The Legend of Lyon Redmond (29 page)

“Books like that are precious,” she said firmly.

“What kinds of books do you like to read?” he tried, casually. He suddenly very much wanted to know.

“I'd like to read Miles Redmond's books.”

Indicating that she'd reveal things about herself selectively and on her own terms, thank you very much.

A peculiar blend of amusement and irritation surged through him.

She didn't realize how very, very determined he could be.

“I'm sure you can find a set in Tingle's Bookshop,” he said smoothly. “Which is . . .” he pivoted, then pointed up the street. “. . . right over there. You won't need GPS to find it. Miles did make it to Lacao one more time. But he remained in England when his wife Cynthia became pregnant with their first child. They had four sons, and a daughter, as you can see.” He tapped each name gently. “It seemed his destiny was to continue to help the rest of the
world
see
the world. One of them in particular was rather notorious. . . .” he touched a name. “Augustine Redmond.”

“A little notoriety strengthens the bloodline, from what I understand.”

“If you're basing strength on scoundrels, then you'll be delighted to know your blood is strong indeed.”

Gratifyingly, she laughed.

“Redmond Worldwide has branched out into mountaineering equipment, travel gear—nearly everything travel related. Their headquarters are in London, but they have offices around the world.”

“They sponsored an Everest climb a few years ago, didn't they? And weren't they in the America's Cup last year?”

Ah. So she read the newspapers, at the very least. Perhaps business journals.

“Yes. And they've recently partnered with Cole-Eversea for high-performance outdoor wear. Later in life Colin Eversea, Olivia's brother, and a Mr. Gideon Cole founded Cole-Eversea textiles after successfully breeding a sheep with the softest, most durable wool. The business has been in the family—your family—ever since. Colin Eversea and his wife Madeline had children later in life, four of them. Two boys, two girls, all rascals save one, or so I'm given to understand. One of their descendants heads the company.”

“I found my Cole-Eversea sweater in a thrift store.” She plucked at the tissue-fine cashmere cardigan she wore open beneath her jacket. “Otherwise I never would have been able to afford it.”

He froze.

He'd caught a glimpse of something on her breasts when she'd plucked at her sweater.

He jerked his head up and all but glared at her.

“Are you . . . are you wearing a McLusky t-shirt?” He could barely get the words out.

“I . . . ah . . . Yes.” She said this carefully. Startled.

“The band. McLusky.” He said this abruptly.

“Is there . . . another McLusky?”

“I fuc . . . that is, I
love
McLusky.” He said this almost accusingly.

McLusky was difficult to love, too. Noisy, obnoxious, visceral, clever, obscure. He couldn't think of anyone who remembered them.

Let alone a woman.

There ensued a fraught little silence.

She narrowed her eyes. Studying him in a way that meant:
Prove it
.

“I'm fearful I'm fearful I'm fearful of flying and flying is fearful of me,”
he quoted softly, like a soldier repeating a password to a sentry.

There was a short silence.

“Well.” She said cryptically. Imbuing that word with a dozen shades of meaning.

He imagined describing her to his friend Geoff Hawthorne later: “She wore cashmere over McLusky.”

An interesting moment zinged between them.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked suddenly.

“I'm a doctor.”

She blinked. “Doctors, in my experience, usually
lead
with ‘I'm a doctor.'”

He gave a short laugh. “I have a practice, a clinic, in the Sneath Building down the hill—you may have passed it on your way up. I've a partner, Finn O'Flaherty. A lot of local patients. We even do occasional house calls.”

That was all he said. It was his turn to be circumspect.

She just nodded, taking this in. She didn't do what a few too many women did when they learned he was a doctor: fawn. He didn't know why they did that. Apart from the money, doctors often made terrible partners, for so many reasons. The ghastly long and unpredictable hours, for one.

He definitely wasn't the sort of doctor Jemima wanted him to be.

And he was as immovable as the bloody trees in front of him when it came to those reasons for doing what he did.

He looked abruptly down at her iPad again. “Ah . . . now as for the notorious. . . . you'll enjoy hearing about Ruby Alexandra, the daughter of Violet Redmond and the Earl of Ardmay. There are two famous portraits of her—or rather, one famous, one infamous—one at the Duke of Falconbridge's residence, and the other still hangs in Alder House. You can see that one for yourself whilst you're here. She was a spectacular beauty and scandal seemed to dog her. She married her best friend, ultimately. A boy she'd grown up with. John Fountain.
My
forebearer. He was adopted by Philippe Lavay, but he'd been born a bastard. Hardly a suitable match for the daughter of an earl, particularly back then. He sailed off to make his fortune. He did, and then some. You'll find quite a few buildings named for him around England. I understand it was quite the Wuthering Heights story of their day, with a much better ending.”

“Every good story should have a little drama.”

Hmmm. He wasn't certain he agreed. He also wasn't certain drama was something anyone could avoid. Destiny was like a tiger trap. Sometimes you just fell into the pit.

“Speaking of the Duke of Falconbridge. . . .” She
dropped her finger on Alexander Moncrieffe, bound to Genevieve Eversea. “What do you know about him?”

He knew that the current duke's granddaughter was expecting him for dinner, and would be disappointed he hadn't shaved.

But he didn't say it aloud. The omission felt like a lie. He didn't like himself for it, and he didn't understand it. There would be time to mull that later.

“Well, you
are
indeed indirectly related to the current duke. Let's see . . . Ah, Lord Anthony Argosy married the Duke and Duchess of Falconbridge's middle daughter, Grace. Nearly twenty years apart in age when that happened—his first marriage was
not
a success—and her parents weren't thrilled about this match. But the union proved spectacularly happy, and quite bountiful, as you can see.”

He pointed to the abundance of girls and boys fanning out from Argosy's and Grace's little branch of the tree tree.

“Oh, good,” she murmured. “It's always a relief when people go on to be happy.”

Some peculiar emotion—it felt like anger—sizzled faintly on the periphery of his awareness.
Who made you unhappy, Miss Redmond
? He wanted to know. He suddenly wanted vengeance for her.

“I could close my eyes and drop a finger nearly anywhere here on this tree and we'd have a fascinating story. Explorers, actors, politicians, tycoons, soldiers, surgeons, rock stars, body guards . . . were you aware that Colin Eversea's oldest son founded a private investigation firm? It's huge now. Trains and employs bodyguards and the like . . . so if you're ever a visiting dignitary, or married to one, you can call upon them.”

He'd dropped the word “married” into that sentence strategically.

From her brief crooked smile, she knew he was fishing.

And she didn't volunteer any information.

Fair enough.

“And here's an interesting Eversea . . . see, Clive Dunkirk? Drummer in the 70's band Heliotrope?”

“I bought all of Heliotrope's records at a thrift store one day,” she said idly.

She looked up sharply when she noticed he'd fallen abruptly silent.

“You love Heliotrope, too, don't you?” she asked. Sounding almost resigned.

“I'm a fan,” he said, noncommittally.

He passionately loved Heliotrope. Thunderous, complex, frightening, epic. And loud. Everything he'd been inside when he was younger, and he supposed, in some form or another, still was.

She hiked her eyebrows as if she knew the truth.

“You love visceral music,” he hazarded a moment later. As if diagnosing her.

“I love visceral everything,” she said instantly.

This
sounded like a challenge.

Perhaps even an invitation.

Their eyes locked for an assessing moment, and then he dropped his again, uncertain, in truth, what to do about that.

He wasn't often nonplussed.

“Ah . . . and here's an infamous Eversea. Evangeline Moon.”

“Evangeline Moon was an
Eversea
? The actress from the 30s?”

He was very much enjoying watching her face light up when he told her things. Malcolm dragged his finger up along the family tree and stopped it at Adam Sylvaine, then skated it down as he spoke. “She was born Eve Anna Talbot. Eve became a
family name, beginning with Evie Duggan, who was married to Pennyroyal Green's vicar, Adam Sylvaine. The current vicar is a Sylvaine, by the way. But Adam was a contemporary of your Aunt Olivia, her cousin. Anyway, Reverend Sylvaine and Evie Duggan had four children. Long before that there was a rumor Evie Duggan killed her first husband, who was an earl. Which was likely nonsense. A few hundred years later, Evangeline Moon was born in poverty in San Francisco. She inherited both Evie Duggan's looks
and
the scandal-prone DNA.”

“I knew she was from San Francisco. But Gabriel Graham was her true love,” Isabel said firmly. “I had
such
a crush on him when I was younger. I was riveted by his movies. I couldn't believe anyone that charismatic had ever existed.”

Malcolm was so suddenly irrationally jealous of the long-dead, effortlessly cool Gabriel Graham that his finger jerked like a record scratch up to another part of her family tree.

“Now Genevieve Eversea, Olivia's sister, married the Duke of Falconbridge. Their direct descendants still abound in England, all of Europe, really. You may even see them in town while you're here. Unless you blink, because the future duke is usually a blur in that Maserati.”

“Do you know him well, then?”

He pressed his lips together. “He thinks
I'm
a Plebian. His brothers and sister are more tolerable.”

He could imagine Jemima's reaction to being called “tolerable.”

Isabel was studying him, a faint furrow between her brows.

It was perilously close to sunset. He should have left ten minutes ago.

A bird sang a glorious snatch of song, and Isabel
tipped her head back to see if she could find the singer in the tree.

“Do you see something carved there? It looks like an ‘I' and maybe an ‘S.'”

The lowering sun had indeed struck new angles and illuminated hidden nooks. And there it was.

He tipped his own head back. “I think you're right. I-S. I've never noticed it before. As though someone was trying to carve ‘Isabel.'

She drew in a long, audible breath.

And exhaled a shuddery one.

And suddenly, abruptly, she slipped her iPad back into her bag and folded her hands in front of her.

“I'm sorry,” he said instantly. “Is all this history a bit much?”

“No . . .
I'm
sorry . . . I'm happy, actually.” She glanced up at him quickly, then smiled swiftly, but the smile was wobbly. “That was my happy face, honestly. It's just. That I . . . I didn't really know my parents, so . . .”

This sentence trailed into nothingness as she pretended to be distracted by rummage through her handbag.

“Ah,” he said instantly, neutrally, a universe of understanding in that syllable.

Isabel looked up at him again. He had doctor's eyes. A way of looking into you that implied you may as well tell him your secrets, because he knew them anyway.

She was certain
plenty
of women and patients had volunteered their secrets to him.

He wasn't going to find her quite as forthcoming.

She looked forward to his efforts, however.

The silence stretched a bit. She'd created an awkward moment and she regretted it.

He didn't really need to know a thing about her
in order for her to enjoy him, and she'd been so caught up in the momentum of the conversation she'd tripped on her own conversational thread.

“The reason I practice medicine in Pennyroyal Green . . .” he ventured. “. . . . where I was born . . . Sometimes I think it has a bit to do with Jack Fountain, who never knew his own father. Maybe a need to belong, to feel connected to something, is in my DNA.”

She knew why he'd said it: so that she would recognize that her own untold story, however dark or difficult, was simply part of centuries of human experience.

She was very unaccustomed to insightful men.

She wasn't certain how much she liked it

“I wonder if someone might even stand beneath these trees a hundred years from now and tell the story of Isabel Redmond to someone else,” she mused.

He gave a short laugh. “Given your bloodline, it almost seems inevitable. And a hundred years is like yesterday here in England. For example, Isaiah Redmond, Lyon's father, died later in life under mysterious circumstances. There's a faction here in England that maintains to this day that Jacob Eversea—Olivia's father—killed him.”

“No!” she was perversely thrilled.

“Nothing was ever proven, of course. Nothing ever seems to be proved when it comes to the Everseas. They traditionally get away with everything, or so legend has it.”

She smiled at him slowly. She loved knowing roguish blood flowed in her veins. And that her history contained mysteries.

“To this day, there's still a bit of tension between the Everseas and Redmonds,” he added idly. “I
thought I should warn you. In case you encountered a bit of tension during your visit.”