“Miss Eversea . . .”
“Olivia.”
“Olivia.”
He said this gravely. Accepting it with the ceremony such favor deserved.
And he smiled slowly, which made her flush to her roots.
Her eyes were a shade bluer than the sky, and her lashes, when she lowered them, cast a shivering shadow on her cheek.
“Olivia, I . . .”
He stopped. He could have finished the sentence in a million ways.
“I usually bring a basket to the Duffys every Tuesday, after the meeting for the Society of the Protection of the Sussex Poor,” she said in a rush.
And then she whirled and dashed off, stopping once again to stretch up to touch a leaf. “We meet again, spring!” she said.
He gave a short laugh and watched her go.
And then he whirled around and though he mostly walked nearly all the way home, he occasionally leaped a few low fences just for the devil of it.
And he stopped just once, to touch the “O” he’d carved into the elm tree.
Chapter 8
Six weeks before the wedding . . .
“HERE ARE FOUR SHILLINGS.” Olivia dropped them one at a time into the cup shared by the beggars against Madame Marceau’s wall. “I hope you will buy something hot to eat with it. Do consider going to Sussex, if you would like to work and live quietly. This should be enough for mail coach fare.”
She stepped back abruptly.
“This may be the last you see of me. Farewell.”
The bandaged beggar never lifted his head or spoke, and she wondered again if he even could. Perhaps he couldn’t even hear. But he raised his hand and brought it down in a slow blessing. It was like watching a curtain lower on a portion of her life.
Madame Marceau was clever and busy and she congratulated herself on the hiring of Mademoiselle Lilette, for she and Olivia had established a rapport.
Mademoiselle Lilette was whistling softly as she pinned. As it so happened, she was whistling “The Legend of Lyon Redmond,” and it was just too much today.
“Mademoiselle Lilette, may I ask you not to whistle that song?”
“I am so sorry. Do forgive me. It is very lively, the song, non?”
“Oh yes,” Olivia said blackly. “Very lively indeed.”
A prickly, raw little silence ensued.
“Forgive me, Miss Eversea, if the subject is a peu difficile, but you are the only woman I know for whom a song was written. He was a lively man? As lively as the song? This Lyon Redmond?”
Was he lively? She did not want to think about Lyon during the final fitting of her wedding dress.
No, he wasn’t lively.
He’d been life itself.
She never talked truthfully about him. She only talked around him, in generalities. No one had known him the way she had.
Suddenly she wanted someone to know.
“He was a surprising man. A . . . vivid . . . man who was also very disciplined. He was very clever and alarmingly quick. He was tender-hearted. And he did so want to see places. He had a wonderful laugh. He would . . . he would have enjoyed the song. I hope—”
She stopped.
“You hope?”
She’d nearly run out of ability to speak about him.
“I hope he did.” Her voice was husky now. “See places.”
She did, God help her. He might have died in a ditch. Or he might in fact be riding the Nile on a crocodile. She had entertained every imaginable scenario over the years. She imagined him again on the deck of a ship. It gave her some small measure of comfort, even as a hair-fine filament of anger ran through the picture: no matter where he was, he wasn’t here, and he had gone without her.
“Was he brave? Was he good?”
Mademoiselle Lilette seemed a trifle too curious.
But Olivia closed her eyes. She couldn’t find it in her to mind at the moment.
And she, as she’d once told someone else, never lied.
“Yes.” Her voice was thick. “Very brave. And very good.”
She didn’t know how long her eyes remained closed.
She opened them, because when she closed them she saw his face again in the rain, in the dark.
She slid Landsdowne into place in her mind’s eye instead. His dear face and dark eyes.
“I had a great love, once,” Mademoiselle Lilette volunteered softly, hesitantly.
Ah! Perhaps this was the source of the questions. “What became of him?”
“I do not know. He disappeared one day.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. I have never married.”
“Oh, Lilette . . . I am so sorry.” Olivia’s heart squeezed painfully.
“Merci, Miss Eversea. You are very kind.”
There was a little silence.
“Surely one day . . . you are still young . . .” Olivia ventured.
“Perhaps. But my heart, she cannot seem to see anyone else.”
Oh God. Olivia wondered what her life would be like if she’d ever dared explain that to her family that way: My heart, she cannot seem to see anyone else.
And then had quietly retired from life. There! Done with that nonsense.
Instead she’d endured years of bouquets and wagers in betting books. She’d dodged suitors neatly, charmingly, and had managed to hide the greater part of herself for years.
Until her cousin Adam Sylvaine, the vicar, had given her the miniature she’d once given Lyon. He’d said he was not at liberty to tell her how it came into his possession. All she knew was that Lyon had somehow relinquished it, and he’d once vowed he never would.
It had broken the spell. She had decided then to do something to rejoin life.
And life for any woman typically meant getting married and having a family.
“I’m sorry that you lost him, Mademoiselle Lilette. Truly.”
She reached down a hand, and found Lilette’s hand coming up to squeeze hers.
“Mais bien sûr, I am strong.”
Olivia couldn’t see it, but she sensed a Gallic shrug from down around the area of her hem.
There was a hush, honoring lost loves.
“Mademoiselle Lilette . . .”
“Oui, Miss Eversea?”
She was almost afraid to ask the question. She’d never known another soul she could ask, and she was half afraid of the answer.
And finally she did.
“How did . . . how did you go on?” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “When you knew he was gone?”
She had never met another soul who could possibly answer that question.
Mademoiselle Lilette was quiet for a time.
“I have my passions, too, you see. If you are a passionate woman, you find things to care about, for you cannot help yourself. As you have, yes? For the strong, we do go on.”
Olivia couldn’t speak. It had taken all of her nerve to even ask that question, and she hadn’t yet found her voice again.
“Your heart is healed, non, Miss Eversea? The song, it is silly nonsense, and you should not let it trouble you. You will be happy, Miss Eversea, you will see. You are marrying a fine man.”
Olivia was not willing to discuss the condition of her heart. “One of the finest of men I’ve known.”
“And you are fortunate.”
“I am fortunate.”
“And only the grandest of women are sung about.”
Olivia snorted at that. “There I fear our opinions must diverge. I wish more than anything for a little time away from songs and wagers and prints and all this nonsense. It’s everywhere I turn. If only I could escape for a week or two to catch my breath . . . so I can be married with a clear mind.”
“Perhaps a trip to the country?”
“Another country, perhaps,” Olivia said mordantly. “My home is in the country, in Pennyroyal Green, Sussex. I would have to go very far to escape the nonsense, as we’ve agreed to call it. It seems to have saturated London and its environs. Then again, my mother might not even
notice I’ve gone and I’ve hardly been very helpful lately. My nerves are making me shrewish.”
She was still talking when she noticed Mademoiselle Lilette was motionless for some time.
“Miss Eversea?”
“Yes?”
“We are fini.”
Well, then. She and Mademoiselle Lilette were the first to see her stand up in her wedding dress.
The seamstress turned her around by her shoulders ceremoniously and aimed Olivia at the mirror.
The dress was a masterpiece of gossamer, flowing simplicity. The tiered sleeves were short and ever so slightly puffed and trimmed in silver lace. They looked as dainty as little fairy bells perched on her shoulders. A train flowed behind her like mist—a train, not cobwebs—and silver ribbon gleamed at the neckline, the hem, the waist. The hem was caught up in little loops of silver ribbon, with just a scatter of beading. She was to wear white kid gloves.
She hardly recognized the girl who stared back at her. White-faced, dazzled. Haunted.
“I would certainly marry me,” she said.
Mademoiselle Lilette smiled.
“You are beautiful, Miss Eversea. Surely it is all anyone should require of you right now.”
It was time to think about Landsdowne.
And how his dear, strong face would look when he saw her in the dress.
Perhaps her heart could not see anyone else. Perhaps her heart had indeed been permanently blinded.
But she had decided that making someone else happy was the next best thing to being happy, and she knew she could do it.
And perhaps one day she would not be able discern Landsdowne’s happiness from her own.
About five years earlier . . .
ANNIE, JENNY, PATRICK, MAEVE, Jordy, Christopher, Michael, and the baby, who likely had a name, but was a girl and would be called “the baby” until another one was born, which, given that these were the Duffys, was an inevitability.
Lyon knew the names and all their little dramas by heart.
Rather the way he’d come to know his ceiling at night.
For almost three months he’d met Olivia just once a week, for just shy of two hours, unless one counted church, where he could hardly look at her, let alone speak with her. He didn’t even make excuses anymore. He simply disappeared from the house about the same time every Tuesday. He hadn’t tried very hard to be convincing, but he’d managed rather skillfully to dodge his father, the only person he truly needed to convince.
He knew she liked marmalade better than blackberry jam, that she preferred coffee to tea unless the tea was very black indeed, and she didn’t take sugar in either of them, just like him, and that she preferred to take breakfast in the kitchen rather than the dining room because she liked the way the sun came in that particular window in the morning, gauzy and bright, and that she yearned after a pair of white kid gloves trimmed in gold that were in Postlethwaite’s window. He knew that she’d had a kitten who’d died when she was nine years old and she’d never forgotten him, and that she was worried about her brother Chase, who seemed rather quiet lately, and about Colin, who was conducting quite the stormy and obvious courtship of Miss Louisa Porter, that her favorite flower was red poppies, that she had named the immense holly tree outside her bedroom window Edgar, because it seemed to fit, that her heroes were Mrs. Hannah More, Zachary Macaulay, and Mr. William Wilberforce, who were passionate, tireless abolitionists and crusaders for the poor. And, of course, Mrs. Sneath.
His ambition was to be her hero, too.
He admired her almost helplessly. It was the first time in his life Lyon had felt he’d needed to earn anything. Sometimes when he was with her he felt as though he were walking a narrow fence rail, arms balancing him, worried that the next moment would be the one she decided he was unworthy.
But his native confidence always returned.
It was so very clear she felt the same way.
Conversation spilled from them, sparkling and effortless, ricocheting from topic to topic. They found each other an infinite source of delight.
But every moment with her seemed to enhance his awareness of her, until it was so acutely sensitized he found the smallest things erotic. The bend of her elbow. The skin of her wrist when she turned it up. He longed to trace the faint blue veins with a single, delicate finger, and press his lips against her pulse. That shadow between her breasts that made his head light, because all it did was make him imagine them bare. The pale, tender strip of skin between her bound-up hair and the collar of her pelisse. The way her slim back flared into her hips. The whorl of her ear. He imagined tracing it delicately with his tongue, and how she would moan softly. When they stood near each other the space between them pulsed with heat, until it seemed patently absurd that she wasn’t pressed against him.
And he lay awake and suffered.
This kind of consuming want was entirely new to him. He was accustomed to appetites, not obsessions, and there was usually an aristocratic widow available to satisfy an appetite. And he certainly knew how to satisfy himself alone in bed at night. But he could do neither, because they were so far from what he really wanted it would have been like eating wood shavings simply because no food was available.
His restlessness had driven him out to the Pig & Thistle at night, where he watched Jonathan win dart games, and had begun conducting a halfhearted flirtation with a charming teacher from Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy who took some dinners at the pub. It distracted him slightly, but alleviated nothing.
Lyon simply wasn’t a rake or a rogue. One didn’t seduce well-bred young ladies, particularly one’s neighbors, and most definitely not an Eversea, if one was a Redmond. Even stealing a kiss from her was fraught with a statement of intention.
But the silences between their giddy rush of conversation had begun to grow longer and more tense. They stole little touches here and there—a brush of their fingers when he handed off a handkerchief, or when she slid the basket onto his arm to hold. It was so absurdly not enough that it bordered on torture.
He understood why Romans didn’t feed the lions before they set them upon the Christians. Hunger made one furious and untenable.
He was off for a good gallop one morning after a sleepless night, when he slowed his horse to a walk and then pulled him to a halt in front of Postlethwaite’s. He stared at the window.
Then slid from his horse’s back and tethered him.
He hesitated briefly. Then he pushed open the door, and the bells danced and jingled merrily. This morning the sound shredded his nerves.
“Why, Mr. Redmond, good morning!” Postlethwaite bowed. “What brings you to my fine establishment?”
“Good morning, Mr. Postlethwaite. I’d like to purchase the white kid gloves in the window. The ones trimmed in gold.”
He was conscious that he was speaking in a rush and perhaps too adamantly.
“A gift for a lady in your life, eh, Mr. Redmond?”
Clearly Postlethwaite was familiar with the syndrome.
Lyon said nothing. His nerves were wound too tightly and he needed this transaction to happen very quickly indeed.
Postlethwaite was pulling them from the window and reaching out to hand them to Lyon to inspect when the bell of the shop jingled again.
Lyon pivoted.
And froze.
There stood his brother Jonathan, just as frozen as Lyon.
Jonathan’s gaze darted from Lyon. To the gloves. To Postlethwaite. Back to Lyon.
A damning little silence ensued.
“I saw Benedict tethered outside,” Jonathan ventured, quietly.
Lyon found he couldn’t speak. He could only imagine what his expression was, given the three hundred things he was feeling at once. He couldn’t seem to arrange mild disinterest over his features.
“I won’t say anything,” Jonathan said quietly and surprisingly gently.
Lyon couldn’t even nod.
“I’ll just wrap those gloves for you, shall I, Mr. Redmond?”
Mr. Postlethwaite said discreetly.
“Thank you,” Lyon said stiffly. Still looking at his brother.
Neither he nor Jonathan had yet blinked.
“Now, young Mr. Redmond,” Postlethwaite said brightly. “Are you looking for something, too?”
“Thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite, but I was looking for my brother. Father wants a word with you immediately. Something about London?”
SHE LOVED HOW he spoke of his family: the warmth in his voice when he spoke of his sister, Violet, who was about Olivia’s age and was quite a handful. His admiration for his clever, quiet brother Miles and his affection for Jonathan, who was rather like a puppy but who looked so like Lyon that Olivia knew he would someday be devastating. She knew his horse was named Benedict, that he had once rescued and raised a baby sparrow, that his favorite color was blue, like her eyes and his, that he’d won the Sussex Marksmanship Trophy three years running and a half-dozen fencing competitions at school. He was left-handed. He had two middle names, Arthur and James, which she’d discovered when he’d handed her a handkerchief one day to clean off a bit of jam, and she’d rubbed her thumb over his embroidered initials. As if she could imprint them on her soul that way.
She learned that he loved scones, very strong unsugared coffee just like she did, and reading while stretched out in chair farthest from the fire in their main room, because he could tip his head back and see, on clear nights, the Starry Plough, and she knew that he had accidentally shot the foot off the statue of Mercury in his father’s garden when he was a boy. He read and read and reread Marcus Aurelius, and sometimes he read to her from it as they walked, when she asked. His favorite quote was “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
How she loved that sentence. Love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. And she loved the little silence that followed when he’d read it to her, because she knew he was thinking about her, and wanted her to know it.
He was relentlessly, fiercely intelligent, and willing to rousingly argue in a way she found exhilarating, since she was so accustomed to being cleverer than nearly everyone, and he would not simply let her win. Not even when her temper flared.
The Legend of Lyon Redmond Page 10