“She was very…” He waved a hand in the air as he considered his words. “Severe. And I would have to say that she was quite firm in her opinions.”
Olivia considered that for a moment, then said, “I like women who are firm in their opinions.”
“I expect you do.”
She felt herself smiling, and she leaned forward, feeling a wonderful, almost effervescent kinship. “Would she have liked me?”
The question seemed to have caught him off guard, and his mouth hung open for a few moments before he finally said, looking almost amused by the question, “No. No, I don’t think she would have done.”
Olivia felt her own mouth go slack with shock.
“Did you wish for me to lie to you?”
“No, but—”
He waved her protest away. “She had little patience for anyone. She sacked six of my tutors.”
“Six?”
He nodded.
“My goodness.” Olivia was impressed. “I would have liked her,” she murmured. “I only managed to run off five governesses.”
He gave a slow smile. “Isn’t it strange how unsurprising I find that?”
She scowled at him. Or rather she meant to scowl. It probably came out something closer to a grin. “How is it,” she returned, “that I did not know of your grandmother?”
“You didn’t ask.”
What did he think, that she ran about asking people about their grandparents? But then it occurred to her—what did she know about him, really?
Very little. Very little indeed.
It was odd, because she knew him. She was quite certain she did. And then she realized it—she knew the man, but not the facts that had made him.
“What were your parents like?” she said suddenly.
He looked at her with some surprise.
“I didn’t ask if you had a grandmother,” she said, by way of an explanation. “Shame on me for not thinking of it.”
“Very well.” But he did not answer right away. The muscles of his face moved—not enough to reveal what he was thinking, but more than enough to let her know that he was thinking, that he couldn’t quite decide how to answer. And then he said: “My father was a drunk.”
Miss Butterworth, which Olivia had not even realized she was still holding, slipped from her fingers and thunked onto her lap.
“He was a rather amiable drunk, but strangely, that doesn’t seem to make it much better.” Harry’s face betrayed no emotion. He was smiling even, as if it were all a joke.
It was easier that way.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Harry shrugged. “He couldn’t help himself.”
“It’s very difficult,” she said softly.
He turned, sharply, because there was something in her voice, something humble, something maybe even…understanding.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. She was the one with the tidy, happy family, with the brother who married her best friend, and the parents who actually cared.
“My brother,” she said. “The one who married my friend Miranda. I don’t think I told you, but he’d been married before. His first wife was horrid. And then she died. And then—I don’t know, one would think he’d have been glad to be rid of her, but he just seemed to get more and more miserable.” There was a pause, and then she said, “He drank a great a deal.”
It’s not the same, Harry wanted to say, because it wasn’t her parent, it wasn’t the person who was supposed to love you and protect you and keep your world a right and steady place. It wasn’t the same, because there was no way she’d cleaned up her brother’s vomit 127 times. It wasn’t a mother who never seemed to have anything to say, and it wasn’t…It wasn’t the same, damn it. It wasn’t— “It’s not the same,” she said quietly. “I don’t think it could possibly be.”
And with those words, those two short sentences, everything inside of him, all those feelings that had been thrashing about—they calmed. Settled into a more comfortable place.
She gave him a tentative smile. Tiny, but true. “But I think I can understand. Maybe a little.”
He looked down for some reason, down at her hands, which were resting atop the book in her lap, and then at the sofa, covered in a pale green stripe. He and Olivia were not exactly next to each other; there was still room for an entire person between them. But they were on the same piece of furniture, and if he reached out his hand, and if she reached out her hand…
His breath caught.
Because she’d reached out her hand.
Chapter Sixteen
He didn’t think about what he did. He couldn’t have thought about it, because if he had, he never would have done it. But when she reached out her hand…
He took it.
It was only then that Harry realized what he had done, and perhaps only then that she realized what she had started, but by then it was far too late.
He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed each of them, right at the base, where she would wear a ring. Where she currently wasn’t wearing a ring. Where, in a flash of terrifying imagination, he saw her wearing his ring.
It should have been a warning. It should have induced sufficient panic to make him drop her hand, flee the room, the house, her company, forever.
But he didn’t. He kept her hand at his lips, unable to part with the touch of her skin.
She was warm, soft.
Trembling.
He looked up, finally, into her eyes. They were wide, gazing at him with trepidation…and trust…and maybe…desire? He couldn’t be sure, because he knew she couldn’t be sure. She wouldn’t know desire, wouldn’t understand the sweet torture of it, the bodily longing for another human being.
He knew it, and he realized that he’d known it almost constantly since he’d known her. There had been that first, electrical moment of attraction, true, but that wasn’t meaningful. He didn’t know her then, hadn’t even liked her.
But now…it was different. It wasn’t just her beauty he wanted, or the curve of her breast, or the taste of her skin. He wanted her. All of her. He wanted whatever it was that made her read newspapers instead of novels, and he wanted that little piece of unconventionality that made her open a window and read silly novels to him across the space between their houses.
He wanted her razor-sharp wit, the triumph on her face when she speared him with a particularly apt retort. And he wanted the look of horrified befuddlement when he bested her.
He wanted the fire behind her eyes, and he wanted the taste of her lips, and yes, he wanted her beneath him, around him, on top of him…in every possible position, in every single way.
He was going to have to marry her. It was that simple.
“Harry?” she whispered, and his gaze fell to her lips.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said softly, without thinking, without even considering that it might be something he should ask her.
He leaned forward, and in that last second before his lips touched hers, he felt washed clean. This was his new beginning.
He kissed her then, the first touch achingly gentle, nothing more than a brush of his lips against hers. But the contact was electric. Breathtaking, in every literal sense of the word. He drew back, just far enough to see her expression. She was gazing at him with a sense of wonder, her cornflower eyes drinking him in.