The Legend of Lyon Redmond (6 page)

He ducked into the back of his shop, and they
could hear him rustling about and whistling cheerily and tunelessly under his breath.

Olivia drifted, as casually as she could make it seem, over to the section of history books. Her blood was ringing in her ears, since her heart was circulating it rather enthusiastically.

“
History
books, Olivia? Wouldn't you rather have a look at the horrid novels? I thought I saw
The Orphan on the Rhine
on the shelf. You want that one, remember!”

“Shoo,” Olivia muttered beneath her breath to Genevieve, who had attached herself to her hip.

“I beg your pardon?” Genevieve was startled.

“Er, my shoe. I believe there's a pebble in it.”

“Oh. Well, perhaps you ought to take it off and—”

“Oh look! Mr. Tingle has returned with your books, Gen!”

“Ohhh, lovely!” Her younger sister whirled and all but skipped to the front of the store.

Olivia took a deep breath and rounded the corner of a shelf.

Mr. Redmond was standing there idly, his long form looking as at home there as he did in a ballroom, one leg casually bent, and he was studying the spines of the books as if he had all the time in the world to do precisely that.

A book was already tucked under his arm.

She stared at him.

He didn't even turn. “Well. Good afternoon, Miss Eversea.”

His voice was scarcely above a murmur.

“Why, good afternoon, Mr. Redmond. Have you an interest in history?”

“As a matter of I'm positively fascinated by the events of the past. Specifically, the events of last night.”

“Last night . . . do you mean the first time you stole a waltz?”

He smiled. “I still refuse to feel chagrin.”

“You did indeed do me a charity, for Lord Cambersmith would have trod upon my foot. He always does.”

“You see? I am a veritable Robin Hood of the ballroom.”

“Didn't Robin Hood give to the poor?”

“Oh, but I did. I gave to poor me, who had heretofore gone my entire life without dancing with you.”

She stifled a laugh at that.

He turned. “I have already made a purchase.” He gestured with the book beneath his arm. “I just wanted to make certain I didn't leave the shop before I ascertained there was nothing else in the store I wanted.”

“Very thorough of you,” she said, her voice just barely above a hush. “I should hate for you to forgo something you want.”

He approved of that saucy little sentence with a slow smile she felt in her solar plexus.

“What's that in your hand, Miss Eversea? Have you brought me a love letter?”

Olivia stifled shocked laughter. Then reflexively whipped the pamphlet behind her back.

“I'm terribly sorry, was that too bold?” He was all mock somber contrition.

“Hush. No. I'm difficult to shock. I've a number of rather lively brothers, you know. One becomes inured to being startled.”

“Oh yes. Everyone knows about your lively brothers, Miss Eversea. Very well. Difficult to shock, is it? Have a care, or I may consider that a challenge.”

“I personally find challenges invigorating.”

“Bold words from a woman who doesn't want to
show me whatever it is you're holding, because she's afraid of what I'll say about it.”

Damn. This was precisely true and she blinked at being skewered with the truth.

He raised his eyebrows in a challenge.

“It's true. I
don't
want to show it to you,” she admitted. Quite pleased with him, perversely.

“Oh God. Is it because . . . is it because it's a . . . poem?” he said with such crestfallen trepidation she burst out laughing and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

“If you'd
told
me you liked poetry I would have stayed up the entire night to write a poem about you, Miss Eversea. And I never thought I'd say that to a soul in my entire life.”

“Fear not. It's not a poem. And I shouldn't wish for you to endure that ordeal. Particularly because nothing rhymes with Olivia.”

“Nothing rhymes with ‘beautiful,' either. But for you I would undertake the challenge.”

Her breath snagged in her throat.

She'd heard that sort of compliment a dozen or so times before.

But somehow the way Lyon Redmond said it made her understand precisely what he saw and felt when he looked at her, and what he saw and felt were very adult, very complex things, indeed. “Beautiful” was not a word to be taken, or delivered, lightly.

The backs of her arms heated, and she prayed it wouldn't turn into a blush.

“You
are
very bold, Mr. Redmond,” she managed finally. A little subdued.

“Am I?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “I've never been accused of such a thing. I thought I was simply being truthful.”

“Truthful, and a bit of a rogue.”

He smiled slowly, crookedly, pleased with that assessment, apparently.

“What will you do, Mr. Redmond, if you ever succeed in genuinely scandalizing me?”

“If I do, you'll forgive me straight away.” He said this with a little shrug that was both thrilling and irritating.

She gave him an insincere scowl.

“Come, show me what it is.” He nudged his chin in the direction of what she was holding. “I shan't judge.”

She didn't want to introduce a discordant note into these giddy, stolen few moments of his company.

But she remembered his own truthful bravery of the night before.

And she loathed artifice.

She drew in a bracing breath and sighed it out.

With resignation she turned it around and held it up so he could read the title.

“‘A Letter to His Excellency the Prince of Talleyrand Perigord on the Subject of the Slave Trade,'” he read aloud softly. “William Wilberforce.”

He looked up into her face again.

“It's . . . an antislavery pamphlet.” He sounded faintly confused.

Her heart sank.

He studied her, a question in his eyes, but none of the other things she dreaded: censure or mockery or condescension or boredom or that blank, dull complacency of someone who utterly lacked intellectual curiosity.

He simply waited for her to expound.

“You see, it's just . . .” she faltered.

And now she was abashed.

“What? What is it?” he urged softly, and stepped
closer to her. She recognized it was an unconscious reflex to protect her from whatever was distressing her, to put himself between her and danger or upset.

And it was odd, but she immediately felt sheltered.

Now the back of her neck began to heat, too, and she was worried it would migrate to her face in seconds, and she would be in the throes of a full-blown scarlet blush.

She looked up at him. His eyes were so warm.

“It's just that I cannot bear it.”

She'd never confessed this to anyone, in so many words, anyway. Her family thought Olivia was clever—too clever by half, much of the time—and vivacious and witty, occasionally cuttingly so. Everyone had a role in their family, and this was hers.

But all of these qualities also nicely disguised how much she actually
viscerally
suffered over the world's injustices. How they settled into an aching knot in her stomach and made her restless, and were only eased when she did something, anything about it. She had never tried to truly explain it. It would have confused and distressed them and upset the natural order of the Eversea household, and they would have tried to soothe her out of it, for they hated her to be uncomfortable, when she knew it was a permanent condition.

“Cannot bear it?” he repeated gently.

Her cheeks were hot now. “The Triangle Trade . . . these merchants . . . this illegal practice . . . they buy and sell
people
. They tear them from their homes and families and sell them. Can you imagine your freedom and your home and your life stripped from you? For
profit
. It's . . . really quite unbearable to contemplate, and there's so little I can do to help. And
you see . . . so I read and share pamphlets when I can, and, help out with Mrs. Sneath and . . .”

He was clearly listening intently, but his expression was difficult to decipher. A mix of thoughtfulness and schooled inscrutability. He was listening, but he was also thinking something else altogether.

Shining through all of it, like the sun rising, was a sort of blazing tenderness.

Every jagged uncertain place in her was instantly soothed. She should not have questioned him. Of course he understood. Somehow she'd known he would.

Oh, I'm afraid of him
. But it was a dizzying, gorgeous sort of fear, like standing on a mountaintop and seeing infinity in every direction.

“Why didn't you want to show me?” He was puzzled, gently.

“Well, it's not considered ladylike, is it? Crusades and good works and the like. Or rather, it's an activity for spinsters and bluestockings and young women who haven't dowries, and I'm not one of those. Or for very strident women with booming voices who frighten men. Who do you think of when you think of crusades?”

“Mrs. Sneath,” Lyon said promptly. He looked fascinated.

“And she booms, doesn't she?”

“She
does
boom.”

“My parents don't precisely deplore my interest, but they've taken to changing the subject when I broach it. I do have other topics of conversation. And other interests. I do not always run on and on about it.”

Ironically, she felt as though she was running on and on about it. More truthfully, she was babbling. His gaze, unblinking and unabashedly admiring
and very blue and intent, had sent her thoughts careening off their track.

“The slave trade is an evil practice, a blight upon all humankind. And I can't think of a lovelier quality than compassion. Promise me you will never feel ashamed of it, Miss Eversea.”

She was speechless.

“Promise me,” he insisted fervently.

“Very well,” she said shyly, and gave a little laugh. “But truly? Doesn't that sort of thing bore you?”

“I'm finding it difficult to conceive of a circumstance in which you would bore me. I imagine you're simply
filled
with surprises.”

“Careful, Mr. Redmond, or I may consider
that
a challenge.”

“Even when you're sleeping, I'm certain you're fascinating or at least entertaining. Perhaps you snore or mutter things, like Colonel Kefauver at White's, who talks in his sleep. About tigers eating the natives and the like.”

She ought to have laughed. But her mind's eye was instantly flooded with an image: she was opening her eyes to the light of dawn, and turning her head on her pillow.

To finding him lying next to her, his blue eyes on her, warm and sleepy.

She dropped her eyes, all of her aplomb hopelessly lost.

The silence that followed was filled with the comforting sound of the pages of books being turned, the faint merry lilt of Genevieve chattering with Mr. Tingle.

“Mr. Redmond, I think this is one of the instances in which I may need some time to forgive you for cheek,” she finally said, softly.

He was silent for the time it took her heart to beat twice.

“Was that enough time?” he whispered.

It was, indeed, but she wasn't about to let him know. She simply looked up again through her eyelashes.

He hadn't gotten any uglier while she was looking down.

Though now he looked faintly worried. There was a faint little shadow between his eyes. Her impulse was to take his face in her hands and smooth it away.

She'd never had that kind of impulse in her entire life.

Let alone for someone at least a foot taller than she, like Lyon Redmond.

She sensed he carried more burdens than anyone knew.

“I'm sorry if . . .” he whispered, finally. “I'm not normally so . . .” He made a helpless gesture. “It's just that I . . .”

She shook her head sharply:
Don't be.

She knew what he meant.

And suddenly neither of them could speak again.

The initial giddy rush of words ebbed into a velvety silence. Olivia knew a temptation to close the gap between them and lay her head against his chest.

As if she'd done it dozens of times in her life.

“May I . . . may I have this pamphlet?” he asked suddenly.

“You
want
to read it?” She was skeptical.

He nodded somberly.

So she hesitated, then held it out to him, ceremoniously, with both hands, and he took it as gravely as if it was coated in gold leaf.

It wasn't until their fingers were a hairsbreadth from touching that she noticed his hands were trembling, too.

And as she relinquished the pamphlet, his thumb lightly, deliberately skimmed the back of hers.

A bolt of pleasure traced her spine. Her heart flipped over in her chest.

The first touch of his skin against her skin.

Illicit and far too bold.

And not enough.

Oh, not enough.

She knew it was just the beginning.

“Take this,” he whispered urgently, and thrust the book he was holding into her hands.

“Olivia, Mr. Tingle said he'd—”

Olivia leaped backward as if Lyon was a bonfire and whirled on her sister, who had just flounced innocently around the corner.

“For heaven's sake, Genevieve, you gave me a fright!” she snapped, and tucked the book beneath her pelisse.

Genevieve froze like her father's pointing hunting dog, her eyes perfect saucers of astonishment. “I merely turned a corner, Olivia,” she pointed out, reasonably, because Genevieve was nearly always reasonable, except for the fact that she longed for hair that curled and hers simply wouldn't. “It was
you
who jumped like a trod-upon cat. Wasn't that the Redmond heir? Lyon?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Did he spook you?”