Part 5 (1/2)
”You refer to the flash ballad? Or to the man himself?”
He said it lightly enough. But there was nothing casual about the way he was studying her face.
He was a very astute man.
She managed a faint smile. ”Given the events of the day, I shouldn't blame you if you were curious about the origins of the so-called legend. Shall I put your mind at ease?”
”It would be churlish to object to having my mind put at ease.”
This was how they spoke to each other: with dry humor and gentle irony. They shared a pleasure in each other's intelligence and view of the world. It was easy and pleasant and safe, and she liked it, because she suspected he would never require more of her than that.
”I confess there was indeed an attraction when I was a bit younger-the legend, if you will, has its foundation in a certain truth-but it did not last long. I cannot tell you why he disappeared or where he is. Whatever took place then no longer has any bearing on the person I am now or wish to be in the future.”
Attraction. The word was so pallid it felt like heresy. A scarce few months after she'd locked eyes with Lyon in a ballroom, she'd been lying alongside him in a clearing deep in the woods near Pennyroyal Green, her arms latched around his neck, kissing him as though the two of them had just invented kissing. The pleasure had been narcotic. They only wanted more and more and more.
If her abigail harbored any suspicions about the gra.s.s strains on her dress that day, she hadn't said a word.
As for the rest of what she'd just said, Olivia hadn't the faintest idea whether it was indeed true. It didn't matter. Lyon was gone, and Landsdowne was here. She'd said what he'd needed to hear.
”Funny, isn't it, how the 'legend'-I'll use that word-persists.” Landsdowne said this idly. ”One would have thought the bloods had given up the betting books and forgotten his name altogether by now. Instead, it seems to be sprouting heads, like a Hydra. And I wish I could protect you from it.”
”I know, and you're a dear”-there, she'd said the word, too!-”to care so much, and I'm so terribly sorry to concern you. The Everseas have always been a gift to the gossipmongers of London and to the bloods at White's who've had such a wonderful time filling the betting books with nonsense. So many things rhyme with Eversea, you see. And I've been rather a sport for so long, like cricket or pugilism, I suppose this is their last opportunity to profit from it. Though your future may be filled with flash ballads about my relatives, as I hardly think my family will breed a sedate generation. Do you mind terribly?”
He smiled faintly. ”One day someone will supplant the stories, I suppose. When we're in our dotage. What stories we'll tell our grandchildren.”
He said these things so easily now. To make grandchildren they would need to make children, and to make children they would need to make love, and to make love she would need to lie naked beneath Landsdowne's naked body, and- ”I'm glad you think so,” she said hurriedly. ”Although a dose of 'dull' might be restful upon occasion.”
”It's funny about youthful experiences . . . so often the things that happen to us in our youth shape us into our permanent selves. When we're still young and malleable.”
”Surely you're not suggesting you're old and calcified?”
He laughed. ”I think you'll discover I'm rather limber.”
Her eyes flared in surprise, and she looked down into her tea. Heat rushed into her cheeks.
Landsdowne naked. Landsdowne reaching for her. Landsdowne next to her in bed for the rest of her life. Did he moan and make noises and . . .
She tensed and pushed it out of her mind. But she must spend more time imagining all of this. Surely the notion was not distasteful. He was tall and manly, he possessed all of his teeth, he smelled wonderful. Surely more time spent dwelling upon it would help her to prepare for that inevitability. Surely it should be something she welcomed . . . one day.
She looked up to find his dark eyes on her intently.
He wasn't smiling.
But she sensed he was imagining precisely the same thing.
Landsdowne wanted her, in every sense of the word.
Perhaps he thought the blushes meant she was modest, and would need to be gently tutored in matters of romance.
If only he knew.
”In the spirit of mutual disclosure, I feel I should ask whether you left a trail of broken hearts behind you on your way to matrimony. You've managed to remain out of the broadsheets, if so, something my family seems unable to achieve.”
His eyebrows shot up. He tonged sugar into his tea and swished it about long enough for her to realize he was about to confess something.
He took a fortifying sip.
And then he leaned back and sighed.
”Very well. There is a . . . Well, I've known Lady Emily Howell since we were very young. A lovely girl, very kind, and I admire her a good deal. Our families believed we would one day enter into an agreement. I suppose I believed it, too. And then . . . I met you.”
There was a hint of rueful, careful ardor around the word ”you.”
As if it had been destiny. As if anyone could understand he'd had no choice at all in the matter.
She often thought Landsdowne had viewed her as a challenge. He was wealthy, a bit older, owned property all over England, was known to be fair and yet ruthless in business.
His determination to pursue the allegedly un.o.btainable Olivia Eversea and her new willingness to capitulate had likely coincided. Their courts.h.i.+p had hardly been the stuff of legends, but many a marriage began on less fortuitous footing.
She smiled but said nothing.
”Lady Emily has been all that is gracious and congratulatory, as a friend would be. Though I expect she is in fact disappointed. I can honestly tell you that I did not court her, and I do not believe anyone a.s.sumed we had a formal understanding. And yet.”
”And yet,” Olivia repeated softly.
”I do greatly regret any pain I may have caused her.”
Olivia pictured Lady Emily and her no doubt well-bred disappointment. There would be no hysterics. No foolscap covered in Landsdowne's name, burned at midnight.
When the word that Lyon Redmond had disappeared finally penetrated Pennyroyal Green, and then the whole of London society-it took some time, the way it takes time for damp to make a weak roof cave in-Olivia had stopped eating. It was as if whatever made her human, gave her appet.i.tes and needs, had been excised. She had no more need for nourishment than a wickless candle needs a flame. She felt just that pointless.
She hadn't even fully realized she'd stopped eating until her mother began to panic.
And at some point she had begun again, because here she was.
Yet food had never tasted quite the same since.
Lyon had abandoned her.
And Landsdowne was here.
”You're very kind,” she said impulsively to Landsdowne. For he was. Good and solid and kind and perhaps most importantly, here.
He quirked his mouth self-deprecatingly.
They each took fortifying sips of tea.