The Forgotten Room(57)

Her gaze darted upward to Harry’s face, because he was nervous; he was actually babbling like a schoolboy. His brows slanted upward, anxious for her approval.

She looked back down at the miniature and took it from his fingers. “It’s wonderful. It’s like magic. It’s not even me.”

“It’s yours.”

“I can’t take this. You need it for your painting.”

“I’ll make another. I want you to keep this. I want you to keep this in your trunk in your awful grubby room in the nunnery, and to take it out every night when I’m gone and look at it and say, Harry loves me, Harry’s coming back in June to take me away to Europe, Harry’s going to make up for all this work and misery and make me as happy as a man ever made a woman.”

Olive stepped back. “What?”

He caught her hand. “Listen to me, Olive. I’ll be twenty-two in April, and I’m coming into a little money then, a tidy little nest egg my grandmother left me. It’s not a fortune, but it’s a start. Right after graduation, I’m taking you away from here—”

“But you can’t!”

“Yes, I can.” He kissed her hand and went down on his knees, pulling her to the floor with him. “I can’t stand watching you in your uniform, working the way you do, serving us like this. We should be serving you. The way Prunella sneers at you—”

“She sneers at me?”

“When you’re not looking. That’s just the way she is. She’s jealous of anyone who’s prettier than she is, and she’s seen me looking at you—”

“Oh, no!” Olive put her face in her hands, but Harry pulled the fingers gently away and tilted up her chin.

“Because she knows you’re her superior, Olive. She knows I love you.” He placed his palms on her cheeks. “I love you, Olive. What do you think of that? I’m taking you away with me. It’s going to be the biggest scandal. We’re going to live in Europe together, and we’ll be the happiest two people on the face of the earth, the king and queen of happiness.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Don’t be silly. I’m just a—just a housemaid. You’re Harry Pratt—you have your future before you—”

He was shaking his head. “No, I’m not Harry Pratt. Not that Harry Pratt, the fellow who swans about Manhattan, pretending to be what people expect of him. The college boy, the ladies’ man, ready to follow his father onto Wall Street and marry some heiress and own a big fat mansion uptown filled with ten kids and a safe-deposit box filled with railway shares. Old drawings packed away in a crate somewhere. That’s not me. I want to paint, Olive. I want to paint for a living; I want to paint for life. I want to live with you in an attic in Florence and paint all night until I make something real, something almost perfect, and then tramp through the hills with you and lie naked in the vineyards. I want to see your face every morning and draw your face every day. I want to see the sunshine on your skin. Now, that’s what I call a grand future.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Oh, I know what I’m saying, all right. I’ve been thinking about it every second. I can’t imagine living without you. I want to know every inch of you and give you every inch of me, if you’ll have it. The real me, the Harry that’s hidden beneath all the shirtfronts and the dinner jackets.” He leaned forward, and his lips touched the tip of her nose. “You’re about the only one who’s ever met him, I think.”

“I’m just a passing fancy. You’ll go back to Harvard and forget me by February.”

“You know that’s not true. It would be like forgetting my own arm.” He kissed her nose again, a little longer, a little more tenderly. “Forgetting my own heart.”

“Stop.” His breath was sweet on her face, brandy and mincemeat and adoration. “You promised not to—not to—” Not to touch me. Not to kiss me. Not to do this, the one thing she couldn’t afford. The final line she couldn’t possibly cross.

Unless she did.

He pulled away a few inches, and his smile and his blue eyes came into shining focus. He pointed to the tin ceiling above them.

“It’s Christmas, Olive. Look up.”

She looked up and up, into the skylight that showed the black Christmas night and the tiny bright stars, and the little sprig of green that hung with painstaking care in the exact center, several feet above.

“You’re a devious man, Harry Pratt.”

“When I have to be.”

He brushed his thumbs against her cheekbones. “I’ve been plotting all day. The mistletoe. The miniature. The darned brandy and mince pie—and she takes a lot of buttering up, that Mrs. Keane, you know, and for a moment there I thought she’d never give in—and then tracking you down before it was too late.”

“Just for a kiss?”

“Just one little kiss, Olive. A tiny Christmas miracle. What do you say?”

Olive had never kissed anyone on the lips. Her heart was striking her ribs, maybe twice every second, panicked and thrilled. Her fingers were cold. She thought, If he tastes like he smells, it can’t be so bad. Brandy and mincemeat and adoration.

“Well, Olive? Kiss me?”

She placed one brave hand against his shirtfront.