Pennyroyal Green: The Legend Of Lyon Redmond Part 17

The notion that Olivia should feel hurt or ashamed or abandoned, that she should think for a moment that she could bear being apart from him, tortured him at night, and London, which he had always loved, had become excruciating. Time was, once again, his enemy.

To survive, he'd mastered a permanent faint, interested smile. It was as effective as a mask, and he soon discovered it was all that seemed necessary to be considered charming, because he was Lyon Redmond, and everyone was predisposed to think him charming, anyway.

He accepted invitations to dine with old school friends; he spent a pleasant enough few nights at White's, where the waiters greeted him with real pleasure and deference and where old Colonel Kefauver still alternately snoozed, talked in his sleep, and told alarmingly violent stories of his days in India. And would, Lyon thought, until the end of time.

One evening at White's he and his father had settled in at a table with drinks, and when his father pored over the newspaper, Lyon wandered over to the betting book and flipped idly through a few pages.

He froze when his name leaped out at him.

N. Gracen wagers Lord Fincher fifteen pounds L. Redmond is engaged to Hexford's daughter by year's end.

Wagers on his proposed wedding to Lady Arabella already.

Though no one was taking much of a risk at fifteen pounds.

But Arabella was a prize, and anyone's willingness to concede her to Lyon was a way of conceding his own supremacy. Lyon was a prize, too.

At one point in the distant past, perhaps six months ago, this would have brought immense satisfaction.

And now he just felt like a prize bull kicking the walls of his pen.

The bloods at White's were fools. They would wager on anything.

And as he stared at that, he could feel the blood leaving his face.

He must have been white with fury when he turned.

His father was watching him. And he raised his gla.s.s in what appeared to be a toast.

AT HIS FATHER'S request, he persuasively presented his ideas about steam engines and railroads to a group of England's wealthiest men in what must surely be the longest, glossiest table in all of England.

He knew his father envisioned Lyon at the head of it one day.

Lyon, in fact, had envisioned himself at the head of it.

And he did lose himself for moments at a time in the enthusiasm of the investors. He loved clever minds and innovation and the idea of risking for rewards. The discussion grew lively and detailed and Lyon basked in their genuine admiration for his ideas about steam engines. He'd committed his own discretionary funds to the eendeavor.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, old man," was the consensus, as the club lingered over drinks later.

The tree being Isaiah, of course.

Which Lyon supposed was a compliment. He wasn't completely unmoved by it, either.

Isaiah certainly glowed as if it was.

But every bit of it, even this antic.i.p.ated triumph at the Mercury Club, had begun to feel like an interminable dream.

His real life only existed in about hour increments, and only on Tuesdays.

AND HE RODE in Rotten Row with Arabella, who sat a mare beautifully, and who was so accustomed to stares that she never blinked when heads whipped toward them as they rode past. The row was crowded thanks to the weather, and they were seen and remarked upon and he could antic.i.p.ate precisely what the broadsheets would print about it.

"What a magnificent couple," he heard someone murmur appreciatively.

And when he delivered her home again she smiled and blushed with something like apology. For she knew she was too quiet and too shy, and that Lyon was brilliant. Arabella would likely never resist whatever destiny her father planned for her, and suddenly this made Lyon pity her so achingly that he gave her hand a kiss farewell.

He found his father at home when he returned, settled in his favorite chair, one that Lyon could remember always being there, a great enveloping leather behemoth. He was reading a newspaper.

"How was your ride with Lady Arabella?"

"Charming," Lyon said shortly.

He waited another moment, in the hopes that his next words would sound more casual than desperate.

"Father, if you can spare me, I need to return to Suss.e.x."

His father looked up from his newspaper and studied him for a moment.

"Oh? You need to? Why is that?"

"A chestnut mare I've been coveting is at last available for sale. I've put some of my allowance aside for the purchase of her."

He'd prepared the lie as he was riding with Arabella, who was riding a chestnut mare. And Lyon had sunk his funds into the latest Mercury Club endeavor and was awaiting the return. He was hardly currently in a position to buy a mare.

His father lowered the paper all the way into his lap and regarded his oldest son calmly. And it was a moment before he spoke.

"A mare, is it?"

There was something ironic about the words that had the hairs p.r.i.c.kling on the back of Lyon's neck.

"Yes." He was aware the word was faintly defiant, but he couldn't seem to help it.

More silence.

"Very well, Lyon," his father said at last, in a tone Lyon found difficult to interpret. "Go home to Pennyroyal Green. See to your mare. And tell your mother I'll be home in a week."

OLIVIA TOOK A deep breath of clean, free air before she crossed the threshold into the Duffy household, much like a diver preparing to enter a murky sea. Her only responsibility was to leave the food with a quick, charitable smile and then depart-it really was all her parents had given her permission to do-but she never could. It wasn't as though they were chickens in a barnyard, for heaven's sake. She didn't know how any human with a heart or conscience could look about the Duffy house or into Mrs. Duffy's face and not offer some momentary respite.

She'd grown fond of the children, some of them noisy little heathens, some of them angels, all of them, truly, some blend of each, all of them vying for a sc.r.a.p of attention from their exhausted, beleaguered mother and their indifferent, hapless, usually absent father. The children scarcely were allowed to be children, anyway, pressed into service as nannies and cleaners as soon as they could walk.

Olivia tried to give each of them a word of praise, a special greeting, a question that told them that she recognized them as separate little individuals, not a ma.s.s of hungry open mouths. Everyone, she fervently believed, had a right to be loved, to be fed, to be clothed and sheltered. But her attentions were like a drop in an ocean of need.

She settled the basket of food on the begrimed table, whipped open the curtains, and slid open a window, which let out a little of the foul air but revealed the crusty remains of porridge on the stove and the fine layer of dirt that coated everything, children included. The fire was low, and wet clothes draped on the hearth seemed on the brink of mildewing.

Mrs. Duffy immediately began to unpack the basket as her children clamored around her.

"Scones today, Mrs. Duffy," Olivia said brightly.

"Thank you." Mrs. Duffy swiped a strand of lank hair behind her ear. Whatever pride she might have laid claim to had gone down beneath a wave of hungry mouths to feed and soiled baby clouts long ago. She accepted whatever charity she could get.

Had Mr. Duffy ever looked at Mrs. Duffy with a face lit with awe and hunger?

Had Mrs. Duffy's heart ever leaped when she looked at Mr. Duffy?

"Shall I hold the baby for you, Mrs. Duffy, whilst you feed the others?"

Wordlessly, the drawn and weary Mrs. Duffy handed over the baby, a pretty little thing who had once been generous with her laughter, delighted at the newness of the world, even the dusty, grimy, shrill world of the Duffy house. Now she was listless and frighteningly too warm. She'd been unwell last week, too.

Olivia's gut clenched. She looked up, desperate to leave here, desperate to do something to make it better and knowing whatever she did would matter for only a few minutes.

"Oh, sweetheart," she murmured to the baby, who fussed. "Do you think a doctor ought to see her, Mrs. Duffy?" she whispered.

"Of course she needs a doctor, Miss Eversea."

Mrs. Duffy smiled a tight, bitter, faint smile, so resigned that it chilled Olivia's very bones and made her feel abashed and very young. The Duffys could not afford a doctor. Or a headstone, either. The baby, when she died, would likely be buried beneath a wooden cross somewhere behind the house.

Mrs. Duffy would have to keep on living here.

And Olivia could leave.

"I'll see you next Tuesday," she whispered.

She kissed the baby between the eyes and handed her back to Mrs. Duffy, who hoisted her up like the burden she was, not the person she could become if she survived to adulthood.

And Olivia seized her basket and left the house.

She fought back tears as she gulped in huge breaths.

She now understood that Lyon was a grace note on top of all the other blessings in her life. Suddenly not even Lady Arabella or the broadsheets or his father mattered in light of this. What mattered were the moments she had with him.

She was frantic to see him one more time, if only to tell him how grateful she was.

Chapter 10.

IT WAS TUESDAY AT three o'clock, not two o'clock, by the time Lyon was in Pennyroyal Green again. Not even he had yet been able to alter the laws of time, but his horse was fast and the roads were good and he'd all but run from the stables to the elm tree, still dusty from the road.

He stood next to the "O" he didn't dare turn into "Olivia" with his knife. He didn't need to. The word was carved on his heart. But if he was lucky, very lucky-and when wasn't he, for he excelled at making his own luck-he would be able to intercept her returning from the Duffys.

And when her familiar pet.i.te form came into view, he closed his eyes and said a silent hosannah.

He opened them again, and stepped out from the tree slowly, so she wouldn't be alarmed.

She didn't see him. Her head was lowered, eyes on her feet, rather than on the sky and scenery as usual.

His heart lurched. Something was off. It was a bit like watching a kite struggling to get airborne.

She stopped abruptly when she saw him, and clapped one hand to her heart.

And for a long moment neither said anything at all. But her face said everything, and he was certain the brilliance he saw there was a reflection of what she saw in his.

"I thought you were going to be gone for a month," she said softly.

"I invented an excuse to come home."

"I thought you wanted to be in London."

"All I ever want is to be wherever you are."

He literally saw her breath catch when he said it. She moved closer, slowly, as if his expression, his very need for her, was spooling her into him.

Her lovely face was still a trifle guarded.

She lowered the now-empty food basket on the ground.

The silence was taut, their joy in each other all tangled in a net of tension and recrimination and frustration, of responsibility.

"Did you see her?" she asked. But she sounded more abstracted than accusatory.

"If you mean did I see Lady Arabella, yes. I saw her. I danced with her. I rode with her in Rotten Row."

She watched him unblinkingly.

"I thought about you every moment of every day, Liv. I saw you everywhere. In trees, in clouds, in the faces of women who walked by, in the puddle of gravy on my roast beef . . ."

She tipped her head and studied him with those blue, blue eyes, deciding whether she thought this was true. There was a glimmer of what might be amus.e.m.e.nt about the corners of her mouth.

"She means nothing to me. I was like a man in Newgate. I made a mark with a nugget of coal on my bedroom wall for every day I was there."

This made her smile faintly. "You did not."

"I even wrote a poem: 'For Olivia, Who Would Not Accept My Gloves.'"

She smiled in earnest.

"I have learned that everyone else in the world is boring except you."

"It has taken you this long to realize it?" Still, it was a shadow of her usual sparkle.

Now he was truly worried. He stepped toward her, stopped just shy of touching her, but close enough to catch a hint the lavender she likely stored her clothes in.

"Liv," he said softly. "Something is very wrong. Please tell me."