about showing it to her.

“One of my houses,” he replied shortly, one of the more intriguing sentences she'd ever heard.

He slid her a sidelong glance. Inscrutable. “Shall we?”

H
E STRIPPED OFF HIS
coat and handed it to her, wordlessly.

Startled, she took it. Folded it gently over her arm, and resisted the urge to hold it to her nose and breathe it in to see if it still smelled just like him.

Then he pushed up his sleeves and hoisted her trunk to his shoulder, carrying it without apparent effort.

She followed.

The path wound gently up, but she was a country-bred girl quite accustomed to walking, and it posed no difficulty at all. He didn't seem inclined to speak, so to occupy her time she watched the fascinating play of muscle in his back and buttocks as he climbed.

The path concluded in a wrought-iron gate joining the surrounding low white stone wall.

She pushed the gate open and stepped forward.

Her breath caught.

They were in a little courtyard. Beneath their feet a checkerboard of muted rose-red and darker red tiles stretched out in either direction, wrapping around the house. A white tiered stone fountain was the centerpiece.

One wall of the courtyard was hung entirely with a tapestry of green vines starred everywhere with white jasmine. The wall adjacent was a flamboyant spill of scarlet blooms.

Before she knew she was doing it, she moved over wonderingly to touch one, a reflexive response to beauty.

“Bougainvillea,” he said shortly.

“It's so beautiful,” she breathed. “I've never seen one outside of a hothouse. But they belong in the sun, don't they? They're like the skirts of Spanish dancers.”

She turned to find him smiling at her.

“All you need is a blue flower growing somewhere and you'll have the British flag,” she added.

He laughed. “The Spanish would love
that
. Speaking of things you won't see outside of a hothouse—and no, I'm not referring to you—turn around and take a peek around that corner.”

She did as ordered. A few steps over the red stone, she peered around the corner of the house.

And there it was.

Her jaw dropped. She stared as if she'd just accidentally stumbled upon the queen lounging here in the middle of Spain.

“Go ahead. You always wanted to.”

It seemed whimsical and dreamlike, growing right there out in the open, covered all over in luscious, sunny globes of fruit.

She approached it as if it were an exotic creature, and reached up and gave a tug.

And an orange tumbled into her palm.

She closed her eyes and held it to her nose and breathed in deeply. The singular scent, sharp and sweet and citrus, was heavenly.

The English weather would have killed that orange tree straightaway if it had the temerity to
grow out in the open. Which is why all their English trees were so sturdy, and so many of them ancient.

Like the two oaks in the center of Pennyroyal Green, for instance, said to represent the Redmonds and Everseas. They had grown for centuries, stubbornly thriving, holding each other up, competing for resources.

She gave a wondering laugh, and whirled.

She caught some fascinating expression fleeing his face.

“Pick a few more,” he said evenly. “We'll eat some, we'll drink some.”

She pulled a few more from the tree with an air of wonder, and filled her arms with them.

He settled her trunk with a little grunt and then slid a hefty key into the heavy arched door, and turned the knob.

She gasped.

The entire house was made of light.

And then she blinked and discovered why it seemed that way: a series of three soaring arched windows that allowed in sea-scoured sunshine, which spilled through nearly the entirety of the main room. A heavy table of slabbed wood, weathered to a silvery finish, was pushed in front of the windows, and in the center was a large glass bowl of the palest shade of aquamarine. It was like a drop of the sea had been captured in Venetian glass.

The creamy pale walls rose and met the high ceiling in rounded corners, and the floors were tiled in huge, satin rose-red stone, edged with tiny, intricate blue and yellow mosaic.

Arched doorways led into dark, cool hallways, off which, presumably, were bedrooms.

A settee—ivory brocade, French, and possibly Chippendale, and yet somehow right in this room
for all of that—was angled before the fireplace, flanked by a pair of sleek ormolu chairs upholstered in more brocade. A low oval marble table, its wooden legs intricately turned, sat between all of them.

It was like stepping into his dream. One of the very first things he'd shared with her.

“The oranges can go there.”

He pointed at the blue bowl, and she spilled them from her arms and stood back to admire them.

Beautiful things, not a lot of things, he'd once said. That's what he would have in his house.

She remembered, because she remembered everything about him.

They were both silent.

She held still, suffused with wonder and a peculiar peace and sense of
rightness
in this house. It was a strangely familiar sensation.

And then she recalled the first she time he had felt that way:

It was when he first approached her in the ballroom. As if the fences surrounding her world had been kicked down.

In retrospect quite ironic, given their association had been confined by the clock and hedgerows and their family's expectations.

“It's so beautiful, Lyon. The house is like stepping into your dream.”

“Perhaps literally. Since it was one of mine.”

On the surface, it was an innocuous enough sentence.

And she could feel the war in him between his desire to take pleasure in her pleasure, and whatever dark, unspoken thing thrummed through both of them at the moment.

She of course had been his dream, as he had been hers.

On a shelf above the table was a row of books.

She moved toward it slowly.

For there was his copy of
Marcus Aurelius
.

Nearly tattered now, the gold embossing nearly worn smooth from being tucked inside his coat countless times, packed into trunks, cupped open in his hands.

She paused before it with a sense of vertigo. She hesitated. Then gingerly, tentatively, she reached out and gently touched it. As if it might vanish, along with this room and Lyon, like a mirage.

Marcus Aurelius
. One of the very first things she'd learned about him.

How she had cherished everything she'd ever learned about him. Almost as if she'd known her time with him would be finite. That someday he would be gone, and all she would have would be a scattering of memories, like figurines kept in a curio cabinet.

And just like that, suddenly, the anger swept in again.

For all that he'd missed.

For all that she'd missed.

For leaving her.

And now showing her what his life had been like without her.

She wasn't certain if this was rebuke. A way to show her how very, very wrong she'd been.

Or if he was showing her what could have been.

Next to
Marcus Aurelius
were all the volumes written by his brother, Miles Redmond, a naturalist and now a famous explorer, a coveted guest at London dinner parties for his tales of his travels in Lacao.

“Miles was almost eaten by a cannibal.” She said this almost lightly. “Did you know?”

He betrayed not a flicker of surprise, but then he seemed to have mastered inscrutability.

“He wouldn't have gone down easily. A bit sinewy is Miles.”

She turned to look at him.

His face was still and hard. His arms were crossed. A bit like armor.

She moved farther down the shelf, examining the spines of the books.

“Violet has a baby now. She married the Earl of Ardmay. She's a countess.”

She chose this one deliberately. She glanced over her shoulder.

He still didn't blink.

“She nearly died giving birth, I heard,” she added, almost casually.

And now he was absolutely motionless. But he was whiter about the mouth now.

She was certain he knew precisely why she'd said it.

She sensed a sort of coiled potential in him that boded ill, something was being wound tighter and tighter. His face was taut, his mouth white at the corners.

But she couldn't seem to help herself from winding it tighter. She wanted it to break.
You weren't there. I needed you I missed you. You missed it. You missed it all.

“Did you know Colin nearly died on the gallows?”

“I knew.” His voice was soft and taut.

She had sat with her family in their London townhouse that horrible morning and prayed.

She had longed for Lyon then. If only he could have come home to her.

But he hadn't.

Colin had lived. Colin generally had that sort of luck.

She turned abruptly away from him again, toward
what appeared to be a tiny sculpture of some sort at the end of the shelf that caught her eye.

“May I?”

He nodded curtly.

It was a bird. A lovely, fragile little thing, scarcely heavier than a dandelion. She plucked it up and perched it in her hand.

“It's an origami crane,” he told her. “Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding . . . a sheet of paper cleverly, intricately folded into different shapes. Animals, flowers, and the like. It's funny how one ordinary thing can so easily be transformed into something extraordinary.”

She looked up at him searchingly. She knew precisely why he'd said that.

“A woman gave it to me. For luck, and to remember her by.”

And she knew why he'd said
that
.

The little crane in her hand suddenly might as well have been a viper.

And now it was clear that every word they were exchanging, no matter how seemingly civil, no matter how seemingly mundane, at its core hid seething fury and accusation and hurt.

Perhaps love was in there, too.

Perhaps they were forever inextricable now.

She put the origami crane down quickly.

Now she would like to set it on fire.

“I could do with some air. Why don't we have a walk on the beach, Olivia?”

He seized his coat and turned without waiting for her reply and was out the door.

She followed just as swiftly.

H
IS STRIDES WERE
punishingly long. She ran to keep up with him. He didn't apologize, and he
didn't slow down. And she didn't ask him to. She
wanted
to run.

“Where are your other homes, Lyon?”

“I've a plantation in Louisiana. Sugarcane. One in New York. A home in the south of France.”

“But not England.”

He didn't reply.

Their feet crunched down along the path, until the sand of the beach silenced their footsteps, and she followed him out to the shoreline.

They appeared to be utterly alone. No ship. No sign of other people. No birds.

“I could buy nearly any house I wanted in England now. If I wanted to be in England,” he added coldly. Ironically. Sounding abstracted.

The sun had nearly dropped into the sea, and the vivid sunset colors were now fading to the color of old bruises, and giving way to the blue-purple of night. The air was still soft and warm, but there was a nip at the edges of it now.

“Do you remember, Lyon, how dull the vicar once was? My cousin Adam Sylvaine is the vicar now. And he's quite good. The church is crowded every weekend. It helps that he's gorgeous.”

He smiled a small, taut smile. And said nothing.

“They called him when they thought your sister was going to die from childbirth. In the dead of night. An Eversea in your house. He did say that Jonathan offered him a brandy.”

He was rigid as a monument now. His arms folded even more tightly across his chest. As if he were trying to hold something in.

“And Jonathan married a very surprising woman, and he set London upside down in the process. He began his own investment group.
And
he's running for Parliament. Did you know he's interested
in child labor reform? Jonathan Redmond, of all people. Your brother did that.”

Lyon remained motionless, apart from a breeze that lifted his hair from his collar. The sea was blue-black now, apart from a wedge of light laid down by the full moon. It was calm, throwing lace foam up onto the beach at sighlike intervals. That's where his gaze was aimed. Away from her. As if she was a source of pain.

“I find myself wondering, Olivia, if the point of all of this to imply that I don't know any of these things—for I do, or much of—or that I simply don't care? Or would it be both?”

He said it very, very slowly. Dangerously slowly. His voice contained a warning for anyone sensible enough to heed it.

It was shaking with fury.

But she couldn't stop herself. Her need to goad him had momentum.

“It doesn't matter, does it? You missed it. All of it. All of these things. All . . . because . . . you . . .
fled
.”

He turned very slowly then.

She had the sense to take two steps backward, away from him.

Because fury came off him in waves. As if she'd opened the door to a furnace.

He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before.

“Fled,” he said carefully. As if he was learning a new language.

She stood her ground.

But he'd stolen her voice, so she simply nodded.

“Fled,” he repeated. The word was incredulous and scathing. “Interesting choice of word coming from a coward.”

The contempt in his voice was scalding.

It ripped her breath from her lungs.

“I'm a—”

“Co-ward,” he enunciated, with intolerable specificity. As if teaching her a new word.

Her mind blanked in shock.

“How. Dare. You. When
you
were the one who
ran away
.”

He gave a short amazed laugh. “Ah, Olivia. Look at you. You should remember how you can't intimidate me with your temper.
I know you
. And I speak the truth. Furthermore, I think you know it, too.”