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.
HIS 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.”
“You know me? Do you think you still do? You have a lot of bloody nerve.”
But this was bluster. Because it was true. And in all likelihood he knew this, too.
He’d always been one step ahead of her, after all.
And they were now hurtling headlong toward something she had hidden from herself for years.
The truth.
She couldn’t stop it now if she wanted to.
“I do have a lot of bloody nerve,” he said calmly, relentlessly. “And I do know you. I always thought you were so brave. You were so passionate about the rights of the poor, the downtrodden, the voiceless. A woman who says what she thinks. I admired you painfully for caring so much. I wanted to be worthy of you. When in the end you were only in fact a frightened . . . little . . . girl.”
The words were cold and brutal.
She could feel her very soul shriveling away from the attack.
She was hoarse. “You don’t know what you’re—”
“And you’re still afraid, I’d warrant. You’re afraid of wanting what you think you shouldn’t want. Of how powerfully you feel about things. Of how very, very much . . .” He stepped toward her, and she stood her ground. “. . . how very, very much you wanted me. In every sense of the word. It killed me, Olivia, that you had the courage to fight for everyone else except me. If I was my father’s creation, then you are your family’s creation.”
“Lyon . . . You don’t under—”
He didn’t hear her. All of this, like a volcano, had clearly lain dormant for years.
“I would have given you the moon. And I could have, too, Olivia. I asked for your faith that night. And you returned it with scorn. Because. You were. Afraid.”
It was unbearable.
“Lyon . . . Please . . . you must understand . . .”
“I believed you saw someth
ing fatal and irredeemable in me, and I quite simply couldn’t bear it, Olivia. Now I know that you were just a coward. It really wasn’t more complicated than that.”
The silence was ghastly. It was filled with the roar of their breathing. As if they were grappling gladiators who had finally sprung apart.
Her hands went up to her face and her lungs felt like a furnace as she drew in a ragged hot breath.
The fact was that he was right. Everyone was right about her.
All the rumors and legends were right.
She had broken his heart.
And in so doing, she had willfully, perhaps permanently, broken her own.
And everyone else’s who loved him.
All because she’d been too afraid to fight for him.
Chapter 18
“LYON . . . YOU HAVE TO understand . . . I never dreamed you would leave,” she said brokenly. “I didn’t mean for you to leave. You shouldn’t have gone. You shouldn’t have gone. You shouldn’t have actually gone.”
Her voice spiraled in anguish, the anguish she’d never shown anyone, let alone herself, lest it rip her to shreds.
She dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands.
She drew in a hot, ragged breath. And then another.
And the sob that clawed its way out might as well have been a shard of her own heart.
One ugly, wracking sob followed another.
Old tears. Too long held back.
She had never, never wept for him since he left.
After a moment she could feel him drop to his knees next to her.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. My girl. My sweet girl. For heaven’s sake. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
He said it so softly, almost panicky. He was flailing.
It was almost funny.
No one else called her that. No else had ever thought she was sweet.
No one knew how tender she really was.
No one else had ever been able to really hurt her.
No one else could save her from herself.
And all of this made her throw herself backward on the sand, fling one arm across her eyes, and weep with abandon.
He said nothing.
Perhaps she’d appalled him speechless.
She lay there on the sand, and she didn’t care that her hair would be full of it, or the back of her dress would likely be ruined, or that her dignity was in shreds, and she wept as though it were the end of the world. As though she’d just lost him all over again.
At some point gentle hands tenderly scooped up her head.
She submitted as he thrust a folded coat beneath her as a pillow.
The coat smelled just like him. And just like everything about him, it comforted and stirred.
She heaved a great ragged sigh and sank back into it.
The sobs seemed to be done with her.
She finally peeled her arm away from her eyes.
And blinked, surprised.
It was full dark. Somehow the entire night seemed cleansed. The stars had an almost stinging brilliance.
She felt peaceful and empty and borderless. She might as well have been sand or sky.
Which was how she knew heartbreak had comprised nearly the whole of her for so long.
Now that she’d released it, she didn’t know who she might be.
She lay still in the emptiness.
She let her head loll to the side. There Lyon was, mostly in shadow now, his arms wrapped loosely around his knees, staring out at the water, his profile etched in shadow.
No other soul on the planet would have skewered her so completely. There was a peace in being so known and understood, even if that meant being excoriated.
“You were right,” she whispered. “About all of it. I was—am—a coward.”
He turned to her swiftly. And then he gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Before you do any more self-flagellation, Olivia—not all of which is unjustified—the truth of the matter was that I had to leave Pennyroyal Green. With or without you. And I only realized that recently. Perhaps in the end . . . perhaps in the end it was all for the best.”
His voice was quiet, too, and almost drifting. That’s when it occurred to her that he’d said what he wanted to say to her, and perhaps he, too, was feeling empty and cleansed.
But who were they now?
And were they finally—as he’d said—finished?
How could anything that took them away from each other be all for the best?
But she knew, too, that once Lyon had spoken to his father about her, Isaiah Redmond would have made good on his threat to ruthlessly clip Lyon’s wings: stripping him of his allowance, bullying him into a marriage Isaiah considered appropriate, threatening him with the loss of everything he loved unless Lyon did precisely what Isaiah wanted him to do.
It would have been intolerable for Lyon and intolerable to witness.
“Yes. I see what you mean, Lyon. I do believe you are right about that, too. You had no choice.”
To her surprise, he laughed, a genuine laugh. It tapered into a pleased sigh.
“Oh, Liv. I could almost hear your brain rifling about to arrive at that conclusion. I never did have to explain anything to you. It was always such a luxury . . . You have no idea. Being with you . . . it was like . . . like slipping out of tight shoes. Only infinitely more thrilling, of course.”
She smiled. God, she knew what he meant. Before him and since he’d gone away, she’d either contracted or ever-so-subtly contorted her very being to accommodate nearly everybody else.
She was only ever wholly herself with him.
It was a bittersweet realization.
“And you weren’t completely wrong about me being . . . my father’s creation,” he added. His voice was thicker now.
“I’m seldom completely wrong,” she murmured. “And your father managed to create a few magnificent things. You, for instance.”
Somehow she could feel he was smiling. Just something about a change in the air. As if his mood was her personal weather.
He sighed companionably, and then unfolded his long body and languorously stretched out beside her, his hands clasped behind his head to pillow it.
He did all of this slowly, as if to emphasize how very tall, how very strong, how very dangerously male he was.
That few inches of space between them almost pulsed. And yet it might as well have been the whole of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Lyon?” Sobbing had scraped her voice raw.
“Mmm?”
“I’m so, so very sorry I hurt you.”
Words she had longed to say for so long.
He said nothing.
She held her breath.
For so long the peace they’d created began to gather into tension again, began to ring in her ears.
Forgive me, she silently begged. I need your absolution.
“I thought you despised me.” He’d been gathering his thoughts, clearly.
“I never—”
“And you know . . . I always thought I would die before I hurt you. I would certainly want to kill anyone else who’d dared to hurt you. And yet at the same time I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to care that I was gone.”
He stopped talking.
His breath seemed held.
“Oh God. Lyon. I cared.”
Cracked, whispered words. Yet they managed to contain the desolation of the years without him, and her whole heart.
He sighed, and tipped over on his side, propped his head on his hand, and stared down at her. His face was all shadows and moonlight.
“I’m sorry, too,” he whispered.
And that was done, then.
They let his words hover softly in the air for a while.
“I would have found a way for us, Olivia.”
“I know. I don’t think I ever truly doubted you. It’s just . . . you were older than I was. More experienced. Always a little quicker. Sometimes . .
. it was too much. Sometimes I felt . . . caught up in something, a little pushed. I just wasn’t ready to make that kind of decision that night.”
He took this in with a long breath.
And he sighed. “I was so certain of the rightness of it, I suppose. Of my own rightness. I was so very arrogant. Young and invincible and all that.”
She smiled. “What did we know about love?”
And there it was. The word. Somehow it was easier to say now that they were utterly empty of pretense or defense. She’d lost her fear of it because it was simply truth, something that just was, like the sand below them and the sky above them.
“Love is like a loaded musket,” he mused. “And yet it’s available to everyone. It’s always . . .” He mimed thrusting out a gun. “‘Here you are! Try not to kill yourself or others with it.’ They oughtn’t allow young people near it.”
But they were still speaking of love as if it were separate from them, as if it were part of the scenery, a reminiscence, not a thing that belonged to them now.
She laughed. “Ah, but the species would never perpetuate if the young weren’t idiots.”
He parted his mouth as if he meant to say something. And then stopped, and gave his head a little shake. “The things you say, Olivia. I just . . .” He gave his head another little shake.
Too filled with the pleasure of her to say anything.
She smiled at him.
She listened to him breathing for a moment, and the lick and sigh of waves rushing up to the beach and slipping back out to sea. That was all and that seemed enough forever. It seemed all she’d ever needed.
She’d never said “I love you” to him aloud then. She’d always regretted it.
She was so weary of disliking herself. She was engaged to marry a fine man, who said he loved her, and she’d begun to envision a life with him, a life grand, consistent, respectable, soothing, and safe, surrounded by family, friends, eventually children. A life, and a man, any woman would be proud and privileged to claim.
A man she could imagine one day loving.
She didn’t want to hurt Landsdowne, or anyone ever again, herself included. She was so tired of pain. Perhaps she was simply tired of feeling so very much.
But she couldn’t not touch Lyon now any more than she could keep her heart from beating.
The Legend of Lyon Redmond Page 21