Julia Quinn - What Happens in London

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, looking 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.

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.