The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

in our dotage. What stories we’ll tell our grandchildren.”
    He said these things so easily now. To make grandchildren they would need to make children, and to make children they would need to make love, and to make love she would need to lie naked beneath Landsdowne’s naked body, and—
    â€œI’m glad you think so,” she said hurriedly. “Although a dose of ‘dull’ might be restful upon occasion.”
    â€œIt’s funny about youthful experiences . . . so often the things that happen to us in our youth shape us into our permanent selves. When we’re still young and malleable.”
    â€œSurely you’re not suggesting you’re old and calcified?”
    He laughed. “I think you’ll discover I’m rather limber.”
    Her eyes flared in surprise, and she looked down into her tea. Heat rushed into her cheeks.
    Landsdowne naked. Landsdowne reaching for her. Landsdowne next to her in bed for the rest of her life. Did he moan and make noises and . . .
    She tensed and pushed it out of her mind. But she must spend more time imagining all of this. Surely the notion was not distasteful. He was tall and manly, he possessed all of his teeth, he smelled wonderful. Surely more time spent dwelling upon it would help her to prepare for that inevitability. Surely it should be something she welcomed . . . one day.
    She looked up to find his dark eyes on her intently.
    He wasn’t smiling.
    But she sensed he was imagining precisely the same thing.
    Landsdowne wanted her, in every sense of the word.
    Perhaps he thought the blushes meant she was modest, and would need to be gently tutored in matters of romance.
    If only he knew.
    â€œIn the spirit of mutual disclosure, I feel I should ask whether you left a trail of broken hearts behind you on your way to matrimony. You’ve managed to remain out of the broadsheets, if so, something my family seems unable to achieve.”
    His eyebrows shot up. He tonged sugar into his tea and swished it about long enough for her to realize he was about to confess something.
    He took a fortifying sip.
    And then he leaned back and sighed.
    â€œVery well. There is a . . . Well, I’ve known Lady Emily Howell since we were very young. A lovely girl, very kind, and I admire her a good deal. Our families believed we would one day enter into an agreement. I suppose I believed it, too. And then . . . I met you.”
    There was a hint of rueful, careful ardor around the word “you.”
    As if it had been destiny. As if anyone could understand he’d had no choice at all in the matter.
    She often thought Landsdowne had viewed her as a challenge. He was wealthy, a bit older, owned property all over England, was known to be fair and yet ruthless in business.
    His determination to pursue the allegedly unobtainable Olivia Eversea and her new willingness to capitulate had likely coincided. Their courtship had hardly been the stuff of legends, but many a marriage began on less fortuitous footing.
    She smiled but said nothing.
    â€œLady Emily has been all that is gracious and congratulatory, as a friend would be. Though I expect she is in fact disappointed. I can honestly tell you that I did not court her, and I do not believe anyone assumed we had a formal understanding. And yet.”
    â€œAnd yet,” Olivia repeated softly.
    â€œI do greatly regret any pain I may have caused her.”
    Olivia pictured Lady Emily and her no doubt well-bred disappointment. There would be no hysterics. No foolscap covered in Landsdowne’s name, burned at midnight.
    When the word that Lyon Redmond had disappeared finally penetrated Pennyroyal Green, and then the whole of London society—it took some time, the way it takes time for damp to make a weak roof cave in—Olivia had stopped eating. It was as if whatever made her human, gave her appetites and needs, had been excised. She had no more need for nourishment than a wickless candle