He seized his coat and turned without waiting for her reply and was out the door.

She followed just as swiftly.

HIS STRIDES WERE punishingly long. She ran to keep up with him. He didn't apologize, and he didn't slow down. And she didn't ask him to. She wanted to run.

"Where are your other homes, Lyon?"

"I've a plantation in Louisiana. Sugarcane. One in New York. A home in the south of France."

"But not England."

He didn't reply.

Their feet crunched down along the path, until the sand of the beach silenced their footsteps, and she followed him out to the sh.o.r.eline.

They appeared to be utterly alone. No ship. No sign of other people. No birds.

"I could buy nearly any house I wanted in England now. If I wanted to be in England," he added coldly. Ironically. Sounding abstracted.

The sun had nearly dropped into the sea, and the vivid sunset colors were now fading to the color of old bruises, and giving way to the blue-purple of night. The air was still soft and warm, but there was a nip at the edges of it now.

"Do you remember, Lyon, how dull the vicar once was? My cousin Adam Sylvaine is the vicar now. And he's quite good. The church is crowded every weekend. It helps that he's gorgeous."

He smiled a small, taut smile. And said nothing.

"They called him when they thought your sister was going to die from childbirth. In the dead of night. An Eversea in your house. He did say that Jonathan offered him a brandy."

He was rigid as a monument now. His arms folded even more tightly across his chest. As if he were trying to hold something in.

"And Jonathan married a very surprising woman, and he set London upside down in the process. He began his own investment group. And he's running for Parliament. Did you know he's interested in child labor reform? Jonathan Redmond, of all people. Your brother did that."

Lyon remained motionless, apart from a breeze that lifted his hair from his collar. The sea was blue-black now, apart from a wedge of light laid down by the full moon. It was calm, throwing lace foam up onto the beach at sighlike intervals. That's where his gaze was aimed. Away from her. As if she was a source of pain.

"I find myself wondering, Olivia, if the point of all of this to imply that I don't know any of these things-for I do, or much of-or that I simply don't care? Or would it be both?"

He said it very, very slowly. Dangerously slowly. His voice contained a warning for anyone sensible enough to heed it.

It was shaking with fury.

But she couldn't stop herself. Her need to goad him had momentum.

"It doesn't matter, does it? You missed it. All of it. All of these things. All . . . because . . . you . . . fled."

He turned very slowly then.

She had the sense to take two steps backward, away from him.

Because fury came off him in waves. As if she'd opened the door to a furnace.

He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before.

"Fled," he said carefully. As if he was learning a new language.

She stood her ground.

But he'd stolen her voice, so she simply nodded.

"Fled," he repeated. The word was incredulous and scathing. "Interesting choice of word coming from a coward."

The contempt in his voice was scalding.

It ripped her breath from her lungs.

"I'm a-"

"Co-ward," he enunciated, with intolerable specificity. As if teaching her a new word.

Her mind blanked in shock.

"How. Dare. You. When you were the one who ran away."

He gave a short amazed laugh. "Ah, Olivia. Look at you. You should remember how you can't intimidate me with your temper. I know you. And I speak the truth. Furthermore, I think you know it, too."

"You know me? Do you think you still do? You have a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y nerve."

But this was bl.u.s.ter. Because it was true. And in all likelihood he knew this, too.

He'd always been one step ahead of her, after all.

And they were now hurtling headlong toward something she had hidden from herself for years.

The truth.

She couldn't stop it now if she wanted to.

"I do have a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y nerve," he said calmly, relentlessly. "And I do know you. I always thought you were so brave. You were so pa.s.sionate about the rights of the poor, the downtrodden, the voiceless. A woman who says what she thinks. I admired you painfully for caring so much. I wanted to be worthy of you. When in the end you were only in fact a frightened . . . little . . . girl."

The words were cold and brutal.

She could feel her very soul shriveling away from the attack.

She was hoa.r.s.e. "You don't know what you're-"

"And you're still afraid, I'd warrant. You're afraid of wanting what you think you shouldn't want. Of how powerfully you feel about things. Of how very, very much . . ." He stepped toward her, and she stood her ground. ". . . how very, very much you wanted me. In every sense of the word. It killed me, Olivia, that you had the courage to fight for everyone else except me. If I was my father's creation, then you are your family's creation."

"Lyon . . . You don't under-"

He didn't hear her. All of this, like a volcano, had clearly lain dormant for years.

"I would have given you the moon. And I could have, too, Olivia. I asked for your faith that night. And you returned it with scorn. Because. You were. Afraid."

It was unbearable.

"Lyon . . . Please . . . you must understand . . ."

"I believed you saw something fatal and irredeemable in me, and I quite simply couldn't bear it, Olivia. Now I know that you were just a coward. It really wasn't more complicated than that."

The silence was ghastly. It was filled with the roar of their breathing. As if they were grappling gladiators who had finally sprung apart.

Her hands went up to her face and her lungs felt like a furnace as she drew in a ragged hot breath.

The fact was that he was right. Everyone was right about her.

All the rumors and legends were right.

She had broken his heart.

And in so doing, she had willfully, perhaps permanently, broken her own.

And everyone else's who loved him.

All because she'd been too afraid to fight for him.

Chapter 18.

"LYON . . . YOU HAVE TO understand . . . I never dreamed you would leave," she said brokenly. "I didn't mean for you to leave. You shouldn't have gone. You shouldn't have gone. You shouldn't have actually gone."

Her voice spiraled in anguish, the anguish she'd never shown anyone, let alone herself, lest it rip her to shreds.

She dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands.

She drew in a hot, ragged breath. And then another.

And the sob that clawed its way out might as well have been a shard of her own heart.

One ugly, wracking sob followed another.

Old tears. Too long held back.

She had never, never wept for him since he left.

After a moment she could feel him drop to his knees next to her.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. My girl. My sweet girl. For heaven's sake. Don't cry. Please don't cry. I didn't mean to make you cry."

He said it so softly, almost panicky. He was flailing.

It was almost funny.

No one else called her that. No else had ever thought she was sweet.

No one knew how tender she really was.

No one else had ever been able to really hurt her.

No one else could save her from herself.

And all of this made her throw herself backward on the sand, fling one arm across her eyes, and weep with abandon.

He said nothing.

Perhaps she'd appalled him speechless.

She lay there on the sand, and she didn't care that her hair would be full of it, or the back of her dress would likely be ruined, or that her dignity was in shreds, and she wept as though it were the end of the world. As though she'd just lost him all over again.

At some point gentle hands tenderly scooped up her head.

She submitted as he thrust a folded coat beneath her as a pillow.

The coat smelled just like him. And just like everything about him, it comforted and stirred.

She heaved a great ragged sigh and sank back into it.

The sobs seemed to be done with her.

She finally peeled her arm away from her eyes.

And blinked, surprised.

It was full dark. Somehow the entire night seemed cleansed. The stars had an almost stinging brilliance.

She felt peaceful and empty and borderless. She might as well have been sand or sky.

Which was how she knew heartbreak had comprised nearly the whole of her for so long.

Now that she'd released it, she didn't know who she might be.

She lay still in the emptiness.

She let her head loll to the side. There Lyon was, mostly in shadow now, his arms wrapped loosely around his knees, staring out at the water, his profile etched in shadow.