Pennyroyal Green: The Legend Of Lyon Redmond Part 31

Startled, she took it. Folded it gently over her arm, and resisted the urge to hold it to her nose and breathe it in to see if it still smelled just like him.

Then he pushed up his sleeves and hoisted her trunk to his shoulder, carrying it without apparent effort.

She followed.

The path wound gently up, but she was a country-bred girl quite accustomed to walking, and it posed no difficulty at all. He didn't seem inclined to speak, so to occupy her time she watched the fascinating play of muscle in his back and b.u.t.tocks as he climbed.

The path concluded in a wrought-iron gate joining the surrounding low white stone wall.

She pushed the gate open and stepped forward.

Her breath caught.

They were in a little courtyard. Beneath their feet a checkerboard of muted rose-red and darker red tiles stretched out in either direction, wrapping around the house. A white tiered stone fountain was the centerpiece.

One wall of the courtyard was hung entirely with a tapestry of green vines starred everywhere with white jasmine. The wall adjacent was a flamboyant spill of scarlet blooms.

Before she knew she was doing it, she moved over wonderingly to touch one, a reflexive response to beauty.

"Bougainvillea," he said shortly.

"It's so beautiful," she breathed. "I've never seen one outside of a hothouse. But they belong in the sun, don't they? They're like the skirts of Spanish dancers."

She turned to find him smiling at her.

"All you need is a blue flower growing somewhere and you'll have the British flag," she added.

He laughed. "The Spanish would love that. Speaking of things you won't see outside of a hothouse-and no, I'm not referring to you-turn around and take a peek around that corner."

She did as ordered. A few steps over the red stone, she peered around the corner of the house.

And there it was.

Her jaw dropped. She stared as if she'd just accidentally stumbled upon the queen lounging here in the middle of Spain.

"Go ahead. You always wanted to."

It seemed whimsical and dreamlike, growing right there out in the open, covered all over in luscious, sunny globes of fruit.

She approached it as if it were an exotic creature, and reached up and gave a tug.

And an orange tumbled into her palm.

She closed her eyes and held it to her nose and breathed in deeply. The singular scent, sharp and sweet and citrus, was heavenly.

The English weather would have killed that orange tree straightaway if it had the temerity to grow out in the open. Which is why all their English trees were so st.u.r.dy, and so many of them ancient.

Like the two oaks in the center of Pennyroyal Green, for instance, said to represent the Redmonds and Everseas. They had grown for centuries, stubbornly thriving, holding each other up, competing for resources.

She gave a wondering laugh, and whirled.

She caught some fascinating expression fleeing his face.

"Pick a few more," he said evenly. "We'll eat some, we'll drink some."

She pulled a few more from the tree with an air of wonder, and filled her arms with them.

He settled her trunk with a little grunt and then slid a hefty key into the heavy arched door, and turned the k.n.o.b.

She gasped.

The entire house was made of light.

And then she blinked and discovered why it seemed that way: a series of three soaring arched windows that allowed in sea-scoured suns.h.i.+ne, which spilled through nearly the entirety of the main room. A heavy table of slabbed wood, weathered to a silvery finish, was pushed in front of the windows, and in the center was a large gla.s.s bowl of the palest shade of aquamarine. It was like a drop of the sea had been captured in Venetian gla.s.s.

The creamy pale walls rose and met the high ceiling in rounded corners, and the floors were tiled in huge, satin rose-red stone, edged with tiny, intricate blue and yellow mosaic.

Arched doorways led into dark, cool hallways, off which, presumably, were bedrooms.

A settee-ivory brocade, French, and possibly Chippendale, and yet somehow right in this room for all of that-was angled before the fireplace, flanked by a pair of sleek ormolu chairs upholstered in more brocade. A low oval marble table, its wooden legs intricately turned, sat between all of them.

It was like stepping into his dream. One of the very first things he'd shared with her.

"The oranges can go there."

He pointed at the blue bowl, and she spilled them from her arms and stood back to admire them.

Beautiful things, not a lot of things, he'd once said. That's what he would have in his house.

She remembered, because she remembered everything about him.

They were both silent.

She held still, suffused with wonder and a peculiar peace and sense of rightness in this house. It was a strangely familiar sensation.

And then she recalled the first she time he had felt that way: It was when he first approached her in the ballroom. As if the fences surrounding her world had been kicked down.

In retrospect quite ironic, given their a.s.sociation had been confined by the clock and hedgerows and their family's expectations.

"It's so beautiful, Lyon. The house is like stepping into your dream."

"Perhaps literally. Since it was one of mine."

On the surface, it was an innocuous enough sentence.

And she could feel the war in him between his desire to take pleasure in her pleasure, and whatever dark, unspoken thing thrummed through both of them at the moment.

She of course had been his dream, as he had been hers.

On a shelf above the table was a row of books.

She moved toward it slowly.

For there was his copy of Marcus Aurelius.

Nearly tattered now, the gold embossing nearly worn smooth from being tucked inside his coat countless times, packed into trunks, cupped open in his hands.

She paused before it with a sense of vertigo. She hesitated. Then gingerly, tentatively, she reached out and gently touched it. As if it might vanish, along with this room and Lyon, like a mirage.

Marcus Aurelius. One of the very first things she'd learned about him.

How she had cherished everything she'd ever learned about him. Almost as if she'd known her time with him would be finite. That someday he would be gone, and all she would have would be a scattering of memories, like figurines kept in a curio cabinet.

And just like that, suddenly, the anger swept in again.

For all that he'd missed.

For all that she'd missed.

For leaving her.

And now showing her what his life had been like without her.

She wasn't certain if this was rebuke. A way to show her how very, very wrong she'd been.

Or if he was showing her what could have been.

Next to Marcus Aurelius were all the volumes written by his brother, Miles Redmond, a naturalist and now a famous explorer, a coveted guest at London dinner parties for his tales of his travels in Lacao.

"Miles was almost eaten by a cannibal." She said this almost lightly. "Did you know?"

He betrayed not a flicker of surprise, but then he seemed to have mastered inscrutability.

"He wouldn't have gone down easily. A bit sinewy is Miles."

She turned to look at him.

His face was still and hard. His arms were crossed. A bit like armor.

She moved farther down the shelf, examining the spines of the books.

"Violet has a baby now. She married the Earl of Ardmay. She's a countess."

She chose this one deliberately. She glanced over her shoulder.

He still didn't blink.

"She nearly died giving birth, I heard," she added, almost casually.

And now he was absolutely motionless. But he was whiter about the mouth now.

She was certain he knew precisely why she'd said it.

She sensed a sort of coiled potential in him that boded ill, something was being wound tighter and tighter. His face was taut, his mouth white at the corners.

But she couldn't seem to help herself from winding it tighter. She wanted it to break. You weren't there. I needed you I missed you. You missed it. You missed it all.

"Did you know Colin nearly died on the gallows?"

"I knew." His voice was soft and taut.

She had sat with her family in their London townhouse that horrible morning and prayed.

She had longed for Lyon then. If only he could have come home to her.

But he hadn't.

Colin had lived. Colin generally had that sort of luck.

She turned abruptly away from him again, toward what appeared to be a tiny sculpture of some sort at the end of the shelf that caught her eye.

"May I?"

He nodded curtly.

It was a bird. A lovely, fragile little thing, scarcely heavier than a dandelion. She plucked it up and perched it in her hand.

"It's an origami crane," he told her. "Origami is the j.a.panese art of paper folding . . . a sheet of paper cleverly, intricately folded into different shapes. Animals, flowers, and the like. It's funny how one ordinary thing can so easily be transformed into something extraordinary."

She looked up at him searchingly. She knew precisely why he'd said that.

"A woman gave it to me. For luck, and to remember her by."

And she knew why he'd said that.

The little crane in her hand suddenly might as well have been a viper.

And now it was clear that every word they were exchanging, no matter how seemingly civil, no matter how seemingly mundane, at its core hid seething fury and accusation and hurt.

Perhaps love was in there, too.

Perhaps they were forever inextricable now.

She put the origami crane down quickly.

Now she would like to set it on fire.

"I could do with some air. Why don't we have a walk on the beach, Olivia?"