Pennyroyal Green: The Legend Of Lyon Redmond Part 25

The way his clothes fit, their quality . . . it was clear they were staggeringly expensive. He almost looked as though he could have stepped out of White's an hour or so ago.

But something was different.

His hair, black and always p.r.o.ne to waving, was long enough to be pulled back into a short queue. And his face was sun-browned.

It made his eyes so.

d.a.m.ned.

Blue.

And when he suddenly became brilliant and convex she realized her own eyes were welling with tears.

He produced a handkerchief with magical immediacy and thrust it out.

Their hands did not touch when she took it. Instantly, an old reflex, she ran her thumb over the corner, and there they were: "LAJR."

Lyon Arthur James Redmond.

"It's shock. That's all. Just surprise." She sounded remarkably calm in her own ears, but she might have been hearing someone else speaking through gla.s.s.

So those were going to be the first words she said to Lyon Redmond after all these years. It's shock. That's all. Just surprise.

Mundane and not at all true.

"Is that so? Are you certain those aren't tears of joy?"

He'd never spoken to her in that tone before. All dark irony.

He'd never spoken to her with anything other than affection.

"Humans either faint or weep when shocked. If we emitted a lavender scent instead I'm certain I would have done that."

He laughed at that, sounding startled, because who wouldn't? It was an absolutely ridiculous thing to say.

That laugh.

The sound she'd once loved more than any other sound in the world.

And suddenly all of it . . . her name spoken in that quick, gruff voice, his handkerchief with his initials in the corner that she used to run her thumb over and over, because they were precious because they were his . . . all the things that were the same about him and the things that were different about him . . .

All of it, all of it made her blackly furious.

She thrust the handkerchief back at him, because she wanted to kick him.

He took it with a surprised grunt.

Good G.o.d, his abdomen was hard as a rock.

He was motionless a moment, staring down at the handkerchief as if she had indeed shoved a sword in.

And then he looked up at her and folded it neatly, deliberately, and placed it back in his pocket.

As if to demonstrate his total composure in the face of her loss of it.

And then he looked up slowly and studied her. Almost dispa.s.sionately. Measuring her as he would an opponent.

She wondered if he knew how much he looked like his father when he did that.

Once she could all but read his every emotion. But that was because he'd trusted her. Somehow over the years Lyon had learned cold, hard inscrutability, that air of looking at someone through a magnifying gla.s.s.

She supposed she had herself partially to thank for that, too.

She stood and withstood his scrutiny, wondering what he saw.

How had she changed, or had she?

He'd once traced her lips with a single finger, as if he wanted to imprint the memory of her on his soul.

Perhaps since he'd left, a dozen other women had diluted the memory of her.

Her shoulder twitched, as if it sensed her intention to whirl on her heels and flee.

But she couldn't seem to complete the motion any more than a tree could uproot itself and take a stroll across the Suss.e.x downs.

He seemed to sense her impulse to flee.

"Olivia."

It was her name, all right, but it was another tone she'd never before heard him use. No ardor, no cajoling, no playfulness, no tenderness.

It was quite distinctly a command.

Very nearly a warning.

And this was when sense finally jostled aside the confusing tide of dammed emotion: he might have been torturously vivid in her memories and dreams.

But he was, in fact, a stranger now.

And he didn't like her.

"Yes?" she said. She attempted to mimic his cool tone. She was still shaking. She hid her trembling hands in her skirt.

"I should like to talk with you at some length. I think perhaps we have some unfinished business."

Well, this was una.s.sailably true.

Still, she wasn't certain how to reply.

"Perhaps you have one or two things you'd like say to me?" A glimmer of mordant humor there. Still, the prevailing tone was detached irony.

"Perhaps," she managed. Her voice was still a thread.

"Then perhaps you'll agree to a conversation. But not here. I'd like to conduct it on my s.h.i.+p."

"On your s.h.i.+p?"

"Yes," he said. Almost impatiently.

"Your . . . s.h.i.+p."

"Yes."

The arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d didn't bother to explain why on earth he would have a s.h.i.+p.

"So . . . Mrs. More isn't here at all."

"No." There was a flicker of something like intolerable amus.e.m.e.nt in that word.

"So you lied. And tricked me."

"Yes."

He was almost brutally monosyllabic and completely unapologetic.

And that's when she fully understood: Lyon was furious, too.

Blackly, coldly furious.

And somehow, perversely, this heartened her. It was better than that impa.s.sivity.

She looked into his face, searching for some clue as to who he was now. There was no evidence of the young man she'd last seen standing as motionless as the dead, his face leached of color, the rain plastering his hair to his face and his s.h.i.+rt to his chest because he'd given his coat to her.

"One must have a code, as you once said to me, Olivia. And while I prefer not to lie, I also prefer to get what I want. And what I wanted was to speak privately to you without anyone else knowing. And I knew just how to do it."

Every word as coldly delivered as if she was up before a magistrate.

Her own fury ramped and then wavered in the face of his, which was as palpable as a wall.

It wasn't as though he didn't have the right to his.

"On your s.h.i.+p." She matched his irony.

"On my s.h.i.+p."

"You couldn't have . . ." Her voice was faint again.

She didn't finish the sentence because she already knew the answer.

"What? Called upon your father, hat in hand? Sent flowers? Shouted objections from the church congregation while they read your banns Sunday after Sunday? No, Olivia. I won't be doing that. But I do want to speak to you. If you are agreeable to this, it will be on my s.h.i.+p. And it will be now, or never."

Now or never.

Just like that night five years ago, when he'd forced her to decide her future in one minute in the pouring rain, in the dark.

This coldly, unnervingly confident man was the same Lyon.

And yet he was not.

That impulse to comfort her. Her name in his voice. Gruff with emotion. She recognized those.

Were all of those simply reflexes born of old memories?

My heart, he'd once called her. My love.

She'd been his heart. And he'd been hers.

And he'd left her without a heart when he disappeared.

Perhaps now she could get it back. Along with the whole of her life.

"It's docked very near. You'll be escorted safely. It's a short enough walk. You're free of harm from me and, I a.s.sure, you, from any cutthroats or other unsavory personages. And it must be now."

That's when she saw the sword at his hip beneath that beautiful coat.

He was wearing a sword. The way any other man would wear a watch fob.

She blinked, and felt another little p.r.i.c.kle of warning.

Who was he now?

What was he now?

G.o.d help her, she wanted to know.

"Very well," she said. "I'll go."

Chapter 15.

HE DIDN'T SAY, "THANK you."