What Happens in London (Bevelstoke #2)(62)

He wasn’t asking her permission, she realized. He was telling her what to do.

It should have raised her hackles. It was everything she detested in a man. But all she could do was stand there, feeling…fluttery. Her feet were squirming in her slippers, she realized, getting ready to rise to her tiptoes, her body suddenly too light to remain fixed to the ground.

She took hold of the back of a chair. She felt as if she might float away. Maybe she should have eaten breakfast.

Although that really didn’t explain the odd sensation that had taken hold somewhat…below her stomach.

She looked at him. He was saying something. But she definitely wasn’t listening. She didn’t even hear him, didn’t hear anything but a wicked little voice inside, telling her to look at his mouth, at those lips, at…

“Olivia? Olivia?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She squeezed her legs together, thinking that some sort of muscular motion might jolt her from her trance. And she couldn’t think of any other body part he couldn’t see.

But that just seemed to make her feel…squirmier.

His head tilted slightly, and he looked…concerned? Amused? It was hard to tell.

She had to get a hold of herself. Now. She cleared her throat. “You were saying…?”

“Are you all right?”

“Perfectly well,” she said crisply. She liked the sound of that, brisk and businesslike, with every consonant perfectly enunciated.

He watched her for a few moments, but she could not quite read his expression. Or perhaps she just didn’t want to read his expression, because if she did, she suspected she’d realize he was looking at her as if she might suddenly start barking like a dog.

She gave him a tight smile, and said again, “You were saying…?”

“I was saying,” he said slowly, “that I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you to be alone with that man. And don’t say that Vladimir would be here, because he hardly counts.”

“No,” she said, thinking of her unsettling last conversation with the prince, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Good. Then we are in agreement?”

“Well, yes,” she said, “about not wanting to be alone with Prince Alexei, but—” She cleared her throat, hoping it might help her regain her equilibrium. She needed to keep a sharper head around this man. He was staggeringly intelligent, and he would run circles around her if she didn’t stay on her toes. And that would be on her toes, not floating right off them. She cleared her throat again. And then again, because all that clearing was giving her a scratchy throat.

“Do you need something to drink?” he asked solicitously.

“No. Thank you. What I was trying to say was—you do understand that I am not alone here. I have parents.”

“Yes,” he said, not sounding terribly impressed with her argument, “it is my understanding that you do. I have never seen them, however. Not here, at any rate.”

She frowned, glancing over her shoulder into the hall. “I think my mother is still asleep.”

“My point exactly,” Harry said.

“I am grateful for the gesture,” she said, “but I feel I must point out that it is quite unlikely that the prince—or anyone, for that matter—will make a call this early in the morning.”

“I agree,” he told her, “but it is a chance I am not willing to take. Although…” He thought for a moment. “If your brother is willing to come down here and vow to me that he will not allow you out of his sight for the rest of the day, I will happily depart.”

“That presupposes that I want him in my sight for the rest of the day,” Olivia said tartly.

“Then you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

She opened her mouth to speak.

He smiled.

She started wondering why she was fighting so hard.

“Very well,” she said, finally moving out of the doorway and into the room. “I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“You won’t even know I’m here,” he assured her.

That, she highly doubted.

“It’s only because I have no other plans for the morning,” she informed him.

“I understand.”

She gave him a sharp look. It was disconcerting, not being able to tell if he was being sarcastic.

“It’s highly irregular,” she murmured, but true to his word, he was already back at the desk, carefully reading the papers he’d brought with him. Were those the same documents he had worked on so diligently when she’d been spying on him?

She edged a little closer, grabbing a book off a table. She needed an object in her hands, something to use as a prop if he noticed how closely she was watching him.

“You’ve decided to read Miss Butterworth, then?” he asked, not looking up at her.

Her lips parted. How had he known she’d picked up a book? How had he even known she was watching him? His eyes hadn’t left the papers on the desk.

And Miss Butterworth? Really? She looked down at the book in her hands in disgust. If she was going to pick up a random object, surely she could have done better than that.

“I’m trying to be more open-minded,” she said, settling into the first chair she came across.