Lyon exhaled thoughtfully. He could feel the desolation of years. He could not imagine what it had been like for Isaiah Redmond and Isolde Eversea.
And now they would be members of the same family.
Which might very well be flinging a lit match into kindling.
So be it.
No one and nothing was going to stop Lyon and Olivia from being together.
“Lyon,” his father said thoughtfully. “You may have acquired a certain amount of wisdom, but I am still older than you are. I think one day, perhaps far in the future, you may discover your heart can hold many different kinds and shades of love. When you have children, you’ll begin to see what I mean. And you will be amazed at what you can learn to live with every day.”
Lyon wasn’t interested in the distant future at the moment. He wanted, very restlessly, to get back to Olivia, who was still with her cousin at the vicarage.
He didn’t ask his father if he would still take Isolde from Jacob Eversea if he could.
He thought he knew the answer, and he didn’t want to hear it.
LYON’S SIBLINGS AND their spouses were gathered in one of the drawing rooms, the room where he and his brothers had once leaped from settee to table to chair, pretending the carpet was lava, and where he’d once been fascinated by the nuts and vines carved into the mantel. He heard their voices, the cadences and timbres, the flow of conversation, all achingly familiar.
He hung back for a moment. A little uncertain.
He knew how relationships could shift and flow and change to fill in gaps left by someone lost. But he was unafraid of nearly everything now, and he could do this, too.
And then they all looked up and saw him.
And there was an almost comical hush.
They stared at him as if he were a rhinoceros. Shyly, with a little trepidation, and as if they all wanted to fling themselves at him and pet him but they weren’t certain whether he was tame enough.
“Still ugly, I see,” Jonathan said, finally.
“Are you talking to the mirror?” Lyon said mildly.
Everyone laughed. Brotherly communication and affection was reestablished, and the ice was broken and Violet hurled herself into his arms.
“Well, my brave girl,” he murmured to her, and gave her a squeeze. “One day we shall have a chat.”
He’d noted straight away that her husband, the Earl of Ardmay, also known as Captain Flint, was in the corner of the room, leaning back and cuddling the baby. Violet, being a girl, was allowed to weep all over Lyon, and everyone else, even his brothers, found the carpet or ceiling interesting or discovered they’d gotten dust in their eyes and needed to blink a good deal.
Except Lyon.
“Don’t hog him, Violet!” Jonathan said irritably.
“Yes, don’t be a Lyon hog, Violet!” Miles teased.
“Lyon hog! That sounds like some hybrid animal Miles would find in Lacao,” Lyon said.
There was more laughter and his brothers hugged and thumped him in a manly fashion and he hugged and thumped them in return.
If anyone in the room had harbored any lingering resentment about Lyon’s disappearance and the crushing confusion and pain of his loss, it was instantly drowned by the superior power of love and gratitude and the sheer rightness of having Lyon here again. And now that they were older, and each of them had fallen in love, they understood more fully why Lyon had to do what he’d done. And relationships could shift and flow to allow him back in.
Each of them had won their own loves the hard way, and had been transformed and softened and deepened in the process, whether they wanted to be or not.
Five years, and now Jonathan was a man, dashing and imposing, who could very nearly be Lyon’s twin.
Five years, and now Miles was handsome and calmly, resolutely confident.
Both had gravitas and presence and Lyon was fiercely proud of them. He knew how hard they must have needed to fight for their happiness and independence. He half wondered if this was his father’s plan from the very beginning, but surely not even Isaiah Redmond was that clever.
Though he also knew he had their wives to thank for giving them the courage.
He learned rather quickly, and to his great relief, that Thomasina and Cynthia, Jonathan’s and Miles’s wives, were lively and witty and charming and warm. And very pretty, a pleasure to have in any room. Tommy had dark red hair and green eyes; she was an exotic beauty. Cynthia was a lovely blonde with blue eyes.
“Beautiful” was the word he reserved for Olivia.
“You’re both clearly better than Jonathan and Miles deserve,” he pronounced, upon meeting the two wives. “I can see that at once.”
“I won Tommy by smoldering at her,” Jonathan claimed. “Which I learned from you.”
“He did, rather,” Tommy admitted. “Smolder at me.”
“Then I insist upon being the godfather of your children.”
“We already have one hundred of ’em,” Jonathan said idly.
Everyone present had already heard this joke, but it was Lyon’s first time, and they thoroughly enjoyed his reaction.
Though if he’d known how many times he would hear it in the years to come, he might have rolled his eyes.
He learned very quickly a little about Jonathan and Tommy’s work on behalf of child labor laws.
“We need to talk at length later. You and Olivia will have much to say to each other,” he told Tommy. “And I need to discuss projects in which to invest.”
And there transpired an infinitesimal silence and a few strained smiles.
Olivia Eversea was synonymous with Beelzebub in the Redmond household. She’d long been blamed for his disappearance. Undoing that wouldn’t happen precisely overnight.
“You will love her. And she will be part of our family, and we will be a part of hers, as soon as I can get a license. I imagine we can be married as soon as Sunday next. I’m quite looking forward to having Olivia and Violet in the same room.”
Violet made a face at him.
“Then you’re a braver man than I am, Lyon,” Jonathan said.
“Well, that goes without saying.” Lyon was moving, casually, toward the Earl of Ardmay, Captain Flint, who had judiciously kept his distance, because, remarkably, baby Ruby was still asleep in his arms.
“Did you smolder at Cynthia?” Lyon asked Miles. “As I recall, your techniques required some refinement.”
“She smoldered at me,” Miles teased.
“We’ll have to compare notes on our techniques, Cynthia.” Lyon winked at her.
And then he moved over and leaned against the wall next to the earl, who had once been charged with capturing Le Chat and bringing him to justice, and had refused to do it, for the love of a woman. The madness that drove a man into being a pirate was the same kind of madness that made another man let him go free: it was all for the love of a woman.
“Ardmay,” Lyon said simply, by way of greeting.
The earl had nothing to say to Lyon except, “Welcome home, Redmond.”
He handed the baby to him, and Lyon took her as if she were an egg.
He could tell Ruby was born to break hearts. A tiny, snoozing, velvety pale thing with the most shockingly miniature eyelashes. He thought the first heart she might break would be his.
The Earl of Ardmay interrupted Lyon’s reverie. “Do you want one of these?”
He sounded amused. He could see the expression on Lyon’s face.
“Dozens,” Lyon said absently, only just realizing it. He thought about how Olivia had been with the Duffys, and he knew that the two of them were going to be the best parents ever born.
“Lyon, did you smolder at Olivia?” Tommy wanted to know.
Lyon looked up from baby Ruby, his eyes still misty with reveries about babies that looked like Olivia.
“No,” Miles answered for him. “He didn’t. But I was there that night. And let me tell you what happened. When he clapped eyes on her, I could have sworn a gong wen
t off . . .”
IT WASN’T UNTIL he met with his mother alone, and she folded him in her arms, that Lyon Redmond finally wept. For all that he knew, and all that he was certain she knew and understood, and because he loved and had missed his mother.
Chapter 24
The next Sunday . . .
SOMETIME DURING THE FOLLOWING week, word reached Pennyroyal Green that the betting book at White’s had disappeared.
A howl of outrage went up among the bloods of the ton.
Lyon claimed no knowledge of it.
And Olivia’s brothers shrugged innocently.
Olivia didn’t believe any of them.
They were going to protect her, and her wedding would not be a sport.
“Isn’t it lovely to know that it’s the last time anyone will speculate over the two of us?” Lyon said simply, bringing Olivia’s hand to his mouth for a kiss. “We are not a sport. We’re a man and a woman in love, and we’ll be married and have a family to rival the Duffys. An entire cricket team.”
“Or an orchestra,” she said dreamily.
“Or an investment group.”
She laughed.
They reveled in walking about Pennyroyal Green together, waving at everyone they saw, stopping to chat, startling the life out of some people, but then charming them so completely that everyone, even Mrs. Sneath, walked away convinced that Olivia and Lyon were meant to be, and poor Landsdowne was nearly forgotten.
They visited the elm tree, and he showed her the “O” he’d carved. She touched it tenderly, and kissed him just as tenderly to make up for the suffering he’d experienced that day, waiting in vain, alone but for a pair of squirrels and his own longing.
They found the little clearing again, and in a fit of nostalgia made love right there on the moss, on his spread-out coat, and got the job done very quickly, as they knew what they were doing and were now very, very good at it.
And then she gave him her gift:
A little gold pocket watch with his initials on it.
It had taken some doing to find the watch and get it engraved quickly, but Mr. Postlethwaite was a resourceful man, especially when a good deal of money was involved.
“Go ahead. Open it.”
With great ceremony, he clicked it open.
Inside was the miniature she’d given him so many years ago, and which had found its way back to her.
“This time you get to keep both of them. The miniature and the real thing.”
This was an occasion for another kiss. A lingering, drugging, tender kiss that left her sighing against his chest, longing for the day they would lie in bed next to each other forever.
“I thought we would go to Bristol for our wedding journey,” he said.
“Bristol?”
And then she understood.
“I’ve manage to obtain an invitation for us to visit Mrs. Hannah More.”
“Truly?” Olivia breathed.
And this was an occasion for a kiss that went on until the sun began to lower.
“Let’s just look at the time, shall we? Not because we have to, because we want to.”
Lyon delightedly clicked open his new watch.
AND THEN, AT last, it was Sunday.
From two directions the families walked to the church, and one witty observer claimed it looked rather like enemy armies convening upon a battlefield from separate encampments. The morning was misty, lending it portent and drama. But both the Redmonds and Everseas possessed exquisite manners, and history had seen more delicate armistices negotiated. In all likelihood, no Eversea would cleave a Redmond skull today over a stolen cow, which was how the trouble between them was rumored to have started back in 1066.
But one never knew.
Nearly the whole of Pennyroyal Green was crowded into the church, and those who couldn’t fit waited outside, hands clasped in anticipation.
Olivia wore a simple white muslin dress.
Lyon wore a look of awe.
Genevieve stood up with Olivia, and both Miles and Jonathan stood up with Lyon. And the mothers of all these men and women, united by love of their children, wept quietly, and even the stoic fathers, enmeshed in rather complex thoughts of their own, may have gotten a bit misty-eyed.
And then Reverend Adam Sylvaine spoke the words.
“Lyon Arthur James, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.” Lyon’s beloved voice was so solemn.
“Wilt thou, Olivia Katherine, have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.”
She’d never been more grateful that only two words separated her from this moment and forever with Lyon.
They added their voices and vows to the centuries of other words spoken in love, hope, and trepidation, and into the very timbers and stones of the little church they sank, to comfort and inspire the next century of worshippers and brides and grooms.
And it might have been a misty morning. The little church might have seemed as dark and soft as a womb.
But everyone said the bride’s and groom’s faces were so radiant they could have read aloud by them.
When the doors of the church were pushed open and they emerged, such a roar of celebration rose it was said that it flushed birds from trees all the way to the Scottish border, echoed through London, and rippled the very sea beneath a ship once called The Olivia, but now called The Delphinia, and the sun leaped high in the sky out of sheer surprise.
Seamus Duggan had composed a song for the occasion. Out of rebellion, he called it “The Legend of Lyon Redmond,” and it had no words at all. But from his fiddle he coaxed a tune of wild yearning, of anger and love and soaring celebration, and its melodic leaps and rests told the story of Olivia and Lyon better than any words could. And it was said that centuries later birds in that part of Sussex still whistled the tune.
The song would one day make Seamus Duggan a rich man, but that was a story for another day.
Mrs. Olivia Katherine Redmond hooked her arm through her husband’s, and they led the procession at a leisurely pace, so that children would have plenty of time to frolic in their wake. And because of the Duffys and the O’Flahertys and Evie Duggan’s sister, there were a lot of children, and plenty of dogs, thank to the O’Flahertys’ promiscuous dog Molly.
Arm in arm they proceeded. The matriarchs and patriarchs, Jacob and Isolde Eversea, Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond. Marcus Eversea and his wife, Louisa. Colin Eversea and Madeline. Violet Redmond and the Earl of Ardmay. Miles Redmond and Cynthia. Ian Eversea and Tansy. Phoebe Vale, once a schoolteacher at Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy, and the Marquess Dryden. Jonathan Redmond and Tommy. Adam Sylvaine and Evie Duggan. Most of them had fallen in love in Pennyroyal Green, and all joined the procession to celebrate their love.
Then came Ned Hawthorne arm in arm with his daughter Polly, who, unbeknownst to anyone, had at last transferred her abiding affection from Colin Eversea to Samuel Heron, a Gypsy boy who lived on the edge of town, and who, along with Leonora and Martha Heron, followed in the processing, cheering and leaping up for the coins Lyon turned every now and again to toss. Mr. Culpepper and Mr. Cooke, who kept the chessboard warm at the Pig & Thistle. Mr. Tingle and Mr. Postlethwaite. Mrs. Sneath and the ladies of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor, including Amy Pitney and Josephine Charing. Miss Marietta Endicott and a stream of little girls who all attended her esteemed academy.
And everyone in Pennyroyal Green who had ever admired, fallen in love with, been kissed by, lost a woman or bet or fight to, sung a song about, or simply s
een an Eversea or Redmond.
To the sound of Seamus’s fiddle and cheers and the jingle of coins Lyon rained down upon the crowd at intervals, they wound from the church through town, past the Pig & Thistle, past Tingle’s Bookshop and Postlethwaite’s Emporium, and finally, past the two ancient oaks twined round each other.
The ones long said to symbolize the Redmonds and Everseas, their destinies so entwined now that they both fought for supremacy and held each other up, and could not live without each other.
They were bursting with spring leaves.
“I confess, I half thought those trees would topple when we married. The legend is so instilled in all of us,” Olivia said to Lyon, over the music.
“Those trees will outlive all of us by centuries,” Lyon said complacently. “And besides, who’s to say more drama isn’t to come?”
He arched a brow, and kissed her hand again, lingeringly, which resulted in another roar of approval and shouted teasing.
Up high, hidden among the leaves, on a thick ancient branch, in a spot no one could see unless one was capable of acrobatically craning one’s head, a single word was carved.
Isolde
Not a soul who paraded by noticed it.
Except Isaiah Redmond, who had carved it there almost thirty years ago one night, while he waited for a girl who never came. He was as aware of it as he was of the beating of his own heart.
Epilogue
October 2015
Pennyroyal Green
IT WASN’T UNTIL HER head grew light that Isabel realized she’d stopped breathing.
Nothing in her wild imaginings—and her imagination was quite the playground—had prepared her for the reality of the legendary oaks. They were so vast they nearly created their own atmosphere. Perhaps they were now like a great pin in a map, the only thing that kept the soft green folds of the Sussex downs from curling up at the edges and flapping away in a stiff wind.
The thought seemed almost heretically whimsical, in light of their majesty.
But then she’d always struggled with awe. It felt like a form of surrender.
And she’d always struggled with surrendering, period.
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