What Happens in London

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 risque 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 nothing. 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?”