The sentiment was rather sporting of her, even if the tone was not. She had, after all, just minutes earlier said that she found him irritating.
Her maid arrived then. Harry heard her before he saw her, stomping over the damp grass with great irritation, traces of a Cockney accent evident in her voice.
“Why does that woman seem to think I should learn French? She’s the one in England, I say. Oh.” She paused, looking at Harry with some surprise. When she continued, her voice and accent were considerably more cultured. “I am sorry, my lady. I did not realize you had company.”
“He was just leaving,” Lady Olivia said, all sweetness and light. She turned to him with a smile so dazzlingly sunny he finally understood all those broken hearts he kept hearing about. “Thank you so much for your company, Sir Harry,” she said.
His breath caught, and it occurred to him that she was an exceedingly good liar. If he hadn’t just spent the past ten minutes with the lady he was now referring to in his head as “Surly Girl,” he might have fallen in love with her himself.
“As you indicated, Lady Olivia,” he said quietly, “I was just leaving.”
And so he did, with every intention of never seeing her again.
At least not on purpose.
Thoughts of Lady Olivia firmly behind him, Harry got back to work later that morning, and by afternoon was lost in a sea of Russian idioms.
Kogda rak na goryeh svistnyet = When the crawfish whistles on a mountain = When pigs fly.
Sdelatz slona iz mukha = Make an elephant out of a fly = Make a mountain out of a molehill.
S dokhlogo kozla i shersti klok = Even from the dead goat, even a piece of wool is worth something =
Equals…
Equals…
He pondered this for several minutes, idly tapping his pen against his blotter, and was just about to give up and move on when he heard a knock at the door.
“Enter.” He didn’t look up. It had been so long since he’d been able to maintain his focus for an entire paragraph; he wasn’t going to break the rhythm now.
“Harry.”
Harry’s pen stilled. He’d been expecting the butler with the afternoon’s post, but this voice belonged to his younger brother. “Edward,” he said, making sure he knew exactly where he’d left off before looking up. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“This came for you.” Edward crossed the room and placed an envelope on his desk. “It came by courier.”
The outside of the envelope did not indicate the sender, but the markings were familiar. It was from the War Office, and it was almost certainly of some importance; they rarely sent communication of this sort directly to his home. Harry set it aside, intending to read it when he was alone. Edward knew that he translated documents, but he did not know for whom. Thus far Harry had not seen any indication that he could be trusted with the knowledge.
The missive could wait a few minutes, however. Right now Harry was curious as to his brother’s presence in his office. It was not Edward’s habit to deliver items about the house. Even if he had been the one to receive the letter, he most likely would have tossed it on the tray in the front hall for the butler to deal with.
Edward did not interact with Harry unless forced to do so, by outside influence or by necessity. Necessity usually being of the financial variety.
“How are you today, Edward?”
Edward shrugged. He looked tired, his eyes red and puffy. Harry wondered how late he’d been out the night before.
“Sebastian will be joining us for supper this evening,” Harry said. Edward rarely ate at home, but Harry thought he might, if he knew Seb would be there.
“I have plans,” Edward said, but then he added, “but perhaps I could delay them.”
“I would appreciate that.”
Edward stood in the center of the office, the very image of a sulky, sullen boy. He was two and twenty now, and Harry supposed he thought himself a man, but his bearing was callow and his eyes still young.
Young, but not youthful. Harry was disturbed by how haggard his brother appeared. Edward drank too much, and probably slept too little. He was not like their father, though. Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on the difference, except that Sir Lionel had always been jolly.
Except when he was sad and apologetic. But he generally forgot about that by the next morning.
But Edward was different. Overindulgence did not make him effusive. Harry could not imagine him getting up on a chair and waxing poetic about the thplendidneth of a thchool. Edward did not attempt to be charming and debonair during the rare occasions that they shared a meal. Instead, he sat in stony silence, answering nothing but direct queries, and then with only the bare minimum of words.
Harry was painfully aware that he did not know his brother, knew nothing of his thoughts or interests. He had been gone the bulk of Edward’s formative years, off on the Continent, fighting alongside Seb in the 18th Hussars. When he returned, he’d tried to rekindle the relationship, but Edward had wanted nothing to do with him. He was only here, in Harry’s home, because he could not afford rooms of his own. He was the quintessential younger brother, with no inheritance to speak of, and no apparent skills. He’d scoffed at Harry’s suggestion that he, too, join the military, accusing him of wanting only to be rid of him.
Harry hadn’t bothered to suggest the clergy. It was difficult to imagine Edward leading anyone toward moral rectitude, and besides that, Harry didn’t want to be rid of him.
“I received a letter from Anne earlier in the week,” Harry mentioned. Their sister, who had married William Forbush at the age of seventeen and never looked back, had ended up in Cornwall, of all places. She sent Harry a letter each month, filled with news of her brood. Harry wrote back in Russian, insisting that if she did not use the language, she’d lose it altogether.