Part 2 (1/2)

Oh, she supposed she'd resorted to the p.r.o.noun ”he” once or twice, when it could not be avoided. As if Lyon were the Almighty. Or Beelzebub.

And surely this delicacy was ludicrous. Perhaps if she made a habit of tossing his name into idle conversation now and again, it would lose its power and become meaningless and strange, as any word will if you stare at it long enough.

On the other hand, the first night she'd danced with Lyon, she'd lain sleepless, thrumming with some unnamed new joy, and then she'd crept out of bed, seized a sheet of foolscap, and feverishly filled the front and back of it with those two words. They had spilled out of her like a hosannah, or like an attempt at exorcism.

They hadn't lost any of their power then.

”Will ye put your signature to my composition for me then, Miss Eversea?” Mr. Pickles was all humility now. Or rather, three parts humility, one part commerce. ”It might very well make me a rich man. I could sell it to the Montmorency Museum to show along with your brother's, Mr. Colin Eversea's, suit of clothes. The ones he was nearly hung in.”

Blast. She'd forgotten about Colin's bequest. She sighed.

Someone was bound to fund a Museum of Eversea Ignominy one day.

”She'll sign nothing,” Landsdowne said evenly. But his eyes were flints. ”I'll give you a s.h.i.+lling to leave here and never return.”

Olivia's head jerked toward him in astonishment. He hadn't yet looked directly at her or greeted her, which was both unnerving and intriguing.

Obviously his intent was to protect her honor.

Not to mention his own.

But she'd always found it well nigh intolerable when someone else spoke for her. And this was the first time Landsdowne had done any such thing.

They locked eyes at last, and she watched his soften, the way they always did when they landed on her.

”Oh, where's the harm in signing it?” she coaxed him. ”Perhaps if Mr. Pickles becomes wealthy he won't need to sell more of these songs. And far be it for any of us to discourage an entrepreneur.”

”Miss Eversea, if I may interject? In the spirit of honesty, I fear I am at the mercy of the muse. My compositions burble forth like a spring from the earth, and riches are hardly likely to discourage them.” Mr. Pickles was the picture of contrite humility.

”Then tell me what it will cost to build a dam,” Landsdowne said grimly.

”We'll have Madame Marceau fetch a quill,” Olivia soothed. ”I shall sign it and leave it with her, with instructions to give it to Mr. Pickles after I'm gone for the day.”

She'd learned that her smiles were Landsdowne's weakness, so she gave him one. Conciliatory and charming and warm.

And challenging.

He hesitated. As if he was contemplating countermanding her.

She stiffened her spine, as if bracing for a wind.

This was what marriage would be like, she realized. Countless little negotiations, both subtle and overt. Which the two of them, of course, would conduct in the most civilized manner imaginable, because two more reasonable adults had never walked the earth, and a more even-tempered man had never been born. And surely it would be balm after brothers who had dangled from the trellises of married countesses, gone to the gallows only to vanish from them in a cloud of smoke, married controversial American heiresses, and been shot at a good deal during the war.

Nor would Landsdowne ever throw a handful of pebbles up at her window at midnight.

Lyon's face flashed before her eyes then. White and stunned, like a man bleeding inside. His s.h.i.+rt glued to his body by rain, because he'd slung his coat around her.

That image was her purgatory.

She shoved it away, back into the shadows of her mind, the only safe place for it.

No, Landsdowne's courts.h.i.+p had been calm, determined, and relentless. He'd conducted it the way the sea conducts a campaign to wear away a cliff.

His mouth at last quirked at the corner. ”Very well, my dear. If you must.”

My dear. He'd slipped those words into conversation shortly after they'd become engaged, and he'd begun to use them more and more. It was husbandly and sweet and made her inexplicably as restless as if he'd reached over and fastened a diamond collar round her neck.

Lyon had called her ”Liv.”

He'd called her other things, too, things that began with ”my.” My heart. My love. He'd used words with the innocent recklessness of someone who had never before been hurt.

They'd of course both learned the harm that words could do.

She suddenly wished for another moment alone. She still felt weak, as if an old fever had stirred.

”Isn't it better to show everyone how little we care about this nonsense?” she murmured to Landsdowne.

His smile became real then. He shoved two pence at Mr. Pickles, who accepted them with pleasure.

Olivia kept the song.

”A pleasure, Mr. Pickles,” he said ironically. ”And there's a s.h.i.+lling in it for you if you move your little choir a few shops down.”

Mr. Pickles accepted the s.h.i.+lling and herded his carolers down the street.

Landsdowne cupped her elbow and resolutely steered her through the pedestrians to Madame Marceau's shop, s.h.i.+elding her with the breadth of his body.

But Olivia stopped abruptly and eased from his grip long enough to crouch before the beggars leaning against the wall. They were so tattered and filthy and abject they were almost as indistinguishable from each other as they were from the shadows. Two of them were bandaged, one around a hand, the other across his face, in all likelihood to hide some kind of disfigurement-war or accident. It mattered not to her.

Her s.h.i.+llings clinked hollowly in the single cup.

”I'm sorry,” she said softly to them, ”it's all I have today . . . but it might be enough to buy mail coach pa.s.sage to Suss.e.x. Reverend Sylvaine in Pennyroyal Green can help you find work and food, perhaps shelter . . .”

But it was all she could say, because their unwashed stench was overpowering, and she was ashamed when she needed push herself to her feet again.

She stepped back abruptly against her strong, clean fiance, who claimed her elbow once more.

But she waited for the beggar, who raised his hand and slowly brought it down in his graceful, characteristic blessing.

She was not typically superst.i.tious, but his blessing had become important as she walked into Madame Marceau's for her fittings.

Landsdowne handed her a handkerchief, which smelled of starch and a hint of bay rum and was neatly embroidered with his initials. She applied it to her nose with a relief that shamed her.

And one day it would be her responsibility, nay, her privilege, to embroider those little initials into the corner of his handkerchiefs.

Rather like the handkerchief she kept in her reticule.

There were initials on that, too.

And blood.