"It's . . . an antislavery pamphlet." He sounded faintly confused.

Her heart sank.

He studied her, a question in his eyes, but none of the other things she dreaded: censure or mockery or condescension or boredom or that blank, dull complacency of someone who utterly lacked intellectual curiosity.

He simply waited for her to expound.

"You see, it's just . . ." she faltered.

And now she was abashed.

"What? What is it?" he urged softly, and stepped closer to her. She recognized it was an unconscious reflex to protect her from whatever was distressing her, to put himself between her and danger or upset.

And it was odd, but she immediately felt sheltered.

Now the back of her neck began to heat, too, and she was worried it would migrate to her face in seconds, and she would be in the throes of a full-blown scarlet blush.

She looked up at him. His eyes were so warm.

"It's just that I cannot bear it."

She'd never confessed this to anyone, in so many words, anyway. Her family thought Olivia was clever-too clever by half, much of the time-and vivacious and witty, occasionally cuttingly so. Everyone had a role in their family, and this was hers.

But all of these qualities also nicely disguised how much she actually viscerally suffered over the world's injustices. How they settled into an aching knot in her stomach and made her restless, and were only eased when she did something, anything about it. She had never tried to truly explain it. It would have confused and distressed them and upset the natural order of the Eversea household, and they would have tried to soothe her out of it, for they hated her to be uncomfortable, when she knew it was a permanent condition.

"Cannot bear it?" he repeated gently.

Her cheeks were hot now. "The Triangle Trade . . . these merchants . . . this illegal practice . . . they buy and sell people. They tear them from their homes and families and sell them. Can you imagine your freedom and your home and your life stripped from you? For profit. It's . . . really quite unbearable to contemplate, and there's so little I can do to help. And you see . . . so I read and share pamphlets when I can, and, help out with Mrs. Sneath and . . ."

He was clearly listening intently, but his expression was difficult to decipher. A mix of thoughtfulness and schooled inscrutability. He was listening, but he was also thinking something else altogether.

Shining through all of it, like the sun rising, was a sort of blazing tenderness.

Every jagged uncertain place in her was instantly soothed. She should not have questioned him. Of course he understood. Somehow she'd known he would.

Oh, I'm afraid of him. But it was a dizzying, gorgeous sort of fear, like standing on a mountaintop and seeing infinity in every direction.

"Why didn't you want to show me?" He was puzzled, gently.

"Well, it's not considered ladylike, is it? Crusades and good works and the like. Or rather, it's an activity for spinsters and bluestockings and young women who haven't dowries, and I'm not one of those. Or for very strident women with booming voices who frighten men. Who do you think of when you think of crusades?"

"Mrs. Sneath," Lyon said promptly. He looked fascinated.

"And she booms, doesn't she?"

"She does boom."

"My parents don't precisely deplore my interest, but they've taken to changing the subject when I broach it. I do have other topics of conversation. And other interests. I do not always run on and on about it."

Ironically, she felt as though she was running on and on about it. More truthfully, she was babbling. His gaze, unblinking and unabashedly admiring and very blue and intent, had sent her thoughts careening off their track.

"The slave trade is an evil practice, a blight upon all humankind. And I can't think of a lovelier quality than compa.s.sion. Promise me you will never feel ashamed of it, Miss Eversea."

She was speechless.

"Promise me," he insisted fervently.

"Very well," she said shyly, and gave a little laugh. "But truly? Doesn't that sort of thing bore you?"

"I'm finding it difficult to conceive of a circ.u.mstance in which you would bore me. I imagine you're simply filled with surprises."

"Careful, Mr. Redmond, or I may consider that a challenge."

"Even when you're sleeping, I'm certain you're fascinating or at least entertaining. Perhaps you snore or mutter things, like Colonel Kefauver at White's, who talks in his sleep. About tigers eating the natives and the like."

She ought to have laughed. But her mind's eye was instantly flooded with an image: she was opening her eyes to the light of dawn, and turning her head on her pillow.

To finding him lying next to her, his blue eyes on her, warm and sleepy.

She dropped her eyes, all of her aplomb hopelessly lost.

The silence that followed was filled with the comforting sound of the pages of books being turned, the faint merry lilt of Genevieve chattering with Mr. Tingle.

"Mr. Redmond, I think this is one of the instances in which I may need some time to forgive you for cheek," she finally said, softly.

He was silent for the time it took her heart to beat twice.

"Was that enough time?" he whispered.

It was, indeed, but she wasn't about to let him know. She simply looked up again through her eyelashes.

He hadn't gotten any uglier while she was looking down.

Though now he looked faintly worried. There was a faint little shadow between his eyes. Her impulse was to take his face in her hands and smooth it away.

She'd never had that kind of impulse in her entire life.

Let alone for someone at least a foot taller than she, like Lyon Redmond.

She sensed he carried more burdens than anyone knew.

"I'm sorry if . . ." he whispered, finally. "I'm not normally so . . ." He made a helpless gesture. "It's just that I . . ."

She shook her head sharply: Don't be.

She knew what he meant.

And suddenly neither of them could speak again.

The initial giddy rush of words ebbed into a velvety silence. Olivia knew a temptation to close the gap between them and lay her head against his chest.

As if she'd done it dozens of times in her life.

"May I . . . may I have this pamphlet?" he asked suddenly.

"You want to read it?" She was skeptical.

He nodded somberly.

So she hesitated, then held it out to him, ceremoniously, with both hands, and he took it as gravely as if it was coated in gold leaf.

It wasn't until their fingers were a hairsbreadth from touching that she noticed his hands were trembling, too.

And as she relinquished the pamphlet, his thumb lightly, deliberately skimmed the back of hers.

A bolt of pleasure traced her spine. Her heart flipped over in her chest.

The first touch of his skin against her skin.

Illicit and far too bold.

And not enough.

Oh, not enough.

She knew it was just the beginning.

"Take this," he whispered urgently, and thrust the book he was holding into her hands.

"Olivia, Mr. Tingle said he'd-"

Olivia leaped backward as if Lyon was a bonfire and whirled on her sister, who had just flounced innocently around the corner.

"For heaven's sake, Genevieve, you gave me a fright!" she snapped, and tucked the book beneath her pelisse.

Genevieve froze like her father's pointing hunting dog, her eyes perfect saucers of astonishment. "I merely turned a corner, Olivia," she pointed out, reasonably, because Genevieve was nearly always reasonable, except for the fact that she longed for hair that curled and hers simply wouldn't. "It was you who jumped like a trod-upon cat. Wasn't that the Redmond heir? Lyon?" She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Did he spook you?"

She said this sympathetically. As if the Redmonds were goblins out of folklore or ghostly highwaymen, like the legendary One-Eyed William, the highwayman who had once allegedly haunted Suss.e.x roads. As if they could be stirred into mayhem, like the devil, unless they were spoken of in whispers.

Then again, Lyon had indeed vanished like a ghost.

And there might be something to the bedeviling theory. She surrept.i.tiously skated her forefinger over her thumb. Her hand still buzzed from his touch.

As if he'd been the fuse that had set her cells permanently alight.

Olivia shrugged. "I suppose it could have been him. I was absorbed in my pamphlet."

Genevieve studied her gravely. "Olivia, you're somehow very, very pink and very, very white at the same time. Those are not your usual colors."

"You've been looking at too many paintings, Genevieve. I'm certain everyone has begun to look like a Gainsborough to you."

Genevieve laughed. "There is no such thing as too many paintings."

Olivia smiled at her. Genevieve was a dear. Funny, lovely, quiet. She was suddenly tempted to reach out and hold on to her, as if she were receding out of sight. This was the first time she'd had a secret from her sister.

"Did you find a book you liked, Genevieve?"

Genevieve gestured mutely with a little stack cradled in her arms. All of them, in all likelihood, about art or artists. Stacked atop it was a broadsheet. "Do you think Papa will mind if I buy all of them? Did you find what you were looking for, Olivia?"

There was neither sight nor sound from behind the bookshelf.

"I believe I did," she said.

Chapter 6.

OLIVIA AND GENEVIEVE RACED home from Tingle's and arrived there just in time to deposit their books in their respective bedrooms and slide into their chairs for dinner. It was a relatively informal affair most nights, with footmen creeping in and out only very occasionally. Jacob Eversea liked to preside over his table and do the carving, especially when he could saw into a good roast of beef, like tonight.

"So what gossip did you bring back from last night's a.s.sembly?"

Their father addressed this to the table at large.

Interestingly, no one leaped to answer the question.

"Very fine music," Olivia said a little too brightly. "Everyone looked very pretty."

"The oldest Redmond is back in town," Marcus said idly. "That was new."

"Our Olivia danced a waltz," Chase said. "I saw her sailing by as I danced."

Et tu, Chase! She shot him a swift glare, then ducked her head lest that glare incriminate her.

She hadn't known they were watching.

More specifically, no one else in the world had existed when she was dancing with Lyon Redmond, and if pressed, she wasn't certain she could remember anything that came after.

"Did you now, Olivia? With whom? Practicing for your season next year?" said her father. Her poor, innocent father. He was prepared to indulge or tease her.

Olivia stared at him, robbed of speech, suddenly.

"Lyon Redmond," Colin volunteered. "As it so happens."