Pennyroyal Green: The Legend Of Lyon Redmond Part 30

She contemplated countermanding him. But she knew concern when she heard it, and her reflex was to take his troubles away.

So she obeyed him. The bread was crusty and coa.r.s.e but delicious, and the cheese was fine. She'd never eaten with an audience, but he watched in absolute silence as she devoured two more slices and sipped her wine.

He handed her a napkin. She dabbed at her lips, then folded her napkin and looked up at him.

"Olivia?"

"Yes?"

"Why Landsdowne? Why now?"

She met his eyes.

"Why shouldn't it be him and why shouldn't it be now?" she said evenly enough.

He drained his wine and then stood, and looked down at her a moment.

"Because you don't love him," he said idly.

She sucked in a startled breath. "How dare you."

"I think you would be amazed at what I now dare."

They locked eyes again. The air shimmered with dangerous emotions and unspoken things.

She didn't know how they would ever be spoken.

"We'll reach sh.o.r.e soon enough," he said finally. "Don't attempt to leave the cabin again. None of my crew were gentle born and even if they were, months at sea without a woman tends to erode gentlemanly impulses."

He said this so easily. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for someone of his breeding to command a crew of dangerous men apparently united in a struggle to control their animal desires.

She glanced at the print on the wall, the one in which he was simmering in a pot.

And she thought of that other print on Ackermann's wall.

Of a man with blue eyes, holding a sword in his left hand, hair rippling in the breeze.

"If you need something to pa.s.s the time . . ."

He reached into the sack and carefully placed a copy of Robinson Crusoe down on the desk, and followed it with The Orphan on the Rhine.

She stared down at them. Stunned.

And suddenly, unaccountably deeply moved.

They'd been purchased at Tingle's, she was certain of it.

She looked up at him, remembering that day. How simply standing near him had been magical. Like falling and flying all at once.

He would have done anything for her. She'd sensed it even then.

She suddenly didn't dare look up. And then she did.

And saw in his eyes that he was remembering that day, too.

Both the beauty of it . . .

And how it had all then been sundered.

"Take your pick." He smiled faintly.

And then he was gone.

SHE MUST HAVE fallen asleep again over her copy of Robinson Crusoe, because she started when there was a sharp rap on her door.

Olivia leaped up and smoothed her skirt and peered out.

It was Digby.

"It's time to disembark, Miss Eversea. We've arrived."

DIGBY LED OLIVIA up to the deck while a pair of truly intimidating men pa.s.sed them, touching their hats, to fetch her trunk.

Olivia emerged blinking; the dazzling lowering sun seemed to be aimed right into her eyes. She craned her head backward. A few shreds of clouds were scattered over a sky that had been brilliant but was now beginning to give way to the indigo of sunset.

Her namesake, The Olivia, was anch.o.r.ed in a little inlet created by the golden, curving horseshoe of a beach.

A caress of a breeze fluttered the hem of her dress, played in the hair that had escaped its pins. It was so serene something in her eased, and for an instant she forgot she'd been tricked into coming, and was simply grateful that she was here, wherever this was.

And then Lyon was at her elbow, and her traitorous heart gave that leap. Recognizing to whom it had once belonged. She yanked it back again. It wasn't his to command anymore.

Or so she told herself.

"Cadiz," he said simply.

THEY WERE ROWED ash.o.r.e in a longboat. His crew managed to beach the craft and a.s.sist her to the beach without dampening overmuch, and she managed mostly to preserve her modesty. G.o.d only knew she didn't want to display too much stocking-covered calf to any of those female-deprived men.

She shook out her skirts and patted them and murmured thanks.

Lyon was standing on the beach, stark as the needle of a compa.s.s in dark trousers and boots and white shirt, speaking to members of his crew in what sounded like fluent Spanish and pointing toward the foot of a cliff.

She watched as one of his crew ferried her trunk away and deposited it where Lyon was directing, at the foot of what appeared to be a little road that wound up the cliff.

The men saluted Lyon and piled into the boats again and shoved them back out into the inlet.

Leaving her entirely alone on the beach with Lyon.

"Shall we?" he said simply, and without waiting for a reply from her, set off across the beach.

She turned toward the ship and froze.

The crew was raising the anchor. Her heart lurched.

"Lyon . . ." she called.

"Yes?" he called over his shoulder. He didn't stop.

She scrambled to follow him, grateful for her traveling boots.

"Why aren't they coming with us?"

"They weren't invited."

"What are they doing?"

"Leaving."

"Where are they going?"

"Away," he said shortly.

"What do you mean, away?" She hated the sound of her voice. She'd been shrill more frequently in the last two days than in the whole of her life.

"They'll be back in a few days."

That did it. She stopped and threw back her head. "Arrrrrgh!"

He whirled around and froze.

Her roar echoed around them.

Which is when she realized how very, very quiet it was. And how very, very alone they likely were.

"That was an interesting sound," he said carefully, finally.

"Lyon Redmond. Do not make me raise my voice again. I don't like the sound of it when it's shrill. Do not order me about. You will inform me and engage me in conversation as if I am a guest, not an enemy captive. You will not stride ahead of me and force me to scramble inelegantly to catch up. I am now here voluntarily and you will treat me at all times with civility, unless you've forgotten how."

In the silence the wind filled his shirt like a sail and whipped his hair up off his sun-browned forehead. And in truth, he looked more pagan than civil at the moment. He was perhaps a little too accustomed to people doing his bidding.

Despite it all, his beauty knifed through her.

"Very well," he said finally, with a surprising, utterly disarming tenderness. "I apologize for being insufferable. And I accept your terms."

She was speechless.

"Have you any other terms?"

She gave her head a shake, because she didn't trust herself to speak over the sudden lump in her throat.

"May I point out you're now issuing orders?" he added, teasing her gently now.

"Duly noted."

She wanted to smile. She almost did.

He wanted to smile, too, she could tell. He almost did.

And yet neither of them could yet completely give way, because the weight of years held them back.

He turned away from her again.

"Look up there, on that rise."

She shaded her eyes with her hand and followed the direction of his pointing finger. She saw a low, gracefully sprawling house of creamy white stone, surrounded by lush greenery-flowering trees, spreading oaks, and needled pines.

A serene house, simple in line, but possessing both a sort of peace and grandeur.

The view from every window would be spectacular-ocean and sand and hills.

Precisely as he'd described to her so many years ago.

Her breath hitched.

She looked at him.

"It's my house," he said.

Every word of that sentence thrummed with a sort of quiet, steely satisfaction.

Her heart skipped. "Your house?"

He wasn't looking at her. And that's when she realized his terseness may well have been because he was nervous about showing it to her.

"One of my houses," he replied shortly, one of the more intriguing sentences she'd ever heard.

He slid her a sidelong glance. Inscrutable. "Shall we?"

Chapter 17.

HE STRIPPED OFF HIS coat and handed it to her, wordlessly.