At that point, Harry had decided he was well within his rights to go home.
Which he did, but not before getting soaked in a freakishly short but violent rainstorm.
Which was why, when he arrived home and shrugged off his sodden coat and gloves, his only thoughts were of a hot bath. He could see it in his mind, steam rising from the surface. His skin would prickle at the heat, almost painfully, until his body adjusted to the temperature.
It would be heaven. Heaven boilething in a tub.
But sure enough, heaven was not to be his, at least not this night. His coat was still hanging limply off one arm when his butler entered the front hall and informed him that a letter had come for him by special messenger and was waiting on his desk.
And so off to his office he went, his feet splishing and sploshing in his boots, only to find that the message contained absolutely nothing of immediate importance, only a few bits and pieces of trivia to fill gaps in the prince’s history. Harry groaned and shuddered, wishing there was a fire in which to toss the offending missive. Then he could stand in front of it, too. He was so cold and so wet and so bloody annoyed with everything.
And then he looked up.
Olivia. In her window, staring down at him.
Really, this was all her fault. Or at least half of it.
He marched over to his window and wrenched it up. She did the same.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, before he could get word in. “Where have you-what happened to you?”
In the compendium of stupid questions, he decided, that would rank high. But his lips were probably still blue with cold, and there was no way he could say all that. “It rained,” he bit off.
“And you decided to go for a walk in it?”
He wondered if, with superhuman effort, he might be able to strangle her from here.
“I need to speak with you,” she said.
He realized he could not feel his toes. “Does it have to be right now?”
She drew back, looking terribly offended.
Which did little to improve his disposition. But still, gentlemanly behavior must have been beaten into him as a child, because even though he should have slammed the window shut, he instead explained himself, biting off, “I’m cold. I’m wet. And I’m in a very bad mood.”
“Well, so am I!”
“Very well,” he ground out. “What has you in a tizzy?”
“A tizzy?” she repeated derisively.
He held up a hand. If she was going to argue over his word choices, he was through with her.
She must have decided to choose a different battle, because she planted her hands on her hips, and said, “All right then, since you asked, you are the cause of my tizzy.”
This had better be good. He waited for a moment, and then said, dripping with equal parts sarcasm and rainwater, “And…?”
“And your behavior this afternoon. What were you thinking?”
“What was I-”
She actually leaned out of her window and shook a finger at him. “You were deliberately provoking Prince Alexei. Do you have any idea what a difficult situation that put me in?”
He stared at her for a moment, then said simply, “He’s an idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot,” she said testily.
“He’s an idiot,” Harry said again. “One who doesn’t deserve to lick your feet. You’ll thank me someday.”
“I have no intention of allowing him to lick me anywhere,” she retorted, then turned utterly red when she realized what she’d said.
Harry began not to feel quite so cold.
“I have no intention of allowing him to court me,” she said, her voice hushed yet strangely loud enough to reach him with every syllable crystal clear. “But that does not mean he can be ill-treated in my home.”
“Very well. I’m sorry. Are you satisfied?”
She was shocked into silence by his apology, but his triumph was short-lived. After no more than five seconds of her mouth opening and closing, she said, “I don’t think you meant it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he burst out. He could not believe she was acting like he’d done something wrong. He was only following his bloody orders from the bloody War Office. And even allowing for the fact that she had no idea he had any orders to follow, she was the one who had spent the afternoon cooing at a man who had insulted her most viscerally.
Not that she knew that, either.
Still, anyone with a grain of sense could tell that the Prince Alexei was an oily little toad. Very well, an extremely handsome, not-little-at-all toad, but a toad nonetheless.
“Why are you so upset?” she demanded.
It was a damned good thing they were not face to face, because he would have done…something. “Why am I so upset?” he practically spat. “Why am I so upset? Because I-” But he realized he could not tell her that he’d been forced to leave the opera early. Or that he had followed the prince to a brothel. Or that he-
No, he could tell her that part.
“I am soaked to the skin, every inch of me ashiver, and I’m arguing with you through a window when I could be in a hot bath.”
The last part came out a bit like a bellow, which probably wasn’t the wisest thing, given that they were, technically, in public.
She was silent-finally-and then, quietly, she said, “Very well.”
Very well? That was it? She was done with a “very well”?
And then, like an idiot, he stood there. She’d given him the perfect opportunity to bid her farewell, shut his window, and march himself upstairs to the bath, but he just stood there.