What Happens in London

Chapter Six

Harry had been planning to head home. It was his custom to take an early-morning ride, even in town, and he’d been just about ready to exit the park when he spied Lady Olivia sitting on a bench. He found this sufficiently intriguing to stop and be introduced to her friend, but after a few moments of idle chatter, he decided he didn’t find either one of them sufficiently intriguing to keep him from his work.

Especially since Lady Olivia Bevelstoke was the reason he’d fallen so far behind in the first place.

She’d ceased spying upon him, that was true, but the damage was done. Every time he sat at his desk, he could feel her eyes upon him, even though he knew very well she’d shut her curtains tight. But clearly, reality had very little to do with the matter, because all he had to do, it seemed, was glance at her window, and he lost an entire hour’s work.

It happened thus: He looked at the window, because it was there, and he couldn’t very well never happen to glance upon it unless he also shut his curtains tight, which he was not willing to do, given the amount of time he spent in his office. So he saw the window, and he thought of her, because, really, what else would he think of upon seeing her bedroom window? At that point, annoyance set in, because A) she wasn’t worth the energy, B) she wasn’t even there, and C) he wasn’t getting any work done because of her.

C always led into a bout of even deeper irritation, this time directed at himself, because D) he really ought to have better powers of concentration, E) it was just a stupid window, and F) if he was going to get agitated about a female, it ought to be one he at least liked.

F was where he generally let out a loud growl and forced himself to get back to his translation. It usually worked for a minute or two, and then he’d look back up, and happen to see the window, and the whole bloody nonsense cycled back to the beginning.

Which was why, when he saw the look of utter dread cross Lady Olivia Bevelstoke’s face at the mention of her brother, he decided that no, he did not need to get back to work just yet. After all the annoyance she had caused him, he was looking forward to watching her experience similar pain.

“Have you met Olivia’s brother, Sir Harry?” Miss Cadogan asked.

Harry swung himself down from his mount; it seemed he would be here for a while. “I have not had the pleasure.”

Lady Olivia’s face assumed a decidedly sour mien at his use of the word “pleasure.”

“He is her twin brother,” Miss Cadogan continued, “recently down from university.”

Harry turned to Lady Olivia and said, “I did not realize you were a twin.”

She shrugged.

“Has your brother completed his studies?” he asked.

She nodded curtly.

He almost shook his head at her attitude. She really was quite an unfriendly female. It was a shame she was so pretty. She did not deserve the good fortune of her looks. Harry rather thought she ought to have a large wart on her nose.

“He might be acquainted with my brother, then,” Harry commented. “They would be of an age.”

“Who is your brother?” Miss Cadogan asked.

Harry told them a bit about Edward, stopping a moment before Lady Olivia’s brother arrived. He was on foot, walking by himself, with the loose-limbed gait of a young man. He looked rather like his sister, Harry noticed. His blond hair was several shades darker, but the bright eyes were precisely the same, both in color and shape.

Harry bowed; so did Mr. Bevelstoke.

“Sir Harry Valentine, my brother, Mr. Winston Bevelstoke; Winston, Sir Harry.”

Said by Lady Olivia with a stunning lack of interest or inflection.

“Sir Harry,” Winston said politely. “I am acquainted with your brother.”

Harry didn’t recognize him, but he supposed young Bevelstoke was one of Edward’s many acquaintances. He’d met most of them here and there; most were entirely unmemorable.

“You are our new neighbor, I understand,” Winston said.

Harry acknowledged this with a murmur and nod.

“To the south.”

“Indeed.”

“I’ve always liked that house,” Winston said. Or rather, pontificated. It certainly sounded as if he were about to take the statement on a grand journey. “Brick, is it not?”

“Winston,” Olivia said impatiently, “you know very well it’s brick.”

“Well, yes,” he said, with an offhanded wave, “or at least I was moderately certain. I don’t often pay attention to those things, and, as you know, my bedroom faces the other direction.”

Harry felt a smile creeping along his lips. This could only get better.

Winston turned to Harry and said, for no apparent reason other than to torture his sister, “Olivia’s room faces the south.”

“Does it now?”

Olivia looked as if she might-

“It does,” Winston confirmed, putting a halt to Harry’s speculation on what Lady Olivia might or might not do. But he was thinking that spontaneous combustion was not outside the realm of possibility.

“You’ve probably seen her window,” Winston went on. “You really couldn’t miss it. It’s-”

“Winston.”

Harry actually stepped back an inch or two. It looked as if there might be violence. And despite Winston’s greater height and weight, he rather thought he’d put his money on his sister.

“I am sure Sir Harry is not interested in a floor plan of our home,” Olivia bit off.

Winston stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wasn’t thinking of a floor plan so much as an elevation.”

Harry turned back to Olivia. He was not sure he had ever seen such well-controlled fury. It was impressive.

“It’s so nice to see you this morning, Winston,” Miss Cadogan put in, quite possibly oblivious to the familial tension. “Are you often out and about this early?”

“No,” he replied. “Mother sent me to fetch Olivia.”

Miss Cadogan smiled brightly and returned her attention to Harry. “Then it seems you are the only regular morning visitor here in the park. I, too, came looking for Olivia. We haven’t had a chance to chat for ages. She has been ill, you know.”

“I did not know,” Harry said. “I hope you are feeling better.”

“Winston was also ill,” Olivia said. She offered a frightening smile. “Much sicker than I.”

“Oh, no!” Miss Cadogan gushed. “I am so sorry to hear that.” She turned to Winston with great concern. “Had I known, I would have brought you a tincture.”

“I shall be sure to inform you next time he falls ill,” Olivia told her. She turned to Harry, lowered her voice, and said, “It happens more often that we would like. It’s very distressing.” And then, down to a whisper: “He was born that way.”

Miss Cadogan rose to her feet, all of her attention on Winston. “Are you feeling better now? I must say, you look a bit peaked.”

Harry thought he looked the picture of health.

“I’m fine,” Winston bit off, his ire clearly directed at his sister, who was still sitting on the bench, looking extremely satisfied with her recent accomplishments.

Miss Cadogan looked past him to Olivia, who was shaking her head, mouthing, “He’s not.”

“I will definitely bring you that tincture,” Miss Cadogan said. “It tastes a bit foul, but our housekeeper swears by it. And I insist that you return home at once. It’s chilly out.”

“It’s really not necessary,” Winston protested.

“I was planning to return soon, anyway,” Miss Cadogan put in, proving that young Bevelstoke was no match for the combined might of two determined women. “You may escort me.”

“Do inform Mother that I shall be back momentarily,” Olivia said sweetly.

Her brother glared at her, but he had clearly been outmaneuvered, and so he took Miss Cadogan’s arm and led her away.

“Well played, Lady Olivia,” Harry said admiringly, once the others were out of earshot.

She gave him a bored look. “You are not the only gentleman I find irritating.”

There was no way he could ignore a comment like that, so he sat beside her, plopping right down into the spot recently vacated by Miss Cadogan. “Anything interesting?” he asked, motioning toward her newspaper.

“I would not know,” she replied. “I am besieged by interruptions.”

He chuckled. “My cue to apologize, I am sure, but I shan’t indulge you.”

Her lips pressed together, presumably pinching back a retort.

He sat back, crossing his right ankle over his left knee, letting his lazy pose signal that he was settling in beside her. “After all,” he mused, “it is not as if I am invading your privacy. We are sitting on a bench in Hyde Park. Open air, public place, et cetera, et cetera.”

He paused, giving her the chance to comment. She did not. So he continued on with: “If you’d wanted privacy, you might have taken your newspaper to your bedchamber, or perhaps to your office. Those are places, would you not agree, where one might operate under the assumption of privacy?”

Again he waited. Again, she refused to engage. So he lowered his voice to a murmur and asked, “Do you have an office, Lady Olivia?”

He did not think she would answer, as she was staring straight ahead, quite determinedly not looking at him, but much to his surprise, she ground out, “I do not.”

He admired her for that, but not enough to change tack. “Pity, that,” he murmured. “I find it most beneficial to have a place that is my own that is not used for sleeping. You should consider an office, Lady Olivia, if you wish for a place to read your newspaper away from the prying eyes of others.”

She turned to him with an impressively indifferent expression. “You’re sitting on my maid’s embroidery.”

“My apologies.” He looked down, pulled the fabric out from beneath him-he was barely on the hem, but he decided to be magnanimous and decline to comment-and set it aside. “Where is your maid?”

She waved her hand in an unspecific direction. “She went off to join Mary’s maid. I’m sure she will return at any moment.”

He had no response to that, so instead he said, “You and your brother have an interesting relationship.”

She shrugged, clearly trying to be rid of him.

“Mine detests me.”

That caught her interest. She turned, smiled too sweetly, and said, “I would like to meet him.”

“I’m sure you would,” he replied. “He is not often in my office, but when he gets up at a reasonable hour, he breakfasts in the small dining room. The windows are just two past my office toward the front of the house. You might try looking for him there.”

She gave him a hard look. He smiled blandly in return.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

He motioned to his mount. “Out for a ride.”

“No, why here?” she ground out. “On this bench. Sitting next to me.”

He thought about that for a moment. “You vex me.”

Her lips pursed. “Well,” she said, somewhat briskly. “I suppose that’s only fair.”

The sentiment was rather sporting of her, even if the tone was not. She had, after all, just minutes earlier said that she found him irritating.

Her maid arrived then. Harry heard her before he saw her, stomping over the damp grass with great irritation, traces of a Cockney accent evident in her voice.

“Why does that woman seem to think I should learn French? She’s the one in England, I say. Oh.” She paused, looking at Harry with some surprise. When she continued, her voice and accent were considerably more cultured. “I am sorry, my lady. I did not realize you had company.”

“He was just leaving,” Lady Olivia said, all sweetness and light. She turned to him with a smile so dazzlingly sunny he finally understood all those broken hearts he kept hearing about. “Thank you so much for your company, Sir Harry,” she said.

His breath caught, and it occurred to him that she was an exceedingly good liar. If he hadn’t just spent the past ten minutes with the lady he was now referring to in his head as “Surly Girl,” he might have fallen in love with her himself.

“As you indicated, Lady Olivia,” he said quietly, “I was just leaving.”

And so he did, with every intention of never seeing her again.

At least not on purpose.

Thoughts of Lady Olivia firmly behind him, Harry got back to work later that morning, and by afternoon was lost in a sea of Russian idioms.

Kogda rak na goryeh svistnyet = When the crawfish whistles on a mountain = When pigs fly.

Sdelatz slona iz mukha = Make an elephant out of a fly = Make a mountain out of a molehill.

S dokhlogo kozla i shersti klok = Even from the dead goat, even a piece of wool is worth something =

Equals…

Equals…

He pondered this for several minutes, idly tapping his pen against his blotter, and was just about to give up and move on when he heard a knock at the door.

“Enter.” He didn’t look up. It had been so long since he’d been able to maintain his focus for an entire paragraph; he wasn’t going to break the rhythm now.

“Harry.”

Harry’s pen stilled. He’d been expecting the butler with the afternoon’s post, but this voice belonged to his younger brother. “Edward,” he said, making sure he knew exactly where he’d left off before looking up. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“This came for you.” Edward crossed the room and placed an envelope on his desk. “It came by courier.”

The outside of the envelope did not indicate the sender, but the markings were familiar. It was from the War Office, and it was almost certainly of some importance; they rarely sent communication of this sort directly to his home. Harry set it aside, intending to read it when he was alone. Edward knew that he translated documents, but he did not know for whom. Thus far Harry had not seen any indication that he could be trusted with the knowledge.

The missive could wait a few minutes, however. Right now Harry was curious as to his brother’s presence in his office. It was not Edward’s habit to deliver items about the house. Even if he had been the one to receive the letter, he most likely would have tossed it on the tray in the front hall for the butler to deal with.

Edward did not interact with Harry unless forced to do so, by outside influence or by necessity. Necessity usually being of the financial variety.

“How are you today, Edward?”

Edward shrugged. He looked tired, his eyes red and puffy. Harry wondered how late he’d been out the night before.

“Sebastian will be joining us for supper this evening,” Harry said. Edward rarely ate at home, but Harry thought he might, if he knew Seb would be there.

“I have plans,” Edward said, but then he added, “but perhaps I could delay them.”

“I would appreciate that.”

Edward stood in the center of the office, the very image of a sulky, sullen boy. He was two and twenty now, and Harry supposed he thought himself a man, but his bearing was callow and his eyes still young.

Young, but not youthful. Harry was disturbed by how haggard his brother appeared. Edward drank too much, and probably slept too little. He was not like their father, though. Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on the difference, except that Sir Lionel had always been jolly.

Except when he was sad and apologetic. But he generally forgot about that by the next morning.

But Edward was different. Overindulgence did not make him effusive. Harry could not imagine him getting up on a chair and waxing poetic about the thplendidneth of a thchool. Edward did not attempt to be charming and debonair during the rare occasions that they shared a meal. Instead, he sat in stony silence, answering nothing but direct queries, and then with only the bare minimum of words.

Harry was painfully aware that he did not know his brother, knew nothing of his thoughts or interests. He had been gone the bulk of Edward’s formative years, off on the Continent, fighting alongside Seb in the 18th Hussars. When he returned, he’d tried to rekindle the relationship, but Edward had wanted nothing to do with him. He was only here, in Harry’s home, because he could not afford rooms of his own. He was the quintessential younger brother, with no inheritance to speak of, and no apparent skills. He’d scoffed at Harry’s suggestion that he, too, join the military, accusing him of wanting only to be rid of him.

Harry hadn’t bothered to suggest the clergy. It was difficult to imagine Edward leading anyone toward moral rectitude, and besides that, Harry didn’t want to be rid of him.

“I received a letter from Anne earlier in the week,” Harry mentioned. Their sister, who had married William Forbush at the age of seventeen and never looked back, had ended up in Cornwall, of all places. She sent Harry a letter each month, filled with news of her brood. Harry wrote back in Russian, insisting that if she did not use the language, she’d lose it altogether.

Anne’s reply had been his warning, clipped from his letter and pasted onto a new sheet of paper, followed by, in English: “That is my intention, dear brother.”

Harry had laughed, but he hadn’t stopped with the Russian. And she must have taken the time to read and translate, because when she replied, she often had questions about the things he’d written.

It was an entertaining correspondence; Harry always looked forward to her letters.

She did not write to Edward. She used to, but she’d stopped when she realized that he would never return the gesture.

“The children are well,” Harry continued. Anne had five of them, all boys save the last. Harry wondered what she looked like now. He hadn’t seen her since he left for the army.

Harry sat back in his chair, waiting. For anything. For Edward to speak, to move, to kick the wall. Most of all, he was waiting for him to ask for an advance on his allowance, for surely that was the reason for his appearance. But Edward said nothing, just stubbed his toe along the floor, catching the edge of the dark-hued carpet and flipping it over before kicking it back down with his heel.

“Edward?”

“You’d best read the letter,” Edward said gruffly as he moved to leave. “They said it was important.”

Harry waited for him to depart, then picked up the directive from the War Office. It was unusual for them to contact him in this manner; they usually just sent over someone with documents in hand. He flipped over the note, used his forefinger to break the seal, and then opened it.

It was short, just two sentences long, but it was clear. Harry was to report to the offices at Horse Guards in Whitehall immediately.

He groaned. Anything that required his actual presence could not be good. The last time they’d hauled him in, it was to order him to play nursemaid to an elderly Russian countess. He’d had to remain glued to her side for three weeks. She’d complained about the heat, the food, the music…The only thing she hadn’t complained about was the vodka, and that was because she’d brought her own.

She’d insisted on sharing, too. Anyone who spoke Russian as well as Harry did could not drink British swill, she’d announced. She actually reminded him a bit of his grandmother for that.

But Harry did not drink, not even a drop, and he spent night after night dumping his glass into a potted plant.

Strangely, the plant had thrived. Quite possibly, the finest moment of the assignment was when the butler frowned down at the botanical wonder and said, “I didn’t think that made flowers.”

Still, Harry had no desire to repeat the experience. Unfortunately, he was rarely given the luxury of refusing. Funny, that. They needed him, as Russian translators weren’t exactly thick on the ground. And yet he was expected to jump to their bidding.

Harry briefly considered finishing the page he was working on before departing, then decided against it. Best to get it over with.

And besides, the countess was back in St. Petersburg, presumably complaining about the cold, the sun, and the lack of English gentlemen forced to wait on her hand and foot.

Whatever it was they wanted of him, it couldn’t be as bad as that, could it?