by Julia Quinn
“I have some at home,” Harry confirmed. He put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder.
“Aaaaaah!”
“Oh, sorry. Meant to grab your other shoulder.” Harry looked up at the rest of the room’s inhabitants, most of whom were looking at him as if he were a criminal. “I was trying to be reassuring. You know, pat on the shoulder and all that.”
“Perhaps we should take Seb back,” Edward suggested.
Harry nodded, helping his cousin to his feet. “You’ll stay with us for a few days?”
Sebastian nodded gratefully. As he headed for the door, he turned to Vladimir and said, “Spasibo.”
Vladimir smiled proudly and said that it was an honor to help such a great man.
The prince translated, then added, “I must agree. Your performance was magnificent.”
Harry exchanged an amused glance with Olivia. He couldn’t help it.
But Alexei was not done. “It would be my honor if you would be a guest at the party next week. It is to be at my cousin’s home. The ambassador. A celebration of Russian culture.” He looked back to the rest of the crowd. “You are all invited, of course.” He turned to Harry, and their eyes met. He shrugged, as if to say—even you.
Harry nodded his reply. It seemed he wasn’t to be done with the Russian prince just yet. If Olivia was going, he was going. That was all there was to it.
Lady Rudland thanked the prince for his kind invitation, then turned to Harry and said, “I think Mr. Grey needs to lie down.”
“Of course,” Harry murmured. He said his goodbyes and helped Sebastian to the drawing-room door. Olivia walked alongside, and when they reached the front door, she said, “Will you let me know how he is doing?”
He flashed her a very small, very secret smile. “Be at your window at six in the evening.”
He should have left right then. There were too many people milling about, and Sebastian was clearly in pain, but he could not resist one last look at her face. And in that moment he finally understood what people meant when they said someone’s eyes lit up.
Because when he told her to be at her window at six, she smiled. And when he looked into her eyes, it was as if the whole world was bathed in a soft, happy glow, and all of it, every little bit of good and fun and happiness—it all came from her. From this one woman, standing next to him at her front door in Mayfair.
And that was when he knew. It had happened. It had happened right there, in London.
Harry Valentine had fallen in love.
Chapter Nineteen
That evening, promptly at six, Olivia opened her window, leaned on the sill, and looked out.
And there was Harry, leaning on his windowsill, gazing up. He looked utterly delicious, his lips curved into the perfect smile, a little bit boyish, a little bit sly. She liked him like this, happy and relaxed. His dark hair was no longer neatly styled, and she was struck by a sudden urge to touch it, to run her fingers through, to muss it up even more.
Good heavens, she must be in love.
It should have been a revelation. She should have been struck down with the shock of it. But instead she just felt lovely. Perfectly, fabulously wonderful.
Love. Love. LOVE. She tested the word out in her mind, in different pitches and tones. They all sounded splendid.
Really, the emotion had a great deal to recommend it.
“Good evening,” she said, a silly grin on her face.
“Good evening to you.”
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Just a moment or two. You’re quite fantastically prompt.”
“I don’t believe in keeping people waiting,” she said. She leaned forward, and almost had enough courage to lick her lips. “Unless they deserve punishment.”
That seemed to intrigue him. He edged farther out his window, too, until they were both hanging just a little bit too far out. He looked as if he were going to speak, but then some devil must have overtaken him, because he burst out laughing.
And then she did, too.
And they were both just…giggling, really, until they had tears in their eyes.
“Oh my,” Olivia gasped. “Do you think that perhaps…sometime…we ought to have some sort of proper meeting?”
He wiped his eyes. “Proper?”
“Like at a dance.”
“We’ve already danced,” he told her.
“Only once, and you didn’t like me then.”
“You didn’t like me, either,” he reminded her.
“You didn’t like me more.”
He thought about that, then nodded. “That’s true.”
Olivia winced. “I was rather horrid, wasn’t I?”
“Well, yes,” he admitted, rather quickly, too.
“You’re not supposed to agree with me.”
He grinned. “It’s good that you can be horrid when necessary. It’s a useful skill.”
She leaned on her elbow, settling her chin onto her hand. “Funny, my brothers never seemed to think so.”
“Brothers are like that.”
“Were you?”
“Me? Never. I encouraged it, actually. The more horridly my sister behaved, the more opportunity there was to watch her get in a great deal of trouble.”
“You’re very crafty,” she murmured.
He answered with a shrug.
“I’m still curious,” she said, refusing to allow a change of topic. “How is it useful to know how to be horrid?”
“That is a very good question,” he said solemnly.
“You haven’t an answer, have you?”
“I have not,” he admitted.
“I could be an actress,” she suggested.
“And lose your respectability?”
“A spy, then.”
“Even worse,” he said, with great firmness.
“You don’t think I could be a spy?” She was being an utter flirt, but she was having far too much fun to hold back. “Surely England could have used someone like me. I should have had the war tidied up in no time.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” he said, and strangely enough, he sounded as if he might have meant it.
But something made her pull back. She was being too playful, about a topic that wanted no humor. “I should not joke about such things,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Sometimes one has to.”
She wondered what he had seen, what he had done. He’d been in the army for many years. It could not all have been regiment parades and girls swooning over uniforms. He would have fought. Marched. Killed.
It was almost impossible to imagine. He rode superbly, and after this afternoon, she had firsthand knowledge of his strength and power, but still, she somehow saw him as more cerebral than athletic. Perhaps it was all those afternoons she’d seen him bent over papers at his desk, his quill moving swiftly across the page.
“What do you do in there?” she asked.
“What?”
She motioned toward him. “In your office. You spend a great deal of time at your desk.”
He hesitated, then said, “This and that. Translations, mostly.”
“Translations?” Her mouth opened with surprise. “Really?”
He shifted position, looking, for the first time that evening, a little bit uncomfortable. “I told you I spoke French.”
“I had no idea you did so so well.”
He shrugged modestly. “I was on the Continent for many years.”
Translations. Good heavens, he was even more clever than she’d thought. She hoped she could keep up. She thought she could; she liked to think she was a great deal more intelligent than most people considered her. It was because she didn’t feign interest in every topic that crossed her path. And she didn’t bother to pursue topics or activities at which she had no aptitude.
It was how any sensible person would behave.
In her opinion.
“Is it very different,” she asked, “translating?”
He cocked
his head to the side.
“As opposed to just speaking,” she clarified. “I can’t manage anything but English, so I really wouldn’t know.”
“It’s quite different,” he confirmed. “I don’t really know how to explain it. One is…unconscious. The other almost mathematical.”
“Mathematical?”
He almost looked sheepish. “I told you I didn’t know how to explain it.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully, “I think it might make sense. You have to fit together pieces of a puzzle.”
“It’s a bit like that.”
“I like puzzles.” She paused for a moment, then added, “Oh, but I hate maths.”
“It’s the same thing,” he told her.
“No. It’s not.”
“If you can say that you must have had very poor teachers.”
“That goes without saying. I ran off five governesses, if you recall.”
He smiled at her, slow and warm, and she tingled inside. If someone had told her just this morning that talk of maths and puzzles would make her shiver with delight, she’d have laughed her head right off. But now, looking at him, all she wanted was to reach out, to float across the space between them, and settle into his arms.
This was madness.
And bliss.
“I should let you go,” he said.
“Where?” She sighed.
He chuckled. “Wherever you need to go.”
To you, she wanted to say. Instead she placed her hand on her window, getting ready to pull it shut. “Shall we meet at the same time tomorrow evening?”
He bowed, and her breath caught. There was something so graceful about his movements, almost as if he were a medieval courtier, and she, his princess in a tower.
“It would be my honor,” he said.
That night, when Olivia crawled into bed, she was still smiling.
Yes, love had a great deal to recommend it.
A week later, Harry was sitting at his desk, staring at a blank piece of paper.
Not that he had any intention of writing anything down. But he tended to do his best thinking at his desk, with a piece of paper laid squarely in the middle of his blotter. And so, after he’d lain in his bed, making a remarkably thorough study of his ceiling as he tried in vain to figure out the best way to propose marriage to Olivia, he’d moved here, hoping for inspiration.
It was not striking.
“Harry?”
He looked up, grateful for the interruption. It was Edward, standing in the doorway.
“You’d asked me to remind you when it was time to begin getting ready,” Edward said.
Harry nodded and thanked him. It had been a week since that strange and wonderful afternoon at Rudland House. Sebastian had all but moved in, having declared Harry’s home far more comfortable (and with considerably better food) than his own. Edward was spending more time at home, too, and hadn’t come home drunk even once. And Harry hadn’t had to give one bit of serious thought to Prince Alexei Ivanovich Gomarovsky.
Well, until now. There was that celebration of Russian culture he was committed to attend that evening. But Harry was actually looking forward to it. He liked Russian culture. And the food. He hadn’t had decent Russian food since his grandmother had been alive to scream at the cooks in the Valentine kitchen. He supposed it was unlikely that there would be caviar, but he was hoping, nonetheless.
And of course Olivia would be there.
He was going to ask her to marry him. Tomorrow. He hadn’t yet worked out the details, but he refused to wait any longer. The past week had been bliss and torture, all rolled up into one sunny blond, blue-eyed woman.
She had to have guessed his intentions. He’d been quite obviously courting her all week—all the proper things, like walks in the park and interviews with her family. And many of the improper ones as well—stolen kisses and midnight conversations through open windows.
He was in love. He’d long since recognized it. All that remained was for him to propose.
And for her to accept, but he thought she would. She hadn’t said she loved him, but she wouldn’t have done, would she? It was up to the gentleman to declare himself first, and he had not yet done so.
He was just waiting for the right moment. They needed to be alone. It ought to be in the daytime; he wanted to be able to see her face clearly, to imprint every play of emotion into his memory. He would declare his love for her and ask her to marry him. And then he’d kiss her senseless. Maybe kiss himself senseless as well.
Who knew he was such a romantic?
Harry chuckled to himself as he got up and wandered over to his window. Olivia’s curtains were open, and so was her window. Curious, he pushed his own up and popped his head out into the warm spring air. He waited for a moment, in case she’d heard his window going up, then whistled.
Within seconds she appeared, bright-eyed and cheerful. “Good afternoon!” she called out.
“Were you waiting for me?” he asked.
“Of course not. But if I was to be in my room, I saw no reason not to leave the window open.” She leaned on the ledge, and smiled down at him. “It’s almost time to get ready.”
“What are you wearing?” Good God, he sounded like one of her gossipy friends. But he didn’t care. It was simply too pleasant to gaze up at her to worry over such things.
“My mother was pressing for red velvet, but I wanted something you could see.”
It was ridiculous how much he loved that she eschewed red and green for his benefit.
“Blue, perhaps?” she mused.
“You do look lovely in blue.”
“You’re very complimentary this afternoon.”
He shrugged, still sporting what he was sure must be an exceedingly silly grin. “I’m in an exceedingly good mood.”
“Even though you must spend the evening with Prince Alexei?”
“He will have three hundred guests. Ergo, no time for me.”
She chuckled. “I thought you were beginning to like him better.”
Harry supposed that he was. He still thought the prince was a bit of an ass, but he had fixed Sebastian’s shoulder. Or to be more precise, he’d had his manservant do so. Still, it amounted to the same thing.
And, more important, he had finally accepted defeat and ceased calling upon Olivia.
Unfortunately for Harry, the prince’s infatuation with Olivia had been replaced with a friendly devotion toward Sebastian. Prince Alexei had decided that Seb must be his new best friend and had been calling daily to check on his recuperation. Harry made a point of being in his office during such visits and had been regaling Olivia with the details, as told to him by Sebastian. All in all, it had been quite amusing, and all the more proof that Prince Alexei was mostly harmless.
“Oh, there’s my mother,” Olivia said, twisting to look behind her. “She’s calling me from down the hall. I must go.”
“I shall see you tonight,” Harry said.
She smiled. “I can’t wait.”
Chapter Twenty
By the time Harry arrived at the ambassador’s residence, the ball was in full swing. He couldn’t quite determine what aspects of Russian culture were being celebrated; the music was German and the food was French. But no one seemed to care. The vodka was flowing freely, and the room echoed with peals of laughter.
Harry immediately looked for Olivia, but she was nowhere to be seen. He was fairly certain she would have already arrived; her carriage had left her house over an hour before his had departed. But it was a crowded room. He’d find her soon.
Sebastian’s shoulder was nearly improved, but he had insisted upon wearing a sling under his coat—the better to attract the women, he’d told Harry. And indeed, it worked. They were mobbed instantly, and Harry was happy to stand back, watching with amusement as Sebastian basked in the worry and concern of London’s fair ladies.
Harry noted that Sebastian did not give an accurate depiction of the accident. In fact, all details were r
ather vague. There was certainly nothing about standing atop a table, acting out a cliff scene from a gothic novel. It was hard to tell exactly what Sebastian had said, but Harry heard one lady whisper to another that he’d been attacked by footpads, the poor, poor dear.
Harry fully expected to hear that Sebastian had fought off an entire French regiment by the end of the evening.
Harry leaned over to Edward as Sebastian graciously accepted the heartrending concern of one particularly buxom widow. “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone how this really happened. He’ll never forgive you.”
Edward nodded, but just barely. He was far too busy watching and learning from Seb to pay attention to Harry.
“Enjoy the leavings,” Harry said to his brother, smiling to himself as he realized that he was through with Sebastian’s left-over females.
Life was good. Very good. As perfect and fabulous as it had ever been, in fact.
Tomorrow he would propose, and tomorrow she would say yes.
She would, wouldn’t she? He couldn’t possibly be so misguided about her feelings.
“Have you seen Olivia?” he asked Edward.
Edward shook his head.
“I’m going to try to find her.”
Edward nodded.
Harry decided that it was useless to attempt to conduct a conversation with his brother with so many young ladies flitting about, and he moved away, trying to see above the crowd as he walked over to the opposite side of the ballroom. There was a small knot of people near the punch bowl, Prince Alexei at the center, but he did not see Olivia. She’d said she would be wearing blue, which would make her easier to spot, but it was always harder for him to distinguish colors in the evening.
Her hair…Now, that was a different story. Her hair would shine like a beacon.
He kept moving through the crowd, looking this way and that, and then finally, just when he was starting to get frustrated, he heard from behind him:
“Looking for someone?”
He turned, and it was as if his life was illuminated by her smile. “Yes,” he said, feigning perplexity, “but I can’t quite find her…”
“Oh, stop,” Olivia said, batting him lightly on the arm. “What has taken you so long? I have been here for hours.”