The Legend of Lyon Redmond (23 page)

“Liv . . . Liv . . . oh my God,
Liv
.”

And just like that they were both in the throes of release, their screams echoing, water rippling out from them.

H
ER LEGS STILL
wrapped around him, he carried her effortlessly toward the shore, then tipped her backward on the beach onto the blanket he'd spread, then sprawled flat out next to her.

They lay there in a stupor of contentment for a time.

She absently traced the lines of him. Drew her finger around that round scar. She recognized a musket ball wound when she saw one.

Someone had shot him.

He had lived.

She suspected she knew why he'd been shot, and how he'd been shot, and was amazed to find that the reason didn't bother her in the least.

She would find out soon enough, because she intended to ask him.

“May I confess something?” She said this dreamily.

“Certainly.”

“I should like to bite you.”

“Bite me? What have I done to deserve such ill treatment?”

His voice was as languid as someone who'd drunk a half bottle of laudanum.

“It's just that your skin is so smooth and a delicious color, like toasted bread, or a biscuit. Just a little nip.”

He smiled dreamily. “I'll allow it.”

“Is it in the book of rules, then?”

“Oh, there's no official pamphlet, or anything of that sort, if that's what you're wondering. But all manner of things fall under the rubric of sex. If it
can be imagined, someone has likely tried it and enjoyed it. Or died trying.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You're not jesting.”

“As enjoyable as it would be to tease you, no. I'm far too replete to make anything up at this point.”

“I like everything we've done so far.”

“Good God, so have I.” He stretched languorously, like a cat, his words a contented slur.

She leaned forward and with her teeth, very delicately, nipped at his chest, and his hand went up to cup the back of her head, his fingers threading through her hair, which was already nearly dry.

“Nice,” he murmured.

“You are beautiful, too,” she whispered.

“Shh,” he said rudely and sleepily, but she didn't mind.

He yawned mightily and looped his arm around her and pulled her into his body as he drifted off to sleep, as if she were the only thing anchoring him to earth, and he wanted to bring her with him into his dreams.

She followed him there moments later.

S
HE STIRRED FROM
a nap because the sun had traveled and was now beaming down on her bare belly.

She tilted her head.

And her heart skipped.

For there he was. Those eyes of his, and his increasingly bewhiskered face. Gazing warmly at her.

So like she'd imagined that day in Tingle's Bookshop years ago.

He reached for her hand and twiddled her fingers idly.

“What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

“Does it matter?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

His voice had that lovely fresh out of sleep rasp.

“No,” she said, and stretched, pointing her toes.

Her leg was pressed against his hard furred one.

He was gazing at her with something like bemused awe.

She was basking in his admiration, feeling beautiful, until he said: “I had no idea your hair was so . . . enormous.”

“I . . . what?” She clapped her hands to her head.

“It's gone very fluffy and tall and just vast. You could wear it into battle proudly and terrify your enemies.”

She couldn't stop laughing. “Hush!” She smoothed it down frantically.

Her body was deliciously sore in so many places, but she now recognized an unfamiliar feeling about her rib cage, too.

It was from laughing until she ached.

She didn't think she'd done that since . . .

Since the last time she'd laughed until she ached with Lyon.

“It's splendid hair. Truly. It's very interesting.” He captured it for her, skeined it around his hand idly. “And soft. Well done, growing such hair.”

He was relentless, and now she was laughing helplessly.

“Here, have it back.”

He unspooled her hair from his hand, and casually draped it instead across her face.

She pushed it away.

“Said the man who has a good deal more hair than he needs on his face at the moment. Not to mention a queue. As if you were a pirate.”

Her second strategic use of the word that day.

Something flickered in his eyes then. He casually rolled away from her onto his back and looked thoughtfully up at the sky, hands folded behind his head.

Her heart gave a little lurch.

Lyon had something on his conscience. And she suspected she knew what it was.

“Would you like me to shave?” he said finally.

“Would you do it?”

“Of course. Tell me what else you'd like me to do for you. Or to you.”

“Surprise me.”

“Don't I always?” he murmured.

He leaned over and touched his tongue, very lightly, to her nipple, then drew it into his mouth and gently sucked.

“Will that do for a start?”

“Dear God,” she rasped, as a white-hot shock of pleasure rayed through her limbs.

He drew leisurely hard circles around her nipple with his tongue, then introduced his teeth lightly into the surprise, while his hand wandered to cup and stroke her other breast. Drunk with the astonishing bliss, she sighed and arched into it.

He kissed a soft trail down, down the seam that divided her ribs, dragging his fingers in the wake of his lips, and he nudged up one of her thighs and without further preamble, delved his tongue into the hot, velvety, very damp core of her, and licked. Hard. Slowly. Deliberately. Again, and then again. His tongue darted, stroking, diving, his fingers playing delicately with that tender, excruciatingly sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs, and she arched to meet him, undulated to abet him, to greedily take in this extraordinary new pleasure.

“Lyon . . . Oh God . . . Oh God . . .”

And as she screamed his name, her fingers knit through his hair and she bowed upward, feeling as if she might break in two from the explosive pleasure.

He rose up over her, and as she was still pulsing with release, he seized her hips and lifted her so he could be inside her in one thrust.

Slowly, slowly, this time. Savoring every inch of her, torturing himself, teasing her. She watched him, and the sun behind him gave him a corona, and his face was all shadow apart from his eyes, first brilliant flashes of blue, then closed, as his head tipped back and his own release rocked through him.

T
HIS TIME HAD, INDEED,
been humbling and surprising for both of them.

Somehow it was now definitive: their desire was bigger than both of them. There was an endless supply of it, and the more they indulged, the more there was of it.

He was still catching his breath, one hand absently, idly, stroking her hair as she lay burrowed somewhere between his shoulder and armpit.

“Lyon . . .”

He lifted his head when he heard the tone in her voice. Instantly wary.

“Are you Le Chat?”

He went absolutely rigid. Very like a sword in a scabbard, for that matter.

He rolled away from her, onto his side, and his hand went down as if he was indeed reflexively reaching for a sword.

He caught himself in time and then fixed her with an inscrutable stare that she could have sworn contained something of admiration for arriving at that conclusion.

“Why do you ask?”

“The simplest answer would have been no.”

He was studying her shrewdly for signs of accusation or hysteria.

She thought perhaps she was too permanently sated for hysteria to ever take hold again.

Then he rolled over flat on his back and stared up at the sky.

She could say now,
I was jesting. Of course you're not a feared pirate.
She could release him from the question, so she wouldn't need to bear the burden of the knowledge.

But in the silence he was gathering his thoughts, and she could not go on without knowing.

She waited. A gull wheeled above them, and Olivia moved closer to him, pressing her thigh lightly against his. So he would feel safe telling her the truth.

He drew in a long breath, then blew it out at length. Clearly considering how to begin.

“Five years ago . . . I came, quite by happenstance—which means I charmed a drunk man into telling me at a dock pub one night—into possession of some sensitive knowledge. An investment group was engaged in the conversion of cargo into slaves. They owned a fleet of five ships.”

She tensed at the idea of slave ships.

He sensed it. He took hold of her hand and threaded her fingers through it, comforting her, holding her fast.

“They had already made multiple trips, successfully eluding the law, bribing just the right authorities apparently, and getting wealthier and wealthier from the sale of human beings. My personal wealth as a merchant—I adopted another name as a merchant—was burgeoning and my reputation was growing. I was approached as a potential investor in this hideous practice through a third party—
exchanging cargo for humans and back again. As you may have guessed, I demurred. Diplomatically.”

She held his hand tighter.

“But there existed—exists, I should say—people in all walks of life who find the slave trade as abhorrent as you or I. And to put it succinctly, I discreetly gathered a crew. And my crew and I boarded each of these ships in turn by night, removed their cargo, be it silks or spices or what have you, put their crews into boats, and set them adrift, and then we—”

“And then you blew the ships to smithereens.” She breathed wonderingly.

Which would have essentially destroyed both the group's profits and eliminated any opportunity they might have to try again. Salting their earth, figuratively speaking.

And frightening the devil out of anyone who might want to traffic in slaves, ever, in European waters.

Very, very thorough. So much more thorough than merely alerting the authorities. And he had of course thought all of this through to this conclusion.

He turned to look at her. “Yes.”

The word was gently delivered. But completely unapologetic.

“And by boarded, you mean wore a mask and used swords and guns. And removing the cargo, you mean stealing it. And by putting them into boats, you mean putting them into boats at sword and pistol point.”

She couldn't believe she was uttering those words, in that order, to Lyon Redmond.

“Yes, to the mask. When necessary, regarding the use of swords and guns.” He paused. “It frequently was necessary.”

And then he actually smiled again. Albeit faintly.
And it was a very unnerving, yet strangely thrilling, smile indeed.

She couldn't breathe.

“I know it was madness,” he said, thoughtfully. “But I needed madness. I
was
mad. So I sought madness. And I found a way to expend it in a way I could justify, and that was very, very satisfying indeed.”

He had put himself in harm's way. Over and over.

Then again, he had won the Sussex Marksmanship Trophy three years running.

The fact that he still lived was testament to how entirely skilled and clever he was. But then, he'd always been a planner.

He had rigidly followed rules for the first part of his life. But oddly, he seemed to have been born to make his own laws. He'd done it the first time he'd stolen a waltz from Cambersmith.

She had, in some ways, set him on this course. She smiled slightly at this thought.

She waited, thinking she ought to decide how to feel about this revelation. But she already knew.

A surge of fierce, possibly unseemly, happiness took her.

“And yet no one ever knew it was you?” she said on a hush.

“As I said, merchants in Europe have come to know me under a different name. And they know me as a trader who drives a hard bargain, but who is fair and reliable and very, very prosperous indeed, and committed to making others prosperous as well. As well as a dazzling conversationalist, a fine dancer with exquisite manners, catnip for women, and a welcome addition to dinner parties all over the continent.” He smiled faintly at this, and gave her hand another squeeze. “Only two men and one woman ever suspected the truth, and they in fact
nearly cornered me. Two of these people are married to each other—my sister Violet and the Earl of Ardmay—and the third owes his life to me.”

“
Violet?
”

“Oh yes. My sister is so much more than anyone realizes. Of my crew, only Digby and my first mate know I am Lyon Redmond.”

She tensed as she recalled something.

“You said five ships . . . but more were said to have been destroyed by Le Chat . . .”

“Ah. A pirate, and not a very good one, decided to impersonate Le Chat and seized a few ships and caused some havoc. A bad man, indeed. He had nothing to do with me. And I know this strains credibility indeed, but my sister shot him to save the life of her husband.”

She rolled over to stare down at him. “Violet shot a
pirate
? A real pirate?”

He smiled at this. She suspected he was enjoying, just a little bit, startling her.

“A story for another time. Everyone underestimates my sister. Then again, perhaps it's what families are for, and we all have to battle our way out of preconceptions, and some of us have to fight harder to be seen than others. And if we're fortunate, we find someone who sees us for who we are.”

And that's where they both fell silent.

Olivia didn't need to say anything.

Because this is what they were for each other. And as he'd said earlier, it was a rare, rare luxury. She'd always wondered whether she even deserved to be loved the way he loved her. But now she knew he simply needed her.

They were quiet. She traced that white musket ball scar on his abdomen gently, then pressed her lips against it.

His chest rose and fell in a sigh, and he threaded his fingers through her hair, gently, stroking.

“I have, in fact, learned that people see what they want to see, and that context is everything,” he said. “I said I was a merchant, and no one thought I was anything other than what I purported to be. As the Redmonds do not yet own the world, I've never been recognized. I've of course also been very careful. Interesting, but everything I ever learned, from shooting to fencing to investing, turned out to be very useful indeed.”

He flashed a wicked little smile.

She absorbed this thoughtfully. “And so the houses, the land, the . . . you paid for it by . . .”

“We took the cargo the ships were carrying and intending to convert into slaves,” he continued calmly. “We dispersed it, selling and trading it so that its origins couldn't be traced. After that, I paid my crew—very, very well, I might add—invested the money in legitimate cargos and other ventures, all quite orthodox and above-board . . . and anonymously donated the rest to the likes of Mr. Wilberforce and anyone else committed to abolitionism and reformation of laws.”

She was frozen with what was likely an inappropriate admiration. She simply could feel only two things: she was glad he had done it, and she was glad he'd survived it.

“And now?” she said softly.

“And now I am done. I will be selling
The Olivia
to my first mate, and my crew and I . . . we shall all go our separate ways. I doubt I'll see any of them again.”

She propped herself up on her elbow again so she could look down into his face. They were quiet for a time, his fingers tangling idly in her hair.

A question haunted her. She thought she knew the reason, but she needed to say it aloud.

“Why did you do it?” she whispered.

He was silent a moment, thoughtful.

And then his mouth quirked at the corner.

“Because you couldn't.”

He said it gently. But deliberately. Ruefully. Laying those words out as if delivering a truth.

Just the way he'd done the night he'd left:
What if loving you is what I do best?

It was indeed what he did best.

He had gone and proved it.

Her breath snagged in her throat.

She saw herself reflected in his eyes. And that was how both she and Lyon had seen the world for years: through the lens of each other.

He held her gaze evenly. She knew how she probably ought to feel.

And then there was the truth.

“Thank you.” She gave him the words, slowly, fervently. Her voice frayed and thick. Tears burning at the backs of her eyes.

The hush that followed was profound and soft and humbling.

They remained silent, honoring a love so immense and pure and unapologetic words would have seemed like a desecration in the moment.

It had belonged to them once.

But she still didn't know whether it belonged to them now.

I
T SEEMED A
terrible pity to put their clothes back on, but they did, in order to walk to the house. But Olivia carried her shoes, so she could feel the sand between her toes all the way.

And then, just for fun, Lyon carried her on his back up the hill to the gate.

“Ho, Benedict! Faster, faster!” she cried.

“That's not what I said to my horse when I rode him,” he said indignantly, which made her laugh.

She rewarded him by slowly hand-feeding him slices of oranges in the house as the sun lowered. They feasted on bread and cheese and fish and wine until they were sleepy and and sated, and then they curled up next to each other on the cream brocade settee, and the conversation meandered from topic to topic the way a bird flits from tree to tree, simply because it can, taking pleasure in flight. She told him about her cousin, the new vicar, and the uproar he had caused, and about Colin's return from the gallows, and about Genevieve and the duke. He told her about some of his travels, leaving out, she was sure, the violent parts and leaving in only the beauty.

He was her best friend. She was again reminded that every single thing, from the profound to the mundane, was better when Lyon was added to it.

But it was déjà vu, too. Once again they skirted the things they ought to talk about and avoided difficult questions. Once again their time was finite. Once again a marriage loomed over them, and this time it was Olivia's.

“How did you get a sugar plantation, of all things, in Louisiana?”

“I purchased it from a man who was up to his eyes in gambling debts. Naturally, I got it cheaply.”

“And you've been to see it? What is Louisiana like?”

“Steamy. Green. Beautiful. Mysterious. Wild.
Very
different from Sussex. The funny thing is, there are alligators, but no crocodiles.”

“Do you ride them?”

“Naturally. I've a stable full of them. All named after you.”

She laughed. “You didn't arrange to have that awful song composed, too, did you? The way you orchestrated the various modistes?”

“I wish I could take credit, but it really was a matter of the stars aligning, and so forth. Didn't I tell you I would one day become a legend?”

“You did, indeed. The song was awful, but Rowlandson at least got your thighs right.”

“Did he? How so?”

She dragged her hand along one to watch his eyes darken, stopping tantalizingly just shy of his cock. A wanton thing to do, but nothing had ever felt more natural.

“They
are
very hard and very beautiful.”

He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers softly, lingeringly. As if they did indeed have all the time in the world.

“I remember when I could only touch you here,” he murmured against her mouth, and skated a finger slowly, slowly along the neckline of her dress, leaving a trail of sparks in its path. “And here.”

He tugged at the hem of her dress, and she raised her arms so he could lift it from her head. And when she was entirely nude, he pulled her across his lap and she hooked her arms around his neck. Her eyelids were growing heavier.

“And I dreamed of touching you like this.” He skimmed his hand along the inside of her thigh and her legs slipped open to allow him, to tempt him closer. “And like this.” He dragged his hand across her belly, and feathered his fingers open over her breast.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and they
met it in a kiss that left both of them breathless. His fingers trailed inside her thigh, and then glided through her damp curls, and lingered there, gliding slowly, circling softly, delving.