Pennyroyal Green: The Legend Of Lyon Redmond Part 35

She thought about this. "A generalization, surely."

"But sadly, it bears up under a.n.a.lysis."

He shot her a mischievous look, knowing a.n.a.lysis was very nearly Olivia's favorite thing.

She smiled, enjoying being known.

"Jonathan may not have done it at all if you hadn't left Pennyroyal Green."

He looked at her sharply then.

And fell into a silence that had stretched on long enough to take on something of the feel of a brood.

She knew, no matter what, that he had missed his family, too.

"Are we waxing philosophical this morning, Olivia?" he said finally.

"It's generally how I wax, when I do."

He laughed.

She wondered if for the rest of her life the sound of his laugh would make her heart launch, because it made every single thing about life better, the way salt or marmalade did.

They mounted a gentle rise, which was when she became aware of a rus.h.i.+ng sound, a constant, soft roar, distinct from the pulse of the ocean breaking on the beach and rolling out again. As they crested the rise, he reached for her hand.

"We'll be heading down in a bit, and the ground can be a bit s.h.i.+fty here, so . . ."

She gave him her hand. It was engulfed in his, and she suddenly felt shy and solemn and girlish.

"Don't trust my agility?" she said lightly.

"Oh, it's not that. I just don't want to go tumbling to my death unaccompanied."

She laughed, and then gave a little gasp as he tugged her forward and then down a fairly steep slope, flexing his arm expertly, effortlessly, for all the world like a rudder on a s.h.i.+p. His strength was both shocking and humbling and innate. She might as well have been gripping a steel bar.

With a little jump they landed on a narrow strip of golden beach.

"All right, then," was all he said.

She couldn't speak.

They were nestled in a sort of basket made of towering stone and sheer cliffs.

A turquoise jewel of a pool s.h.i.+mmered at their feet, spreading in a gently wavy oval for perhaps fifty or more feet, then curving, like the tail of an apostrophe, into another smaller pool that disappeared beyond an enormous outcropping of rock. Its surface s.h.i.+vered, delicately disturbed by the waterfall at its far end, an endless pour of foaming water about as tall as Lyon and about the length of two landaus, if she had to guess, across. She couldn't see its ultimate origin; it spilled from another craggy hill out of sight above them; and it ended by tumbling down staggered ledges of stone before it emptied into the pool.

Behind it was a soft and shadowy recess of stone. Flat from the looks of things.

It looked for all the world like a lacy white curtain over a stage.

"Eden."

She hadn't realized she'd said the word aloud. It was more like an exhale from the very depths of her soul.

"Precisely what I thought when I first saw it."

They admired it in silence for another moment.

"And now you take off all your clothes and stand beneath the waterfall and wash."

Her head whipped toward him.

He extended his hand and opened it ceremoniously. In it was a bar of soap. It looked very white against his browned hand.

She stared at it.

Then looked warily up at him.

"It's French, the soap is. Have a sniff."

"I believe you," she said dryly. "The sentence prior to that one is what gave me pause."

Another silence. During which they locked eyes, and a good deal was thought very loudly but not spoken.

"I'll stay in here." He made a sweeping motion at the little curving portion of the pool that disappeared behind the outcropping. The little tail of the apostrophe. "And perform my own ablutions. It's quite shallow throughout, and I daresay even you can stand up in it. I won't be able to see you and you won't be able to see me. Though if you stand behind the water you ought to be somewhat veiled, regardless of where I am."

She turned toward the waterfall. Then back to him.

Then back to the waterfall. Then back to him.

"Do you . . . need some a.s.sistance? With laces, stays, and so forth?" he said almost stiffly. "Or would you prefer to keep the sand in your crevices as a souvenir of your sojourn here?"

"I can manage," she said tautly.

"Intrepid as always."

She snorted softly.

"I'll keep guard, and I'll protect you from any encroaching seagulls or vengeful mermaids."

"Vengeful, are they?" She at last gingerly reached for the soap.

She was reminded of the time she'd handed a pamphlet to him. That first touch of his skin against hers, illicit and cherished. The fuse that had lit all of it.

His hands were still long and elegant, but brown and hard now. But now there was a faint scar across one. They looked well-used. As though he'd spent the past few years wielding weapons. And other quite dangerous things.

Did he ever tremble now? Or had he seen and touched enough women to shave the edge off wonder forever?

"Oh, mermaids are a jealous species," he said softly, as if he could hear her thoughts. "They often make very cutting remarks about other beautiful women."

She was so enchanted by the image of fuming aquatic maidens smacking their tails indignantly she immediately forgot to be nervous.

It was also the first overt compliment he'd given her since she'd first laid eyes on him again, and it was absurdly potent enough to make her blush.

She couldn't remember a time she'd changed color in the presence of Landsdowne, or any other man, really.

Apart, perhaps, from when she'd gone pale upon reading "The Legend of Lyon Redmond."

Which made her think of Landsdowne, and his hands, strong and square and aristocratic, the signet ring gleaming as he stirred sugar into his tea and confessed to maybe, possibly, mildly disappointing another woman when he became engaged to Olivia.

And here was Lyon, who was incapable of doing anything mildly, yet again offering her something new, something she might or might not be equal to, something that might or might not be wise.

"Take this, too, because you'll need to dry off." Lyon thrust the rolled blanket at her, and she tucked it beneath her arm. "You can walk right up to the waterfall, and tuck yourself behind it. You'll see."

And then she suddenly reached up pulled her ribbon loose and gave her head a good shake, giving her hair up to the breeze, which immediately began tossing it about like a new plaything. And then she kicked off her slippers and lunged to seize them up in one hand, hiked her dress to her calves in the other-let him admire that view-and set out toward the waterfall.

"For all you know, I'm covered all over in iridescent scales," she said over her shoulder.

"Good G.o.d, I hope so. Then all my dreams will have come true."

Her laughter trailed her, unbridled and musical as that waterfall.

IT WAS THE one thing that had been missing, he realized. That sound more than nearly anything meant "Olivia" to him.

He stood and drank it in.

She sounded free and happy. An innocent sort of happy. It was like birdsong after a rainstorm, when birds all sang their fool heads off, throwing their hearts into it.

She should always be this happy.

And then he noticed something on the ground nearby, a sc.r.a.p of s.h.i.+ning fabric.

She'd dropped her reticule.

He picked it up, and a comb and something folded into a tight, white square tumbled out and unfurled on the way, fluttering to the ground.

He picked it up gently, frowning, and ran it through his fingers.

And then all at once he knew what it was.

His thumb found "LAJR" embroidered in the corner.

How had she gotten it? The handkerchief was spotless, apart from a tiny drop of blood.

And then he remembered: it was from the night he'd left Pennyroyal Green. The night his father had hit him.

She'd kept it this long.

And she'd carried it with her folded in a tight square.

He closed his eyes, and once again, his chest exploded with light, like the first time he'd held her in his arms.

Perhaps this was all they would ever have-an hour or two of bliss here and there, strung together like jewels by interludes of longing and loss. Perhaps they were destined for nothing more than a few pockets of time, tucked away into their lives, hidden from everyone and everything the way this cove was hidden from the rest of the beach.

Still.

He watched her go with bemused wonder at fate, his lungs constricting a little with yearning. That ever-present desire that always had its claws in him and seemed to doom him to restlessness.

She loved him. She always had.

He knew it as surely as he knew the color of his own eyes.

And he was just as certain then he'd been born loving her, as surely as he'd been born with blue eyes. It was that simple. That permanent.

And if it was a curse, then he didn't know what a blessing was.

Now he knew what must do, for her sake and for his.

OLIVIA TRIPPED DELICATELY along the beach in her bare feet until the damp sand b.u.t.ted up against cool silvery-gray stone, its jagged edges polished through who knows how many centuries of rus.h.i.+ng water. She took a step up, easing past the waterfall into the recess behind it. It was deep enough so that the smooth back wall of the arcing cave was dry, if cool, and the damp, earthy, mineral smell was a perfume. She inhaled deeply.

She peered out through the curtain of water.

On the sh.o.r.e was a little stack of clothes and a pair of boots and a blanket spread out neatly, which meant Lyon had adroitly stripped and must already be in the water.

Men. Bless their heathen little souls.

And in for a penny, in for a pound.

She could accomplish this quickly if she didn't pause to mull. It was an easy enough thing to slip her dress off over her head once she'd finished with the laces, and after that, she slipped off her s.h.i.+ft. She folded all of it neatly and stacked it against the stone wall.

And just like that, she was entirely naked outdoors and about to step beneath a waterfall, which wasn't a very English thing to be or do.

Though she wouldn't be at all surprised if one of her brothers had done it once or twice.

She stood, simply enjoying being nude, unfettered by anything that defined her, like fine English clothing. The air was warm and dense and velvety, a caress, and it turned mundane acts she'd never given much thought to-raising her arms, walking in bare feet, giving her head a toss to pour her hair down her bare back, shake her hair down her bare back-into sensual ones.

She stepped beneath the water and gasped, and then she laughed in shock.

The contrast between the cold water and the silky air was a brand new kind of bliss. She held the soap beneath the water and rubbed it between her palms.

Too vigorously as it turned out.

"d.a.m.n!"

The stones amplified her voice as if she were on stage at Covent Garden.

The soap leaped for its freedom from her grasp and landed with a splash in the pool below and immediately began sailing away.

LYON DUCKED BENEATH the water and burst to the surface swiftly. A quick little baptism, an attempt at clearing his head.