He treated the gentlemen with similar disdain, speaking only to three.
Harry wondered if there was anyone in attendance the prince did not consider beneath his notice.
“You look very serious this evening, Sir Harry.”
He turned and smiled before he could think the better of it. Lady Olivia had somehow sneaked up to his side, heartbreakingly beautiful in midnight-blue velvet.
“Aren’t unmarried ladies supposed to wear pastels?” he asked her.
Her brows rose at his impertinence, but her eyes sparkled with humor. “Yes, but I’m no longer so new. It’s my third year out, you know. Practically on the shelf.”
“Somehow I find it difficult to believe that that is anyone’s fault but your own.”
“Ouch.”
He grinned at her. “And how have you been faring this evening?”
“I have nothing to report. We’ve only just arrived.”
He knew that, of course. But he couldn’t very well let on that he’d been watching for her, so he said, “Your prince is here.”
She looked as if she wanted to groan. “I know.”
He leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “Shall I help you to avoid him?”
Her eyes lit up. “Do you think you can?”
“I am a man of many talents, Lady Olivia.”
“Funny hats notwithstanding?”
“Funny hats notwithstanding.”
And then, just like that, they both laughed. Together. The sound came together like a perfect chord, clear and true. And then, at quite the same time, they both seemed to realize that moment was significant, although neither had any idea why.
“Why do you wear such dark colors?” she asked.
He looked down at his evening kit. “You don’t like my coat?”
“I do,” she assured him. “It’s very elegant. It’s just that it has been commented upon.”
“My taste in clothing?”
She nodded. “It was a slow week for gossip. Besides, you commented on my gown.”
“True enough. Very well, I wear dark colors because it makes my life easier.”
She said nothing, just waited with an expectant look on her face, as if to say—surely there’s more.
“I shall let you in on a grave secret, Lady Olivia.”
He leaned forward, and so did she, and it was another one of those moments. Perfect accord.
“I am daft when it comes to colors,” he said in a low, grave voice. “Can’t tell red and green apart to save my life.”
“Really?” Her voice was a bit loud, and she glanced about self-consciously before continuing in a quieter tone. “I have never heard of such a thing.”
“I’m not the only one, I’m told, but I’ve never met anyone else so afflicted.”
“But surely there is no need for dark colors all the time.” She sounded—and looked—utterly fascinated. Her eyes were sparkling with it, and her voice was full of interest.
If Harry had known that his difficulties seeing colors would be such a boon with the ladies, he’d have trotted it out years ago.
“Can’t your valet pick out your attire?” she said.
“Yes, but then I’d have to trust him.”
“You don’t?” She looked intrigued. Amused. Perhaps a combination of both.
“He has a rather dry sense of humor, and he knows I can’t sack him.” He gave her a helpless shrug. “He saved my life once. And perhaps more importantly, my horse’s as well.”
“Oh, then you definitely cannot sack him. Your horse is lovely.”
“I’m quite fond of him,” Harry said. “The horse. And the valet, I suppose.”
She nodded approvingly. “You should be thankful that dark colors suit you. Not everyone wears black well.”
“Why, Lady Olivia, is that a compliment?”
“Not so much a compliment to you as an insult to everyone else,” she assured him.
“Thank heavens for that. I don’t think I would know how to conduct myself in a world in which you offered compliments.”
She touched him lightly on the shoulder—flirtatious, daring, and utterly ironic. “I feel exactly the same way.”
“Very well. Now that we are in accord, what shall we do about your prince?”
She gave him a sideways sort of look. “I know that you are just dying for me to say that he’s not my prince.”
“I expected you would, yes,” he murmured.
“In the interest of disappointing you, I shall have to say that he is as much my prince as he is anyone else’s here.” She pressed her lips together as she glanced about the room. “Except for the Russians, I suppose.”
At any other time, Harry would have said that he was Russian, or at least one quarter so. He’d have made a splendid remark, maybe something about not wanting to claim the prince, regardless, and then dazzled her with his command of the language.
But he couldn’t. And truth be told, it was disconcerting how much he wanted to.
“Can you see him?” she asked. She was craning her neck, standing on her tiptoes, but although she was of slightly above average height, there was no way she could see over the crowd.
Harry, however, could. “Over there,” he said with a nod toward the doors leading out to the garden. The prince was standing in the center of a small group of people, looking utterly bored by their attentions, and yet at the same time as if he expected it as his due.
“What is he doing?” Olivia asked.
“He is being presented to…” Well, hell. He had no idea to whom he was being presented. “…someone.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“Young or old?”
“Is this an interrogation?”
“Young or old?” she repeated. “I know everyone here. It is my vocation to know everyone at these events.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Is this something you take special pride in?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“She’s of middling age,” he said.
“What is she wearing?”
“A dress,” he retorted.
“Can you describe it?” she asked impatiently. Then: “You’re as bad as my brother.”
“I quite like your brother,” he said, mostly just to annoy her.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to know him better and change your mind.”
He smiled at that. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t sure how he could have thought her cold and remote. If anything, she was brimming with mischief and humor. All it seemed she needed was to be in the company of a friend.
“Well?” she demanded. “What sort of dress is she wearing?”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot to get a better look. “Something puffy, with…” He motioned toward his shoulders, as if he had any hope of describing female attire. He shook his head. “I can’t tell the color.”
“Interesting.” Her brow wrinkled. “Does that mean it must be either red or green?”
“Or any one of a thousand shades thereof.”
Her posture changed completely. “That’s really fascinating, did you know?”
“Actually, I’ve always found it more of a nuisance.”
“I suppose you would,” she acknowledged. Then she asked, “The woman he’s talking to—”
“Oh, he’s not talking to her,” Harry said, with a bit more feeling than he’d intended.
She stood on her tiptoes again, not that that would improve her view. “What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t talk to anyone. Hardly anyone, at least. Mostly he does a lot of looking down his nose.”
“That’s very strange. He talked a great deal to me.”
Harry shrugged. He didn’t know what to say to that, other than the obvious, which was that the prince wanted to get her into his bed. Which didn’t seem appropriate for the moment.
Although he had to give the prince credit for good taste.
“Very well,?
?? Olivia said. “The woman he’s not talking to. Is she wearing a rather vulgar diamond?”
“On her neck?”
“No, through her nose. Of course on her neck.”
He gave her a rather assessing stare. “You are not the person I thought you were.”
“Considering your initial impression of me, that’s probably a good thing. Is she wearing a diamond?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s Lady Mottram,” she said firmly. “Our hostess. Which means he’ll be busy for several minutes. It would be impolite to ignore her.”
“I would not count on his going out of his way to be polite.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t get away. Lady M has tentacles. And two unmarried daughters.”
“Shall we head in the opposite direction?”
Her brows rose impishly. “Let’s.”
She took off, wending her way expertly through the crowd. He followed the sound of her laughter, and, every few seconds when she turned back to make sure he was there, the dazzling flash of her smile.
Eventually they reached an alcove, and she flopped into a seat, breathless and giddy. He stood beside her, his mien considerably more sedate. He didn’t want to sit. Not yet. He needed to keep an eye out for the prince.
“He won’t find us here!” she said gaily.
Nor would anyone else, Harry could not help but notice. There was nothing risqué about the alcove; it was quite properly open to the ballroom. But the way it was angled—off the corner, with its walls curling round like a womb—one had to be at just the right angle to see in.
It could never be a scene of seduction, or any kind of mischief for that matter, but it was remarkably private. Well buffered, too, from the noise of the party.
“That was fun,” Olivia announced.
He was surprised to find himself agreeing with her. “It was, wasn’t it?”
She let out a deflating little sigh. “I suppose I won’t be able to avoid him all night.”
“You can try.”
She shook her head. “My mother will find me out.”
“Is she trying to marry you off to him?” he asked, coming to sit beside her on the curved wooden bench.
“No, she’d not want me to move so far away. But he’s a prince.” She looked up at him with a fatalistic sort of expression. “It’s an honor. His attentions, I mean.”
Harry nodded. Not in agreement, just in sympathy.
“And what’s more—” She broke off, then opened her lips as if to begin again. But she didn’t.
“What’s more?” he gently prodded.
“Can I trust you?”
“You can,” he told her, “but I’m sure you’re already aware that you should never trust a gentleman who says you can trust him.”
That brought out a tiny smile. “Truer words, and all that. Still…”
“Go ahead,” he said gently.
“Well…” Her eyes had a faraway look to them, as if she were searching for words, or maybe she’d found them, but the sentences sounded wrong. And when she finally spoke, she wasn’t looking at him.
But she wasn’t quite avoiding him either.
“I have…rejected the advances of a number of gentlemen.”
He wondered at her careful use of the word “rejected,” but did not interrupt.
“It’s not that I considered myself above them. Well, some of them, I suppose.” She turned and gave him a direct look. “Some of them were just awful.”
“Understood.”
“But most of them…There was nothing wrong. They just weren’t right.” She let out a sigh, and it sounded a little sad.
He hated that.
“No one will say it to my face, of course,” she went on.
“But you have gained a reputation as being overly particular?”
She gave him a rueful glance. “‘Picky’ was the word I heard. Well, one of them.” Her eyes grew clouded. “The only one I care to repeat.”
Harry looked down at his left hand. It had flexed out, hard, and was now balled into a fist. Olivia was doing her best to minimize, but she had been hurt by the gossip.
She leaned back against the wall behind her, her wistful breath wafting through the air. “And this…oh, this really takes the prize, because—” She shook her head, and her eyes looked heavenward, as if seeking guidance, or forgiveness. Or maybe just understanding.
She looked out over the crowd, and she was smiling, but it was a sad, bewildered sort of smile. And she said, “Some of them even said, ‘Who does she think she’s waiting for? A prince?’”
“Ah.”
She turned toward him, her brows arched, her expression utterly frank. “You see my dilemma?”
“Indeed.”
“If I am seen to reject him, I’ll be…” She chewed on her lip, searching for the correct word. “…not a laughingstock…I don’t know what I’ll be. But it won’t be nice.”
He didn’t seem to move a muscle, and yet his face was achingly kind as he said, “Surely you don’t need to marry him just to prove your niceness to society.”
“No, of course not. But I must be seen to at least give him all due courtesies. If I reject him out of hand…” Olivia sighed. She hated this. She hated all of this, and she’d never really spoken to anyone about it, because they would only say something awful and snide like—Don’t we all wish we had your problems.
And she knew she was lucky, and she knew she was blessed, and she knew she had no right to complain about anything in her life, and she wasn’t complaining, not really.
Except sometimes she did.
And sometimes she just wanted the gentlemen to stop paying attention, to stop calling her beautiful and lovely and graceful (which she was not). She wanted them to stop paying calls, and stop asking her father for permission to court her, because none of them was ever right, and blast it all, she didn’t want to settle for the best of the acceptables.
“Have you always been pretty?” he asked, very quietly.
It was a strange question. Strange, and powerful, and not the sort of thing she’d ever consider answering, except, somehow…
“Yes.”
Somehow, with him, it seemed all right.
He nodded. “I thought so. Yours is that kind of face.”
She turned to him with an oddly renewed sense of energy. “Have I told you about Miranda?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“My friend. Who married my brother.”
“Ah, yes. You were writing a letter to her this afternoon.”
Olivia nodded. “She was a bit of an ugly duckling. She was so thin, and her legs so long. We used to joke that they went all the way to her neck. But I never saw her that way. She was just my friend. My dearest, funniest, loveliest friend. We took our lessons together. We did everything together.”
She looked over at him, trying to gauge his interest. Most men would have run for the trees by now—a young woman blithering on about childhood friendship. Good heavens.
But he just nodded. And she knew that he understood.
“When I was eleven—it was my birthday, actually—I had a party—Winston, too—and all of the local children came. I suppose it was considered a coveted invitation. Anyway, there was a girl there—I can’t even remember her name—but she said some horrid things to Miranda. I don’t think it had ever even occurred to Miranda that she wasn’t considered pretty before that day. I know it hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Children can be unkind,” he murmured.
“Yes, well, so can adults,” she said briskly. “Anyway, it’s all neither here nor there. It’s just one of those memories that has stayed with me.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, and then he said, “You didn’t finish the story.”
She turned, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t finish the story,” he said again. “What did you do?”
Her lips parted.
“I can’t imagine you did not
hing. Even at eleven, you would not have done nothing.”
A slow smile spread across her face, growing…growing…until she could feel it in her cheeks, and then her lips, and then her heart. “I believe I had words with that girl.”
His eyes caught hers in an odd sort of kinship. “Was she ever invited to your birthday parties again?”
Still, she was smiling. Grinning. “I don’t think she was.”
“I’d bet she hasn’t forgotten your name.”
Olivia felt joy bubbling up from within. “I reckon she hasn’t.”
“And your friend Miranda had the last laugh,” he said. “Marrying the future Earl of Rudland. Was there a bigger catch in the district?”
“No. There wasn’t.”
“Sometimes,” he said thoughtfully, “we do get what we deserve.”
Olivia sat beside him, quietly, happy in her thoughts. Then, out of nowhere, she turned to him and said, “I am a devoted aunt.”
“Your brother and Miranda have children?”
“A daughter. Caroline. She is my absolute most favorite thing in the entire world. Sometimes I think I could just eat her up.” She looked over at him. “What are you smiling about?”
“The tone of your voice.”
“What about it?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. You sound like…like…I don’t know, almost like you are waiting for dessert.”
She let out a laugh. “I shall have to learn how to divide my attentions. They are expecting another.”
“My congratulations.”
“I didn’t think I liked children,” Olivia mused, “but I adore my niece.”
She was quiet again, thinking how nice it was to be with someone she didn’t have to talk to every moment. But then of course she did speak, because she never stayed silent for long.
“You should visit your sister in Cornwall,” she told him. “Meet your nieces and nephews.”
“I should,” he agreed.
“Family is important.”
He was quiet for a little bit longer than she would have expected before he said, “Yes, it is.”
It wasn’t quite right. Something in his voice rang hollow. Or maybe not. She hoped not. It would be such a disappointment if he turned out to be one of those men who had no care for his family.