A seal?
Harry shifted his position ever so slightly, trying to get a better view. Was it a royal seal? The Russians did like their royal trappings. He supposed the British did, too, but that was neither here nor there. She wasn’t being pursued by King George.
She glanced at the card in her hands, then moved to set it down on the table beside her.
“Don’t you want to open it?”
“I’m sure it can wait. I wouldn’t wish to be rude.”
“Do not mind me,” he assured her. He motioned toward the card. “It does look interesting.”
She blinked a few times, looking first at the card and then up at him with a curious expression.
“Grand,” Harry clarified, thinking his first choice of adjectives had not been well thought.
“I know who it’s from,” she said, apparently unaffected by the knowledge.
He cocked his head, hoping the motion would serve as the question it would be impolite to voice aloud.
“Oh, very well,” she said, sliding her finger under the seal. “If you insist.”
He hadn’t insisted in the least, but he wasn’t about to say anything that might make her change her mind.
And so he waited patiently while she read, enjoying the play of emotion across her face. She rolled her eyes once, let out a small but beleaguered exhalation, and then finally groaned.
“Unpleasant news?” Harry inquired politely.
“No,” she said. “Just an invitation I’d rather not accept.”
“Then don’t.”
She smiled tightly. Or maybe it was ruefully. He couldn’t be sure.
“This is more of a summons,” she told him.
“Oh, come now. Who has the authority to issue a summons to the illustrious Lady Olivia Bevelstoke?”
Wordlessly, she handed him the card.
Chapter Eight
Reasons Why a Prince Might Pay Attention to Me
By Lady Olivia Bevelstoke
Ruination
Marriage
Neither option was particularly appealing. Ruination, for obvious reasons, and marriage for…well, a whole host of reasons.
Reasons Why I Would Not Care to Marry a Russian Prince
By Lady Olivia Bevelstoke
I don’t speak Russian.
I can’t even manage French.
I don’t want to move to Russia.
I hear it’s quite cold there.
I would miss my family.
And tea.
Did they drink tea in Russia? She looked over at Sir Harry, who was still examining the card she’d handed to him. For some reason she thought he would know. He’d traveled widely, or at least as widely as the army would have needed him to, and he did like tea.
And her list hadn’t even begun to touch upon the royal aspects of marriage to a prince. The protocol. The formality. It sounded an absolute nightmare.
A nightmare in a very cold climate.
Quite honestly, she was beginning to think that ruination was the lesser of the two evils.
“I did not realize you moved in such rarefied circles,” Sir Harry said, once he was done with his perusal of the invitation.
“I don’t. I’ve met him twice. No”-she thought back over the past few weeks-“three times. That’s all.”
“You must have made quite an impression.”
Olivia sighed wearily. She’d known that the prince had found her attractive. She’d had enough men pursue her in the past that she could recognize the signs. She’d tried to dissuade him as politely as she could, but she couldn’t very well rebuff him completely. He was a prince, for heaven’s sake. If there was going to be tension between their two nations, she wasn’t going to be the cause of it.
“Will you go?” Sir Harry asked.
Olivia grimaced. The prince, who was apparently unaware of the English custom that gentlemen called upon ladies, had requested that she pay him a visit. He had gone so far as to specify a time, two days hence, at three in the afternoon, which led Olivia to feel that he had taken a rather liberal view of the word “request.”
“I don’t see how I can refuse,” she replied.
“No.” He looked down again at the invitation, shaking his head. “You can’t.”
She groaned.
“Most women would find it flattering.”
“I suppose it is. I mean, yes, of course it is. He is a prince.” She tried to put a little excitement into her voice. She didn’t think she succeeded.
“But you still don’t wish to go?”
“It’s a nuisance, is what it is.” She gave him a direct look. “Have you ever been presented at court? No? It’s dreadful.”
He laughed, but she was too worked up to do anything but continue. “The dress has to be just so, with hoops and panniers even though no one has worn that nonsense for years. Your curtsy must be exactly the right depth, and heaven forbid you smile at the wrong moment.”
“Somehow I don’t think Prince Alexei expects you to don hoops and panniers.”
“I know he doesn’t, but it’s still going to be grotesquely formal, and I don’t know the first thing about Russian protocol. Which means my mother will insist upon finding someone to teach me, although where she will find a tutor at this late date, I don’t know. And then I will have to spend the next two days learning how deep a Russian curtsy must be, and are there any topics it would be considered impolite to discuss, and oh!”
She left off with the oh, because honestly, the entire topic was giving her a stomachache. Nerves. It was nerves. She hated nerves.
She looked over at Sir Harry. He was sitting very still, with an inscrutable expression on his face.