The Legend of Lyon Redmond (2 page)

A half-dozen men were arrayed before Madame Marceau's, arms slung about each other, swaying rhythmically, their heads tipped back in full-throated song. Another man seemed to be presiding as a conductor, strutting to and fro before them and holding a sheaf of papers in one hand.

He waved one in the air. “Get yer flash ballad here! Two pence! Be the first to teach your friends the song all of London will be singing for centuries to come!”

This was quite a claim, given that one of London's other favorite songs was all about Olivia's brother Colin, and it, like Colin, who had survived the gallows, refused to die.

Years of distributing and accepting pamphlets for the causes nearest her heart—the eradication of slavery and the protection of the poor—had Olivia reflexively stretching out her hand for it.

The man hesitated, then saw the outstretched hand was encased in an expensive blue kid glove and decided to let her hold it.

“Two pence, madame, if ye'd like to take it with you.” He beamed persuasively at her.

She didn't hear him.

She was transfixed in horror by the first words on the page.

The Legend of Lyon Redmond

Her breath left her in one painful gust, surely as though a broom handle had been driven into her ribs.

But the worst was yet to come.

Oh, if you thought you'd never see

A bride called Olivia Eversea

Well come along with me, lads, come along with me!

Her pretty self was on the shelf

And at last a-wed she'll be.

Oh, everyone thought

It was all for naught

And she'd dry up and blow away.

But will Redmond return

And make her burn

For the love of yesterday?

Sensation abandoned her limbs.

Where oh where did Redmond go?

Why oh why did he flee?

Is he riding the Nile on a crocodile?

Or did he take to the wide open sea?

Did a cannibal eat 'im?

Is he living in Eden

With Adam and Eve and the Snake?

Did Miss Eversea scare 'im

Into the arms of a harem

Where he lolls about like a sheik?

Shock reverberated through her as though she'd been driven into the ground with a mallet.

And all the while the little chorus behind her sang on.

Someone back there, she thought irrationally, had a lovely baritone.

S
HE FINALLY, BRIEFLY CLOSED
her eyes because the air in front of her was spangling ominously.

So this is what it feels like right before one faints
, she thought distantly.

She'd never fainted in her life.

Perhaps she ought to breathe. That's what lungs were for, after all, and she currently didn't seem to be using them.

They were words. Just words. Just words.

She inhaled deeply.

Exhaled.

That was a little better.

And still the chorus behind her sang on.

“
Madame
,” the man's insistent voice cut through her daze, which made her realize this likely wasn't the first time he'd said it. “'Tis two pence for that fine composition in your hand.”

She opened her eyes.

She was nearly eye level with a sparkling, shrewd brown gaze. The man's waistcoat buttons were severely taxed by the majestic arc of his stomach, and two tufts of hair friskily peeked from beneath his beaver hat. She suspected it was all the hair he had left in the world.

“Two pence, is it? I can see why it's so dear. It's an impressive piece. Quite nimbly rhymed.”

The man glowed. “It's my own composition, you know. I'm told I've a gift. It goes on to explain all the other things Redmond might be doing whilst he's away.” He leaned over to tap it for emphasis. “Eight verses and counting! I learned about sheiks and crocodiles and the like at a lecture by his brother, Mr. Miles Redmond, the famous explorer.”

“
Quelle
irony,” she murmured.

“The Redmonds are a very accomplished family,” he added proudly, as if he was their personal retainer and the Redmonds kept a staff troubadour to chronicle their lives.

“They are, indeed,” she agreed smoothly. “Tell me,
do
sheiks, in fact, ‘loll'? You see, I was unable to attend that particular lecture by Mr. Miles Redmond.”

“Well, I cannot say for certain. I confess I called upon my imagination for that bit, and the word ‘loll' is rather musical, don't you think?”

“It paints a picture. I fear I must take issue with your first verse, however.”

He bristled. “On what authority do you speak? Are
you
a poetess?”

“I'm Olivia Eversea.”

He froze.

His eyes darted with hummingbird speed over her face.

He made a frantic chopping motion in the general direction of the choir behind him.

They clapped their mouths shut.

The sudden quiet seemed deafening.

And then he whipped off his hat so quickly the ribbons on her bonnet fluttered. He clapped it over his heart and bowed like he'd been felled by an axe.

“Cor, is that so now?” he said when he was upright again. “Pleased I am to make your acquaintance, Miss Eversea. Ye're prettier than a spring day.”

“Clearly hyperbole is your special gift, Mr.—”

“Pickles.”

“Mr. Pickles.”

She fixed him with stare that distilled centuries of excellent breeding and money and arrogance and intelligence and grace.

To his credit, shamed scarlet slowly flooded into his cheeks.

“I
am
sorry about the ‘dry up and blow away' bit,” he muttered sheepishly. “I wrote it before we met, you see.”

“Of course.”

“And I thought it lent pathos.”

“It does give the song a certain dramatic structure, as it were,” she acknowledged.

Her ears were still ringing from shock and her hands were icy. She probably ought to sit down. Perhaps put her head between her knees.

“A structure!” he breathed. “Yes! You are an insightful woman, Miss Eversea.” His face lit with hopeful accord and a plea for understanding.

Olivia gave a start when someone behind her slid the flash ballad from her gloved fingers.

She turned swiftly. It was Lord Landsdowne, her fiancé, looking every bit the viscount in a flawlessly fitting Weston-cut coat, his silver buttons sparkling, his Hessian toes gleaming, his affable, unmistakable air of entitlement radiating from him like beams from a benevolent sun.

She turned a surprised and delighted smile up to him.

He didn't see it. He was too occupied absorbing the little horror in his hand.

And before her eyes his face went slowly, subtly hard.

It occurred to her that she had known him months before they were officially engaged, and yet she'd never seen him angry.

Nor had the words “Lyon” and “Redmond” ever once been spoken aloud by either of them to the other since they met.

She, in fact, hadn't spoken those two words aloud to anyone for years.

Oh, she supposed she'd resorted to the pronoun “he” once or twice, when it could not be avoided. As if Lyon were the Almighty. Or Beelzebub.

And surely this delicacy was ludicrous. Perhaps if she made a habit of tossing his name into idle conversation now and again, it would lose its power and become meaningless and strange, as any word will if you stare at it long enough.

On the other hand, the first night she'd danced with Lyon, she'd lain sleepless, thrumming with some unnamed new joy, and then she'd crept out of bed, seized a sheet of foolscap, and feverishly filled the front and back of it with those two words. They had spilled out of her like a hosannah, or like an attempt at exorcism.

They hadn't lost any of their power then.

“Will ye put your signature to my composition for me then, Miss Eversea?” Mr. Pickles was all humility now. Or rather, three parts humility, one part commerce. “It might very well make me a rich man. I could sell it to the Montmorency Museum to show along with your brother's, Mr. Colin Eversea's, suit of clothes. The ones he was nearly hung in.”

Blast. She'd forgotten about Colin's bequest. She sighed.

Someone was bound to fund a Museum of Eversea Ignominy one day.

“She'll sign nothing,” Landsdowne said evenly. But his eyes were flints. “I'll give you a shilling to leave here and never return.”

Olivia's head jerked toward him in astonishment. He hadn't yet looked directly at her or greeted her, which was both unnerving and intriguing.

Obviously his intent was to protect her honor.

Not to mention his own.

But she'd always found it well nigh intolerable when someone else spoke for her. And this was the first time Landsdowne had done any such thing.

They locked eyes at last, and she watched his soften, the way they always did when they landed on her.

“Oh, where's the harm in signing it?” she coaxed him. “Perhaps if Mr. Pickles becomes wealthy he won't need to sell more of these songs. And far be it for any of us to discourage an entrepreneur.”

“Miss Eversea, if I may interject? In the spirit of honesty, I fear I am at the mercy of the muse. My compositions burble forth like a spring from the earth, and riches are hardly likely to discourage them.” Mr. Pickles was the picture of contrite humility.

“Then tell me what it will cost to build a dam,” Landsdowne said grimly.

“We'll have Madame Marceau fetch a quill,” Olivia soothed. “I shall sign it and leave it with her, with instructions to give it to Mr. Pickles after I'm gone for the day.”

She'd learned that her smiles were Landsdowne's weakness, so she gave him one. Conciliatory and charming and warm.

And challenging.

He hesitated. As if he was contemplating countermanding her.

She stiffened her spine, as if bracing for a wind.

This was what marriage would be like, she realized. Countless little negotiations, both subtle and overt. Which the two of them, of course, would conduct in the most civilized manner imaginable, because two more reasonable adults had never walked the earth, and a more even-tempered man had never been born. And surely it would be balm after brothers who had dangled from the trellises of married countesses, gone to the gallows only to vanish from them in a cloud of smoke, married controversial American heiresses, and been shot at a good deal during the war.

Nor would Landsdowne ever throw a handful of pebbles up at her window at midnight.

Lyon's face flashed before her eyes then. White and stunned, like a man bleeding inside. His shirt glued to his body by rain, because he'd slung his coat around her.

That image was her purgatory.

She shoved it away, back into the shadows of her mind, the only safe place for it.

No, Landsdowne's courtship had been calm, determined, and relentless. He'd conducted it the way the sea conducts a campaign to wear away a cliff.

His mouth at last quirked at the corner. “Very well, my dear. If you must.”

My dear
. He'd slipped those words into conversation shortly after they'd become engaged, and he'd begun to use them more and more. It was husbandly and sweet and made her inexplicably as restless as if he'd reached over and fastened a diamond collar round her neck.

Lyon had called her “Liv.”

He'd called her other things, too, things that began with “my.”
My heart. My love.
He'd used words
with the innocent recklessness of someone who had never before been hurt.

They'd of course both learned the harm that words could do.

She suddenly wished for another moment alone. She still felt weak, as if an old fever had stirred.

“Isn't it better to show everyone how little we care about this nonsense?” she murmured to Landsdowne.

His smile became real then. He shoved two pence at Mr. Pickles, who accepted them with pleasure.

Olivia kept the song.

“A pleasure, Mr. Pickles,” he said ironically. “And there's a shilling in it for you if you move your little choir a few shops down.”

Mr. Pickles accepted the shilling and herded his carolers down the street.

Landsdowne cupped her elbow and resolutely steered her through the pedestrians to Madame Marceau's shop, shielding her with the breadth of his body.

But Olivia stopped abruptly and eased from his grip long enough to crouch before the beggars leaning against the wall. They were so tattered and filthy and abject they were almost as indistinguishable from each other as they were from the shadows. Two of them were bandaged, one around a hand, the other across his face, in all likelihood to hide some kind of disfigurement—war or accident. It mattered not to her.

Her shillings clinked hollowly in the single cup.

“I'm sorry,” she said softly to them, “it's all I have today . . . but it might be enough to buy mail coach passage to Sussex. Reverend Sylvaine in Pennyroyal Green can help you find work and food, perhaps shelter . . .”

But it was all she could say, because their unwashed stench was overpowering, and she was ashamed when she needed push herself to her feet again.

She stepped back abruptly against her strong, clean fiancé, who claimed her elbow once more.

But she waited for the beggar, who raised his hand and slowly brought it down in his graceful, characteristic blessing.

She was not typically superstitious, but his blessing had become important as she walked into Madame Marceau's for her fittings.

Landsdowne handed her a handkerchief, which smelled of starch and a hint of bay rum and was neatly embroidered with his initials. She applied it to her nose with a relief that shamed her.

And one day it would be her responsibility, nay, her
privilege
, to embroider those little initials into the corner of his handkerchiefs.

Rather like the handkerchief she kept in her reticule.

There were initials on that, too.

And blood.

She ought to burn it the way she'd burned the foolscap covered with his name.

“That lot will likely only drink those shillings,” Landsdowne muttered dryly.

“They may do whatever they see fit with them.” She'd said it a little too abruptly, pulling the handkerchief from her nose and handing it back to him.

“The poor are with us always, Olivia.”

“Oh,
are
they now? Do enlighten me.”

He stiffened.

Which is when she realized she'd snapped at him.

She drew in a breath, blew it out again, and squared her shoulders. She smiled at him apolo
getically. “Oh, do let's begin again. And forgive my nerves? It's been a day full of startling things and it's scarcely even begun. I'm terribly sorry to be so shrewish.”

“There's nothing to forgive,” he said instantly. “Or rather, forgive
me
. I was merely making an innocuous comment, and I didn't intend for it to sound like a lecture. And you are an angel, not a shrew. Certainly you know more than I do with regards to the ubiquity of the poor.”

“Oh, I'm a novice compared to Mrs. Sneath.”

“Everyone is a novice at everything compared to Mrs. Sneath.”

She laughed.

“All these wedding preparations would shred even Admiral Nelson's nerves, Olivia. Mine are usually unassailable, and I swear I can hear them groaning from the strain,” he confided. “Are you certain you won't allow me to whisk you off to Gretna Green?” It was only half in jest.

“As tempting as that sounds, my mother and Madame Marceau would likely make a widow of me the day they found out. We've had a number of weddings in the family lately, but no pomp, and I think everyone believes they deserve a little pomp.”

“Oh, but we deserve pomp, too,” he teased gently. “And truthfully, my mother and sisters are both expecting and demanding it, too. Very well. Then at least allow me to take you to Ackermann's for tea, or perhaps Twining's when they've done pinning you, or whatever it is they do to women in there.” He gestured at the shop. “They're both on the Strand and we're so close. I knew you'd be here—I stopped by your town house and spoke a bit with your mother and your brother. It was . . . I'd simply hoped to steal some time with you.”

“I would love that!” she said quite sincerely. She loved wandering about Ackermann's, poring over the new prints and sifting through the pretty little gifts they sold. She'd found her tortoiseshell card case there. “And please don't consider it stealing time. I shall give it freely and happily.”