Part 13 (1/2)
”Perhaps you best stop here,” she said, a bit awkwardly.
He slid the basket from his arm to hers into a fraught silence, because there was far too much to say and it seemed there would never be enough time. And their arms brushed, briefly, and yet deliberately across each other, and it really was only like throwing kindling onto the fire.
That little touch rendered both of them mute for a moment.
”Miss Eversea . . .”
”Olivia.”
”Olivia.”
He said this gravely. Accepting it with the ceremony such favor deserved.
And he smiled slowly, which made her flush to her roots.
Her eyes were a shade bluer than the sky, and her lashes, when she lowered them, cast a s.h.i.+vering shadow on her cheek.
”Olivia, I . . .”
He stopped. He could have finished the sentence in a million ways.
”I usually bring a basket to the Duffys every Tuesday, after the meeting for the Society of the Protection of the Suss.e.x Poor,” she said in a rush.
And then she whirled and dashed off, stopping once again to stretch up to touch a leaf. ”We meet again, spring!” she said.
He gave a short laugh and watched her go.
And then he whirled around and though he mostly walked nearly all the way home, he occasionally leaped a few low fences just for the devil of it.
And he stopped just once, to touch the ”O” he'd carved into the elm tree.
Chapter 8.
Six weeks before the wedding . . .
”HERE ARE FOUR s.h.i.+LLINGS.” Olivia dropped them one at a time into the cup shared by the beggars against Madame Marceau's wall. ”I hope you will buy something hot to eat with it. Do consider going to Suss.e.x, if you would like to work and live quietly. This should be enough for mail coach fare.”
She stepped back abruptly.
”This may be the last you see of me. Farewell.”
The bandaged beggar never lifted his head or spoke, and she wondered again if he even could. Perhaps he couldn't even hear. But he raised his hand and brought it down in a slow blessing. It was like watching a curtain lower on a portion of her life.
Madame Marceau was clever and busy and she congratulated herself on the hiring of Mademoiselle Lilette, for she and Olivia had established a rapport.
Mademoiselle Lilette was whistling softly as she pinned. As it so happened, she was whistling ”The Legend of Lyon Redmond,” and it was just too much today.
”Mademoiselle Lilette, may I ask you not to whistle that song?”
”I am so sorry. Do forgive me. It is very lively, the song, non?”
”Oh yes,” Olivia said blackly. ”Very lively indeed.”
A p.r.i.c.kly, raw little silence ensued.
”Forgive me, Miss Eversea, if the subject is a peu difficile, but you are the only woman I know for whom a song was written. He was a lively man? As lively as the song? This Lyon Redmond?”
Was he lively? She did not want to think about Lyon during the final fitting of her wedding dress.
No, he wasn't lively.
He'd been life itself.
She never talked truthfully about him. She only talked around him, in generalities. No one had known him the way she had.
Suddenly she wanted someone to know.
”He was a surprising man. A . . . vivid . . . man who was also very disciplined. He was very clever and alarmingly quick. He was tender-hearted. And he did so want to see places. He had a wonderful laugh. He would . . . he would have enjoyed the song. I hope-”
She stopped.
”You hope?”
She'd nearly run out of ability to speak about him.
”I hope he did.” Her voice was husky now. ”See places.”
She did, G.o.d help her. He might have died in a ditch. Or he might in fact be riding the Nile on a crocodile. She had entertained every imaginable scenario over the years. She imagined him again on the deck of a s.h.i.+p. It gave her some small measure of comfort, even as a hair-fine filament of anger ran through the picture: no matter where he was, he wasn't here, and he had gone without her.
”Was he brave? Was he good?”
Mademoiselle Lilette seemed a trifle too curious.
But Olivia closed her eyes. She couldn't find it in her to mind at the moment.
And she, as she'd once told someone else, never lied.
”Yes.” Her voice was thick. ”Very brave. And very good.”
She didn't know how long her eyes remained closed.
She opened them, because when she closed them she saw his face again in the rain, in the dark.
She slid Landsdowne into place in her mind's eye instead. His dear face and dark eyes.
”I had a great love, once,” Mademoiselle Lilette volunteered softly, hesitantly.