The Legend of Lyon Redmond (5 page)

“And you, Mr. Redmond? Did you disappoint a particular young woman?”

“Dozens of them, likely. There are only so many waltzes during any given ball.”

This was so arrogant she laughed, and he smiled down into her eyes, teasing her. He was laughing at himself.

His smile faded and he grew serious and almost diffident.

“I will apologize to Bumble, and feel I must apologize to you, too. I can't remember the last time I so egregiously abandoned my manners. It's just that I . . . that it seemed important to reach you before you could disappear.”

That little hesitation charmed her. “Disappear?”

He paused again. “The way dreams do, when you wake in the morning.”

The words were gruff. She knew them to be truthful, because she sensed they'd caused him a great measure of embarrassment.

This was first indication that the matchless Golden Boy Lyon Redmond, who towered over her and had shoulders for miles, could be hurt.

Just let anyone try
, she thought fiercely.

She accidentally ever so slightly squeezed his hand.

He returned the pressure subtly.

Never let me go.
An irrational thought, especially since she suddenly wanted the waltz to end so she could dash off, run and run like a firework let loose. Or find a corner and think about all the things she felt right now, all of them confusing, all of them dazzling, all of them filling her a trifle too full. She was not impulsive, and she always liked to know the why and how of things, and she did not know how she had come to be dancing with him. Only
that she would rather be nowhere else in the world than here, in his arms, in this ballroom.

“You've been away for some time, Mr. Redmond,” she said finally. When it seemed he still couldn't talk.

“Oxford.”

“What did they teach you there?”

“Quite a number of things. Latin, cricket, how to get rich. Or richer.”

“Truly? Is there a professor of wealth, then?”

“They all are, if you listen properly. It's how one applies what one learns. And the friends ones makes.”

She hadn't the slightest objection to wealth although she often found its unequal distribution and the results thereof unfair and intolerable, and she was fascinated by this point of view.

“How do
you
intend to become richer?”

“Steam engines. Clever investing.”

“Steam engines?”

“Or rather, railroads. I do believe steam engines are the future of transportation. Imagine, if you will, Miss Eversea, a Great Britain united by rail from end to end. One day you may be in Scotland in a matter of hours. Or Bath. I've also ideas for importing and exporting. I do think the day of the canal will be finite, and—is this inappropriate waltz conversation? Ought I to be complimenting you on your . . .”

A swift glance that took in her coronet, her necklace, the soft fair swell of her bosom peeking very modestly above the lace she'd chosen so carefully for that particular gown.

He said nothing.

But that look poured down through her like hot honey and fanned out through her veins and she knew she was flushing.

“Thank you,” she said, finally, as surely as if he'd spoken.

He laughed again, sounding delighted.

It turned heads, that laugh.

He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The redoubtable Mrs. Sneath is watching. I just saw her turban twitch. I believe it's because her eyebrows went up.”

Olivia laughed, too, charmed to her toes, then stifled the sound, too conscious that the two of them ought not be enjoying themselves so instantly and thoroughly.

“She
is
redoubtable, isn't she? And fearsome. I spend a good deal of time with her on the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor. My job is to take a basket of food for the Duffy family once a week. On Tuesdays.”

“The Duffys . . .” he frowned faintly. “They live in the house at the south end of town, beyond that big double elm tree. The house that's all but falling down.”

“Yes!” She was peculiarly delighted that he knew this. The elm had been split by lightning and had gone on growing as if it hadn't noticed.

“Mrs. Sneath certainly accomplishes things. And has since I was a boy.”

She was suddenly sorry she'd seen him only from a distance when she was a little girl, or the back of him when she was in church, and that she hadn't hoarded every single glimpse to pore over in her mind later.

It occurred to her that they likely knew all the same people and all the same places, but had seen all of them from different perspectives. Their families included.

“I should like to be like her when I am older,” she said.

“You haven't a prayer of being her when you are older,” he said instantly.

She bristled. “And why? I admire her
immensely
. She does so much good.”

He was unmoved by her little flare of ferocity, when she'd seen other men blink in the face of it.

“Oh, I think she's remarkably, admirably effective. Like a general, she identifies needs, rallies the troops, and goes after addressing them quite unsentimentally. But I think it's in part a redirection of her energies due to disappointment. Her boys are mostly grown and I think her husband bores her. I do not believe for an instant, Miss Eversea, that you are destined for that sort of boredom.”

She smiled slowly. The observation about Mrs. Sneath's marriage seemed faintly scandalous, but it reminded her that for all her intelligence, he was still older and more seasoned and he'd seen more of people and the world. She had never thought about it in such terms, and she suddenly wanted to think about every adult she knew in a new light.

Poor Mrs. Sneath.

Lucky her, to have a thrilling life ahead of her.

Lucky her, to be claimed by Lyon Redmond.

“A prophet, are you, Mr. Redmond?”

He smiled again, and his smile made her breath catch in her throat. “Merely very observant.”

They were silent again for a time.

“Speaking of investing, Miss Eversea, I think I'll go to Tingle's Bookshop tomorrow at about two o'clock to see if he's got in any books about Spain. Tingle keeps them near the history section, which, as you may know, is the remotest, dustiest part of the store. In the very back. I suppose it's because many of his customers don't often venture toward those shelves.”

She understood at once.

“Spain is sunny,” she said inanely.

“Yes,” he said shortly. She sensed he'd unnerved even himself.

They were quiet a moment, and then:

“I hate waltzes,” he finally said, so darkly she gave a start.

He noticed her widened eyes and smiled faintly, tautly. “It's just that they are far, far too short.”

She was suddenly too shy to answer.

The music ended.

But her heart was still waltzing.

He bowed, and she curtsied.

He led her off to the edge of the ballroom, returning her to her friends, as if restoring a figurine he'd stolen to its proper shelf.

The next day . . .

A
T TWENTY MINUTES TO
two o clock, Lyon all but flew from his bedroom.

He halted in his doorway, yanked open his desk, and snatched a sheet of foolscap he kept under the rosewood box, the one with the false bottom, a delightful puzzle of a box. He scrawled two short sentences, sprinkled it with sand, willed it to dry
immediately
, which it mostly did, and then folded it and shoved it into his coat pocket.

He paused in a mirror to ensure his cravat was straightened, which proved to be a mistake. Just as he had one hand on the banister—he liked to use it to launch himself a few stairs at a time—a voice stopped him like a wall.

“Lyon . . . a word, if you please?”

Lyon glanced over his shoulder and saw just his father's hand and forearm. Both were thrust out the door of his study and making beckoning motions in the air.

Bloody hell. Summoned to the Throne Room, as he and his siblings liked to call it. He often had pleasant enough visits with his father, but an actual summons seldom boded anything good and was rarely comfortable, particularly for poor Jonathan,
who could, rather amusingly, do no right, and not even for Lyon, who could generally do no wrong but was as conscious of the need for rightness as a horse is of its harness.

He inhaled deeply, exhaled gustily, resignedly pivoted, and strode into the room, aware he was usually a welcome presence and his father sometimes merely liked to beam proudly at him and discuss the latest work of the Mercury Club, which Lyon usually rather enjoyed.

But as he entered, his eyes avoided the clock.

It was his enemy right now, and perhaps time would slow if he pretended it did not exist.

“Good afternoon, Father,” he said cheerily.

“Have a seat.”

Damn. If sitting was required, then something serious was afoot.

Lyon did, pulling out a chair and arranging himself casually in it, crossing his legs and swinging one polished Hoby Hessian.

He could see the reflection of the clock in its toe. Its pendulum kept swinging traitorously.

“Did you enjoy your first ball in Sussex?”

“It's definitely pleasant to be back. Very different from London. I should like to stay a bit longer and rusticate, if no one objects. I've missed the country a good deal, I realize.”

It was his way of preparing his father for the fact that he didn't intend to leave Pennyroyal Green anytime soon.

“We always enjoy having you about, Lyon. Did anything else interesting happen last night?”

“Saw a few old friends.”

“Such as young Cambersmith?”

“Yes.”

All at once suspicion flared bright and hot and he was, in an instant, on guard.

“His father mentioned that you danced with Miss Olivia Eversea. Stole a waltz right out from under his nose.” His father sounded faintly amused.

Just the very words “Olivia Eversea” made the back of Lyon's neck warm and tightened the bands of his stomach.

He would not look at the clock he would not he would not.

“Yes. I believe I did. Among other girls.” Whose names he could not remember even if someone had pointed a pistol at his head. “Isn't it funny that Cambersmith would tattle?” He smiled faintly.

His father was silent. Never a good sign.

Lyon and his siblings had more than once jested about his father's green eyes. They suspected he could see like a cat right through to any secrets hiding in what he no doubt (affectionately, one hoped) considered the black little hearts of his sons, as well as his one quite lively daughter. He'd always seemed to know who'd gotten jam on the banister, or who had accidentally shot the foot off the statue of Mercury in the garden, or who had stolen a cheroot from the humidor.

His father steepled his hands and tapped the tips of his fingers lightly together.

Which was peculiar, as his father was neither a fidgeter nor a procrastinator. He preferred to deliver orders and news the way a guillotine delivers a nice sharp chop. Swiftly and surgically.

“Did one of your brothers or friends dare you to dance with her, or . . .”

Lyon blinked, genuinely surprised. “I'm sorry?”

“You're sorry for dancing with her?” His father sounded faintly relieved.

“Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, sir, but I don't understand the question. Why would anyone dare me to dance with a young woman who doesn't want for partners and would hardly be likely to refuse
me? We
are
Redmonds, after all.” He said this half in jest.

It was the sort of jest his father typically enjoyed.

It rang flatly in the room.

Lyon dancing with an Eversea was aberrant, and they both knew it. Because Lyon was dutiful, and he had been raised with the notion that the Everseas and the Redmonds quite simply did not dance with one another, any more than cats and dogs enjoyed a good waltz.

“Why, then, did you dance with her?”

Lyon stared back. He saw only his own reflection in his father's eyes.

He wickedly contemplated saying,
Because she is my destiny
just to see whether his father was too young for apoplexy.

He'd never even known he was capable of thinking such words. Let alone believing them.

And then all at once it wasn't funny.

He decided to try cajoling. “Come. You've eyes in your head, Father. And you were young once. It was an impulse, I suppose.”

His father would likely disinherit him at once if he'd said,
Because she reminded me of the first wildflower in spring
. His father considered excessive use of metaphor a character flaw.

His father smiled, faintly and tautly, a smile in which his eyes did not participate. “I was, indeed, young. Once.”

It was as ironic a sentence as Lyon had ever heard.

Something about it stirred a faint memory, a suspicion he'd had for some time. Because he was, as he'd told Olivia Eversea, indeed observant, and he'd seen his father's eyes linger ever so slightly on a particular woman more than once.

He cautiously echoed his father's faint smile with
one of his own. Over the years he'd learned to modulate his emotions, his expressions, his word choices, all in order to ensure his father remained indulgent and proud, because that's what ensured a comfortable life in the Redmond household.

“And yet you're not typically impulsive, Lyon.”

“No. I suppose I'm not.” He knew better than to expound.

Lyon was in fact demonstrably the opposite of impulsive. He hadn't squandered his allowance in gaming hells, impregnated the servants, or appeared in the broadsheets for cavorting on Rotten Row with notorious aristocratic widows.

Though he had indulged in an aristocratic widow or two. Sometimes he thought God had created aristocratic widows for the sole purpose of indoctrinating handsome heirs into carnal pleasures. But he was both discreet and discerning.

From the moment he was born Lyon's responsibility as future head of a dynasty had been impressed upon him, the way a signet ring grinds into hot wax.

He was coming to realize his learned carefulness was something of a useful skill.

He was also beginning to understand the grave cost to himself.

So he said nothing more.

But God help him, he darted a swift look at the clock.

His father usually missed nothing. But if he noticed that glance, he didn't remark upon it.

“Lyon . . . you should know how proud I am of you. A man could not ask for a better son.”

He said this so warmly that despite himself, Lyon nearly flushed. His father's pride and approval was as potent as his censure, and his three sons, despite themselves, had lived for it their entire lives.
His brothers usually had to make do with whatever splashed off Lyon and landed on them. (Their sister, Violet, occupied her own category. Every one of them doted on her, his father included, and she was in danger of becoming hopelessly spoiled.)

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your future with the Mercury Club is brilliant. The world is your oyster. You have not only your family name to thank for this, but your focus and intelligence and discipline. There will, in fact, be an opportunity in a few weeks for you to accompany me to London to present your ideas for investment to the members of the club.”

Yesterday this would have been dizzying, gratifying news. It was everything he had always hoped for.

But oddly, now a trip to London sounded like a trip to purgatory. Heaven, as far as he was concerned, had a population of two.

“Thank you, Father. I should be honored.”

“You are poised now to make a magnificent marriage, as I did, one that will bring a wealth of blessings and stature to the Redmond family for decades to come. I know your suit will be welcome by one young lady in particular, and her family will welcome us to London, too.”

Lyon was wary now. The name of some girl would likely be produced any moment. A girl with a title and a fortune and a father with connections that Isaiah could charmingly exploit in the service of building the fortune.

In all likelihood, Lady Arabella.

Yesterday Lyon would have been curious to hear the name. He'd, in fact, had several names in mind not too long ago. Yesterday, Lady Arabella would have seemed a perfectly reasonable, indeed, desirable choice. It was a choice he understood, and
he'd been raised with the knowledge that making a spectacular marriage, and conferring the associated kind of honor and influence upon his family for generations to come, was his duty.

He knew, definitively, that it no longer mattered what his father said.

Lyon now knew who and what he wanted.

And before yesterday, he hadn't even known what it was to truly want.

“I always hoped to marry as well as you did, Father.”

Lyon thought he saw a flicker in his father's eyebrow region. He could have sworn something about that sentence had touched Isaiah on the raw.

Isaiah finally merely nodded once. “Nothing makes me happier or more proud than knowing I can count on you to do the right thing, son, for your actions are a reflection of your fine character. I am absolutely certain you will never disappoint me or bring shame to our family, and this is such a comfort to me and your mother.”

It was as though he could will these things into existence by merely stating them.

Lyon had always been fascinated by the fact that Isaiah could persuade nearly anyone of anything. He'd watched his father subtly but relentlessly ply wit, charm, and strategy in meetings at the Mercury Club, over drinks at White's, milling about with port and cigars after dinner parties. He studied people for weaknesses, strengths, fears, and proclivities, and he used them to his advantage the way conductor shapes a symphony. Lyon had witnessed one wealthy investor after another succumb to his father's tactics, none the wiser. Thusly the Redmond fortune and influence grew and grew.

It was an extraordinary talent, his father's intel
lectually driven intuition, and Lyon had always been secretly proud of it.

But now that Isaiah was employing the same tactics on him, it seemed faintly sinister.

Lyon's skin itched. As if strings binding him were chafing.

It was not the first time he'd had these sorts of thoughts. Almost two bloody o'clock in the afternoon would not go down in his personal history as the hour of his epiphany.

But it had finally come completely into focus, and with it came an interesting sort of calm.

Lyon was a separate person from his father.

He did not like to be told what to do.

And, like his father, he intended to get what he wanted.

“Thank you, Father. Your opinion means the world to me.”

His father said nothing. He pressed his lips together thoughtfully.

The clock ticked inexorably on. It was now
bloody hell
two o'clock.

Lyon shifted slightly. The message he'd shoved in his pocket rustled.

He finally could no longer bear it. “Will that be all, Father?”

“I hope so,” his father said. And smiled faintly.

I
T HADN'T BEEN
difficult for Olivia to persuade Genevieve to accompany her into town to Tingle's Bookshop the following afternoon. Genevieve
loved
Tingle's Bookshop, and Tingle was fond of the Eversea girls. They were two of his best customers, after all, between Olivia and her pamphlets and love for a good horrid or adventure novel, and Genevieve
and her predilection for florid romances and biographies of great artists and the occasional indulgence in a London broadsheet, which usually made both her and Olivia giggle.

But Olivia rose late, because visions of waltzes had kept her feverishly awake all night. And Genevieve dawdled at home, because she was attempting, and failing, once again to curl her hair, and Olivia thought her head might launch off her neck from impatience as the clock raced toward two.

It was a quarter past two by the time they arrived.

They burst in the door and both paused on the threshold to inhale at once the singular perfume of leather and paper and glue that characterized Tingle's. It was a roomy shop, serving all of Sussex, and it was partly sunny, so that people could admire the gleaming of gold-embossed bindings and comfortably flip through a page or two of books that had already had their pages cut, and partly softly dark, to keep the fine covers from fading.

A few other people were in the store, two older gentlemen and a woman, and all were absorbed in the separate little worlds of their books.

Tingle looked up, beamed, and bowed as if they were princesses. “If it isn't the Eversea girls! What wonderful timing. Miss Olivia, I've a new pamphlet for you.”

Mr. Tingle lived to serve his customers.

Olivia seized it delightedly. “Oh, wonderful, Mr. Tingle. So very kind of you to remember to get it in for me.”

“Oh, it's no trouble at all, my dear. And Miss Genevieve, I've a shipment of books I
know
you'll want to see,” he said, twinkling. “It's in the back, however.” He beamed at them. “I'll be just a moment.”