Julia Quinn - What Happens in London

No one knew how his fiancée had died. Some said illness, but most claimed poison. Murder!

“Really?” She looked up, blinking, then turned toward her window. A dead fiancée? Gossip and rumors? Did Sir Harry know about this? The parallels were amazing.

She could hear him entering the room. Would he notice that the window was open? What would she do? What could she do?

Olivia sucked in her breath. She was on the edge of her seat. Not figuratively, that would never do. She was literally sitting on the edge of the bed. Which accounted for any and all breathlessness.

Priscilla whispered a prayer, and then, with eyes closed tight, she let go.

End of chapter. Olivia flipped the page eagerly.

It was only a few feet to the cold, hard ground.

What? Priscilla was on the ground floor? Olivia’s eagerness quickly gave way to irritation. What sort of pea brain dangled from a ground-floor window? She’d allow for a bit of elevation for the building’s foundation, but really. One would be hard-pressed even to sprain an ankle in such a mild fall.

“That’s rather manipulative,” she said, narrowing her eyes. Who was this author, anyway, trying to scare her readers over nothing? Did Harry have any idea what he’d given her, or had he just been going blindly on a recommendation from his sister?

She looked over at her window. It was still the same size, with the same curtains-unchanged in every way. She wasn’t sure why this surprised her.

What time was it, anyway? Almost half nine. He probably wouldn’t be in his office. Well, he might. He did tend to work late, although come to think of it, he never had told her just what it was he did there with such diligence.

She pushed herself up and away from the edge of the bed and walked toward the window. Slowly, with cautious feet, which was ridiculous, since he couldn’t possibly see her through the curtains.

Miss Butterworth still in her left hand, she reached out with her right and pulled the curtains open…

All things considered, Harry was ready to call it a decent day’s work.

On a normal day, he’d have translated twice what he’d managed for today, possibly more, but he’d been distracted.

He’d found himself staring up at Olivia’s window, even though he knew she wasn’t there. This was the day she was supposed to visit the prince. At three in the afternoon. Which meant she’d probably have left home shortly before two. The Russian ambassador’s residence was not very far away, but the earl and countess would not want to risk being late. There was always traffic, or they could break a wheel, or a street urchin might dash into the road…No one with any prudence left their home without allotting extra time for unforeseen delays.

Olivia would probably be stuck there for two hours, possibly three; no one knew how to drag these things out like the Russians. Then a half hour to get home, and-

Well, she’d be home now, that was for certain. Unless she’d gone back out again, but he hadn’t noticed the Rudland carriage departing.

Not that he’d been looking. But his curtains were open. And when he was angled just so, he could see a small strip of light shining through from the street. And of course any carriages that happened to roll by.

He stood and stretched, lifting his hands above his head and rolling his head down and around. He planned to do one more page tonight-the clock on the mantel proclaimed the time to be only half nine-but just now he needed to shake some blood back into his legs. He walked out from behind his desk, and then over to the window.

And there she was.

For a split second they stood frozen, caught in the moment of wondering-Should I pretend I don’t see?

And then Harry thought-of course not.

He waved.

She smiled. And waved back. And then-

He found himself staring with surprise. She was opening the window.

So of course he did the same.

“I know you said you hadn’t read this,” she said without preamble, “but did you even peek?”

“Good evening to you,” he called. “How was the prince?”

She shook her head impatiently. “The book, Sir Harry, the book. Did you read any of it?”

“I’m afraid not. Why?”

She held it up with two hands, right in front of her face, then moved it to the side so that she could see him. “It is ridiculous!”

He nodded agreeably. “I thought it might be.”

“Miss Butterworth’s mother gets pecked to death by pigeons!”

He fought a chuckle. “Do you know, I think that might make it considerably more interesting to me.”

“Pigeons, Sir Harry! Pigeons!”

He grinned up at her. He felt a bit like Romeo to her Juliet, minus the feuding families and poison.

And with pigeons.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing that part,” he told her. “It sounds quite suspenseful.”

She scowled at him, batting away a piece of hair that the breeze had blown into her face. “It happened before the book began. If we’re lucky, Miss Butterworth will get her own pecking before I reach the end.”

“So you’ve been reading it, then?”

“Bits and pieces,” she admitted. “That’s all. The opening of chapter four and”-she looked down, leafing quickly through the pages before glancing back up-“page one hundred ninety-three.”

“Have you ever considered starting at the beginning?”

There was a pause. A rather long one. And then, with disdain: “I wasn’t planning to read it.”

“It just swept you in, eh?”

“No! That’s not it at all.” She crossed her arms, which caused her to drop the book. For a moment she disappeared from view, then up she popped again, Miss Butterworth in hand. “It was so irritating I couldn’t stop.”

He leaned against the ledge, grinning up at her. “It sounds gripping.”

“It’s nonsense, is what it is. Between Miss Butterworth and the mad baron, I’m cheering for the baron.”

“Oh, come now. It’s a romance. Surely you must side with your fellow lady.”

“She’s an idiot.” She looked back down at the book for a moment, flipping through the pages with remarkable speed. “I can’t tell yet if the baron is murderous as well as mad, but if so, I do hope he succeeds.”

“It’ll never happen,” Harry told her.

“What makes you think that?” She swiped a hand at her hair again, trying to get it off her nose. The breeze was picking up, and he was finding the whole thing rather entertaining.

“Isn’t the author a woman?” he asked.

Olivia nodded. “Sarah Gorely. I’ve never heard of her.”

“And it’s meant to be a romance?”

She nodded again.

He shook his head. “She’ll never kill off the heroine.”

Olivia stared at him for a long moment, then immediately turned to the end of the book.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he scolded. “You’ll spoil it.”

“I’m not going to read it,” she retorted. “How can it be spoiled?”

“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.