by Julia Quinn
“So very low,” Harry murmured, having fun with this now. “Miles and miles below someone like you.”
The prince glanced at him for barely a second, but it was long enough for Olivia to see the distaste in his eyes. “In Russia, the aristocracy provides a structure for society. Without our great families, we would fall apart.”
“Many feel the same way here,” Olivia said courteously.
“There would be—how do you say it…”
“Revolution?” Harry supplied.
“Chaos?” Olivia guessed.
“Chaos,” Alexei selected. “Yes, that is it. Revolution I do not fear.”
“We would all be wise to learn from the experiences of the French,” Harry said.
Prince Alexei turned on him with fire in his eyes. “The French were stupid. They allowed the bourgeoisie too many freedoms. We do not make this mistake in Russia.”
“We do not fear revolution in England, either,” Harry said softly, “although I expect it is for different reasons.”
Olivia’s breath caught. He’d spoken with such quiet conviction, in such contrast to his earlier flippancies. His serious tone could not help but capture the moment. Even Prince Alexei paused and turned to him with an expression that was…well, not respect, exactly, for he clearly did not appreciate the comment. But perhaps there was some sort of recognition, an acknowledgment of Harry as a worthy opponent.
“Our conversation grows so serious,” she declared. “It is far too early in the day for such talk.” And when that failed to garner an immediate response, she added, “I can’t bear political discussions when the sun is shining.”
Actually, what she couldn’t bear was making herself out to be a complete ninny. She adored political discussions, at any time of day.
And the sun wasn’t shining, either.
“We are most rude,” Prince Alexei said, rising from his seat. He came before her and sank to one knee, leaving her speechless. What was he doing?
“Can you forgive us?” he murmured, taking her hand.
“I—I—”
He brought her knuckles to his lips. “Please.”
“Of course,” she finally got out. “It is—”
“Nothing,” Harry put in. “I believe that is the word you’re looking for?”
She would have glared at him if she could have seen him around Alexei, who was presently filling her entire breadth of vision. “You are of course forgiven, Your Highness,” she said. “I was being silly.”
“It is the right of all beautiful women to be silly when they wish.”
The prince moved at that point, and Olivia did catch a glimpse of Harry’s face. He looked as if he might gag.
“You must have a great many appointments here in London,” Harry said, once Alexei had resumed his seat.
“I am given several awards,” he said, looking confused and annoyed by the change of subject.
Olivia jumped in to translate. “I think what Sir Harry means is that you must have many commitments, many people to meet.”
“Yes,” Alexei said.
“Your days must be very busy,” Harry added, his voice just a touch impressed and fawning.
Olivia frowned. She had a feeling she knew what he was up to, and it would not end well. “You must lead a very exciting life,” she said quickly, trying to shift the conversation.
But Harry was not to be diverted. “Today, for example,” he mused. “You must have a terrific schedule. How honored Lady Olivia is that you should take time out to see her.”
“I would always make time for Lady Olivia.”
“You are ever generous with your company,” Harry said. “From what do we take you this afternoon?”
“You take me from nothing.”
Harry gave a knowing little smile, just to show that the insult, while noticed, had not stung. “Where else could you be this afternoon, Your Highness? With the ambassador? With the king?”
“I could be anywhere I wish.”
“Such is the privilege of royalty,” Harry mused.
Olivia bit her lip nervously. Vladimir had begun to inch his way over, and if there was to be violence, Harry was not going to emerge the victor.
“I am so honored by your presence,” she said—the absolute only sentence she could think of quickly.
“Why, thank you,” Harry quipped.
Stop, she mouthed at him.
Why? he mouthed back.
“I think you speak without me,” Alexei said angrily.
Vladimir moved ever closer.
“Of course not,” Olivia assured him. “I was only trying to remind Sir Harry that his cousin is…ehrm…expecting him for, er, a meeting.”
Alexei looked most dubious. “You said all this?”
Olivia could feel her skin burning. “Quite a bit of it,” she mumbled.
“I really must go,” Harry said abruptly, standing up.
Olivia stood as well. “Please allow me to escort you to the door,” she said, trying not to sound as if it were coming through clenched teeth.
“Please do not trouble yourself,” he replied. “I would not dream of asking so beautiful a lady to get up.”
Olivia blanched. Did Alexei realize that Harry was mocking him? She looked over at the prince, trying not to be obvious about it. He did not seem to have taken offense; in fact, he looked quite pleased. That is, he looked quite pleased in a rather stiff and reserved sort of way. Perhaps satisfied was a better description.
Harry saw himself out, depriving Olivia of the chance to tell him exactly what she thought of his childish behavior. She gripped the edge of the sofa cushion beneath her, seething. He would not escape so easily. He had no idea what it meant to allow a woman’s ire to fester. Whatever she had to say to him, it would be far less pretty tonight than it would have been this afternoon.
In the meantime, however, there was still the prince to attend to. He sat across from her, his expression somewhere between satisfied and smug. He was pleased that Harry had gone, and probably even more pleased that she was now alone with him.
And Vladimir. One really could not forget about Vladimir.
“I wonder where my mother is,” Olivia said, because, really, it was odd that she had not made an appearance. The door to the sitting room had been left quite properly open the entire time, so her presence was not needed as a chaperone, but Olivia would have thought that she’d have wanted to greet the prince.
“Is it necessary for her to be here?”
“Well, not really.” Olivia glanced over at the open door. “Huntley is right there in hall…”
“I am glad we are alone.”
Olivia swallowed, not sure what to say to this.
He smiled a little, but his eyes grew heavy. “Are you nervous to be alone with me?”
I wasn’t until now.
“Of course not,” she said. “I know that you are a gentleman. And besides that, we are not alone.”
He blinked several times and then laughed abruptly. “You do not mean Vladimir?”
Olivia felt her eyes dart back and forth across the room, from the prince to his attendant, and then back again, several times. “Well, yes,” she said haltingly. “He’s right…there. And—”
Alexei waved away her concern. “Vladimir is invisible.”
Her uneasiness grew. “I don’t understand.”
“It is like he is not here.” He smiled at her, and not in a way that made her comfortable. “If that is how I wish it.”
Olivia’s lips parted, but she had absolutely nothing to say.
“For example,” Alexei continued, “if I were to kiss you—”
Olivia gasped.
“—it would be the same as if we were alone. He would not tell anyone, and you would not feel any more…how do you say it…uncomfortable.”
“I think you should go, Your Highness.”
“I should like to kiss you first.”
Olivia stood, knocking the table with her shins. “That won’t b
e necessary.”
“No,” he said, rising to his feet as well. “I think it is necessary. To show you.”
“To show me what?” she said, unable to believe she was asking the question.
He gestured to Vladimir. “That it is as if he is not here. I must have protection at all times. He is with me always. Even when—I should not say it in front of a lady.”
There was quite a bit already he should not have said in front of a lady. Olivia scooted along the edge of the sofa, trying to make her way out of the seating area and over to the door, but he was blocking her way.
“I will kiss your hand,” he said.
“Wh–what?”
“To prove to you that I am a gentleman. You think I will do something else, but I will kiss your hand.”
It felt as if her throat were closing up. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t seem to be breathing. He had unnerved her completely.
He took her hand. Olivia was still too shocked to pull it back. He kissed it, his fingers stroking hers as he released her.
“Next time,” he said, “I will kiss your mouth.”
Oh, dear God.
“Vladimir!” Alexei let out a short stream of Russian, and his servant came immediately to his side. Olivia was horrified to realize that she had forgotten that he was there, although she was quite certain this was only because she had been so surprised by the prince’s outrageous conversation.
“I will see you tonight,” Alexei said to her.
“Tonight?” she echoed.
“You attend the opera, yes? The Magic Flute. It is the first performance of the season.”
“I—I—” Was she attending the opera? She couldn’t think straight. A royal prince had attempted to seduce her in her own sitting room. Or at least had sort of attempted to do so. In the presence of his hulking manservant.
Surely she had earned a bit of befuddlement.
“Until then, Lady Olivia.” Prince Alexei swept from the room, Vladimir in his wake. And all Olivia could think was, I need to tell Sir Harry about this.
Except that she was furious with him.
Wasn’t she?
Chapter Fourteen
Harry was in a bad mood. The day had started out perfectly fine, and indeed had promised all sorts of good cheer, until he’d ambled over to Rudland House’s sitting room and come across Prince Alexei Gomarovsky, apparent descendant of Russia’s most famous bachelor poet.
Or if not most famous, then famous enough.
Then he’d had to watch Olivia fawning over the churl.
Then he’d had to sit there and pretend he didn’t understand when the bastard said he wanted to rape her. And then tried to pass the bloody thing off as some nonsense about sky and fog.
Then—as he was sitting at home, trying to figure out what to do about the prince’s second statement in Russian, which had been an order to the ever-charming Vladimir to investigate him—he’d received written orders from the War Office to attend that evening’s opening of The Magic Flute, which would have been marvelous, had he been able to watch the stage instead of his new least favorite person, the aforementioned Alexei of Russia.
Then the bloody prince had left the opera early. Left, just as the Queen of the Night was beginning her aria. It was “Hell’s Vengeance Boileth in Mine Heart,” for heaven’s sake. Who left at the beginning of “Hell’s Vengeance Boileth in Mine Heart”?
Hell’s vengeance, Harry decided, was boilething in his heart as well.
He’d followed the prince (and the ever-present and increasingly menacing Vladimir) all the way to Madame LaRoux’s, where Prince Alexei presumably partook of the favors of a lady or three.
At that point, Harry had decided he was well within his rights to go home.
Which he did, but not before getting soaked in a freakishly short but violent rainstorm.
Which was why, when he arrived home and shrugged off his sodden coat and gloves, his only thoughts were of a hot bath. He could see it in his mind, steam rising from the surface. His skin would prickle at the heat, almost painfully, until his body adjusted to the temperature.
It would be heaven. Heaven boilething in a tub.
But sure enough, heaven was not to be his, at least not this night. His coat was still hanging limply off one arm when his butler entered the front hall and informed him that a letter had come for him by special messenger and was waiting on his desk.
And so off to his office he went, his feet splishing and sploshing in his boots, only to find that the message contained absolutely nothing of immediate importance, only a few bits and pieces of trivia to fill gaps in the prince’s history. Harry groaned and shuddered, wishing there was a fire in which to toss the offending missive. Then he could stand in front of it, too. He was so cold and so wet and so bloody annoyed with everything.
And then he looked up.
Olivia. In her window, staring down at him.
Really, this was all her fault. Or at least half of it.
He marched over to his window and wrenched it up. She did the same.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, before he could get word in. “Where have you—what happened to you?”
In the compendium of stupid questions, he decided, that would rank high. But his lips were probably still blue with cold, and there was no way he could say all that. “It rained,” he bit off.
“And you decided to go for a walk in it?”
He wondered if, with superhuman effort, he might be able to strangle her from here.
“I need to speak with you,” she said.
He realized he could not feel his toes. “Does it have to be right now?”
She drew back, looking terribly offended.
Which did little to improve his disposition. But still, gentlemanly behavior must have been beaten into him as a child, because even though he should have slammed the window shut, he instead explained himself, biting off, “I’m cold. I’m wet. And I’m in a very bad mood.”
“Well, so am I!”
“Very well,” he ground out. “What has you in a tizzy?”
“A tizzy?” she repeated derisively.
He held up a hand. If she was going to argue over his word choices, he was through with her.
She must have decided to choose a different battle, because she planted her hands on her hips, and said, “All right then, since you asked, you are the cause of my tizzy.”
This had better be good. He waited for a moment, and then said, dripping with equal parts sarcasm and rainwater, “And…?”
“And your behavior this afternoon. What were you thinking?”
“What was I—”
She actually leaned out of her window and shook a finger at him. “You were deliberately provoking Prince Alexei. Do you have any idea what a difficult situation that put me in?”
He stared at her for a moment, then said simply, “He’s an idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot,” she said testily.
“He’s an idiot,” Harry said again. “One who doesn’t deserve to lick your feet. You’ll thank me someday.”
“I have no intention of allowing him to lick me anywhere,” she retorted, then turned utterly red when she realized what she’d said.
Harry began not to feel quite so cold.
“I have no intention of allowing him to court me,” she said, her voice hushed yet strangely loud enough to reach him with every syllable crystal clear. “But that does not mean he can be ill-treated in my home.”
“Very well. I’m sorry. Are you satisfied?”
She was shocked into silence by his apology, but his triumph was short-lived. After no more than five seconds of her mouth opening and closing, she said, “I don’t think you meant it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he burst out. He could not believe she was acting like he’d done something wrong. He was only following his bloody orders from the bloody War Office. And even allowing for the fact that she had no idea he had any orders to follow, she was the one
who had spent the afternoon cooing at a man who had insulted her most viscerally.
Not that she knew that, either.
Still, anyone with a grain of sense could tell that the Prince Alexei was an oily little toad. Very well, an extremely handsome, not-little-at-all toad, but a toad nonetheless.
“Why are you so upset?” she demanded.
It was a damned good thing they were not face to face, because he would have done…something. “Why am I so upset?” he practically spat. “Why am I so upset? Because I—” But he realized he could not tell her that he’d been forced to leave the opera early. Or that he had followed the prince to a brothel. Or that he—
No, he could tell her that part.
“I am soaked to the skin, every inch of me ashiver, and I’m arguing with you through a window when I could be in a hot bath.”
The last part came out a bit like a bellow, which probably wasn’t the wisest thing, given that they were, technically, in public.
She was silent—finally—and then, quietly, she said, “Very well.”
Very well? That was it? She was done with a “very well”?
And then, like an idiot, he stood there. She’d given him the perfect opportunity to bid her farewell, shut his window, and march himself upstairs to the bath, but he just stood there.
Looking at her.
Watching the way she hugged her arms to her body, as if she were chilled. Watching her mouth, which he couldn’t quite see clearly in the dim light, and yet somehow he knew the precise moment she pressed her lips together, the corners tightening with hidden emotion.
“Where were you?” she asked.
He couldn’t stop looking at her.
“Tonight,” she clarified. “Where did you go that you got so wet?”
He glanced down at himself, as if only just then remembering that he was soaked.
How was that possible?
“I went to the opera,” he told her.
“Did you?” She hugged her arms more tightly against her body, and although he could not be sure, it looked as if she moved slightly closer to the window. “I was supposed to attend,” she said. “I wanted to go.”
He moved, too, closer to his window. “Why didn’t you?”
She hesitated, her attention moving from his face for a moment before returning as she said, “If you must know, I knew the prince would be there, and I did not wish to see him.”