A sudden shiver of awareness tingled through him, and, as was his habit whenever something did not feel right, he looked to the door.
Lady Olivia Bevelstoke. She was standing alone, watching the Smythe-Smith girl with an inscrutably blank expression. Except…
Harry’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t be positive, but from this angle, it almost looked as if she were staring at the Grecian urn behind the Smythe-Smith girl.
What was she doing?
“You’re staring,” came Sebastian’s ever-grating voice in his ear.
Harry ignored him.
“She is beautiful.”
Harry ignored him.
“Engaging, as well. But not engaged.”
Harry ignored him.
“It’s not for a lack of trying on the part of the good bachelors of Great Britain,” Sebastian continued, unperturbed as always by Harry’s lack of response. “They keep asking. Alas, she keeps refusing. I heard that the elder Winterhoe even—”
“She’s cold,” Harry cut in, with a bit more bite to his voice than he’d intended.
Sebastian’s voice was filled with delighted amusement as he said, “I beg your pardon?”
“She’s cold,” Harry repeated, recalling their brief exchange. She’d held herself like a bloody queen. Every word had crackled with frost, and now she did not even deign to look at the poor girl playing the violin.
He was surprised she’d come tonight, to be honest. It did not seem the most likely venue for icy diamonds of the first water. Someone had most likely forced her to attend.
“And here I had such high hopes for your future together,” Sebastian murmured.
Harry turned to offer a scathing retort, or at least one with all the sarcasm he could muster, but the music took a turn, and the violinist once again reached a crescendo. This time it had to be the end, but the crowd was taking no chances, and a rousing round of applause erupted before she’d even completed the final note.
Harry walked alongside Sebastian as he made his way toward his grandmother. She’d come in her own carriage, Sebastian had told him, and therefore they need not wait until she was ready to depart. Still, he did need to say good-bye, and although Harry was no direct relation, he ought to make his greeting as well.
But before they could make it across the room, they were accosted by one of the Smythe-Smith mothers, calling, “Mr. Grey! Mr. Grey!”
From the intensity in her voice, Harry judged, the Earl of Newbury must be meeting with difficulties in his quest for a fertile wife.
Sebastian, to his credit, showed none of his haste to depart as he turned and said, “Mrs. Smythe-Smith, it has been such a delightful evening.”
“I am so pleased you were able to attend,” she gushed.
Sebastian smiled in return, the sort that said he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. And then he did what he always did when he wanted to get out of a conversation. He said:
“May I present my cousin, Sir Harry Valentine.”
Harry nodded politely, murmuring her name. That Mrs. Smythe-Smith thought Sebastian the bigger prize was evident; she looked directly at him as she asked, “What did you think of my Viola? Wasn’t she just splendid?”
Harry was not quite able to mask his surprise. Her daughter was named Viola?
“She plays the violin,” Mrs. Smythe-Smith explained.
“What is the violist called?” Harry could not help asking.
Mrs. Smythe-Smith glanced at him with some impatience. “Marianne.” Then back to Sebastian: “Viola was the soloist.”
“Ah,” Sebastian replied. “It was a rare treat.”
“Indeed. We are so very proud of her. We shall have to plan for solos for next year.”
Harry began to plan for his trip to the Arctic, to correspond.
“I am so glad you were able to attend, Mr. Grey,” Mrs. Smythe-Smith continued, apparently unaware that she’d said this already. “We have another surprise for the evening.”
“Did I mention my cousin is a baronet?” Sebastian put in. “Lovely estate back in Hampshire. The hunting is divine.”
“Really?” Mrs. Smythe-Smith turned to Harry with new interest and a broad smile. “I am so grateful for your attendance, Sir Harry.”
Sir Harry would have responded with more than a nod except that he was plotting the imminent demise of Mr. Grey.
“I must tell you both about our surprise,” Mrs. Smythe-Smith said excitedly. “I want you to be the first to know. We shall have dancing! This evening!”
“Dancing?” Harry echoed, struck nearly into incoherence. “Er, will Viola be playing?”
“Of course not. I shouldn’t want her to miss out. But it just so happens that we have a number of other amateur musicians in the audience, and it is such great fun to be spontaneous, don’t you think?”
Harry rated spontaneity up with trips to the dentist. What he did rate highly, however, was petty revenge. “My cousin,” he said with great feeling, “adores dancing.”
“He does?” Mrs. Smythe-Smith turned back to Sebastian with delight. “You do?”
“I do,” Sebastian said, perhaps a bit more tightly than was necessary, given that it was not a lie; he did like to dance, far more than Harry ever had.
Mrs. Smythe-Smith looked at Sebastian with beatific expectancy. Harry looked at them both with self-satisfied expectancy; he did love when everything wrapped up neatly. In his favor, specifically.
Sebastian, aware that he’d been outmaneuvered, said to Mrs. Smythe-Smith, “I hope your daughter will save the first dance for me.”
“It would be her honor to do so,” Mrs. Smythe-Smith said, clasping her hands together with joy. “If you will excuse me, I must make arrangements to begin the music.”
Sebastian waited until she’d wended through the crowd, then said, “You will pay for this.”
“Oh, I think we’re even now.”
“Well, you’re stuck here, too, at any rate,” Sebastian replied. “Unless you wish to walk home.”
Harry would have considered it, were it not pouring rain. “I’m happy to wait for you,” he said, with all the good cheer in the world.
“Oh, look!” Sebastian said, with patently false surprise. “Lady Olivia. Right there. I’d wager she likes to dance.”
Harry considered saying, You wouldn’t, but really, what was the point? He knew Sebastian would.
“Lady Olivia!” Sebastian called out.
The lady in question turned, and there was no way she could avoid them, what with Sebastian plowing through the crowd to her side. Harry, too, could find no way to avoid the encounter; not that he would give her the satisfaction of doing so.
“Lady Olivia,” Sebastian said again, once they were at speaking range. “How lovely to see you.”
She gave a faint impression of a nod. “Mr. Grey.”
“Taciturn this evening, are we, Olivia?” Sebastian murmured, but before Harry could wonder at the familiarity of such a statement, he continued with: “Have you met my cousin, Sir Harry Valentine?”
“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, look
ing 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.
Chapter Five
There 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. Nervou
s 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.