"And we saw him in Tingle's Bookshop today, too," Genevieve added, brightly. "Over by the history tomes. Lyon Redmond."

That's when everyone seemed to freeze mid-chew.

"In Tingle's, you say?" her father finally said, idly, reaching for more roast beef.

Olivia suddenly wasn't certain where to aim her eyes. She felt as if Lyon Redmond was imprinted on her corneas and everyone could see him.

She applied herself to her peas, which were bobbing in a little pool of sauce. They friskily eluded the tines of her fork, which gave her an occupation.

"Yes!" Genevieve continued brightly. "And Olivia spoke with-OW!"

Genevieve scowled at Olivia and reached down to rub her kicked shin.

"As Genevieve was saying before a twinge overcame her-perhaps too much beef gives you indigestion, Gen?" Olivia added with pointed sweetness, "I spoke with Mr. Tingle, who then referred me to another book and gave me a new pamphlet."

A sort of collective, sighing groan rumbled around the table. It wasn't that they were an uncharitable lot. It was just that the word "pamphlet" had that effect upon her family. She had waxed evangelically on the topic more than once, and they were indulgent but puzzled by what they perceived as a pa.s.sion that had sprung from nowhere, and would likely be cured, like an ague, when she married.

"Pamphlet" ought to frighten them off the topic of Lyon Redmond.

Her father drizzled gravy over his meat. "A bit of a coincidence that Mr. Redmond would be in the bookshop at the same time as you two ladies were in it."

He flicked a swift look at his older daughter.

Olivia went still.

She didn't dare look at her mother, because her mother could read her like a b.l.o.o.d.y book.

Her father, Jacob Eversea, was usually so merry and affectionate they often forgot he was also unnervingly astute. The Everseas were wealthy for a reason. He was the reason. His instincts for investments were uncanny and occasionally, if rumors were to be believed, unorthodox.

Olivia was fairly new to both subterfuge and guilt and found both of them uncomfortable. The latter had, in fact, rendered her mute. Genevieve was still nursing hurt feelings and a smarting shin and was unblinkingly inspecting her sister's face as if she suspected she was instead an impostor wearing an Olivia costume.

Genevieve, alas, was no imbecile.

So neither of them replied to her father.

And the silence was teetering on the brink of becoming d.a.m.ning.

Help came in the unlikely and oblivious form of Ian. "The diversions in Pennyroyal Green, apart from riding and shooting, begin with the pub and end with the bookshop. Where else is Redmond to go? Church?"

"I do wish you wouldn't say 'church' quite so incredulously," their mother said dryly. "We do own the living, you know."

"A pity none of us went into the clergy."

This elicited a scatter of uneasy chuckles that rapidly dwindled. Olivia, like her mother and her sister, wouldn't have minded in the least if any of her brothers had gone into the clergy. Her brothers had all instead gone to war. Chase and Ian had been gravely wounded. Colin, with his talent for survival, had been relatively unscathed. All had served with honor and bravery. It was a miracle they had all returned.

She was freshly reminded that idly discussing anything around the dinner table with her entire family now, whether it was Lyon Redmond or church or cricket, was a luxury she would never again take for granted. These people, so rarely together all at once now, meant more to her than anything else in the world.

They were her world.

She was suddenly flooded with love and resentment for this very fact, and she was inclined to forgive them for anything, including tattling on her.

"I don't know what on earth would keep Redmond in Pennyroyal Green, anyway," Colin added. "I heard at the Pig & Thistle that he's meant to go to the continent on Mercury Club business. Or marry Hexford's daughter, as White's betting book has it. After all, when a man is accustomed to throwing money about and women falling all ov-"

Her father slowly turned toward Colin and shocked him into silence with a glare so arctic it was a wonder the candles weren't snuffed.

"This is a dinner table," Jacob said mildly to his frozen family, after a moment's stunned silence to allow his point to settle in. "Why should we ruin a fine meal with such talk?"

"Fair enough," Colin said, after a moment, subdued but undaunted. "What do you say we get up a cricket match tomorrow? Run down to the Pig & Thistle in a bit, recruit a few men?"

And they were off and talking cricket, and all the forks and knives were moving again.

Olivia couldn't take her eyes from her plate.

Hexford's daughter. As in the Duke of Hexford. That would be Lady Arabella. Olivia knew her. Shy girl, pretty, so very, very wealthy. On the marriage mart, Arabella was the equivalent of winning the Suss.e.x Marksmanship Trophy.

She was remembering the worried shadow between Lyon Redmond's eyes when he thought he'd alarmed her. The little step he took toward her to protect her. The impulse to lay her head against his chest, as if she could transfer her every worry to him through her cheek.

She'd danced perhaps four waltzes in her life and countless reels and quadrilles, but not once had she noticed so acutely the fit of her hand in another's. Not once had the heat of a touch lingered at her waist.

Such talk.

Wicked, laughing blue eyes.

His trembling hand.

A whisper of a touch that had turned her blood effervescent and hot, and ignited a craving that made her understand at once everything and nothing about the matters between men and women.

Such talk.

As if the mere idea of him or any Redmond was enough to turn the roast beef.

She had never questioned it. Children were trusting and malleable when they loved and were much loved by their parents, and Jacob and Isolde Eversea were in general bastions of kindness and wisdom and authority, in turns affectionate and strict. The Everseas had dozen of friends all over England, all of them, at least the ones she knew about, respectable. Olivia had certainly never witnessed any marked tendency toward arbitrary enmities.

So surely the objection to the Redmonds was based in some truth?

But then there was a legend, after all. The trees in the town square, the two ancient oaks entwined, said to represent the Everseas and Redmonds. Who were now so entwined they both fought for supremacy and held each other up, and could no longer live without each other.

Some called it a curse.

"May I be excused?" she said suddenly.

"Olivia, darling, are you feeling well?" Her mother was worried. Olivia usually polished her plate and then returned for more.

"She has a new pamphlet," Genevieve explained.

"Right, right, a pamphlet, right," everyone murmured.

She dashed up to her room. She'd given the pamphlet to Lyon. Thank G.o.d no one in her family wanted to read it.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the book on Spain he'd shoved into her hands, eager to touch something that he'd touched. She hadn't yet opened the book.

Oddly, she wasn't terribly alarmed or surprised by the notion that women fell all over him. Of course they did-one need only look at the man to see why. Certainly she was beginning to truly understand the power of her own beauty, and she knew the notion of her marriage settlements bestowed her with an extra frisson of allure.

But her beauty was the least of who she was.

And she knew instinctively this was true about Lyon Redmond, too.

She turned the cover of the book over, reveling in the feel of the crisp new spine, in that little surge of pleasure that came with opening any new book, almost no matter what was inside.

A slip of foolscap promptly slipped out and tumbled into her lap.

Her heart gave a little leap and she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

Meet me next to the double elm tree on Wednesday at three p.m. Say you're going to visit the Duffys.

Her jaw dropped.

And then she gave a short laugh, dumbstruck by the sheer audacity of it.

He'd obviously written that message before he'd left home for Tingle's books.

It was far too presumptuous. It a.s.sumed she was comfortable with lying, which she definitely was not, that she didn't mind being told what to do, which anyone who knew her knew she minded immensely, and that she wanted to see him again.

Which she wanted to do more than nearly anything in the world.

She read it over again, her heart thundering so hard it was a wonder someone in her family didn't hear it and shout a complaint up at her.

It had clearly been dashed off quickly. His letters leaned forward eagerly and his "L's" and "D's" made daring vertical leaps. Elegant and handsome, impatient and determined, and unequivocal, like the man himself.

It was too much. It was too fast. It was too new. She was held fast in a tangled skein of emotions and she did not know how to begin unraveling it, when heretofore her existence had been wound as neatly as the embroidery silks she and Genevieve tended carefully, and occasionally squabbled over.

She thought of her beloved family downstairs, even now probably sprawled together about the fire, reading to one another, playing chess, embroidering flowers onto samplers, a bit of quiet before her brothers ventured out to the Pig & Thistle. They all would eventually marry and have homes of their own, and this moment in time was precious.

Was it like that in Lyon's house tonight, too?

She doubted it was quite that peaceful.

Was her appeal for him the appeal of the forbidden?

She didn't think so.

She frowned faintly. She felt . . . pushed. Or perhaps "tugged" was a more appropriate word.

Her reflex when pushed was always to dig in her heels.

But still, she drew a finger over those letters, tracing them, and as she imagined him writing them, a surge of tenderness surprised her. He was a man, with a man's intensity and desires; she would warrant he knew all about sensual hunger and how to get it satisfied, and that few women if any would ever say no to him. She would chew and swallow this sheet of foolscap if Lyon Redmond was a virgin.

But there was also almost an innocence to his honesty. She knew he was a bit at sea here for the first time, and she was the only other person in the world who knew how he felt.

Oh G.o.d.

How could she possibly be equal to any of this? To him?

He could be leaving for the continent.

Or marrying the daughter of a duke.

She held her breath, as if preparing to pull a splinter, and with a lurch of almost physical pain, she consigned the note to the fire.

Where it burned down to join the ashes of the sheet of foolscap she'd burned the night before.

She'd written the words "Lyon Redmond Lyon Redmond Lyon Redmond" until there was no more room to write it.

HE'D NEVER ANTIc.i.p.aTED he'd actually need to wait for her, so he didn't bring a book, not even Marcus Aurelius, which usually traveled with him everywhere.

He did bring her pamphlet, which he had already read three times, as if it were her heart in publication form. Which, in a way, he supposed it was.

His own flesh crawled at the notion of slavery. But his response was more intellectual in nature, perhaps even selfish: the idea of losing his own freedom stopped his breath.

But clearly it reverberated through Olivia's very soul.

All he knew was that she suffered over such things, and the notion of her suffering at all made him so peculiarly uncomfortable and furious he thought he might do anything at all for her to ease it.

He admired her fiercely, and this made him restless. In part because her pa.s.sions, so native, made him realize now that for years he hadn't been so much dutiful his entire life as numb.

He leaned against the double elm tree and looked up through the leaves. He'd done this at least a dozen times in his life-he could probably walk the whole of the town with his eyes closed and not get lost, so familiar was every landmark and texture of the town. He peered upward and tried to enjoy the contrast of the jubilant green of the spring leaves against the blue sky. It was rather like stained gla.s.s.

This required the kind of patience he no longer possessed.

He'd shaved with particular care that morning, and he was confident the man who looked back at him from the mirror was polished and regal. He'd tied and retied his cravat three times, before deciding simple was best primarily because his hands were oddly clumsy with nerves. Anyone who knew him well, Jonathan or Miles, would have laughed to see him so at the mercy of a woman, when it was generally understood that it was always the other way around.

Though perhaps it would have been less funny when they learned this particular woman was Olivia Eversea.

At half past three, he sorted through the contents of his coat pockets. Two pence, an old theater ticket, a tiny folding knife, and his gold pocket watch engraved with his initials, a gift from his father on his sixteenth birthday. He cherished that watch. It had made him feel very adult. He'd become someone who needed a watch, for he had places to be and things to attend to.

He flipped the pocket watch open, and then closed. And open, and then closed. Not feeling terribly adult. The click seemed deafening here in the quiet woods, and seemed to emphasize how very foolishly alone he was out here beneath the elm tree.

At four o'clock he walked thirty feet up the rutted dirt road and peered, and saw nothing but a squirrel, who was then joined by another squirrel. Lucky squirrels, whose a.s.signation was a success.

He watched the shadows of everything around him lengthen, even his own.

At four-fifteen, he carved the letter "O" in the elm tree with his knife. Because he thought perhaps if he wrote it somewhere it might ease a bit of the restlessness, the fever. Because it felt as though a knife were at this moment carving it into his very soul.

It did not.

He wasn't certain he'd ever waited two hours for any human before, let alone a woman.

He was a determined man. He stood on the road and willed her into appearing on the horizon.