Though he was delighted when she did win.
Every new thing she learned about him was like being handed a jewel, which she would turn round and round in her hands, studying its every facet.
She wanted to trace with a finger the lines of his face, his lips, his jaw. To slide her arms around his waist and tilt her head up and touch her lips to his. To breathe him in. Sometimes he would say something, or the light would catch him just so, and just like that her throat would knot and she would lose her ability to speak, as if everything she felt had rushed her senses all at once.
And then he would fall silent, too.
She knew his reciprocal silence was recognition. And if she burned, she could only imagine how he burned. For of course he knew much more about such matters than she did. Her pillow was probably shocked at the attention she lavished upon it at night.
She occasionally regretted he was a gentleman. The fact that he was meant she was safer, and luckier, than she deserved to be.
But it all meant she felt faintly feverish much of the time. It was a pleasant sort of sick that apparently left her looking even more beautiful, or at least more interesting.
“You look as though you’re in the throes of an opium dream, Olivia,” her brother Ian accused over breakfast, four weeks after Lyon had first joined her on her walk to the Duffys. Her parents had breakfasted hours ago. Olivia, who had tossed and turned and scarcely slept for weeks, was late to the table lately, so she usually breakfasted with whatever brother happened to be home and slowly recovering from a night of doing too much of everything, primarily drinking.
“How on earth would you know that? And what’s wrong with it, if I do?”
“Interesting,” Ian mused. Studying her curiously.
“What is?” she said irritably.
“You just responded to me in full sentences. I haven’t heard one of those from you in a while. And you’re so very fond of sentences.”
He was teasing her, but Olivia was startled. She was vaguely aware her conversation had become somewhat drifty and monosyllabic lately. It was just that conversation that wasn’t with Lyon suddenly seemed a waste of time. She’d talked to these people her entire life. She was only able to talk to him for about two hours every week.
All her senses seemed forever occupied with him, but she had gone so long unable to talk about him that a hair-fine fissure of something she couldn’t quite identify—it felt a bit like anger but might also be fear, or frustration, or some blend thereof—had opened up in her joy. She was swept up in a current and forever adjusting her sails.
But both she and Lyon knew this could not go on forever.
Olivia, who never could bear to be told what to do, knew he would need to dictate whatever happened next. And Lyon was so much more comfortable treating the future like a plaything, for speculation was how men like him and his father grew wealthier.
“How on earth would you know about opium dreams, Ian?” she countered swiftly.
“Er, just a guess,” Ian said hurriedly. “Reached for a metaphor. You forgot to correct my grammar a moment ago, so I wondered if something was amiss. You seem a bit distracted lately.” He pushed the coffee over to her. “This ought to help.”
Olivia poured some coffee and closed her eyes and inhaled its heavenly vapors.
When she opened them again Ian was frowning at her. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were nursing a brute of a whisky headache.”
She snorted. “Naught is amiss. Perhaps I’ve simply given up on correcting your grammar, exhausted from the fruitless effort.”
“Ah, Olivia,” her brother teased. “Never give up on me.”
She smiled at him then and he pushed the marmalade over to her so she could set about painting her bread with it.
Suddenly Genevieve darted into the chair opposite her, startling both her and her brother. “Olivia, will you come with me to Tingle’s today?”
“Er . . . Oh. Um. I cannot. I must to go to the meeting of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor, and then to the Duffys. It’s Tuesday.”
A little furrow appeared between Genevieve’s eyes. “But that’s not until one,” she pointed out gently.
“I’ve things to do until then,” she said swiftly.
An interesting silence ensued, and Olivia realized that Genevieve and Ian had gone still and were studying her unblinkingly.
“Like . . . gazing dreamily off into space?” Genevieve exchanged a swift speaking glance with Ian, who ducked his head. Perhaps suppressing a smile.
Olivia scowled. “Correspondence,” she said loftily. “Regarding my pamphlet.”
She had, in fact, started a letter to Mrs. More some time ago, so this wasn’t entirely a lie. She might even finish it this afternoon.
“Very well,” Genevieve said at last, still frowning a little. Less daunted by the word “pamphlet” than Olivia would have preferred.
Another funny little silence ensued.
“What’s that in your hand, Genevieve?” Ian gestured with his chin.
“Oh, it’s a broadsheet from London.” She brandished it. “I thought I’d read it whilst I had a cup of coffee.”
Ian tipped the pot and a sad brown trickle dribbled into Genevieve’s extended cup. Genevieve eyed it disconsolately.
“We can always get more,” Ian said complacently, and the housekeeper was moving to bring in another pot as he said it. “What’s the latest gossip?”
“Why, are you wondering whether you’re in here?” Genevieve fanned the broadsheet open.
“I shouldn’t be,” he said vaguely. “This month anyway.”
Olivia cast her eyes heavenward in mock dismay. In truth, she enjoyed all her siblings thoroughly, though of a certainty her household was more anarchic than the Redmonds. She also knew instinctively it was a happier one. How fortunate they were to sit here together and laugh and talk and know they “could always get more,” more coffee and marmalade and conversation that would amuse and irritate, such a contrast from the terrifying squalor in which the Duffys lived.
All at once it seemed freshly inconceivable that she couldn’t tell her siblings about Lyon, because sharing the things she loved with people she loved was not only of the chief pleasures of her life, it was fundamental to who she was.
How odd that Lyon could make her world feel so infinite and simultaneously shrink it.
This paradox had begun to feel just a little bit like a vise.
Genevieve cleared her throat and crackled the paper as if preparing to orate.
“Let’s see . . . Lord Ice—that’s what they call the Marquess Dryden, isn’t that funny?—is said to be searching for four black horses with white stockings. How very dramatic of him. The Silverton sisters have returned after a season abroad and are cutting quite the social swath . . . And Lady Arabella, Hexford’s daughter is supposedly about to become engaged, and she’s been in London for a round of social engagements. We saw her once, do you remember, Olivia? She’s blond and so pretty.”
“Better a Redmond leg-shackled than one of us,” Chase said with near-religious fervor, around a bite of fried bread.
Olivia slowly lowered her coffee cup to the table. As if she were suddenly falling and falling and afraid it might shatter when she landed.
“Does it say to whom Lady Arabella will wed?” She could scarcely feel her lips form the words. They sounded bright and brittle in ears.
“All I can tell you is that the betting book at White’s has it that it’s Lyon Redmond,” Ian said, on a yawn.
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 could she have missed it? She was besotted, that’s why. The word “bind” was synonymous with “chained.” Which, coincidentally, suddenly seemed to be wrapped around her heart and squeezing the breath from her.
Did “fate” indeed bind Lyon to a duke’s daughter and a life the duplicate of his father’s?
There was no rule that said love would supersede his sense of duty.
Then again, there was no rule that said it wouldn’t.
“It’s just a stupid broadsheet,” she said so vehemently that both Genevieve and Ian gave a start.
She pushed herself blindly away from the table without saying another word.
LYON LEANED BACK against the elm tree; his heart was pounding so absurdly hard it was a wonder it didn’t rustle the tissue-wrapped gloves he’d tucked into his coat. He had never before really given a gift to a woman who wasn’t his mother, and this gift seemed perfect and yet woefully inadequate all at once. Because he wanted to give her the world.
He did not, however, want to give her the news he needed to deliver.
As usual, when she appeared, the world seemed to flare into double its usual brightness, and he stepped out to greet her, to bask in the light he usually saw in her face.
She kept walking right on past him as if he was the elm tree. Or invisible.
Well, then. Something was clearly amiss.
He fell into step beside her, and reached for her basket. She pulled her arm away abruptly. And still didn’t look at him.
His second rather profound clue that something was definitely wrong.
“Olivia,” he tried.
She sped up just a little, as if the sound of his voice were instead the whine of a mosquito she was attempting to outrace.
He kept pace with her. “Olivia, I can’t stay today. I need to go to London for about a month. I leave tomorrow.”
And that’s when she finally stopped. She looked at him. Her face blanked in shock and disbelief, for all the world as if he’d shot her.
Scarlet flooded into her cheeks.
And then her mouth set in a thin line, and she whipped around so quickly her skirts nearly knocked her down.
But she kept walking.
Much, much faster now.
“Olivia, please talk to me.” He felt ridiculous scurrying alongside her.
She ignored him. Her jaw was as hard as an axe blade, and her nose, while not necessarily pointed skyward, was definitely elevated. For the first time in his life he understood the term “high dudgeon.”
“Olivia. For God’s sake. Stop.”
She halted abruptly and whirled on him. “I thought I told you that I don’t like being told what to do.”
He was utterly unfamiliar with whatever mood this might be, and he was very unaccustomed to flailing. At least she was speaking to him. He thought he’d best take advantage of the moment.
“I’m sorry,” he said carefully. “It’s just that I . . .”
He paused.
“Yes?” she prompted tersely.
“I shall miss you whilst I’m there. In London.”
It wasn’t remotely close to how he truly felt, which was all manner of desolation. And he’d said it stiffly. It was rather impressively difficult to speak into the face of whatever formidable mood she was in.
She didn’t soften in the least.
“Then why are you going to London?” She sounded like a magistrate.
“To give the presentation to the Mercury Club. The one I told you about. About steam engines.”
Her eyes bored into him. “And the Duke of Hexford will be present.”
He fell silent a moment, wary now. “Yes,” he said finally.
“And Lady Arabella will likely be there, too. In London.”
He sighed.
Damn.
How . . . ? Ah. The bloody broadsheets had likely said something about it. Either that, or London gossip had wormed its grimy little way into the Eversea household.
“Not at the Mercury Club meetings, no.”
He understood an instant later that this was a very wrong thing to say. Olivia’s pride or feelings appeared to be ferociously wounded, and teasing was not the way to balm it. He hurriedly amended, “It’s just that I cannot keep making excuses for why I remain in Sussex, and I particularly can’t forestall this meeting. It was planned long ago. I simply haven’t a choice, Liv.”
She stared at him, head tipped as if he were a specimen of some sort pinned to a board.
“No choice but to ride with Lady Arabella in public. And dance with Lady Arabella in public. And walk with her. And talk with her. In public.”
“Lady Arabella doesn’t talk much. Mostly blushes and agrees with things.”
“She sounds delightful.”
He paused to think again, frowning faintly. This angry version of Olivia was very impressive indeed—her eyes snapped sparks, her cheeks were scarlet against cream, her every word was hung with icicles. She was utterly beautiful, and he was tempted to tell her that, too, but he suspected it wouldn’t be at all well received at the moment.
He knew deep hurt when he saw it.
And it was killing him to be the cause of it.
“Some might concur,” he said gently. “I, on the other hand, infinitely prefer speaking to you. No matter what. No matter when. I even prefer having this deucedly awkward conversation with you, with your eyes blazing and your fists clenched and just moments away from stamping your foot.”
There was a surprised little silence, during which he could tell she was tempted to laugh.
Ah, but she was stubborn.
“But you want to go to London.” She said this flatly. Sounding, however, a trifle mollified.
“I’ve wanted to speak to the Mercury Club investors, yes. But no. I don’t want to leave now.”
He’d just said a good deal, and they both knew it.
And a little silence, a detente of sorts, fell.
But for the first time the things they’d left unspoken and undiscussed, because they would have robbed them of the sweet fleeting pleasure of each other’s company, rendered them unable to speak.
Perhaps he ought to let something else do the speaking for him. He took a deep, steadying breath.
“Olivia . . . I . . . I wanted to give you something.”
His hands seemed ridiculously unwieldy and twice their usual size with nerves when he reached into his coat. He fumbled about in there, but finally got hold of the gloves.
He handed the tissue-wrapped bundle to her silently.
His heart took up that absurd pounding again.
She looked up at him quizzically, silently. Her lovely eyes were still blazing with temper and hurt, but he thought he detected a bit of softening.
He held his breath as she carefully parted the tissue and removed, slowly, as if in amazement, those beautiful, long-coveted kid gloves.
She went still.
And then she looked up at him, her face utterly stricken.
Which was all wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
“But . . . these are . . . these are the gloves from Postlethwaite’s,” she said faintly.
“Yes,” he agreed cautiously.
He could hear her breath shuddering in and out.
“Are these . . .” Her voice cracked, and she drew in a long breath. “Lyon, are these a parting gift?”
He was shocked. “No! Good God, no! They’re just—I wanted—”
“An apology for going away to see Lady Arabella?”
“No! Olivia—”
But she couldn’t hear him.
“But I can’t keep these, Lyon. What am I to do with these? I can’t wear them in public. I can’t do anything at all with you in public. How will I explain how I came to have them? What were you thinking?”
She was trembling now with hurt and fury and thwarted longing, and tears were beginning to glitter in her eyes. If he’d ever been tempted to become a rake, now would a good time to start: he could sweep her into his arms, kiss her senseless, and make her forget the reasons she was hurt. It would certainly absolve him of trying to explain himself.
But he quite simply couldn’t do that either to her or to himself.
Becaus
e he would still have to leave her and go to London.
He drew in a breath. Counted to three silently. “Olivia.”
He said it so calmly, so portentously, that she at last went still and looked up at him, breath held. Willing him to say something to make it better.
He took a moment to marshal his courage.
“I want to give you the moon. But I was forced to make do with gloves.”
She made a little sound of pain. As though he’d shoved a needle into her.
Her face suffused with misery.
Too late he realized how that must have sounded to someone whose heart and pride were abraded: as though the moon was no longer on offer, and this was a consolation prize.
“Olivia—”
“Give them to Lady Arabella.” She shoved them back at him.
He took them, stunned.
She turned on her heel and ran as if she couldn’t get far enough away from him fast enough.
Chapter 9
Five weeks before the wedding . . .
ONCE OLIVIA’S TROUSSEAU WAS complete, peace of a sort descended upon the Eversea town house. All the Everseas apart from her mother and Colin had dispersed to Pennyroyal Green or to other parts of England, Genevieve into the waiting arms of her husband.
The next day Olivia was painting her toast in marmalade—it was her tradition to spread it neatly out to the corners before she took one bite—when a footman brought in a tray of correspondence.
“For you, Miss Olivia.”
Olivia frowned faintly at the address written on the front of the letter.
She slit it rapidly and read the few lines.
She lay it down on her plate and stared at it, one hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
“Oh. Oh my goodness. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.”
Her mother dropped her knife with a clatter. “Olivia, good heavens, tell me nothing has—”
She laid a hand immediately on her mother’s wrist. “Everything is fine, Mama. Everything is more than fine. Everything is wonderful.”
Her mother had survived losing a baby, sending sons off to wars and to the gallows, and children off to matrimony with aplomb and extraordinary strength, grace, and humor. But Olivia remained a grave concern, and her mother tried not to show how much of a concern. Olivia knew she’d in part gotten her own stoicism from her mother.
The Legend of Lyon Redmond Page 11