The tray was heavy, but Olive was strong. She bore Harry’s coffee up the five long flights of stairs until she arrived at his door, which was closed. Propping the tray against one arm, she knocked with the other. “Coffee, sir!” she said, into the paneled wood.
“Come in!” called Harry’s familiar voice.
She turned the knob awkwardly and backed her way in.
She had entered Harry’s room before, of course. Many times, in fact, since he had returned home from college. Dusting and polishing the family’s rooms was part of the ordinary course of her duties, and while one of the more senior housemaids usually attended the boys’ rooms—or so they were called, anyway, though both Harry and August had long lost any resemblance to their innocent younger selves—she often filled in. She knew the details intimately. There was Harry’s bed, still unmade, probably still warm, hung in green damask and plump with white pillows. There was his desk, covered with sketches and half-finished letters. His wardrobe stood open, in need of a thorough thinning out, or perhaps the services of a professional valet. The bookshelves at one end were crammed full in a comfortable, messy-scholar way that Olive found endearing. She set down the tray and turned to the chair, where she expected to find Harry himself, dressed and smiling, but it was empty.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Olive spun around and gasped, filling her eyes with the sight of Harry’s bare chest, which gleamed a beautiful pale gold between the open edges of the dressing gown that hung from his shoulders. His face was half-spread with shaving soap, and the wicked edge of a razor hovered above the other side, ready to strike. He grinned and turned back to the mirror above the sink, framed by the open doorway of his private bathroom. (Her father’s own design, naturally.) “I was hoping they’d send you up. I don’t suppose you have a moment or two before you have to go back?”
Olive was too astonished to speak. Harry stroked the blade in confident lines across the foam that adorned his cheek, while the soap-fragrant steam from his recent bath billowed around him. He looked radiant and well rested, lean and marvelously built: each contour immaculate, like an Italian marble touched by God’s finger and brought to life. Her eyes dragged helplessly along the width of his shoulders, the lines of his waist, the curves of his calves beneath the edge of the robe, and she felt as if someone had doused her in kerosene and set her quietly alight. Her mouth watered and her insides melted. He was too much. He was too exalted, too magnificent. He was unreal, a different species altogether.
Mrs. Jackins’s voice echoed in her head: Masters and servants. Masters and servants, mixing together. A right fix.
Harry set down his razor, patted his cheeks with a towel, and turned toward her. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said, stepping forward.
Olive stumbled back. “I should leave.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Harry grinned his most charmingly piratical grin and strode toward her, robe swinging dangerously. He lifted his arms and spread his palms as if to grasp her by the cheeks, to pin her to his lips like a butterfly in a collection, and Olive turned and flew out the door, out of Harry’s comfortable room, out of sight of that bed that had only just been vacated, that bookshelf full of volumes a mere housemaid would never, ever have time to read.
By the time the multitude of Pratt clocks struck a united eleven o’clock, the glorious Christmas Eve dinner had been served and cleared, the coffee had been drunk, and the family had gathered together in the drawing room, trimming the tree under the imperious direction of Mrs. Pratt. (Christmas trees, apparently, must be trimmed just so for the proper effect, which, according to Mrs. Pratt’s taste, might best be described as baroque.)