Pennyroyal Green.

The Legend of Lyon Redmond.

Julie Anne Long.

Dedication.

FOR MAY CHEN, MAGNIFICENT editor. It's been.

such a pleasure and privilege to share the triumphs and tribulations of the Redmond and Eversea families with you.

Acknowledgments.

MUCH GRAt.i.tUDE TO MY clever, insightful, and supportive editor, May Chen, who always just gets me, such a luxurious feeling; to the hardworking, gifted staff at Avon who are so committed to excellence and innovation, in particular thanks to Tom Egner for the beautiful, beautiful covers, Jessie Edwards for being such a fun and creative publicity partner, and to Shawn Nicholls, so patient with all the technical questions; and to my stalwart agent, Steve Axelrod.

And heartfelt thanks to everyone who has ever tweeted, blogged, commented, written a letter to me, or in any way shared their enthusiasm for the Pennyroyal Green series books. You mean the world to me, and I love and appreciate all of you so much!.

Chapter 1.

The first week of February . . .

SHE'S GETTING MARRIED ON the second Sat.u.r.day in May.

Nine words scrawled across a sheet of foolscap. He stared at them until they blurred into a single gray ma.s.s.

When he lifted his head, his ears were ringing and he was as dazed as if he'd literally been dragged backward through time.

For Lyon Redmond, there had always only ever been one "she."

He was momentarily disoriented to find himself on the deck of a ship docked in Plymouth, not on the Suss.e.x downs, waiting by the double elm tree. The one with the "O" carved into it.

A dozen pairs of eyes were on him, waiting patiently for the command that always came.

His crew was a carefully curated, casually lethal lot of men and one woman, the versatile Miss Delphinia Digby-Thorne, she of the many languages and surprisingly useful acting talents-she had once spilled ale all over his sister, Violet.

They had nothing in common apart from mysterious pedigrees, ambiguous morals, and unswerving loyalty. To him.

Unlike, alas, Olivia Eversea.

But then, every last one of them had prospered the moment they'd aligned their fortunes with him. He was cynical enough to know it was all of a piece, the loyalty and the prosperity. He didn't care.

The bearer of this news, a man dressed in footman's livery, took Lyon's silence as dismissal and turned rather too optimistically to leave.

"Hold," Lyon said sharply.

The swords of his men came up swiftly to bar the man's way.

"I'm unarmed," the footman said hurriedly, holding up his hands. "And alone. You have my word."

Lyon smiled a smile that would have had many a man wetting his smallclothes. It bore more resemblance to the curve of a cutla.s.s. "While I'm certain your word is indeed priceless, you've naught to fear. I just cleaned my sword, so there will be no running through of anyone for at least another few hours."

This elicited chuckles from his crew.

The footman gave a wobbly, uncertain smile.

Lyon knew a surge of impatience, which he recognized as shame. He was not in the habit of intimidating clearly unarmed and outnumbered men for the sport of it.

Then again, given how history often treated bearers of bad news, the man was probably fortunate he still drew breath.

"Your name, please."

"Ramsey, sir."

"You're in no danger as long as I believe you are answering my questions truthfully, Ramsey."

"Of course, sir."

But judging from how the footman blanched, he didn't miss the implicit threat.

"Who sent you, Ramsey?"

"Begging your pardon, but Lord Lavay said you would know when you read the message. I am in his employ. I'm a footman, sir." He squared his shoulders and touched the silver braid on his coat, as if for luck. "And I won the coin toss."

"I was a reward, then, was I, Ramsey?" Lyon drawled, to another scatter of chuckles. "Please describe Lord Lavay to me."

Ramsey furrowed his brow. "Well . . . he's a big gentleman. Perhaps as tall as you, sir. French. He often waves his hands when he talks, like so." He began to demonstrate with a sweep of his own hands, then clearly thought better of it when all the swords aimed at him twitched a warning. "Took quite an injury in a fight not too long ago, but he's fit now."

Lyon studied the footman unblinkingly, searching for the faintest hint of perfidy in the flicker of an eyelash or the tensing of a muscle.

He knew all about that fight and that injury. Lyon and his crew had found Lavay bleeding to death on the Horsleydown Stairs in London.

Lyon was in fact the reason Lord Lavay still walked the earth.

Then again, indirectly, Lord Lavay and his friend the Earl of Ardmay were indirectly the reason Lyon still walked the earth, and they had sacrificed a fortune in reward money to allow him to walk away. Though Lyon primarily had his sister, Violet, to thank for that. Men will do things for women they wouldn't otherwise in their right minds do.

No one knew that better than Lyon.

"I'm glad," he said, at last. Curtly. But he meant it. Lavay was a good man, and Lyon had learned that good men were too scarce, and the loss of one was a loss for all.

Lavay was also the only man in the world who knew where to find Lyon Redmond right now. And one of the very few people in the world who knew him by his three ident.i.ties: The real one. The a.s.sumed one.

And the one that could get him hanged.

Even if this message was a trap to lure him back to Suss.e.x or into the Crown's custody, it mattered little. Lyon had become a man who could elude or escape any trap, by any means necessary.

In all likelihood this message was Lavay's way of discharging a debt of honor.

"Lord Lavay is a fine man, the finest I know, sir," the footman maintained stoutly, into the silence. "He married his housekeeper. Mrs. Fountain."

This was startling.

"Did he, now? Quite the epidemic of marriage in Suss.e.x lately, isn't there?"

Lyon said this so bitterly everyone blinked as if he'd flicked something caustic into their eyes.

He drew in a long breath.

"And where is Lord Lavay at this very moment, Ramsey?"

"I expect he's still in Pennyroyal Green sir, a village in Suss.e.x, where I left him. You see, given that he's newly married and . . . well, he's quite taken a shine to the place. Right nice town, it is," he extemporized, brightening.

"Is it?" Lyon said with such flat and brutal irony that his crew swiveled toward him in surprise, eyes wide.

He was beginning to alarm them.

He was beginning to alarm himself.

Because for the first time in years time Lyon wasn't certain what he wanted to do.

d.a.m.n Olivia Eversea, anyway.

She'd knocked his world off its axis from that first moment in the ballroom, when she'd turned to him and smiled, and . . .

Even now. Even now the memory of that smile could stop his breath.

He'd last seen Pennyroyal Green in the dead of night almost five years ago. His trajectory since then had been as swift and mindless as if he'd been shot from a cannon. And it wasn't just because of what Olivia had said to him in the garden after midnight, in the pouring rain. Though after she'd said what she'd said, for a time he'd stopped caring what became of him.

No, that fuse had been lit for longer than anyone knew.

No one from Suss.e.x had seen him since.

Though one had certainly tried. He half smiled at the thought of Violet.

And it was this that had broken the speed of his trajectory.

He'd had his own methods for remaining, however tangentially, informed about the lives of those he'd left behind. He'd proved something over the past five years. He'd at first thought it was all for Olivia. But he was no longer certain. He'd tried to purge his life of her, relinquishing even her miniature.

Clearly it hadn't worked.

But what no one knew, not even his crew, was that this was his final voyage. He'd risked this trip into London to track down the source of a little mystery that could devastate Olivia and her family.

He now had his answer.

He was, strangely, not surprised by it.

But he hadn't been prepared to make a decision about what to do next so soon.

Oh, Liv, he thought.

Suddenly it hurt to breathe. Fragments of memories rushed at him, each distinct as stained gla.s.s.

Olivia walking along the road to the Duffys' house, then breaking into a run when she saw him waiting beneath the elm tree, her face lighting like a star. As if even a second away from him was wasted.

That was the memory that always came to him in his darkest moments.

And now she was giving herself to another man.

His fingers curled on a surge of emotion. But he stopped just short of giving the message the crushing it deserved.

She. If Lavay had indeed written that word, he might have seen her, or even talked to her, or . . .

He couldn't do it.

He couldn't b.l.o.o.d.y do it.

And this is what decided him.

He tucked the message into his coat. "You can go, Ramsey," he said. "Thank you."

The footman spun and nearly bolted, silver braid glinting in the sun.

Lyon turned to face all the expectant faces of his crew.

"And we," he told them, "are staying in England."

It was time for a reckoning.

Three weeks later . . .

OLIVIA EVERSEA SIGHED IN the soothing, well-sprung recesses of her family's barouche, grateful for the solitude if only for the duration of the drive from St. James Square to the Strand.

It was perhaps an acknowledgment of how insufferable she'd been lately that her family had let her go to Madame Marceau's alone.

The discussion over whether she ought to have silver trim on her wedding dress, like poor Princess Charlotte, or perhaps even beading along the hem, which would be much more expensive, but wouldn't she just glow like an angel (her mother's words) in it, had become absurdly impa.s.sioned, and subtle insults may even have flown, and her even-tempered sister, Genevieve, may even have slammed a door. Or, rather, shut it emphatically, which was close as Genevieve ever came to throwing a tantrum.