What Happens in London (7 page)

“Er…yes,” she stammered.

“I made Lady Olivia’s acquaintance this very evening,” Harry cut in, wondering what Seb was up to. He knew very well that the two of them had already spoken.

“Yes,” Lady Olivia said.

“Ah, poor me,” Sebastian said, changing the subject with startling speed. “I see Mrs. Smythe-Smith signaling to me. I must find her Viola.”

“Does she play as well?” Lady Olivia asked, her eyes clouding with confusion. And perhaps a little worry.

“I do not know,” Sebastian replied, “but she clearly anticipated the future of her progeny. Viola is her darling daughter.”

“She plays the violin,” Harry put in.

“Oh.” She seemed amused by the irony. Or maybe just puzzled. “Of course.”

“Enjoy the dancing, you two,” Sebastian said, giving Harry a quick glance of positively evil intent.

“There is dancing?” Lady Olivia asked, looking somewhat panicked.

Harry took pity on her. “It is my understanding that the Smythe-Smith quartet will not be playing.”

“How…nice.” She cleared her throat. “For them. So they can dance, of course. I’m sure they would like to.”

Harry felt a little spark of mischief (or was it menace?) wiggling through him. “Your eyes are blue,” he commented.

She threw him a startled glance. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your eyes,” he murmured. “They’re blue. I thought they might be, given your coloring, but it was difficult to tell from so far away.”

She froze, but he had to admire her adherence to purpose as she said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He leaned in just enough so that she would notice. “Mine are brown.”

She looked as if she were about to make a retort, but instead she blinked, and almost appeared to be peering at him more closely. “They
are
,” she murmured. “How odd.”

He wasn’t sure whether her reaction was amusing or disturbing. Either way, he wasn’t through provoking her. “I think the music is starting,” he said.

“I should find my mother,” she blurted out.

She was getting desperate. He liked that.

Perhaps the evening would turn out to be enjoyable, after all.

T
here had to be a way to force the evening to a close. She was a much better actor than Winston. If he could feign a plausible head cold, Olivia decided, surely she could manage plague.

Ode to Plague

By Olivia Bevelstoke

Biblical

Bubonic

Better than leprosy

Well it
was
. In these circumstances, at least. She needed something not just disgusting; it had to be violently transmissible as well. With history. Hadn’t the plague killed half of Europe a few hundred years ago? Leprosy had never been so efficient.

Briefly she considered the ramifications of putting her hand to her neck and murmuring, “Are these boils?”

It was tempting. It really was.

And Sir Harry, drat the man, looked pleased as punch, as if there were nowhere he’d rather be.

But here. Torturing her.

“Look at that,” he said conversationally. “Sebastian is dancing with Miss Smythe-Smith.”

Olivia searched the room, determinedly not looking at the man next to her, “I am sure she is delighted.”

There was a pause, and then Sir Harry inquired, “Are you looking for someone?”

“My mother,” she practically snapped. Hadn’t he heard her the first time?

“Ah.” He was blessedly silent for a moment, and then: “Does she resemble you?”

“What?”

“Your mother.”

Olivia swung her gaze over to him. Why was he asking this? Why was he even talking to her? He’d made his point, hadn’t he?

He was an awful man. It might not explain the paper and fires and the funny hat, but it explained
this
. Right here, right now. He was, quite simply, awful.

Arrogant.

Annoying.

And quite a bit more, she was sure, except that she was too flustered to think properly. Synonym retrieval required a far clearer head than she could achieve in his presence.

“I thought to help you look for her,” Sir Harry said. “But alas, we have not met.”

“She looks a bit like me,” Olivia said distractedly. And then, for no reason that she could identify, she added, “Or rather, I look like her.”

He smiled at that, just a little one, and Olivia had the oddest sense that for once he wasn’t laughing at her. He wasn’t trying to be provoking. He was just…smiling.

It was disconcerting.

She couldn’t look away.

“I have always valued precision in language,” he said softly.

She stared at him. “You are a very strange man.”

She
would
have been mortified, because that was not the sort of thing she normally said aloud, except that he deserved it. And now he was laughing. Presumably at her.

She touched her neck. Maybe if she pinched herself the welt would pass for a boil.

Diseases I Know How To Feign

By Olivia Bevelstoke

Head cold

Lung Ailment

Megrim

Sprained Ankle

The last wasn’t strictly a disease, but it certainly had its useful moments.

“Shall we dance, Lady Olivia?”

Like right now. Only she’d thought of it too late. “You wish to dance,” she echoed. It seemed inconceivable that he’d want to, even more inconceivable that he might think she would.

“I do,” he said.

“With me?”

He looked amused—condescendingly so—by the question. “I had thought to ask my cousin, as he is the only person in the room with whom I can claim any familiarity, but that would cause a bit of a sensation, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I believe the song has ended,” Olivia said. If it wasn’t true, it would be soon.

“Then we shall dance the next one.”

“I have not agreed to dance with you!” She bit her lip. She sounded like an idiot. A petulant idiot, which was the worst kind.

“You will,” he said confidently.

Not since Winston had told Neville Berbrooke that she was “interested” had she so badly wanted to strike another human being. She would have done so, too, if she’d thought she could get away with it.

“You don’t really have a choice,” he continued.

His jaw or the side of his head? Which would cause more pain?

“And who knows?” He leaned in, his eyes glittering hot in the candlelight. “You might enjoy yourself.”

The side of his head. Definitely. If she came at him with a wide, arcing swing, she might knock him off balance. She’d like to see him sprawled on the floor. It would be a
gorgeous
sight. He might strike his head on a table, or even better, grasp the tablecloth on
the way down, taking the punchbowl and all of Mrs. Smythe-Smith’s cut crystal with him.

“Lady Olivia?”

Shards everywhere. Maybe blood, too.

“Lady Olivia?”

If she couldn’t actually
do
it, she could fantasize about it.

“Lady Olivia?” He was holding out his hand.

She looked over. He was still upright, not a speck of blood or broken glass in sight. Pity. And he quite clearly expected her to accept his invitation to dance.

He was, unfortunately, right. She didn’t have a choice. She could—and probably would—continue to insist she’d never laid eyes on him before this evening, but they both knew the truth.

Olivia wasn’t quite certain what would happen if Sir Harry announced to the
ton
that she’d spied on him from her bedroom window for five days, but it would not be good. The speculation would be vicious. At best she’d have to hide at home for a week to avoid gossip. At worst, she could find herself engaged to marry the boor.

Good
God
.

“I would love to dance,” she said quickly, taking his outstretched hand.

“Enthusiasm as well as precision,” he murmured.

He really was a strange man.

They reached the dance floor a few moments before the musicians lifted their instruments.

“A waltz,” Sir Harry said, upon hearing the first two notes. Olivia gave him a curious, startled look. How did he
know
such a thing so quickly? Was he
musical? She hoped so. It meant the evening would have been even more of a torture to him than it was to her.

Sir Harry took her right hand and held it in its proper position in the air. The contact would have been shocking enough, but his other hand—at the small of her back—it was different. Warm. No, hot. And it made her feel ticklish in very odd places.

She’d danced dozens of waltzes. Maybe even hundreds. But no one’s hand at the small of her back had ever felt quite like this.

It was because she was still rattled. Nervous in his presence. That had to be it.

His grip was firm, but still quite gentle, and he was a good dancer. No, he was a splendid dancer, far better than she was. Olivia faked it well, but she would never be a superb dancer. People said she was, but that was only because she was pretty.

It wasn’t fair, she would be the first to admit it. But one could get away with quite a lot in London, simply by being pretty.

Of course it also meant that one was never presumed to be clever. All of her life it had been that way. People had always expected her to be some sort of china doll, there to look lovely, and be displayed, and
do
absolutely nothing.

Sometimes Olivia wondered if this might be why she occasionally misbehaved. Never anything on a grand scale; she was far too conventional for that. But she had been known to speak too freely, express an opinion too strongly. Miranda had once said that she would never wish to be that pretty, and Olivia hadn’t understood, not really. Not until Miranda had moved
away, and there was no one left with whom to have a truly excellent conversation.

She looked up at Sir Harry, trying to study his face without being obvious about it. Was he handsome? She supposed. He had a small scar, barely noticeable really, near his left ear, and his cheekbones were a bit more prominent than was classically handsome, but still, he had something. Intelligence? Intensity?

He had a touch of gray at his temples, too, she noticed. She wondered how old he was.

“You’re a very graceful dancer,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help it.

“Have you become immune to compliments, Lady Olivia?”

She gave him a sharp look. It was no less than he deserved. His tone had been equally sharp. Close to insulting.

“I have heard,” he said, expertly turning her to the right, “that you have left shattered hearts all across town.”

She stiffened. It was just the sort of thing people liked to say to her, thinking she’d be proud of it. But she wasn’t proud. And what’s more, it
hurt
that everyone thought she would be. “That is hardly a kind, or an appropriate, thing to say.”

“Are you always appropriate, Lady Olivia?”

She glared at him, but only for a second. His eyes met hers, and there it was again—the intelligence. The intensity. She had to look away.

She was a coward. A pathetic, spineless, miserable excuse for…for…well, for herself. She’d never backed down from a battle of wills. And she hated herself for doing so now.

When she heard his voice again, it was closer to her ear, his breath hot and moist. “And are you always kind?”

She clenched her teeth. He was goading her. And while she would love to deliver a setdown, she refused to do so. It was what he was trying for, after all. He wanted her to respond, just so that he could do the same.

Besides, she couldn’t think of anything suitably blistering.

His hand moved against her back—subtle, expert pressure that guided her in the dance. They turned, and then again, and she caught a glimpse of Mary Cadogan, eyes wide, mouth in a perfect little oval.

Wonderful. This would be all over town by tomorrow afternoon. One dance with a gentleman ought not cause a scandal, but Mary was sufficiently intrigued by Sir Harry—she would find a way to make it sound breathless and terribly
au courant
.

“What are your interests, Lady Olivia?” he asked.

“My interests?” she echoed, wondering if anyone had ever asked her this before. Certainly not so directly.

“Do you sing? Paint watercolors? Stab a needle in that fabric that goes in that hoop?”

“It’s called embroidery,” she said, somewhat testily; his tone was almost mocking, as if he didn’t expect her to have interests.

“Do you do it?”

“No.” She hated embroidery. She always had. And she wasn’t good at it, either.

“Do you play an instrument?”

“I like to shoot,” she said bluntly, hoping to put
a stop to the conversation. It wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t really a lie, either. She didn’t not like shooting.

“A woman who likes guns,” he said softly.

Good Lord, the evening would never end. She let out a frustrated exhale. “Is this an exceptionally long waltz?”

“I don’t think so.”

Something about his tone caught her attention, and she looked up, just in time to see his lips curve as he said, “It only seems long. Because you don’t like me.”

She gasped. It was true, of course, but he wasn’t supposed to say it.

“I have a secret, Lady Olivia,” he whispered, leaning down just as far as he could without breaking the bounds of propriety. “I don’t like you, either.”

Olivia was still not liking Sir Harry several days later. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t even seen him. She knew he existed, and that seemed to be enough.

Every morning one of the maids entered her bedchamber and opened the curtains, and every morning, as soon as the maid left, Olivia leaped to her feet and yanked them back closed. She refused to give him any reason to accuse her of spying on him again.

Plus, what was to stop him from spying on
her
?

She hadn’t even left the house since the night of the musicale. She’d feigned a head cold (so easy to claim she’d caught it from Winston) and stayed inside. It wasn’t that she was worried about crossing paths
with Sir Harry. Really, what was the likelihood that they would be coming down their front steps at the same time? Or returning from an outing? Or seeing each other on Bond Street? Or at Gunther’s? Or at a party?

She wasn’t going to run into him. She rarely even thought about it.

No, the bigger issue was avoiding her friends. Mary Cadogan had called the day after the musicale and then the day after that and then the day after that. Finally, Lady Rudland had told her that she would send a note when Olivia was feeling better.

She could not imagine having to tell Mary Cadogan about her conversation with Sir Harry. It was bad enough remembering it—which she seemed to do, on a minute-ly basis. To have to recount it to another human being…

It was almost enough to make a head cold devolve into plague.

What I Detest About Sir Harry Valentine

By the normally benevolent Lady Olivia Bevelstoke

I think he thinks I’m unintelligent.

I know he thinks I am unkind.

He blackmailed me into dancing with him.

He’s a better dancer than I am.

After three days of self-imposed isolation, however, Olivia was itching to move past the boundaries of her house and garden. Deciding that the early morning was the best time to avoid other people, she donned
her bonnet and gloves, grabbed the freshly delivered morning newspaper, and headed out to her favorite bench in Hyde Park. Her maid, who unlike Olivia did enjoy needlework, followed along, clutching her embroidery and complaining about the hour.

It was a glorious morning—blue sky, puffy clouds, light breeze. Perfect weather, really, and no one out and about. “Come along, Sally,” she called out to her maid, who was lagging at least a dozen steps behind.

“It’s
early
,” Sally moaned.

“It’s half seven,” Olivia told her, holding steady for a few moments to allow Sally to catch up.