Like No Other Lover (21 page)

It was impossible to miss Violet: she was perched on a large rock in the middle of all the activity. Miles dismounted and tethered Ramsay’s reins to a low-hanging branch of an ash tree, then strode forward to confront her, relief warring with anger.

They regarded each other for a moment in silence.

His knew his sister was considered a diamond of the first water and all that. But he simply saw her as Violet: he saw her as a child with tangled dark curls and bright eyes, all laughter and mischief and offhanded cleverness and falling down and following him and his brothers. Someone he’d played with and teased and looked after and loved his entire life.

“I imagine it’s not as simple to run away with Gypsies as one might think,” he offered finally, conversationally.

“They won’t take me,” she confessed glumly.

“Imagine that.”

“I might have been of
some
use,” she groused.

Miles saw the healer Leonora Heron cast him a look and heard her mutter something in Rom. It sounded to him like a vehement disagreement.

“Did you stay here all night?”

“No. I arrived this morning,” Violet told him. “Mrs. Heron kept me in her tent for a time.”

Miles turned to the Gypsy woman. “Thank you for looking after her, Mrs. Heron.”

“You are welcome, Mr. Redmond. I have one of my own, you see.” She sent him a long-suffering look. Commiserating about recalcitrant girls.

Behind them, a cluster of bright Gypsy horses tossed their heads, approving of the breeze, seemingly approving of the fact that they would be off again soon, entertaining other pockets of England, men riding their backs the way birds bobbed ocean swells. Horses who lived with Gypsies became Gypsies, too, Miles supposed.

He saw the direction of Violet’s gaze: Samuel Heron, who was a now a grown man and handsome, and clearly reveling in being both. Samuel glanced toward Violet warmly, but gave a start when he encountered Miles’s ferocious unblinking stare. As effective as a spiked wall.

Samuel hastened toward the horses.

“Did you know Gypsies consider the
gadji
unclean?” Miles offered mildly. “It isn’t personal, really. It’s simply a cultural belief.”

Violet watched Samuel go. “Ironic,” she said glumly, “given that I am so very clean.”

Miles lowered his long frame and sat down on the ground next to his subdued sister. He whipped his coat out behind him, leaned back on his hands and sighed. “Why?” he asked simply.

When it came to Violet,
Why?
was nearly always a rhetorical question, but asking it had become a tradition of sorts between them.

“Why?” She turned to him, a picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Whatever do you mean by—”

“Enough, Violet.” He said it so firmly it nearly qualified as snapping. She blinked in astonishment. “Tell me the
real
reason you ran away. Do you even know? Was it Samuel Heron?”

Violet opened her mouth to speak, then paused, looked into his face, and frowned. Then caught herself frowning and the frown eased away. She was always careful about inviting lines to etch themselves upon her lovely visage.

“You look weary, Miles.”

He cast a baleful glance at her. But her surprise sounded genuine, not a diversionary tactic.

Late nights with Cynthia Brightly.
“I wonder if it has anything to do with my sister disappearing.”

She flinched. The word “disappear” had an unpleasant connotation in their family.

They were quiet again.

“No,” she said finally. “It had naught to do with Samuel Heron. Not entirely. Though he
is
handsome. He’s different.
You
should know about different.” Her sidelong glance was accusing but it lacked conviction. “He’s…” She sighed. Pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes. “It had naught to do with him. I’m not sure I know why I did it, Miles. That’s the truth.”

Miles was tempted to give her a hard shake.

“Violet…let’s suppose you
had
left with the Gypsies. Had just…vanished into the night, and we never saw you again. Do you have any idea what that would have done to Mother and Father? To…all of us? Do you honestly mean to tell me that this doesn’t
matter
to you?”

She began to cry. Quietly at first, so he wouldn’t know it, and because Violet hated to be messy about things, and she wasn’t sentimental. But they were genuine tears. And they soon became the messy sort, replete with sniffing and gurgled sobs.

He suffered along with her. He’d never been able to bear her tears, from the moment she was born. But he didn’t “There, there” her, or pat her back, or hug her. It was good for Violet to cry tears that weren’t meant to be anything but tears. Tears that merely meant genuine grief and frustration, not a means to make someone—usually a man—so uncomfortable he would do absolutely anything she wanted.

So he let her cry. And felt every single one of those tears as surely as if they were his own.

And eventually she pulled out one of her spotless handkerchiefs and dabbed daintily at her eyes. Violet was invariably, astoundingly, crisply neat. He wondered how she did it, as she was active enough.

“I’m sorry to worry you, Miles.”

“I know,” he said gently.

“It’s just…I miss him.”

Him being Lyon.

“I miss him, too.”

“I hate him for leaving. I hate
her”—
Violet had managed to thoroughly demonize Olivia Eversea, and refused to even utter her name, as though its mere utterance would conjure a devil—“for making him leave. Everything was lovely, and now everything is ruined. Ruined and quite odd.”

Miles didn’t know about ruined. They had all managed to stagger on somehow; Redmond life continued in all its forms, mundane and profound. Laughter and arguments and feuding and the making of money continued. But he did agree with the “quite odd.” And he didn’t know whether his brother had
left
or whether something had befallen him, and he wasn’t certain whom to blame. It was an odd sensation, this not knowing, like falling and falling and falling and never knowing where or when or if one might land. A different sort of gravity seemed to apply to their family now.

“We don’t know what really happened, Violet.” He said this to her again though he’d said this so many times it had begun to lose all meaning and sound strange to his own ears, the way any word might if you stare at it for too long. There were moments, he confessed to himself, when he hated Lyon, too.

But he was tired of humoring Violet; thanks to a certain house party guest, he’d acquired a taste for bald honesty. His sister’s recklessness took place against a backdrop of entirely taken-for-granted love and protection. She
expected
to be scolded, rescued, punished, and pampered no matter what she did, and not once had her brothers or her parents disappointed her. Her recklessness required no real courage, as such. And it was, as Cynthia had pointed out, an indulgence of a bored and willful girl who didn’t have the faintest idea how to channel her energies.

And it was an expression…of loss. Loss of family, loss of certainty, of equilibrium.

“Do you truly think Olivia Eversea could actually
make
Lyon do anything, Violet?
Lyon?
You know Lyon.”

“She broke his heart.” Violet made this sound like the most sinister of crimes, and as though a broken heart was the sort of debilitation excusing all manner of behavior.

“We don’t know this, either. It’s all conjecture.” He’d said this a thousand times before, too.

They watched the Gypsies, including Samuel Heron, cluck to the horses, begin saddling the ones they would ride out of camp and settling harnesses over others. Rolls and trunks were being lifted into wagons. The tents would come down next, like flowers blooming in reverse.

“Miles…” Violet said this with uncharacteristic trepidation. She took a breath. “It’s just…sometimes I don’t think it’s enough.”

This was a faintly alarming statement. He swiveled toward her. “
What
isn’t enough?”

She went abruptly quiet. As though saying those words aloud had unnerved her. As though she hoped he would forget about them.

He halfsuspected he knew what she meant. It was just as Cynthia had said: Violet was intelligent and bored and restless, and nothing in Sussex, or even London, would satisfy her.

He simply didn’t know what to tell her. She was a woman. And a Redmond. This rather firmly delineated her options.

“I do miss Lyon, too, Violet. But he isn’t here. And I know I am
not
him. I can never be him. I wish I could, but I know I can never make up for the fact that he’s—”

She’d turned sharply and was looking up at him in such blank astonishment that he stopped speaking.

“What is it?” he asked irritably.

“Miles, don’t you know that we would fly apart without you?” She looked truly bemused.

“We?”

“The
Redmonds
,” she said, as though he were slow-witted child. And no one had
ever
spoken to him that way. “All of us.”

“Well, I suppose I’m now the…Heir
Regent
, if you will. Given Lyon’s absence, my role has changed and I’ll be expected to—”

“
No
, Miles.” She was genuinely impatient now. “For heaven’s sake. It was
always
you. I recall…well, there is something boring and scientific you tried to explain to me once…a theory about a certain force that keeps the moon up in the sky and hugging close to the earth rather than flying off into space?”

“Well, that would be gravity, I suppose, for a beginning,” he supplied wryly. Wondering where she was headed with this.

“If you say so,” she allowed dubiously. “But that’s you, Miles. You’ve always been that. If you had been the one to leave, we would all go flying apart, cartwheeling off through the solar system. Papa is so absorbed in making money and hating Everseas and
impressing
everyone. Mama cares only for us and for the house and for the things she buys. It’s enough for her. And I love both of them, I do. Lyon was so busy being
wonderful
, being the heir, you know, learning the business, making everyone proud. And Jonathon is
Jonathon
, and—well, what I mean to say is that Lyon might be the sun in all of this, but you’re the earth. You allow all of us to be who we are, because of who
you
are. Solid. Looking out for us. We can
count
on you. We all know it, you know. I think even Father does. And then you went off to the South Seas, which seemed very exotic, but even that was so scrupulously planned, and we knew you were going…but I never doubted for an
instant
that you would return to us. Not one instant. Because that’s who you are.”

Miles went still. He was immensely discomfited. Imagine
Violet,
of all people, arriving at such a conclusion. He wasn’t certain what to make of it. He wasn’t certain he entirely liked what he’d heard, either. He shifted with uncharacteristic restlessness.

“Did the Gypsies teach you profundity overnight, Violet?”

“Ah, see, I’ve embarrassed you.” She was quite pleased. She smoothed her dress over her knees and smiled. Getting the better of Miles happened so seldom.

They were quiet together.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“I asked discreetly, in case you were concerned. In other words, the entire party of guests does not know you attempted to run off with the Gypsies. In case that matters to you. Miss Brightly suggested I might find you here.”

Violet nodded almost approvingly.

“I like her.” She said this almost defiantly. Deliberately, as though she’d expected to provoke him with the observation. “I do. Cynthia.”

“Why do you like her?” and Miles sounded once again like a scientist. Even-toned, genuinely curious. But his heart thumped peculiarly. He wanted to hear someone else talk about her.

Violet thought about this. “She’s very clever, you know. She’s very…
alive
. She’s quite pretty. She’s a good deal of fun. I do believe she’s fearless. And our parents most decidedly do not like her. Those are the reasons.” Violet smiled wickedly.

He suppressed a smile. No mention of kindness, or goodness, all the other fashionable attributes young ladies were supposed to admire in one other.

All the qualities Lady Georgina radiated. All the qualities he appreciated, too.

But there was no mention, either, of honesty. Or passion. Or true courage. Or complexity. Or…kindness.

He supposed it wouldn’t have mattered what words Violet used. He knew now that language was insufficient to describe what happened to him when he was near Cynthia Brightly.

Violet turned to him.

“You don’t like her, either, do you?” she pressed. “You should see your face even now. You’ve gone so
dark
. You’re so
thunderous
when she’s about. And it’s so unlike you to be rude. I saw you speaking with her yesterday, Miles. You looked…
impatient
. I have never in my life seen you like that. She
is
my guest. She cannot help that she has no family at all. We must be kind to her.”