There was no intoxicant in the world like Lyon Redmond.

He dropped her hand abruptly and bolted off, his heels kicking up little sprays of sand.

"Where are you-what are you-"

He pivoted and ran backward a few steps, eyes on the sky, and then stopped abruptly.

"Stay right where you are!" he commanded.

He stretched out his arm like a triumphant acrobat landing, and ceremoniously turned up his hand.

"Now look up, Liv. Look at my hand."

She did.

And lo and behold, the bright orb of the moon was right there, nestled in his palm.

"Ohhh," she breathed.

It was beautiful and perfect and magical.

And an illusion.

And then he wound his arm and pretended to bowl the moon to her, a la cricket.

She ducked, flinging her arms over her head.

He shook his head and sighed, gustily and funereally. "We're going to have to work on your catching, Eversea, if you're ever going to be a decent wicket keeper."

He dropped his arm, leaving the moon in the sky, and strode forward.

She laughed and scrambled to catch up to him, her bare feet sinking into the silken sand, and she found herself savoring every step, because every step brought her closer to him.

He remembered to stop to wait for her.

AH, CEILING, MY old friend, Lyon thought mordantly. We meet again.

He wondered if ceilings would always remind him of Olivia.

They'd silently gone their separate ways into separate chambers once in the house.

And he'd stripped out of his clothing and climbed into bed, and waited in vain for sleep, and it was just like old times.

He was a little older, perhaps a little wiser, infinitely more jaded. He'd been stabbed at and shot at, and he'd done a fair amount of stabbing and shooting. He'd ama.s.sed a fortune through a piquant blend of ruthless opportunism, lawlessness, and idealism, and he'd earned his sense of near invincibility, not to mention the calluses on his hands and on his heart.

And yet here he was, lying perfectly rigid, like a man attempting not to jar a grave wound. As uncertain and burning, burning, burning with untenable l.u.s.t as if he was a boy again who had just touched his first breast.

And all it had taken was a few moments in her arms.

He was darkly amused at himself, and at everything, really.

In some ways this suffering was truly operatic, the stuff of legends. Tragic, consuming, all the doomed and star-crossed lovers nonsense, etcetera. She was his Achilles' heel, his Chiron wound that would never heal.

On the other hand, surely nothing could be more mundane. For there would be no myths, no operas, no plays, no flash ballads, if men and women before the two of them hadn't performed this particular fruitless pas de deux over and over since the beginning of time.

He'd thought that he'd wanted to show her his house in Cadiz to prove to her how wrong she'd been. To show her what she could have had.

Now he knew it was because he simply wanted her to know that he was worthy of her. Which is all he'd ever wanted.

And she was right. He hadn't quite seen it before, but he had pushed her. He knew how precious her family was to her, especially since she could have lost her brothers in the war. She'd had enough uncertainty in her life. And yet he had demanded of her that they go forward into uncertainty, together.

He had simply thought love was enough.

He shifted restlessly in his bed.

He could have taken her tonight.

Her perhaps ought to have taken her tonight.

He could still take her tonight. She was lying only a few rooms away.

He knew how to use Olivia's own pa.s.sion and sensuality to get what he wanted.

But what then?

He had enough honor and breeding to not relish cuckolding a man like Landsdowne. Or to deflower a woman who was engaged to another man.

But when he peered beneath the veneer of that rationale he knew the truth: He might have survived being shot and stabbed.

But Olivia Eversea was still the razor who could slice his callused heart to ribbons.

She always had been.

He wondered if she always would be.

And G.o.d help him, he wasn't certain he was brave enough to live through that again.

So when he finally slept, he slept alone.

Chapter 19.

MORNING POURED THROUGH THE window, sea breeze scoured clean, the light so pure and brilliant everything in the room merged into a single soft glow, the walls, the windows, the curtains, the floors.

Everything apart from a gleaming jar of marmalade and the shining handle of the knife protruding from it.

Lyon was sitting at the table, a small stack of fried bread on a plate next to him, steam rising from a cup next to his elbow.

She slid into the chair across from him and propped her chin on her hands.

He poured a cup of coffee from a surprisingly fine porcelain pot and pushed it over to her.

"It will singe your eyebrows off." His voice was still gravelly from sleep, and it affected her senses as surely as if his fingers had played with the short hairs on the nape of her neck.

He watched, waiting for her to taste it.

" votre sante." She raised it in a toast, took a sip, and winced.

"Eh?" he said happily.

"Eh!" she approved, and took another bracing sip. "It's marvelous. It's what I always imagined lava tasted like."

"Turkish," he said shortly. And smiled faintly.

She smiled at him. A pair of mauve shadows curved beneath his eyes, and she suspected she sported a matching set. Clearly neither of them had slept well, if at all. They had metaphorically set each other's bodies on fire and then gone their separate ways to smolder in their respective beds.

She wondered if he'd memorized his ceiling the way she'd memorized hers. She'd probably lost any weight she'd gained on this journey by tossing and turning violently.

But he'd been very right to stop that kiss last night.

"You look piratical," she said. And dangerous. And appealing. And human. And vulnerable.

And the black whiskers made his eyes seem even bluer.

His eyes flared an instant at her choice of words. Which had not been idle.

He smiled swiftly and swiped a self-conscious hand over his chin. "You look . . ."

His eyes finished the sentence for him.

If one could make love with a single look, he'd just done that.

He reached for a slice of fried bread and slid the plate over to her, along with a jar of marmalade. Her favorite.

"All the luxuries of home," she said. Her voice was a little faint, after that look.

She seized the knife and spread the marmalade over the bread as if she were one of Genevieve's beloved painters.

He watched her, bemused.

She paused to admire her handiwork before she took a bite.

"Does it have to be completely covered?" He sounded fascinated.

"Yes," she said easily.

He smiled at that.

They knew each other so well, but there were so many other things they didn't know, the homely humble things.

She bit into it. Heaven. Bread and marmalade had never tasted so marvelous.

When she finished chewing she said, "I should like a bath."

He paused mid-chew and studied her with faint surprise, then flicked a glance over her, as if to ascertain whether she was indeed dirty.

"I'm a woman," she pointed out. "The tolerance for sand in my various crevices is no doubt lower than your own."

"Fair point."

He watched approvingly as she tore into her bread again like a starved wolf. She'd never been this hungry in her life.

"I know just the place," he said at last. Sounding mysterious.

"The place?"

"I haven't a bathtub yet, per se, and as you likely have noticed, no household staff to see to it if I did have one. You see, when it's just me and I want to thoroughly bathe, I . . ." And he gestured with his chin out the window.

"You aren't going to tell me to wade into the ocean!"

"I'm not going to tell you to do anything. You made it clear how you felt about that." He said this with a sort of relish. "I'll just show you."

He took another bite of his own bread, then studied her face.

He put the bread down.

"You'll love it," he said gently, and with total confidence. It was both irritating and hopelessly magnetic, as usual. As if she were a mare who spooked easily, and the whole point of his life was to lead her to things she loved.

"JONATHAN HAS HIS own investment group, you say?" he said suddenly. "I've had my ways of staying abreast of the news, but I hadn't heard this bit."

They had set out into the beautiful morning. He'd thrown a few things into a knapsack, cheese and bread and a little bottle of wine and a couple of rolled-up blankets, and he was swinging it in his hand and whistling some unidentifiable tune. It meandered so much she suspected it was his own invention, which made her smile.

That brilliant blue sky above them was the very color of happiness, as cheerful as a carnival canopy. The sun was gentle but brilliant, the air softly humid, and she wondered at the fact that she hadn't thought to bring a bonnet, or wear stockings. She'd seized her reticule, more out of habit than from necessity, though it contained a comb. How quickly she'd taken to becoming a heathen.

"And they say he'll be running for Parliament," she reminded him. "He's pa.s.sionate about child labor reform."

Lyon shook his head in wonderment. "There must have been a woman involved."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because women are why we do anything."