The Legend of Lyon Redmond (4 page)

All four of them turned blackly incredulous gazes on him.

“His eyes are wrong,” Olivia said finally, faintly, absurdly. “They ought to be blue.”

I
T WAS BLISSFULLY
quiet in Twining's tearoom. Just the soul-soothing music of teacups clinking against saucers, the
chink chink
of spoons dissolving sugar cubes and stirring in cream, the soft gurgle of brew poured from pots. No flash ballads drifting in from the street through the windows. No decorative prints on the walls making a mockery of her history.

She hoped Landsdowne hadn't noticed the irony of the reclining lion that had always presided over Twining's entrance.

“So,” Olivia finally said brightly. “Colin and Ian were right. I
didn't
want to go into Ackermann's.”

He snorted a soft, humorless laugh.

The two of them were subdued and dazed. As though they'd barely escaped a trauma with their lives.

Colin and Ian had departed to leave Olivia and Landsdowne to recover from Ackermann's.

“I'm sorry about today,” she added. “I suppose London is forever in need of a spectacle. I never anticipated anything quite like this, however.”

He smiled faintly at her. “What do you suppose will be next? An operetta?”

She hadn't considered the possibility of an operetta.

“Oh God,” she said faintly.

“I suppose you could consider it a tribute. If you were homely, you'd likely be less of an industry.”

She quirked her mouth.

Another little silence ensued.

“Olivia, you've been rotating your cup like a roulette wheel. Drink your tea. You need color in your cheeks.”

She had, in fact, been fidgeting, and she stopped. The tea in her cup eventually sloshed to a stop, too.

A little silence fell.

“Are you certain you aren't bothered, my dear?” Landsdowne tried.

“Oh, I'm bowed, but unbroken.” She managed this with an insouciant sweep of her hand. She felt anything but insouciant, but then she'd been pretending not to feel things for so long it had become second nature.

“It's just . . . when you read that man's . . . shall we say, opus . . . outside of Madame Marceau's, you went a shade or two paler than you already are. And I thought I might need to produce smelling salts in Ackermann's. It was . . . quite concerning.”

She hadn't known she'd changed colors.

But speaking of pale things, Landsdowne's knuckles were white on his teacup.

She looked into his face, which was unremarkable if one sought the customary significators of beauty in it—aquiline noses and Byronic curls and the like. But it was compelling in its strength and confidence, and she liked it very much. His gaze was direct and intelligent, his shoulders imposing. One knew instantly he could be trusted with important things. He genuinely cared for her. One knew he would likely never press her for more than she was willing to say or do. He would never test her.

She wondered if this quality was why he, of all the suitors over the years, had won. Because she could go on as she was, sharing only a part of herself with him, and he would never know it.

Lyon had done
nothing
but test her.

“John.” She laid a hand gently on his arm.

His face softened immediately and his grip on his teacup eased.

It seemed unfair to be able to transform him with just a touch and a single word. He admired her so much; he asked so little from her. She likely didn't deserve him, but “deserve” was quite the subjective word. It made her doubly resolved to be a perfect wife.

Wife. She was going to be a
wife
.

She leaned back and squared her shoulders, much like Mrs. Sneath did when she was preparing to do something dutiful. “I feel we should discuss ‘The Legend of Lyon Redmond.'”

Saying those two words aloud to him as though they were as mundane as “fork” or “biscuit” was one of the bravest things she'd yet done in her life.

“You refer to the flash ballad? Or to the man himself?”

He said it lightly enough. But there was nothing casual about the way he was studying her face.

He was a very astute man.

She managed a faint smile. “Given the events of the day, I shouldn't blame you if you were curious about the origins of the so-called legend. Shall I put your mind at ease?”

“It would be churlish to object to having my mind put at ease.”

This was how they spoke to each other: with dry humor and gentle irony. They shared a pleasure in each other's intelligence and view of the world. It was easy and pleasant and safe, and she liked it, because she suspected he would never require more of her than that.

“I confess there was indeed an attraction when I was a bit younger—the legend, if you will, has its foundation in a certain truth—but it did not last long. I cannot tell you why he disappeared or where he is. Whatever took place then no longer has any
bearing on the person I am now or wish to be in the future.”

Attraction
. The word was so pallid it felt like heresy. A scarce few months after she'd locked eyes with Lyon in a ballroom, she'd been lying alongside him in a clearing deep in the woods near Pennyroyal Green, her arms latched around his neck, kissing him as though the two of them had just invented kissing. The pleasure had been narcotic. They only wanted more and more and more.

If her abigail harbored any suspicions about the grass strains on her dress that day, she hadn't said a word.

As for the rest of what she'd just said, Olivia hadn't the faintest idea whether it was indeed true. It didn't matter. Lyon was gone, and Landsdowne was here. She'd said what he'd needed to hear.

“Funny, isn't it, how the ‘legend'—I'll use that word—persists.” Landsdowne said this idly. “One would have thought the bloods had given up the betting books and forgotten his name altogether by now. Instead, it seems to be sprouting heads, like a Hydra. And I wish I could protect you from it.”

“I know, and you're a dear”—there, she'd said the word, too!—“to care so much, and I'm so terribly sorry to concern you. The Everseas have always been a gift to the gossipmongers of London and to the bloods at White's who've had such a wonderful time filling the betting books with nonsense. So many things rhyme with Eversea, you see. And I've been rather a
sport
for so long, like cricket or pugilism, I suppose this is their last opportunity to profit from it. Though your future may be filled with flash ballads about my relatives, as I hardly think my family will breed a sedate generation. Do you mind terribly?”

He smiled faintly. “One day someone will supplant the stories, I suppose. When we're in our dotage. What stories we'll tell our grandchildren.”

He said these things so easily now. To make grandchildren they would need to make children, and to make children they would need to make love, and to make love she would need to lie naked beneath Landsdowne's naked body, and—

“I'm glad you think so,” she said hurriedly. “Although a dose of ‘dull' might be restful upon occasion.”

“It's funny about youthful experiences . . . so often the things that happen to us in our youth shape us into our permanent selves. When we're still young and malleable.”

“Surely you're not suggesting you're old and calcified?”

He laughed. “I think you'll discover I'm rather limber.”

Her eyes flared in surprise, and she looked down into her tea. Heat rushed into her cheeks.

Landsdowne naked. Landsdowne reaching for her. Landsdowne next to her in bed for the rest of her life. Did he moan and make noises and . . .

She tensed and pushed it out of her mind. But she
must
spend more time imagining all of this. Surely the notion was not distasteful. He was tall and manly, he possessed all of his teeth, he smelled wonderful. Surely more time spent dwelling upon it would help her to prepare for that inevitability. Surely it should be something she welcomed . . . one day.

She looked up to find his dark eyes on her intently.

He wasn't smiling.

But she sensed he was imagining precisely the same thing.

Landsdowne wanted her, in every sense of the word.

Perhaps he thought the blushes meant she was modest, and would need to be gently tutored in matters of romance.

If only he knew.

“In the spirit of mutual disclosure, I feel I should ask whether you left a trail of broken hearts behind you on your way to matrimony. You've managed to remain out of the broadsheets, if so, something my family seems unable to achieve.”

His eyebrows shot up. He tonged sugar into his tea and swished it about long enough for her to realize he was about to confess something.

He took a fortifying sip.

And then he leaned back and sighed.

“Very well. There is a . . . Well, I've known Lady Emily Howell since we were very young. A lovely girl, very kind, and I admire her a good deal. Our families believed we would one day enter into an agreement. I suppose I believed it, too. And then . . . I met you.”

There was a hint of rueful, careful ardor around the word “you.”

As if it had been destiny. As if anyone could understand he'd had no choice at all in the matter.

She often thought Landsdowne had viewed her as a challenge. He was wealthy, a bit older, owned property all over England, was known to be fair and yet ruthless in business.

His determination to pursue the allegedly unobtainable Olivia Eversea and her new willingness to capitulate had likely coincided. Their courtship had hardly been the stuff of legends, but many a marriage began on less fortuitous footing.

She smiled but said nothing.

“Lady Emily has been all that is gracious and congratulatory, as a friend would be. Though I expect she is in fact disappointed. I can honestly tell you that I did not court her, and I do not believe anyone assumed we had a formal understanding. And yet.”

“And yet,” Olivia repeated softly.

“I do greatly regret any pain I may have caused her.”

Olivia pictured Lady Emily and her no doubt well-bred disappointment. There would be no hysterics. No foolscap covered in Landsdowne's name, burned at midnight.

When the word that Lyon Redmond had disappeared finally penetrated Pennyroyal Green, and then the whole of London society—it took some time, the way it takes time for damp to make a weak roof cave in—Olivia had stopped eating. It was as if whatever made her human, gave her appetites and needs, had been excised. She had no more need for nourishment than a wickless candle needs a flame. She felt just that pointless.

She hadn't even fully realized she'd stopped eating until her mother began to panic.

And at some point she had begun again, because here she was.

Yet food had never tasted quite the same since.

Lyon had abandoned her.

And Landsdowne was here.

“You're very kind,” she said impulsively to Landsdowne. For he was. Good and solid and kind and perhaps most importantly,
here
.

He quirked his mouth self-deprecatingly.

They each took fortifying sips of tea.

“I have a friend who trains and races horses,” he said, after a long pause. “It is his passion. He fell off a spirited one and broke his arm badly, and the
doctor told him he could set it one of two positions. If he set it the usual way, the way that afforded him the most freedom of movement, he wouldn't be able hold reins effectively ever again. He chose to have his arm set in the second option—in such a way that he could grip the reins.”

“So you say we are broken into the shape of our wounds. Or in the shape of the thing that means the most to us, and so we are suited to one thing only.”

He smiled at her swiftly. Landsdowne genuinely appreciated her intelligence.

She didn't smile. A chill was slowly spreading in her gut.

“Do you perhaps speak from experience?” she challenged lightly. Suddenly nervous.

He shrugged. “Oh, I don't think so. I just thought it was anecdote worth sharing. That it perhaps merited a philosophical discussion.”

“I'm not certain I'm equal to a philosophical discussion at the moment, when I must tell Madame Marceau before next week which trim to use on the hem—the silver or the cream? Or beading? Perhaps Parliament would be thoughtful enough to put it to a vote. Though I'm certain your metaphor doesn't apply to me.”

He was quiet, and this time it was he who turned his teacup a few times.

“You haven't yet wed, and you've had countless options.”

A fortnight after she'd filled a sheet of foolscap with Lyon's name she'd filled another one:
Olivia Redmond Olivia Redmond Olivia Redmond.
Over and over and over. She hadn't known what else to do with the geyser of emotion she could share with no one but Lyon. It was too new, too potent, and far, far too big to contain or understand.

She'd thrown that sheet of foolscap into the fire, too.

Because as far as her family and his were concerned, it amounted to heresy.

“I haven't wed because I've only lately met you,” she told Landsdowne.

It was such a perfect thing to say that he decided to believe it.

He reached for her hand and gripped it. And his was so solid and warm and real and fine, and nothing in her lurched in joy or in any other emotion, and she thought, surely this sort of safety was better, and madness was for the very young.

About five years earlier, at the Sussex Christmas Eve Assembly . . .

“N
O, NO, MILES, IT'S
like this.”

Jonathan Redmond slouched against the wall of the milling ballroom, shoved his hands in his pockets, narrowed his eyes, and aimed a look down the bridge of his nose at a young woman who was at least five years his senior.

The woman intercepted Jonathan's gaze, frowned faintly, puzzled but indulgent, gave her fan an irritated little twitch, and turned away. Coltish Jonathan, of course, was all but invisible to her at his age.

His brother Miles stifled a laugh. “You look like you just took a cricket ball to the head. It's more like
this
.”

He tipped his head back, slitted his eyes, clenched his jaw, and aimed a gaze at the same woman.

And while Miles Redmond, the second oldest, had many splendid qualities, he wore spectacles and hadn't yet quite grown into his nose, and this time the woman remained oblivious.

“You've succeeded only in looking constipated.” Jonathan was indignant. “And what woman will succumb to that?”

“How do you know that isn't Lyon's secret?” Miles retorted.

They both laughed.

Lyon Redmond rolled his eyes. His brothers were taking the piss out of him, which he normally rather enjoyed. Taking the piss out of each other was one of the myriad pleasures of having brothers. Affection, if displayed, was usually conveyed via insults and wrestling, which they all found satisfactory and sufficient.

But then, his brothers could laugh.

They didn't have to
be
him.

It was true he did, in fact, have a patented sultry look. It really didn't require much more than simply being Lyon Redmond while aiming appreciative, unswerving attention at a woman for a tick longer than was strictly proper.

It raised a blush nearly every time.

And it was generally agreed among the bloods of the
ton
that given an option, they would choose his life over theirs, if only for a day. Perhaps that day would be spent at Manton's, shooting the hearts out of targets or whipping the foil out of his fencing master's hand; followed by an hour or two in London at their father's secretive and exclusive Mercury Club, where England's wealthiest men devised strategies for making themselves and each other wealthier; and perhaps conclude with a ball much like this one, where most of the women could be counted on to look yearningly past every other man present in the hopes they would intercept one of his smolders.

What Lyon could have told nearly anyone was that even
he
envied Lyon Redmond. Because the Lyon Redmond of current lore was primarily simply that: lore.

It was said he effortlessly excelled at everything. It wasn't true. He focused on what he wanted to
master and methodically, ruthlessly conquered it, whether it was cricket or calculus or fencing or shooting or a woman. And while it was true he invariably got what he wanted, he made absolutely certain the effort never showed.

He'd been born knowing the power of subtlety and the advantage of surprise. It was in the Redmond blood, after all.

Which meant he was also discreet about his carnal indulgences.

All in all, given other choices, Lyon would still ultimately probably decide to remain himself.

But he was beginning to feel like a prize bull confined to a gilded pen until such time as his father, Isaiah Redmond, deemed it was time for him to fertilize a carefully chosen aristocratic heifer. The Duke of Hexford's daughter, Arabella, seemed a likely choice. Though Arabella was hardly a heifer. She was stunning and shy to the point of muteness and blushed apologetically after everything she said.

But she wasn't here tonight. This particular ball was far too rustic an event for the daughter of a duke. Lyon was home for good from Oxford, though he had come by way of a lengthy stay in the family town house in London. London's diversions were a startling contrast to those of Pennyroyal Green, whose closest thing to a den of iniquity was the Pig & Thistle and the perennial cutthroat chess game between Mr. Culpepper and Mr. Cooke.

Not that Lyon lingered in any iniquity dens. He cherished his inheritance, and he knew precisely what was required of him in order to keep it.

“Pay attention, you hapless fools,” he commanded his brothers. “It's more like . . .”

Dozens of young women were milling about,
most of them in white, some of them titled, all of them glowing and pretty in the way that youth and hope is always pretty, and it was charming and comfortable and as English a scene as one could wish for.

Later, Miles would swear he literally heard the sound of a gong being struck when Lyon clapped eyes on her.

But for Lyon, the prevailing sensation could only be described as panic.

Panic that she might be a vision rather than an actual woman. Panic that she
was
an actual woman, but that he might never be able to touch her, and his entire life would be rendered meaningless if he couldn't. Panic that she would have nothing to do with him. Panic that he wouldn't know what to say if she
would
have something to do with him.

It was absolutely absurd, and all of this would have amused every person who had ever met him, for Lyon, like his father, seemed to have been born knowing just what to say to get people to do just what he wanted.

She was wearing white muslin, beautifully cut and simple, but so were many of the other girls. She was petite. So were many of the other girls.

But she was somehow as distinct as the first wildflower one happens upon after a long, brutal winter.

An ache started up somewhere in the vicinity of his rib cage.

Her face was like a heart on a slender pale neck—perhaps that's why he'd thought of flowers?

Her mouth, however, made him think of . . . other things.

Her mouth was a sinful pale pink pillow.

His brothers were staring at him.

“Lyon, what the devil is the
matter
?” Jonathan
demanded. “Aren't you a bit young for apoplexy? What on earth are you look . . .”

He trailed off. He'd followed the direction of Lyon's gaze.

Which terminated in a slim, black-haired Olivia Eversea.

“Who is that?” Lyon's voice was distant. A studied casualness.

“You don't recognize her? That's Miss Olivia Eversea. She of the good works, the too-clever-by-half . . . an
Eversea
, Lyon.”

Jonathan shot a worried look at Miles.

“No, Lyon,” Miles said, and this time he was deadly earnest. “You can't be seri— No, no, no, no, no, n . . .”

Because Lyon was already moving toward her, carried like so much flotsam on the tide.

He wove through the crowd, leaving a little wake of turned heads. He might have even smiled and nodded appropriately, for such was his breeding, and such were his reflexes. Feminine hearts lifted and then broke as he passed.

Olivia lifted her head abruptly when he'd nearly reached her, as if she'd heard that gong. Her eyes flared for an instant.

And then she smiled.

Slowly.

Incandescently.

But with absolutely no curiosity or surprise.

More as though she'd been expecting him.

That smile . . . it was like walking through a door into a world he'd never suspected existed. He understood, all at once, the word “joy,” and why it was so small, just three letters. It was as simple and profound as a sudden flame in the dark.

He stopped about three feet away from her.

For a moment or for a year, they stood silent and smiling like loobies, as if they'd already said everything they were ever going to say to each other, perhaps in some other lifetime.

No one else existed.

And yet later they were to discover that dozens were watching all of this via sidelong glances and outright stares and stricken glares.

“Of course,” she said, finally, softly.

“Of course?” he repeated tenderly. Already cherishing those two words as the first she'd said to him. They seemed to capture everything about the moment.
Of course. Of course it's you I've waited for my entire life. Of course we're meant to be together forever. Of course.

“Of course I'll dance with you, Mr. Redmond. It's why you're here?”

He recovered quickly. “Among other reasons.”

She tipped her head to the side and looked at him through lowered lashes, a look amusingly reminiscent of his own patented sultry one. “I suppose we can discuss your other reasons during the waltz.”

Splendid! She was a flirt!

“Oh, I'm certain the discussion will take at least three waltzes. It might even require a lifetime.”

He'd never said anything quite so bold.

He'd never meant anything more fervently.

He was alarmed at himself and hoped he hadn't alarmed her, but he hadn't a compass for whatever this was and he didn't know what else to do besides speak truth.

He held his breath for her response.

She made him wait, and he counted that wait in heartbeats.

“Why don't we start with the waltz,” she said.

The words were both a challenge and a promise.

The promise lay in the fact that her words, albeit insouciant, were a little breathless.

Which is how he knew her heart was beating as fast as his.

And then she laid her hand on his proffered arm and led her out to the floor.

O
LIVIA HAD NEVER
been quite this close to Lyon Redmond, and it was so exotic she felt as though she'd been given an actual lion to dance with. Everseas and Redmonds did not dance with each other. If humanly possible, they did not speak to each other, or about each other, or do business with each other. For as long as she could remember, it was understood that the word “Redmond” would be treated in their house rather as though someone had silently broken wind in company. Its occurrence was distasteful but occasionally unavoidable, and while it could be politely ignored, it was certainly not encouraged or enjoyed.

But he'd appeared before her and a curious thing happened: the entire ballroom had suddenly gone soft at the edges, and it was as though she could see beyond it outward to forever.

She exhaled at length. As if she could finally release the breath she'd been holding her entire life. Waiting for him.

She hadn't yet had a season—she would most
definitely
have a season next year and it was generally assumed she would cause quite a stir and a veritable stampede of suitors, which she rather enjoyed picturing—but she'd heard all the things said about him, of course, and she'd been inclined to believe them. That murmurs soughed through ballrooms when he entered, and one would know he'd arrived by the near wind created by fluttered fans and eye
lashes and heads whipping round to get a look. That other young men threw back their shoulders and stood straighter, but they couldn't duplicate whatever it was he brought into a room: a self-possession, an unmatchable elegance, and an arrogance that challenged and awed. Something innate.

Now, however, with his hand at her waist and her hand gripped in his, the two of them were quiet, and something about the quality of his silence made her feel strangely protective.

It occurred to her that arrogance was an excellent cloak for a sort of shyness.

And now they had no choice but to waltz through a room filled with dropped jaws. Hopefully none of them belonged to any of her brothers. They could usually be counted upon to be off causing dropped jaws of their own. Her parents weren't here tonight. They had clearly assumed that nothing was more benign than a Pennyroyal Green assembly and that Olivia would be the last person to do something untoward.

Her head reached to about Lyon Redmond's collarbone.

If she tipped her head up and he tipped his down simultaneously, and she stood on her toes, by her calculations their lips would meet effortlessly.

She'd never had such a thought before in her entire life.

The backs of her arms began to heat.

His face was a glorious geometry of angles meeting planes meeting hollows that seemed specifically designed to make hearts pound and breathing more difficult, as if the observer had suddenly been thrust into a different altitude. Olympus, perhaps.

Really, he was untenably handsome and alarmingly masculine.

But his blue eyes were warm and bemused.

“It just occurred to me that I may have absconded with you, Miss Eversea. Was this waltz already spoken for?”

“Of course it was. But I'll apologize to the gentleman in question apace,” she said airily.

“‘Apace'?” He was amused. “Would it be the man who is glaring at us? I can see the whites of his eyes as we sail by.”

“That would be Lord Cambersmith.”

“Good God, that
is
Bumble! I didn't recognize him in grown-up clothes.”

He lifted his hand from her waist to wave merrily, and Bumble reflexively waved back before he realized what he was doing and dropped his hand to resume glowering.

“I used to go fishing with his older brother. Do you think he'll call me out?”

“Would you shoot him apace?”

“I would try not to,” he said with mock regret. “It's just that I never miss, and I should hate to ruin his grown-up clothes, given that he is so lately in them.”

She smiled up at him. The two of them were being insufferably and uncharacteristically selfish but neither could seem to care at the moment. Nobody else in the world seemed important.

“Well, he wouldn't be within rights to call you out, and he won't, anyway. I've known him almost since birth. He hasn't any sort of claim on me.”

A hesitation.

“Has anyone else?”

A blunt, bold question. Low, and gruff again.

“No.”

Though she sensed she had just been claimed.

Another little silence, as the truth of that settled in.