I Kissed an Earl Page 4

  Violet shook her head to and fro, pityingly.

  Jonathan opened his eyes in time to see Lady Wartham’s dropped-open mouth clap tightly shut and her eyes narrow in an admirably poisonous way. She whipped around in an indignant blur of taffeta and clicked off without a word for either of the Redmonds.

  Jonathan rounded on his sister. “See what you’ve done, you wretch!”

  “Oh, stop. You just said yourself she was a dalliance. If you can tell me her first name now I shall profess abject chagrin and I will owe you a great favor of your choice.”

  He glared at her. Lips tightly clamped.

  She smiled slowly at him.

  As always, Jonathan struggled to maintain a snit and his mouth unsuccessfully fought a smile. “But one needs the practice with dallying, you see,” he explained. “Or how will my reputation ever become the match of Argosy’s?”

  “Practice? For when you find the woman with whom you’ll have ten children?”

  “Enough!” he howled.

  She put a conciliatory hand on his arm. “Jonathan, listen to me. This is important, I swear to you. The French gentleman accompanying the earl—his name is Lavay. Lord Lavay. She—that Gypsy girl, Martha Heron—shouted ‘Lavay’ to me! Don’t you recall? It was all very puzzling at the time. And Lavay is the mate of the Earl of Ardmay’s ship. And she said I’d go on a long journey over water!”

  He groaned. “Is that all? Oh, for God’s sake, Violet, if that were true every time a Gypsy said it the entire country would be bobbing on boats in the Thames right now.”

  Losing interest, he intercepted the gaze of Lady Peregrine and began to produce what he believed was a sensual smile.

  “Not her,” Violet said. “She’s awful. A terrible gossip. Stop practicing and listen to me.”

  Jonathan turned back to her irritably. “Listen, you’re not usually so featherbrained. Why give this ‘Lavay’ nonsense any credence at all? Doubtless it’s not the rarest of French surnames. There’s something not quite right with that Gypsy girl, and you know it.”

  “I think you simply hope there’s something not quite right with her,” she said shrewdly.

  He glared at her.

  She mouthed Ten children.

  She remained fixed in his glare.

  She breathed in deeply, suddenly nervous. “It’s not just that. When I was introduced to the Earl of Ardmay he saw you, and went…well, very like a pointer spotting a rabbit. I swear to you, Jon, he made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Quite chilling. He said you looked exactly like a trader who is also believed to be a South Seas privateer—a pirate—who goes by the name Le Chat.”

  “Me?” Jonathan’s eyes went wide with shock, and then misty with the very notion. “Fanciful name, Le Chat. But I ain’t a pirate, Vi.”

  “I know you aren’t, Jon. And it means ‘the cat.’”

  “I know what it means,” he said irritably. “I had a French tutor, too. “

  His roving gaze intercepted the gaze of another woman, Millicent Hart.

  “Not her, either. She has all the wits of a blown dandelion. And a lion is a big cat, Jonathan. Don’t you see? The earl thought you looked exactly like this person named Le Chat. And a lion is a big cat.”

  Jonathan frowned, irritated now. “It’s a damned silly name. Pirates do that, don’t they? Adopt silly, dangerous-sounding—”

  “His ship has a silly name, too, Jonathan. Apparently it’s called The Olivia.”

  The effect of sudden comprehension on Jonathan was rewarding and extreme. She could have sworn his blood stopped moving beneath his skin, so taut, so pale, so still he went.

  The mention of Everseas, and the disaster one particular female Eversea had wreaked upon their family, had that effect on the man.

  Their eyes locked. His were darker and more inscrutable than she’d ever seen them, and she wondered again what kind of man her brother would make. Solid and formidable like Miles? An enigmatic emblem of power, like their father? Silently Violet willed him to believe what she believed. Lyon is out there. Lyon might very well be a trader known as Hardesty and a pirate named Le Chat sailing a ship called The Olivia. They needed to find him. To convince him to return home.

  To save him from the Earl of Ardmay and certain justice at the end of a rope.

  But surely it was all a mistake? Surely, if it was indeed Lyon, all wasn’t quite what it seemed?

  And then, spell broken, Jonathan scowled and shook his head violently.

  “So your theory is that Lyon restyled himself as a pirate named Le Chat in the wake of his broken heart at the hands of that bloody Eversea woman and named his ship The Olivia to commemorate his misery or to take revenge upon her? It’s—well, it’s really the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Think about it.”

  “I grant you it seems unlikely. But The Olivia, Jon! It’s—”

  He held up a hand. “No. No, Vi, it’s just…patently absurd. I mean—does this pirate board ships, rape and pillage, things of that sort?” Now he was struggling to keep his face straight.

  “Why don’t you ask the Earl of Ardmay? Until our king got hold of him he was known as Captain Flint and his mandate is to capture Le Chat for a bounty. He might tell you more than he’d tell a woman. He might speak more of raping and pillaging to a fellow member of his species. Then again, you apparently look exactly like Le Chat.”

  The earl was easy to locate even in the crush, like a glacier in a sea. He was politely speaking to an older gentleman, Monsieur Lavay at his side, a coolly elegant foil to the earl’s quiet smolder.

  “I spoke to the earl,” Jonathan said curtly. “Father introduced me to him and to Lord Lavay. He did ask whether I’d ever considered going to sea, said there was a fellow named Rathskill, a cook’s mate whom he needed to replace. Incompetent and cheeky. I pity the sod. But I didn’t care for the way he looked at me, Vi. Apparently the king decided to give the title to someone more given to heroics.”

  “A pity, then, that father isn’t given over to heroics.”

  “I should think surviving you is an act of heroism,” Jonathan said predictably enough. “Besides, why wouldn’t Miles have heard of him, this Le Chat sailing on the The Olivia? Miles has been everywhere.”

  “But he hasn’t been everywhere recently. And just because Miles has gone places on a ship doesn’t mean he knows everyone else who has, Jonathan. For heaven’s sake.”

  “Perhaps he has been too besotted with Cynthia to pay attention?”

  “Miles notices everything. And he’s still trying to find funding for his next expedition to Lacao. Perhaps he hasn’t kept abreast of all the latest pirates.”

  They both dreaded Miles leaving again on a new expedition to the South American land that had made him famous by way of books and lectures, and taking his delightfully inappropriate new wife with him. Cynthia wasn’t welcome in the Redmond home, an inflexible command of their father, Isaiah Redmond. But Miles, miraculously, hadn’t been entirely disinherited.

  It was Violet’s fault, really, that Miles had fallen in love with the scandalous Miss Brightly at all. Her own misguided act of kindness—and mischief—she’d brought her into the Redmond household. Thus setting in motion yet another family uproar, another fissure.

  Then again, uproar was generally Violet’s bailiwick.

  Lyon had, however, rather trumped her in that regard by disappearing altogether nearly two years ago now. Their father had abandoned hope of his return and made Miles his heir. Until the matter of Cynthia.

  Violet couldn’t bear how love in various forms was unraveling her family while everyone pretended all was well and tried to get on with things. She wanted to return it to the way it was.

  “Jonathan, what did Olivia say to him to make him leave?”

  His head swiveled toward her. “How did you know she said anything?”

  “Ha! She did!”

  He became closemouthed again. “He never said anything, Violet. He didn’t tell me what she said.”
/>
  She suspected Jonathan was lying, and wasn’t very good at it. And this was interesting and new, too.

  Silence, as Jonathan and Violet leaned against the wall and perused the ballroom. Their father stood in conversation with a member of his investment group, the Mercury Club. Isaiah was difficult to miss. Tall, lean, distinguished, probably busily convincing a wealthy man to invest in the Mercury Club’s fledgling railroad endeavor, or financing merchant ships to bring back goods from China, India, or America, much like the Earl of Ardmay was said to have done. Like this Mr. Hardesty had done. Amassing money and more money, influence and more influence through trade and other means. That was her father.

  “Violet…” Jonathan began cautiously. Placating. Damnation. Her entire body tensed. “I know you miss Lyon. But I think this—”

  “Don’t,” she hissed. “Do not use that tone with me, Jonathan Redmond, as though I’m some ridiculous child to be humored. He thought you looked like Le Chat, Jon. You. He thought you were Le Chat. And you look more like Lyon every day. The Olivia! At least please entertain the possibility.” She was very close to begging. She hadn’t begged for a thing since she was a child.

  Jonathan looked at his sister for a long while, his handsome face troubled. And then alarm leaped into his dark eyes.

  “Leave it, Violet. Don’t get any ideas!”

  “Jonathan…What if he’s in danger? The Earl of Ardmay wants to bring this Le Chat to justice. And you know what justice so often means, don’t you? Don’t you remember what almost happened to Colin Eversea? If that man, the Earl of Ardmay, has a go at Lyon, I’m not sure even Father can do a thing to help him. Don’t you want him to come home?”

  “Didn’t say I didn’t. But Violet…Lyon’s not a…” He shook his head slowly. “I mean he just can’t be a…” All at once his face blanked peculiarly. And slowly, slowly scrunched as suddenly the full portent of what he was about to say sank in. “…a p-p-p-irate!”

  He could scarcely get the word out for throwing his head back laughing.

  And apparently then the more he thought about it the harder he laughed. He gave his thigh a slap at intervals and coughed out gleeful things like “a pirate!” and “honestly!” and “Do you think he has a parrot now?” until Violet wanted to give him a good smack.

  Lyon himself—the Lyon they knew and loved—would have thought it ridiculous.

  Nevertheless.

  Jonathan coughed and wiped his eyes, good humor thoroughly restored.

  “More likely the only thing we should take from this is that you’re meant to marry Lavay. I mean, we mustn’t forget what that Gypsy girl said, isn’t that so?” His dark eyes snapped wickedly. “What do you think, sister mine? Did he manage to keep any properties in the war? Was he one of the titled French who hid their goods and families away in some other country? Or is he impoverished, looking for a wife with a plump dowry? He’s handsome, ain’t he? The ladies seem to think so.”

  Jonathan knew best how to irritate her.

  “I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I haven’t yet met the man I can bear to marry,” she said loftily.

  But her eyes drifted once more to the Earl of Ardmay and Lord Lavay. It could not be helped, somehow; it was as though the earl exerted more gravity than anyone else in the room. He’d produced a smile for the man he was speaking with, an elderly gentleman, whose posture was stooped and hands animated with conversation. The earl’s smile was surprisingly lovely; she could see this even from a distance. Genuine.

  And yet there still remained that otherness about him, a remove. It occurred to her he wore his confidence and his difference a bit like a wound he favored: it served to keep everyone was at a precise distance, as if closeness was a danger. She looked at the lovely smile of the deadly earl and knew a fleeting, peculiar, aberrant sensation.

  She felt…protective.

  It was sharp and sudden and total and of course utterly absurd. And gone, mercifully, in an instant.

  His head went up abruptly, as though he’d heard a silent call meant only for him. Even as the older gentleman continued speaking with him, he turned his head. Intercepted her gaze. His light eyes glinted cold in the chandelier light.

  He was a dangerous man, the earl. And if Lyon was indeed a pirate, and it was the earl’s mandate to bring him down, she had no doubt he would do it.

  She turned her head away from him quickly.

  But what if Lavay, that elegant Frenchman, were indeed the man meant for her? If this had naught to do with Lyon? What if this was what the Gypsy girl had meant? What ought she to feel in this moment? Did it happen quickly, or come on slowly, love? How had Miles and Cynthia known? How on earth did it feel to not feel bored and restless and trapped?

  “Well, you better meet ’im soon, Vi, the man you’ll marry, or you’ll be on the shelf and our parents will be saddled with you and whatever will father do with your dowry?” Jonathan said this with apparent concern. Eyes dancing mischievously.

  Violet cut a glance sideways at her brother. “Yes, I best hurry. Pity I’m an impoverished homely crone and no one shall want me a year from now, or two years from now, or ever.”

  Jonathan turned to his sister in abject admiration and exasperation. Gave his head a shake. Violet had more confidence than any man he’d ever met, far more than was healthy for a woman, and he knew enough of London gossip, and of the contents of the betting books at White’s, to know the fascination she held for the bloods in the ton.

  And yet he honestly couldn’t picture her besotted with any of the men he knew, or blushing helplessly like the poor woman he’d just been flirting with. When and if Violet ever fell in love, lightning would split the heavens, tectonic plates would shift, continents would reorder themselves.

  Because she might be willful and spoiled and impetuous, but no one loved with the force of his sister. Her love story would be epic.

  Which was why Lyon’s disappearance had cut her deepest. Even he knew it.

  And it could very well be the reason Violet never fell in love at all.

  “Just…don’t do it, Violet.”

  This had never been a successful admonition when it came to Violet.

  “Do what?”

  “Whatever it is you’re contemplating.”

  She turned to Jonathan in surprise. “I seldom contemplate, Jonathan. Things just…happen.”

  And with that she blew him a kiss and sailed gracefully away across the ballroom, the eyes of yearning, if wary, bloods following her.

  Chapter 4

  Violet pushed back a heavy velvet curtain and peered out the Redmonds’ London town house window and thought: Rathskill. The “incompetent and cheeky” cook’s mate the earl needed to replace.

  All was blackness below, as it was just past one o’clock in the morning. She had left the ball with her parents in the Redmond family coach; and her parents had gone up to bed…together. Simultaneously. This happened more and more frequently lately. Decidedly odd when their marriage had long seemed to be one of affectionate tolerance, where Isaiah invariably did as he pleased and Fanchette spent his money. In recent months some subtle shift of power had taken place, some fresh new fascination with each other had taken root, and Violet had begun to wonder whether she’d acquired her skills at managing men, such as they were, from her father, or from her mother.

  She thought she could trace this back to one particular cozy family occasion, where all the Redmonds, including their young cousin Lisbeth, had gathered to watch Colin Eversea hang from a scaffold erected below the window. Naturally, since he was an Eversea, he’d instead disappeared from the scaffold amidst explosions and clouds of smoke.

  It marked the first and only occasion she’d ever heard her father lose his patience. Specifically, he’d shouted “son of a bitch!” The sound of his control snapping like a taxed gallows rope.

  The crowd had rioted and all of London took to singing a particularly insidiously catchy song all about Colin Eversea, a song that l
ived on and on and on, in theaters and pubs, everywhere.

  The Everseas had the luck of the devil, it was said.

  Colin didn’t hang. Colin had in fact married a mysterious dark-haired woman he brought to church every Sunday at Pennyroyal Green, and with whom it was said he was raising sheep and cows and the like. His brother Chase, who used to drink all night in the Pig & Thistle, occasionally even alone, was said to be marrying next. A very sudden thing, too, Chase Eversea’s engagement. He’d sent to Pennyroyal Green from London a boy named Liam Plum and his sister, Meggie, who now worked in the Pig & Thistle.

  But yet another Eversea, Olivia, had driven Lyon away. And of all the secrets and grudges that bound the Everseas and Redmonds throughout the ages, some of which Violet knew of, others which were only intimated, some of which she was certain she would only learn when her parents were on their deathbeds, this one was the newest cut and perhaps the deepest. Colin lived happily; the Redmonds lived on, dignity, fortune, influence intact, but their family had been torn asunder. Like a mouth with a critical tooth punched out of it, everyone had slowly begun to lean and move in cockeyed directions and Violet felt more and more unmoored.

  And as for Olivia Eversea, she seemed in no danger of marrying soon. She could marry herself to her causes, Violet thought bitterly.

  Well, the Everseas may have the luck of the devil; the Redmonds were left to make their own luck, Violet decided. Her father, she suspected, often bought luck.

  She was about to make a little luck of her own. And as she had told Jonathan earlier, things just…happened. She couldn’t leave it. She didn’t know what would happen next, or precisely how she would go about achieving what she’d just decided to do. She only knew she had no choice.

  There was a whisper behind her. “I’ve brought the trunk down you ordered packed and called a hack as you requested, Miss Violet.”

  She turned to the footman. “Thank you, Maurice.”

  “Do enjoy your stay with Lady Peregrine in Northumberland. A fortnight is it, miss? The house party?”

  “Yes. A fortnight. Thank you, Maurice. I expect I shall enjoy it.”