What Happens in London (18 page)

She must have looked startled, because he added, “You were blushing.”

Her shoulders drew back. “I’m not blushing.”

“Of course not,” he said without hesitation. “It’s very warm in here.”

Which it wasn’t. “I was thinking about my brothers,” she said. It was a little bit true, and it ought to put a halt to his imaginings about her alleged blush.

“I quite like your twin,” Harry said.

“
Winston?
” Good heavens, he might have said he liked swinging from trees with monkeys. Or eating their droppings.

“Anyone who can get under your skin can only deserve my respect.”

She scowled at him. “And I suppose you were nothing but sweetness and light with
your
sister?”

“Absolutely not,” he said with no shame whatsoever. “I was a beast. But”—he leaned forward, his eyes full of mischief—“I always employed stealth.”

“Oh please.” Olivia had enough experience with siblings of the male persuasion to know that he had
no
idea what he was talking about. “If you are trying
to tell me that your sister was not aware of your antics—”

“Oh no, she was most definitely aware.” Harry leaned forward. “But my grandmother was not.”

“Your grandmother?”

“She came to live with us when I was an infant. I was certainly closer to her than to either of my parents.”

Olivia found herself nodding, although she was not sure why. “She must have been lovely.”

Harry let out a bark of laughter. “She was many things, but
not
lovely.”

Olivia couldn’t help but grin as she asked, “What do you mean?”

“She was very…” He waved a hand in the air as he considered his words. “Severe. And I would have to say that she was quite firm in her opinions.”

Olivia considered that for a moment, then said, “I like women who are firm in their opinions.”

“I expect you do.”

She felt herself smiling, and she leaned forward, feeling a wonderful, almost effervescent kinship. “Would she have liked me?”

The question seemed to have caught him off guard, and his mouth hung open for a few moments before he finally said, looking almost amused by the question, “No. No, I don’t think she would have done.”

Olivia felt her own mouth go slack with shock.

“Did you wish for me to lie to you?”

“No, but—”

He waved her protest away. “She had little patience for anyone. She sacked six of my tutors.”

“Six?”

He nodded.

“My goodness.” Olivia was impressed. “I
would
have liked her,” she murmured. “
I
only managed to run off five governesses.”

He gave a slow smile. “Isn’t it strange how unsurprising I find that?”

She scowled at him. Or rather she meant to scowl. It probably came out something closer to a grin. “How is it,” she returned, “that I did not know of your grandmother?”

“You didn’t ask.”

What did he think, that she ran about asking people about their grandparents? But then it occurred to her—what
did
she know about him, really?

Very little. Very little indeed.

It was odd, because she knew
him
. She was quite certain she did. And then she realized it—she knew the man, but not the facts that had made him.

“What were your parents like?” she said suddenly.

He looked at her with some surprise.

“I didn’t ask if you had a grandmother,” she said, by way of an explanation. “Shame on me for not thinking of it.”

“Very well.” But he did not answer right away. The muscles of his face moved—not enough to reveal what he was thinking, but more than enough to let her know that he
was
thinking, that he couldn’t quite decide how to answer. And then he said:

“My father was a drunk.”

Miss Butterworth
, which Olivia had not even realized she was still holding, slipped from her fingers and thunked onto her lap.

“He was a rather amiable drunk, but strangely, that doesn’t seem to make it much better.” Harry’s face betrayed no emotion. He was smiling even, as if it were all a joke.

It was easier that way.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Harry shrugged. “He couldn’t help himself.”

“It’s very difficult,” she said softly.

He turned, sharply, because there was something in her voice, something humble, something maybe even…understanding.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. She was the one with the tidy, happy family, with the brother who married her best friend, and the parents who actually cared.

“My brother,” she said. “The one who married my friend Miranda. I don’t think I told you, but he’d been married before. His first wife was horrid. And then she died. And then—I don’t know, one would think he’d have been glad to be rid of her, but he just seemed to get more and more miserable.” There was a pause, and then she said, “He drank a great a deal.”

It’s not the same
, Harry wanted to say, because it wasn’t her parent, it wasn’t the person who was supposed to love you and protect you and keep your world a right and steady place. It wasn’t the same, because there was no way she’d cleaned up her brother’s vomit 127 times. It wasn’t a mother who never seemed to have anything to say, and it wasn’t…
It wasn’t the same, damn it. It wasn’t—

“It’s not the same,” she said quietly. “I don’t think it could possibly be.”

And with those words, those two short sentences,
everything inside of him, all those feelings that had been thrashing about—they calmed. Settled into a more comfortable place.

She gave him a tentative smile. Tiny, but true. “But I think I can understand. Maybe a little.”

He looked down for some reason, down at her hands, which were resting atop the book in her lap, and then at the sofa, covered in a pale green stripe. He and Olivia were not exactly next to each other; there was still room for an entire person between them. But they were on the same piece of furniture, and if he reached out his hand, and if she reached out her hand…

His breath caught.

Because she’d reached out her hand.

H
e didn’t think about what he did. He couldn’t have thought about it, because if he had, he never would have done it. But when she reached out her hand…

He took it.

It was only then that Harry realized what he had done, and perhaps only then that she realized what she had started, but by then it was far too late.

He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed each of them, right at the base, where she would wear a ring. Where she currently wasn’t wearing a ring. Where, in a flash of terrifying imagination, he saw her wearing
his
ring.

It should have been a warning. It should have induced sufficient panic to make him drop her hand, flee the room, the house, her company, forever.

But he didn’t. He kept her hand at his lips, unable to part with the touch of her skin.

She was warm, soft.

Trembling.

He looked up, finally, into her eyes. They were wide, gazing at him with trepidation…and trust…and maybe…desire? He couldn’t be sure, because he knew
she
couldn’t be sure. She wouldn’t know desire, wouldn’t understand the sweet torture of it, the bodily longing for another human being.

He knew it, and he realized that he’d known it almost constantly since he’d known
her
. There had been that first, electrical moment of attraction, true, but that wasn’t meaningful. He didn’t know her then, hadn’t even liked her.

But now…it was different. It wasn’t just her beauty he wanted, or the curve of her breast, or the taste of her skin. He wanted
her
. All of her. He wanted whatever it was that made her read newspapers instead of novels, and he wanted that little piece of unconventionality that made her open a window and read silly novels to him across the space between their houses.

He wanted her razor-sharp wit, the triumph on her face when she speared him with a particularly apt retort. And he wanted the look of horrified befuddlement when
he
bested
her
.

He wanted the fire behind her eyes, and he wanted the taste of her lips, and yes, he wanted her beneath him, around him, on top of him…in every possible position, in every single way.

He was going to have to marry her. It was that simple.

“Harry?” she whispered, and his gaze fell to her lips.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said softly, without thinking, without even considering that it might be something he should ask her.

He leaned forward, and in that last second before his lips touched hers, he felt washed clean. This was his new beginning.

He kissed her then, the first touch achingly gentle, nothing more than a brush of his lips against hers. But the contact was electric. Breathtaking, in every literal sense of the word. He drew back, just far enough to see her expression. She was gazing at him with a sense of wonder, her cornflower eyes drinking him in.

She whispered his name.

It was his undoing. He pulled her to him again, this time with all the urgency rushing through his veins. He kissed her hungrily, all caution sliding away, and before he knew it, his hands were in her hair, and the pins were falling out, and all he could think was that he wanted to see her again with her hair down.

Her hair down, floating across her skin. And nothing else.

His body, already tight with desire, grew impossibly hard, and in one wretched burst of sanity, he realized that if he did not set her away from him immediately, he was going to rip the clothes from her body and take her right there in her parents’ drawing room.

With the door open.

Good God.

He put his hands on her shoulders, not pushing her back so much as he dragged himself away from her.

For a moment they could do nothing but stare at each other. Her hair was tumbling from her coiffure, and she looked adorably, splendidly mussed. She raised one of her hands to her mouth, her three middle fingers touching her lips in wonderment.

“You kissed me,” she whispered.

He nodded.

Her lips moved into a hint of a smile. “I think I kissed you back.”

He nodded again. “You did.”

She looked as if she might say something more, but then she turned toward the open door. And her hand, which had still been up near her face, moved to her hair.

“You’ll want to fix that,” he said, his own lips quivering toward amusement.

She nodded. And again, she looked as if she might speak, but she didn’t. She gathered all of her hair at the back of her neck, using one hand to keep it all bunched together like a pony’s tail, and then stood.

“Will you be here when I return?” she asked.

“Do you wish me to be?”

She nodded.

“I shall be here,” he said, even though he would have said the same if she had said no.

She nodded yet again, hurrying over to the door. But before she left, she turned one last time and looked at him. “I—” she started to say, but then she just gave her head a shake.

“You what?” he asked, unable to keep the warm amusement from his voice.

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

He laughed. And she laughed. And it was, he decided as he listened to the fading sound of her footsteps, a perfect moment.

In every possible way.

Harry was still sitting on the sofa a few minutes later when the butler stepped into the room. “Prince Alexei Gomarovsky for Lady Olivia,” he intoned. He paused, leaning forward as he glanced about the room. “Lady Olivia?”

Harry started to say that she would be back in a moment, but the prince had already stalked into the room. “She will see me,” he was saying to the butler.

But she’ll be kissing me
, Harry wanted to cackle. It was quite a marvelous feeling, this. He had won. And the prince had lost. And although a gentleman did not kiss and tell, Harry was quite certain that by the time Alexei left Rudland house, he’d know who had won Olivia’s favor.

Harry stood, feeling just a little evil for how much he was looking forward to this.

He’d never claimed he was an uncompetitive man.

“You,” Prince Alexei said. Actually, it sounded a bit like an accusation.

Harry smiled blandly as he stood in greeting. “Me.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting Lady Olivia, of course. What are
you
doing here?”

The prince chose to answer this with curled lip. “Vladimir!” he barked.

Vlad the Impaler (as Harry had taken to calling him), thumped heavily into the room, sparing Harry
a surly glance before turning back to his master, who was asking him (in Russian, of course) what he had discovered so far about Harry.

“
Poka nitchevo
.”

Nothing yet.

For which Harry was immensely grateful. It was not well known that he spoke Russian, but it was not well hidden, either. It would not require much investigation to discover that Harry’s grandmother had come from an extremely old and noble Russian family.

Which didn’t
necessarily
mean that he had learned the language, but Prince Alexei would have to be an idiot not to wonder. And while Alexei was rude, and lecherous, and most probably without any redeeming social qualities, he was not an idiot, regardless of what Harry might have called him in the past.

“Have you had a pleasant morning, Your Highness?” Harry asked in his friendliest voice.

Prince Alexei speared him with a stare, clearly intending that to be his reply in its entirety.

“I am having a lovely morning,” Harry continued, sitting back down.

“Where is Lady Olivia?”

“I believe she went upstairs. She had something to…ah…attend to.” Harry made a little motion near his hair, which he decided to let the prince interpret how he wished.

“I will wait for her,” Alexei said in his usual clipped tones.

“Please do,” Harry said affably, motioning toward the seat across from him. For this he received another furious stare, probably earned, since it wasn’t his place to act as host.

Still, it was immensely entertaining.

Alexei flipped his coattails and took a seat, his mouth pressed shut in a firm, unyielding line. He stared straight ahead,
clearly
intending to ignore Harry completely.

Which would have been just fine with Harry, since he had no great desire for interaction with the prince himself, except that he was feeling just a trifle superior, since
he
was the one Olivia had chosen to kiss and
not
the prince, despite Harry’s position outside royalty, outside the aristocracy, outside all that Prince Alexei held dear.

And when one combined this with Harry’s current directive from the War Office, which one
could
interpret to mean that he ought to do his best to be a thorn in the Russian prince’s side, well…

Far be it from Harry Valentine to shirk his patriotic duty.

Harry stood up just enough to reach
Miss Butterworth
on the table, then sat back down, humming to himself as he found the page where they’d left off two days earlier, with poor Priscilla losing her family to pox.

Hmm hmm hmmm hmmmmmm hm hm…

Alexei shot him a sharp, annoyed glance.

“‘God Save the King,’” Harry informed him. “In case you were wondering.”

“I was not.”

“God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King
.”

The prince’s lips moved, but his teeth remained clenched as he ground out, “I am familiar with the tune.”

Harry let his voice rise slightly in volume. “
Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the King
.”

“Cease your infernal singing.”

“I’m just being patriotic,” Harry said, launching right back in with, “
O Lord, our God, arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall
.”

“If we were in Russia, I would have you arrested.”

“For singing my own country’s anthem?” Harry murmured.

“I would need no reason beyond my own indulgence.”

Harry considered this, shrugged, and continued: “
Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all
.”

He stopped, deciding that the final verse was not needed. He rather liked ending on “knavish tricks.” “We are an extremely fair-minded people,” he said to the prince. “If you’d like to be included in the ‘all.’”

Alexei did not answer, but Harry noticed that both of his hands were balled into tight fists.

Harry turned back to
Miss Butterworth
, deciding that he did not mind this part of the espionage trade. He hadn’t had this much fun annoying someone since…

Ever.

He smiled to himself at that. Even his sister had not been so delightful to torture. And Sebastian never took anything seriously; it was almost impossible to annoy him.

Harry hummed the first few bars of “La Marseillaise,” just to gauge the prince’s reaction (brilliantly
red-faced with fury), then settled in to read. He flipped ahead, quickly deciding that he had no interest in Priscilla Butterworth’s formative years, and finally settled on page 144, which appeared to contain madness, disfigurement, insult, and tears—all the requirements for a cracking good novel.

“What are you reading?” Prince Alexei demanded.

Harry looked up absently. “I beg your pardon?”

“What are you reading?” he snapped.

Harry glanced down at the book, and then back up at the prince. “I was under the assumption you did not wish to speak with me.”

“I don’t. But I am curious. What is that book?”

Harry held the book up so that Prince Alexei could see the front cover. “
Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron
.”

“Is that what is popular in England?” Alexei sneered.

Harry thought about that. “I don’t know. Lady Olivia is reading it. I thought I might do so as well.”

“Is that not the book she said she would not like?”

“I believe so, yes,” Harry murmured. “Can’t say I blame her.”

“Read it to me.”

Score one to the prince. Harry would have been only slightly more surprised if the prince had come over and kissed him square on the lips.

“I don’t think you’ll enjoy it,” Harry said.

“Do you like it?”

“Not really,” Harry replied with a shake of his head. It wasn’t precisely true; he very much enjoyed listening to Olivia read it aloud. Or reading it aloud to Olivia. But somehow he doubted the words would
share the same magic when shared with Prince Alexei Gomarovsky of Russia.

The prince lifted his chin, tilting his face ever so slightly to the side. It was as if he were posing for a portrait, Harry realized. The man spent his whole life holding himself as if he were posing for a portrait.

Harry might have felt sorry for him if he weren’t such an ass.

“If Lady Olivia is reading it,” the prince said, “then I want to do so, as well.”

Harry paused, digesting that. He supposed he could sacrifice
Miss Butterworth
for the sake of Anglo-Russian relations. He shut the book and held it out.

“No. You read it to me.”

Harry decided to obey. It was such a bizarre request he couldn’t bring himself to say no. Also, Vladimir had taken two steps in his direction and begun to growl.

“As you wish, Your Highness,” Harry said, once again settling down with the book. “I assume you would like to begin at the beginning?”

Alexei answered with a single, regal nod.

Harry turned back to the opening. “
It was a dark and windy night
,” he read, “
and Miss Priscilla Butterworth was certain that at any moment the rain would begin, pouring down from the heavens in sheets and streams, dousing all that lay within her purview.”
He looked up. “‘Purview’ is not used correctly, by the way.”

“What are these ‘sheets’?”

Harry looked back down at the words. “Er, just an expression. Rather like raining cats and dogs.”

“This I find stupid.”

Harry shrugged. He’d never been fond of the idiom himself. “Shall I continue?”