“You should be careful how you speak to me,” Olive said, closing the door behind her.
Across the room, Harry was busying himself with his chair and easel and a set of charcoals. He was either nonchalant about her arrival—and she almost hadn’t done it, almost hadn’t come at all—or trying exceptionally hard to seem as if he were. “Careful? How?”
Olive leaned back against the door and took in the scene before her, not wanting to miss a single detail in her haste, in her anticipation, which choked up her throat and made her fingertips tingle. “Your family will think there’s something between us.”
Harry straightened and turned toward her, wearing that broad and radiant smile that made her heart freeze in her chest. He had changed into a simple white shirt and brown trousers, terribly bohemian. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, and his teeth were as white as his shirt. “There is something between us.”
“Don’t be a fool. You know what I mean. I’ll be dismissed on the spot.” She could hardly get the words out, he was so beautiful.
Harry put his hands on his hips and tilted his head. His smile dimmed, almost mortal. “Olive,” he said slowly, “do you think for a single moment that I would let them hurt you in any way?”
And that was it. For the past several days, and especially the past few hours, Olive had argued with herself endlessly about Harry Pratt. Whether she was simply blinded by his pretty face and his pretty manners and his flattery and his social position, or whether this attraction she felt for him was genuine. Whether she should visit him again in his studio, or ignore him and continue on her mission to rescue her father’s memory and reputation. Whether she was right to be in this room at all, whether she was being weak or brave, whether Harry was a good man or simply a good seducer, whether Harry meant her salvation or her downfall.
And now, as he stood there before her in his billowing white shirt, glowing gold from the lamplight, surrounded by canvas and paint and brick walls and old furniture, in that beautiful and intimate room her father had designed at the top of the Pratt mansion, she realized that not only did she no longer care about the answers; she couldn’t even remember the questions.
She belonged here. That was all.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know much about you at all.”
“Well, you’re going to. You’re going to know everything about me, and I hope you’ll tell me everything about you. Not that I need to know it. I already know who you are.”
“What?”
“I mean the essence of you. Come here. I’ve set up a little background for you, a little more comfortable than last week. And I built the fire up, so you won’t be cold.”
Olive wanted to ask why she would be cold, since she was wearing her thick flannel nightgown topped by an even thicker dressing gown, but perhaps she didn’t want to know the answer to that, either. She walked obediently in the direction of Harry’s gesturing hand, where a pile of cushions lay on the floor, flanked by a pair of potted palms. “Of course they won’t be palms in the actual painting,” Harry said. “It’s just for perspective.”
“Of course.” Olive lowered herself carefully onto the cushions, which were upholstered in silk and threadbare velvet and released a comfortable scent of dusty lavender as she sank among them.
“They’re from my aunt’s old house in Washington Square, I think. I salvaged them myself when Uncle Peter died and she moved uptown. There was something old and decadent about them; I couldn’t resist.”
“I thought everything about this house was decadent already.”
“Not in the same way. It’s all gilding and no gold. That’s it. You can recline a little. On your elbow, yes, like that. Look as if you’re settling down to daydream. Beautiful.” He circled around behind her and put his hands to her head, unpicking her braid. “Do you mind removing that dressing gown?”
“Yes, I do!”
Harry stepped around the cushions and bent on his knee in front of her, bracing his elbow against his thigh, almost as if he were playing football. “Olive, will you do me a very great favor? Stop thinking about the stupid people downstairs, all the stupid people in the world outside this door. They don’t exist. There’s only one opinion that matters anymore, and that’s yours. Your opinion, Olive. That’s all I care about, and that’s all you should care about. What do you think will happen if you take off this robe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think I’ll turn into a slavering beast and ravish you on the spot?”
She laughed. He was smiling and genial and serious all at once, and the lamplight hit his head like a halo. “No.”
“So you trust me?”
She studied him a little longer, and he didn’t waver. How could he be a danger to her, when his blue eyes reflected hers so steadily?