Part 14 (2/2)

Every new thing she learned about him was like being handed a jewel, which she would turn round and round in her hands, studying its every facet.

She wanted to trace with a finger the lines of his face, his lips, his jaw. To slide her arms around his waist and tilt her head up and touch her lips to his. To breathe him in. Sometimes he would say something, or the light would catch him just so, and just like that her throat would knot and she would lose her ability to speak, as if everything she felt had rushed her senses all at once.

And then he would fall silent, too.

She knew his reciprocal silence was recognition. And if she burned, she could only imagine how he burned. For of course he knew much more about such matters than she did. Her pillow was probably shocked at the attention she lavished upon it at night.

She occasionally regretted he was a gentleman. The fact that he was meant she was safer, and luckier, than she deserved to be.

But it all meant she felt faintly feverish much of the time. It was a pleasant sort of sick that apparently left her looking even more beautiful, or at least more interesting.

”You look as though you're in the throes of an opium dream, Olivia,” her brother Ian accused over breakfast, four weeks after Lyon had first joined her on her walk to the Duffys. Her parents had breakfasted hours ago. Olivia, who had tossed and turned and scarcely slept for weeks, was late to the table lately, so she usually breakfasted with whatever brother happened to be home and slowly recovering from a night of doing too much of everything, primarily drinking.

”How on earth would you know that? And what's wrong with it, if I do?”

”Interesting,” Ian mused. Studying her curiously.

”What is?” she said irritably.

”You just responded to me in full sentences. I haven't heard one of those from you in a while. And you're so very fond of sentences.”

He was teasing her, but Olivia was startled. She was vaguely aware her conversation had become somewhat drifty and monosyllabic lately. It was just that conversation that wasn't with Lyon suddenly seemed a waste of time. She'd talked to these people her entire life. She was only able to talk to him for about two hours every week.

All her senses seemed forever occupied with him, but she had gone so long unable to talk about him that a hair-fine fissure of something she couldn't quite identify-it felt a bit like anger but might also be fear, or frustration, or some blend thereof-had opened up in her joy. She was swept up in a current and forever adjusting her sails.

But both she and Lyon knew this could not go on forever.

Olivia, who never could bear to be told what to do, knew he would need to dictate whatever happened next. And Lyon was so much more comfortable treating the future like a plaything, for speculation was how men like him and his father grew wealthier.

”How on earth would you know about opium dreams, Ian?” she countered swiftly.

”Er, just a guess,” Ian said hurriedly. ”Reached for a metaphor. You forgot to correct my grammar a moment ago, so I wondered if something was amiss. You seem a bit distracted lately.” He pushed the coffee over to her. ”This ought to help.”

Olivia poured some coffee and closed her eyes and inhaled its heavenly vapors.

When she opened them again Ian was frowning at her. ”If I didn't know better I'd say you were nursing a brute of a whisky headache.”

She snorted. ”Naught is amiss. Perhaps I've simply given up on correcting your grammar, exhausted from the fruitless effort.”

”Ah, Olivia,” her brother teased. ”Never give up on me.”

She smiled at him then and he pushed the marmalade over to her so she could set about painting her bread with it.

Suddenly Genevieve darted into the chair opposite her, startling both her and her brother. ”Olivia, will you come with me to Tingle's today?”

”Er . . . Oh. Um. I cannot. I must to go to the meeting of the Society for the Protection of the Suss.e.x Poor, and then to the Duffys. It's Tuesday.”

A little furrow appeared between Genevieve's eyes. ”But that's not until one,” she pointed out gently.

”I've things to do until then,” she said swiftly.

An interesting silence ensued, and Olivia realized that Genevieve and Ian had gone still and were studying her unblinkingly.

”Like . . . gazing dreamily off into s.p.a.ce?” Genevieve exchanged a swift speaking glance with Ian, who ducked his head. Perhaps suppressing a smile.

Olivia scowled. ”Correspondence,” she said loftily. ”Regarding my pamphlet.”

She had, in fact, started a letter to Mrs. More some time ago, so this wasn't entirely a lie. She might even finish it this afternoon.

”Very well,” Genevieve said at last, still frowning a little. Less daunted by the word ”pamphlet” than Olivia would have preferred.

Another funny little silence ensued.

”What's that in your hand, Genevieve?” Ian gestured with his chin.

”Oh, it's a broadsheet from London.” She brandished it. ”I thought I'd read it whilst I had a cup of coffee.”

Ian tipped the pot and a sad brown trickle dribbled into Genevieve's extended cup. Genevieve eyed it disconsolately.

”We can always get more,” Ian said complacently, and the housekeeper was moving to bring in another pot as he said it. ”What's the latest gossip?”

”Why, are you wondering whether you're in here?” Genevieve fanned the broadsheet open.

”I shouldn't be,” he said vaguely. ”This month anyway.”

Olivia cast her eyes heavenward in mock dismay. In truth, she enjoyed all her siblings thoroughly, though of a certainty her household was more anarchic than the Redmonds. She also knew instinctively it was a happier one. How fortunate they were to sit here together and laugh and talk and know they ”could always get more,” more coffee and marmalade and conversation that would amuse and irritate, such a contrast from the terrifying squalor in which the Duffys lived.

All at once it seemed freshly inconceivable that she couldn't tell her siblings about Lyon, because sharing the things she loved with people she loved was not only of the chief pleasures of her life, it was fundamental to who she was.

How odd that Lyon could make her world feel so infinite and simultaneously shrink it.

This paradox had begun to feel just a little bit like a vise.

Genevieve cleared her throat and crackled the paper as if preparing to orate.

”Let's see . . . Lord Ice-that's what they call the Marquess Dryden, isn't that funny?-is said to be searching for four black horses with white stockings. How very dramatic of him. The Silverton sisters have returned after a season abroad and are cutting quite the social swath . . . And Lady Arabella, Hexford's daughter is supposedly about to become engaged, and she's been in London for a round of social engagements. We saw her once, do you remember, Olivia? She's blond and so pretty.”

”Better a Redmond leg-shackled than one of us,” Chase said with near-religious fervor, around a bite of fried bread.

Olivia slowly lowered her coffee cup to the table. As if she were suddenly falling and falling and afraid it might shatter when she landed.

”Does it say to whom Lady Arabella will wed?” She could scarcely feel her lips form the words. They sounded bright and brittle in ears.

”All I can tell you is that the betting book at White's has it that it's Lyon Redmond,” Ian said, on a yawn.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

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