End of chapter. Olivia flipped the page eagerly.
It was only a few feet to the cold, hard ground.
What? Priscilla was on the ground floor? Olivia’s eagerness quickly gave way to irritation. What sort of pea brain dangled from a ground-floor window? She’d allow for a bit of elevation for the building’s foundation, but really. One would be hard-pressed even to sprain an ankle in such a mild fall.
“That’s rather manipulative,” she said, narrowing her eyes. Who was this author, anyway, trying to scare her readers over nothing? Did Harry have any idea what he’d given her, or had he just been going blindly on a recommendation from his sister?
She looked over at her window. It was still the same size, with the same curtains—unchanged in every way. She wasn’t sure why this surprised her.
What time was it, anyway? Almost half nine. He probably wouldn’t be in his office. Well, he might. He did tend to work late, although come to think of it, he never had told her just what it was he did there with such diligence.
She pushed herself up and away from the edge of the bed and walked toward the window. Slowly, with cautious feet, which was ridiculous, since he couldn’t possibly see her through the curtains.
Miss Butterworth still in her left hand, she reached out with her right and pulled the curtains open…
Chapter Eleven
All things considered, Harry was ready to call it a decent day’s work.
On a normal day, he’d have translated twice what he’d managed for today, possibly more, but he’d been distracted.
He’d found himself staring up at Olivia’s window, even though he knew she wasn’t there. This was the day she was supposed to visit the prince. At three in the afternoon. Which meant she’d probably have left home shortly before two. The Russian ambassador’s residence was not very far away, but the earl and countess would not want to risk being late. There was always traffic, or they could break a wheel, or a street urchin might dash into the road…No one with any prudence left their home without allotting extra time for unforeseen delays.
Olivia would probably be stuck there for two hours, possibly three; no one knew how to drag these things out like the Russians. Then a half hour to get home, and—
Well, she’d be home now, that was for certain. Unless she’d gone back out again, but he hadn’t noticed the Rudland carriage departing.
Not that he’d been looking. But his curtains were open. And when he was angled just so, he could see a small strip of light shining through from the street. And of course any carriages that happened to roll by.
He stood and stretched, lifting his hands above his head and rolling his head down and around. He planned to do one more page tonight—the clock on the mantel proclaimed the time to be only half nine—but just now he needed to shake some blood back into his legs. He walked out from behind his desk, and then over to the window.
And there she was.
For a split second they stood frozen, caught in the moment of wondering—Should I pretend I don’t see?
And then Harry thought—of course not.
He waved.
She smiled. And waved back. And then—
He found himself staring with surprise. She was opening the window.
So of course he did the same.
“I know you said you hadn’t read this,” she said without preamble, “but did you even peek?”
“Good evening to you,” he called. “How was the prince?”
She shook her head impatiently. “The book, Sir Harry, the book. Did you read any of it?”
“I’m afraid not. Why?”
She held it up with two hands, right in front of her face, then moved it to the side so that she could see him. “It is ridiculous!”
He nodded agreeably. “I thought it might be.”
“Miss Butterworth’s mother gets pecked to death by pigeons!”
He fought a chuckle. “Do you know, I think that might make it considerably more interesting to me.”
“Pigeons, Sir Harry! Pigeons!”
He grinned up at her. He felt a bit like Romeo to her Juliet, minus the feuding families and poison.
And with pigeons.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing that part,” he told her. “It sounds quite suspenseful.”
She scowled at him, batting away a piece of hair that the breeze had blown into her face. “It happened before the book began. If we’re lucky, Miss Butterworth will get her own pecking before I reach the end.”
“So you’ve been reading it, then?”
“Bits and pieces,” she admitted. “That’s all. The opening of chapter four and”—she looked down, leafing quickly through the pages before glancing back up—“page one hundred ninety-three.”
“Have you ever considered starting at the beginning?”
There was a pause. A rather long one. And then, with disdain: “I wasn’t planning to read it.”
“It just swept you in, eh?”
“No! That’s not it at all.” She crossed her arms, which caused her to drop the book. For a moment she disappeared from view, then up she popped again, Miss Butterworth in hand. “It was so irritating I couldn’t stop.”
He leaned against the ledge, grinning up at her. “It sounds gripping.”
“It’s nonsense, is what it is. Between Miss Butterworth and the mad baron, I’m cheering for the baron.”
“Oh, come now. It’s a romance. Surely you must side with your fellow lady.”
“She’s an idiot.” She looked back down at the book for a moment, flipping through the pages with remarkable speed. “I can’t tell yet if the baron is murderous as well as mad, but if so, I do hope he succeeds.”
“It’ll never happen,” Harry told her.
“What makes you think that?” She swiped a hand at her hair again, trying to get it off her nose. The breeze was picking up, and he was finding the whole thing rather entertaining.
“Isn’t the author a woman?” he asked.
Olivia nodded. “Sarah Gorely. I’ve never heard of her.”
“And it’s meant to be a romance?”
She nodded again.
He shook his head. “She’ll never kill off the heroine.”
Olivia stared at him for a long moment, then immediately turned to the end of the book.
“Oh, don’t do that,” he scolded. “You’ll spoil it.”
“I’m not going to read it,” she retorted. “How can it be spoiled?”
“Trust me,” he said. “When a man writes a romance, the woman dies. When a woman writes one, it ends all tidy and sweet.”
Her lips parted, as if she weren’t sure whether to take offense at the generalization. Harry bit back a grin. He liked her befuddled.
“How is it romantic if the woman dies?” she asked suspiciously.
He shrugged. “I didn’t say it made sense, just that it was true.”
She didn’t seem to know what to make of that, and Harry found that he was quite content just to sit there and watch her as she glared down at the book in her hands. She was utterly adorable, standing up there at her window, even in that atrocious blue dressing gown of hers. Her hair hung down her back in a single thick braid, and he wondered why it was only just occurring to him now that the entire exchange was extremely irregular. He’d not met her parents, but he could not imagine they would approve of her chatting with an unmarried man in the dark, through her window.
In her dressing gown.
But he was having far too much fun to care, and so he decided that if she wasn’t going to concern herself with proprieties, neither would he.
Her eyes narrowed and then she looked back down at the book, her fingers moving stealthily toward the final pages.
“Don’t do it,” he warned her.
“I just want to see if you’re correct.”
“Then start at the beginning,” he said, mostly because he knew it would vex her.
She let out a groan. “I don’t want to read the entire book.??
?
“Why not?
“Because I won’t like it, and it will be a waste of my time.”
“You don’t know you won’t like it,” he pointed out.
“I know.” Said with utter conviction.
“Why don’t you like to read?” he asked.
“This is why,” she exclaimed, giving Miss Butterworth a little shake. “It’s complete nonsense. If you gave me the newspaper—now that, I would read. In fact I do. Every word. Every day.”
Harry was impressed. It wasn’t that he thought women didn’t read the newspaper. He just hadn’t really given the matter much thought. Certainly his mother had never done so, and if his sister did, she never gave any indication in her monthly correspondence.
“Read the novel,” he said. “You might surprise yourself and enjoy it.”
“Why are you prodding me to read something that you yourself have no interest in?” she asked, with no small degree of suspicion.
“Because—” But he stopped, because he didn’t know why he was doing so. Except that he’d given it to her. And he was enjoying teasing her about it. “I’ll make a deal with you, Lady Olivia.”
She cocked her head to the side expectantly.
“If you read it—all of it, beginning to end—then I will do the same.”
“You’ll read Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron,” she said dubiously.
“I will. As soon as you’re through with it.”
She looked as if she were about to agree, and indeed she opened her mouth to speak. But then she froze, and her eyes narrowed dangerously.
This, he reminded himself, was a woman with two brothers. She would know how to fight. Deviously.
“I think you should read it with me,” she said to him.
Harry had all sorts of thoughts about that, most of them fed by his usual practice of reading novels before bed.
In bed.
“Buy another copy,” she said.
His lovely little daydream popped and disintegrated.
“We shall compare notes. It will be like a reading club. One of those literary salons I am always rejecting invitations to.”
“I am flattered beyond imagination.”
“As well you should be,” she said. “I have never invited anyone else to do the same.”
“I don’t know that the store will have another copy,” he said.
“I’ll find one for you.” She gave him a bit of a smirk. “Trust me, I know how to shop.”
“Why am I suddenly frightened?” he murmured.
“What?”
He looked at her and said more loudly, “You scare me.”
She appeared to be delighted by that.
“Read me a passage,” he said.
“Now? Really?”
He settled himself on the ledge, leaning his back against the window frame. “The beginning, if you will.”
She stared down at him for a few moments, then shrugged and said, “Very well. Here we are.” She cleared her throat. “It was a dark and windy night.”
“I feel as if I’ve heard that before,” Harry commented.
“You’re interrupting.”
“So sorry. Go on.”
She gave him a stare, then continued. “It was a dark and windy night, 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.” She looked up. “This is dreadful. And I’m not sure the author used ‘purview’ correctly.”
“It’s close enough,” Harry said, although he agreed with her completely. “Continue.”
She shook her head but obeyed nonetheless. “She was, of course, shielded from the weather in her tiny chamber, but the window casings rattled with such noise that there would be no way she would find slumber in this evening. Huddled on her thin, cold bed, she blah blah blah, hold on, I’ll skip to where it gets interesting.”
“You can’t do that,” he scolded.
She held Miss Butterworth aloft. “I’m holding the book.”
“Toss it down,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
He nudged himself off the ledge and stood on the floor, poking his upper body out the window. “Toss it down.”
She looked most dubious. “Will you catch it?”
He laid down the gauntlet. “If you can throw it, I can catch it.”
“Oh, I can throw,” she returned, clearly insulted.
He smirked. “I’ve never met a girl who could.”
At that she hurled it at him, and it was only thanks to his quick reflexes, honed by years on the battlefield, that he managed to get himself in place to catch it.
Which he did. Thank God. He was not sure he could have lived with himself had he not.
“Next time try a gentle toss,” he grumbled.
“What would be the fun in that?”
Forget Romeo and Juliet. This was much closer to The Taming of the Shrew. He looked up. She had pulled up a chair and was now sitting right by her open window, waiting with an expression of exaggerated patience.
“Here we are,” he said, finding the spot where she’d left off. “Huddled on her thin, cold bed, she could not help but recall all of the events that had led her to this bleak spot, on this bleak night. But this, dear reader, is not where our story begins.”
“I hate when authors do that,” Olivia announced.
“Shush. We must begin at the beginning, which is not when Miss Butterworth arrived at Thimmerwell Hall, nor even when she arrived at Fitzgerald Place, her home before Thimmerwell Hall. No, we must begin on the day she was born, in a manger—”
“A manger!” Olivia nearly shrieked.
He grinned up at her. “I was just making sure you were listening.”
“Wretch.”
He chuckled and read on. “…the day she was born, in a small cottage in Hampshire, surrounded by roses and butterflies, on the last day before the town was ravaged by pox.”
He looked up.
“No, don’t stop,” she said. “It’s just starting to get interesting. What sort of pox, do you think?”
“You’re a bloodthirsty wench, did you know?”
She cocked her head to the side in a gesture of agreement. “I’m fascinated by pestilence. I always have been.”
He skimmed quickly down the page. “I’m afraid you are destined for disappointment. The author gives no medical description whatsoever.”
“Maybe on the next page?” she asked hopefully.
“I shall continue,” he announced. “The epidemic took her beloved father, but miraculously spared the baby and her mother. Also among the fallen were her paternal grandmother, both grandfathers, three great-aunts, two uncles, a sister, and a second cousin.”
“You’re having fun with me again,” she accused.
“I’m not!” he insisted. “I swear to you, it’s all here. It was quite an epidemic there in Hampshire. If you hadn’t chucked the book at me, you could see for yourself.”
“No one writes that badly.”
“Apparently someone does.”
“I’m not sure who is worse, the author for writing this drivel, or us, for reading it.”
“I’m having great fun,” he declared. And he was. It was the most unlikely thing, sitting here at his window, reading an excruciatingly bad novel to Lady Olivia Bevelstoke, the most sought-after young lady of the ton. But the breeze was lovely, and he’d been cooped up all day, and sometimes, when he looked up at her, she was smiling. Not at him, although she did that, too. No, the smiles that seemed to tingle through him were the ones on her face when she didn’t realize he was looking, when she was simply enjoying the moment, smiling into the night.
She was not just pretty, she was beautiful, with the sort of face that made men weep: heart-shaped, with perfect porcelain skin. And her eyes—women would kill for eyes of that color, that amazing cornflower blue.
She was beautiful, and she knew it, but she did not wie
ld her beauty like a weapon. It was simply a part of who she was, as natural as two hands and feet, ten fingers and toes.
She was beautiful, and he wanted her.
Chapter Twelve
Sir Harry?” Olivia called out, coming to her feet. She leaned against the sill, peering out past the darkness to his window, where he sat silhouetted against a flickering rectangle of light. He had gone so still, and so suddenly, at that.
He started at the sound of her voice, looking up at her window, but not quite at her. “Sorry,” he muttered, and he turned quickly back to the book, searching through the words to find his place.
“No, no, don’t be,” she assured him. He really did look a little odd, as if he’d just eaten something that had gone off. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at her, and then—it was really quite impossible to describe, or even understand—what happened. His eyes met hers, and even though it was dark, and she couldn’t see the color, that rich, warm chocolate—she still knew it. And she felt it. And then, quite simply, she lost her breath. Just lost it. Her balance, too. She stumbled back into her chair, and sat there for a moment, wondering why her heart was racing.
All he’d done was look at her.
And she’d…she’d…
She’d swooned.
Oh, dear heavens, he must think her an absolute fool. She had never swooned a day in her life, and—and, oh very well, she hadn’t really swooned, but that was what it felt like, this strange, floaty thing, all fizzy and queer, and now he was going to think she was one of those ladies who had to carry a vinaigrette with her everywhere she went.
Which was bad enough, except that she’d spent half her life poking fun at those ladies. Oh dear oh dear. She scrambled back to her feet and poked her head out the window. “I’m fine,” she called out. “Just lost my footing.”
He nodded slowly, and she realized he wasn’t entirely with her. His thoughts were far, far away. Then, as if quietly coming back into place, he looked up and begged her pardon. “Woolgathering,” he offered as explanation. “It’s late.”
“It is,” she murmured in agreement, although she did not think it could be very much past ten. And all of a sudden she realized that she could not bear to have him say good night, that she was going to have to do it first. Because…because…Well, she didn’t know why, she only knew that it was true.