He said this so warmly that despite himself, Lyon nearly flushed. His father's pride and approval was as potent as his censure, and his three sons, despite themselves, had lived for it their entire lives. His brothers usually had to make do with whatever splashed off Lyon and landed on them. (Their sister, Violet, occupied her own category. Every one of them doted on her, his father included, and she was in danger of becoming hopelessly spoiled.) "Thank you, sir."

"Your future with the Mercury Club is brilliant. The world is your oyster. You have not only your family name to thank for this, but your focus and intelligence and discipline. There will, in fact, be an opportunity in a few weeks for you to accompany me to London to present your ideas for investment to the members of the club."

Yesterday this would have been dizzying, gratifying news. It was everything he had always hoped for.

But oddly, now a trip to London sounded like a trip to purgatory. Heaven, as far as he was concerned, had a population of two.

"Thank you, Father. I should be honored."

"You are poised now to make a magnificent marriage, as I did, one that will bring a wealth of blessings and stature to the Redmond family for decades to come. I know your suit will be welcome by one young lady in particular, and her family will welcome us to London, too."

Lyon was wary now. The name of some girl would likely be produced any moment. A girl with a t.i.tle and a fortune and a father with connections that Isaiah could charmingly exploit in the service of building the fortune.

In all likelihood, Lady Arabella.

Yesterday Lyon would have been curious to hear the name. He'd, in fact, had several names in mind not too long ago. Yesterday, Lady Arabella would have seemed a perfectly reasonable, indeed, desirable choice. It was a choice he understood, and he'd been raised with the knowledge that making a spectacular marriage, and conferring the a.s.sociated kind of honor and influence upon his family for generations to come, was his duty.

He knew, definitively, that it no longer mattered what his father said.

Lyon now knew who and what he wanted.

And before yesterday, he hadn't even known what it was to truly want.

"I always hoped to marry as well as you did, Father."

Lyon thought he saw a flicker in his father's eyebrow region. He could have sworn something about that sentence had touched Isaiah on the raw.

Isaiah finally merely nodded once. "Nothing makes me happier or more proud than knowing I can count on you to do the right thing, son, for your actions are a reflection of your fine character. I am absolutely certain you will never disappoint me or bring shame to our family, and this is such a comfort to me and your mother."

It was as though he could will these things into existence by merely stating them.

Lyon had always been fascinated by the fact that Isaiah could persuade nearly anyone of anything. He'd watched his father subtly but relentlessly ply wit, charm, and strategy in meetings at the Mercury Club, over drinks at White's, milling about with port and cigars after dinner parties. He studied people for weaknesses, strengths, fears, and proclivities, and he used them to his advantage the way conductor shapes a symphony. Lyon had witnessed one wealthy investor after another succ.u.mb to his father's tactics, none the wiser. Thusly the Redmond fortune and influence grew and grew.

It was an extraordinary talent, his father's intellectually driven intuition, and Lyon had always been secretly proud of it.

But now that Isaiah was employing the same tactics on him, it seemed faintly sinister.

Lyon's skin itched. As if strings binding him were chafing.

It was not the first time he'd had these sorts of thoughts. Almost two b.l.o.o.d.y o'clock in the afternoon would not go down in his personal history as the hour of his epiphany.

But it had finally come completely into focus, and with it came an interesting sort of calm.

Lyon was a separate person from his father.

He did not like to be told what to do.

And, like his father, he intended to get what he wanted.

"Thank you, Father. Your opinion means the world to me."

His father said nothing. He pressed his lips together thoughtfully.

The clock ticked inexorably on. It was now b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l two o'clock.

Lyon shifted slightly. The message he'd shoved in his pocket rustled.

He finally could no longer bear it. "Will that be all, Father?"

"I hope so," his father said. And smiled faintly.

IT HADN'T BEEN difficult for Olivia to persuade Genevieve to accompany her into town to Tingle's Bookshop the following afternoon. Genevieve loved Tingle's Bookshop, and Tingle was fond of the Eversea girls. They were two of his best customers, after all, between Olivia and her pamphlets and love for a good horrid or adventure novel, and Genevieve and her predilection for florid romances and biographies of great artists and the occasional indulgence in a London broadsheet, which usually made both her and Olivia giggle.

But Olivia rose late, because visions of waltzes had kept her feverishly awake all night. And Genevieve dawdled at home, because she was attempting, and failing, once again to curl her hair, and Olivia thought her head might launch off her neck from impatience as the clock raced toward two.

It was a quarter past two by the time they arrived.

They burst in the door and both paused on the threshold to inhale at once the singular perfume of leather and paper and glue that characterized Tingle's. It was a roomy shop, serving all of Suss.e.x, and it was partly sunny, so that people could admire the gleaming of gold-embossed bindings and comfortably flip through a page or two of books that had already had their pages cut, and partly softly dark, to keep the fine covers from fading.

A few other people were in the store, two older gentlemen and a woman, and all were absorbed in the separate little worlds of their books.

Tingle looked up, beamed, and bowed as if they were princesses. "If it isn't the Eversea girls! What wonderful timing. Miss Olivia, I've a new pamphlet for you."

Mr. Tingle lived to serve his customers.

Olivia seized it delightedly. "Oh, wonderful, Mr. Tingle. So very kind of you to remember to get it in for me."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all, my dear. And Miss Genevieve, I've a shipment of books I know you'll want to see," he said, twinkling. "It's in the back, however." He beamed at them. "I'll be just a moment."

He ducked into the back of his shop, and they could hear him rustling about and whistling cheerily and tunelessly under his breath.

Olivia drifted, as casually as she could make it seem, over to the section of history books. Her blood was ringing in her ears, since her heart was circulating it rather enthusiastically.

"History books, Olivia? Wouldn't you rather have a look at the horrid novels? I thought I saw The Orphan on the Rhine on the shelf. You want that one, remember!"

"Shoo," Olivia muttered beneath her breath to Genevieve, who had attached herself to her hip.

"I beg your pardon?" Genevieve was startled.

"Er, my shoe. I believe there's a pebble in it."

"Oh. Well, perhaps you ought to take it off and-"

"Oh look! Mr. Tingle has returned with your books, Gen!"

"Ohhh, lovely!" Her younger sister whirled and all but skipped to the front of the store.

Olivia took a deep breath and rounded the corner of a shelf.

Mr. Redmond was standing there idly, his long form looking as at home there as he did in a ballroom, one leg casually bent, and he was studying the spines of the books as if he had all the time in the world to do precisely that.

A book was already tucked under his arm.

She stared at him.

He didn't even turn. "Well. Good afternoon, Miss Eversea."

His voice was scarcely above a murmur.

"Why, good afternoon, Mr. Redmond. Have you an interest in history?"

"As a matter of I'm positively fascinated by the events of the past. Specifically, the events of last night."

"Last night . . . do you mean the first time you stole a waltz?"

He smiled. "I still refuse to feel chagrin."

"You did indeed do me a charity, for Lord Cambersmith would have trod upon my foot. He always does."

"You see? I am a veritable Robin Hood of the ballroom."

"Didn't Robin Hood give to the poor?"

"Oh, but I did. I gave to poor me, who had heretofore gone my entire life without dancing with you."

She stifled a laugh at that.

He turned. "I have already made a purchase." He gestured with the book beneath his arm. "I just wanted to make certain I didn't leave the shop before I ascertained there was nothing else in the store I wanted."

"Very thorough of you," she said, her voice just barely above a hush. "I should hate for you to forgo something you want."

He approved of that saucy little sentence with a slow smile she felt in her solar plexus.

"What's that in your hand, Miss Eversea? Have you brought me a love letter?"

Olivia stifled shocked laughter. Then reflexively whipped the pamphlet behind her back.

"I'm terribly sorry, was that too bold?" He was all mock somber contrition.

"Hush. No. I'm difficult to shock. I've a number of rather lively brothers, you know. One becomes inured to being startled."

"Oh yes. Everyone knows about your lively brothers, Miss Eversea. Very well. Difficult to shock, is it? Have a care, or I may consider that a challenge."

"I personally find challenges invigorating."

"Bold words from a woman who doesn't want to show me whatever it is you're holding, because she's afraid of what I'll say about it."

d.a.m.n. This was precisely true and she blinked at being skewered with the truth.

He raised his eyebrows in a challenge.

"It's true. I don't want to show it to you," she admitted. Quite pleased with him, perversely.

"Oh G.o.d. Is it because . . . is it because it's a . . . poem?" he said with such crestfallen trepidation she burst out laughing and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

"If you'd told me you liked poetry I would have stayed up the entire night to write a poem about you, Miss Eversea. And I never thought I'd say that to a soul in my entire life."

"Fear not. It's not a poem. And I shouldn't wish for you to endure that ordeal. Particularly because nothing rhymes with Olivia."

"Nothing rhymes with 'beautiful,' either. But for you I would undertake the challenge."

Her breath snagged in her throat.

She'd heard that sort of compliment a dozen or so times before.

But somehow the way Lyon Redmond said it made her understand precisely what he saw and felt when he looked at her, and what he saw and felt were very adult, very complex things, indeed. "Beautiful" was not a word to be taken, or delivered, lightly.

The backs of her arms heated, and she prayed it wouldn't turn into a blush.

"You are very bold, Mr. Redmond," she managed finally. A little subdued.

"Am I?" He sounded genuinely surprised. "I've never been accused of such a thing. I thought I was simply being truthful."

"Truthful, and a bit of a rogue."

He smiled slowly, crookedly, pleased with that a.s.sessment, apparently.

"What will you do, Mr. Redmond, if you ever succeed in genuinely scandalizing me?"

"If I do, you'll forgive me straight away." He said this with a little shrug that was both thrilling and irritating.

She gave him an insincere scowl.

"Come, show me what it is." He nudged his chin in the direction of what she was holding. "I shan't judge."

She didn't want to introduce a discordant note into these giddy, stolen few moments of his company.

But she remembered his own truthful bravery of the night before.

And she loathed artifice.

She drew in a bracing breath and sighed it out.

With resignation she turned it around and held it up so he could read the t.i.tle.

"'A Letter to His Excellency the Prince of Talleyrand Perigord on the Subject of the Slave Trade,'" he read aloud softly. "William Wilberforce."

He looked up into her face again.