What Happens in London

“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.”