Free The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long

flushed. His father’s pride and approval was as potent as his censure, and his three sons, despite themselves, had lived for it their entire lives.His brothers usually had to make do with whatever splashed off Lyon and landed on them. (Their sister, Violet, occupied her own category. Every one of them doted on her, his father included, and she was in danger of becoming hopelessly spoiled.)
    â€œThank you, sir.”
    â€œYour future with the Mercury Club is brilliant. The world is your oyster. You have not only your family name to thank for this, but your focus and intelligence and discipline. There will, in fact, be an opportunity in a few weeks for you to accompany me to London to present your ideas for investment to the members of the club.”
    Yesterday this would have been dizzying, gratifying news. It was everything he had always hoped for.
    But oddly, now a trip to London sounded like a trip to purgatory. Heaven, as far as he was concerned, had a population of two.
    â€œThank you, Father. I should be honored.”
    â€œYou are poised now to make a magnificent marriage, as I did, one that will bring a wealth of blessings and stature to the Redmond family for decades to come. I know your suit will be welcome by one young lady in particular, and her family will welcome us to London, too.”
    Lyon was wary now. The name of some girl would likely be produced any moment. A girl with a title and a fortune and a father with connections that Isaiah could charmingly exploit in the service of building the fortune.
    In all likelihood, Lady Arabella.
    Yesterday Lyon would have been curious to hear the name. He’d, in fact, had several names in mind not too long ago. Yesterday, Lady Arabella would have seemed a perfectly reasonable, indeed, desirable choice. It was a choice he understood, andhe’d been raised with the knowledge that making a spectacular marriage, and conferring the associated kind of honor and influence upon his family for generations to come, was his duty.
    He knew, definitively, that it no longer mattered what his father said.
    Lyon now knew who and what he wanted.
    And before yesterday, he hadn’t even known what it was to truly want.
    â€œI always hoped to marry as well as you did, Father.”
    Lyon thought he saw a flicker in his father’s eyebrow region. He could have sworn something about that sentence had touched Isaiah on the raw.
    Isaiah finally merely nodded once. “Nothing makes me happier or more proud than knowing I can count on you to do the right thing, son, for your actions are a reflection of your fine character. I am absolutely certain you will never disappoint me or bring shame to our family, and this is such a comfort to me and your mother.”
    It was as though he could will these things into existence by merely stating them.
    Lyon had always been fascinated by the fact that Isaiah could persuade nearly anyone of anything. He’d watched his father subtly but relentlessly ply wit, charm, and strategy in meetings at the Mercury Club, over drinks at White’s, milling about with port and cigars after dinner parties. He studied people for weaknesses, strengths, fears, and proclivities, and he used them to his advantage the way conductor shapes a symphony. Lyon had witnessed one wealthy investor after another succumb to his father’s tactics, none the wiser. Thusly the Redmond fortune and influence grew and grew.
    It was an extraordinary talent, his father’s intellectually driven intuition, and Lyon had always been secretly proud of it.
    But now that Isaiah was employing the same tactics on him, it seemed faintly sinister.
    Lyon’s skin itched. As if strings binding him were chafing.
    It was not the first time he’d had these sorts of thoughts. Almost two bloody o’clock in the afternoon would not go down in his personal history as the hour of his epiphany.
    But it had finally come completely into focus, and with it came an