“You didn’t look miserable. You looked delighted with the company you had.”
“And do you know how miserable that made me, having to pretend? Having to wear that damned mask, to be the son they expect?” He shook his head. “No more, Olive. Not another day. I’ve decided. We’re not going to wait for June. We’re going to leave right now, tomorrow morning. I can’t stand another day of this, watching you suffer, helpless to step in and say, She’s mine. So I’m not going back to college. I’m not going to wait for graduation. I’ve got a bit of money saved, enough to get us started until the trust comes through. We’ll be free, Olive.”
She pulled back. “I can’t, Harry. My mother. She depends on my wages.”
“Why, then we can send for her, too. Or send her money. Please, Olive.” He reached for her hand. “Listen to me. There’s another thing. I’ve been a blackguard this past week, head over heels, a careless blackguard who’s put you in a very particular sort of danger, and I’m afraid . . . Well, I was thinking that it’s possible—I mean, it’s not entirely inconceivable that . . . or even likely—well, that we can’t wait so long as June. Do you understand what I mean?”
Olive stared at the neat line of gold studs marching down Harry’s shirt. His words ran past her ears, too much to comprehend, because her mind kept returning to the thing it should not. The thing she dreaded to know. She said softly, “You said your mother gave you the necklace on New Year’s Day?”
“Yes. I remember it well.” He hesitated. “She and my father had had an argument of some kind, right after the party. She was upset. She said that the necklace had been given to her in love, and that she was passing it on to me in the hope that I should find such a love, one day. And I didn’t want to take it, at the time. I thought she was giving it to me on an impulse, because she and my father had had an argument, but she insisted. And she was right.” He lifted Olive’s hand and kissed each fingertip. “We shall be so much happier than my parents were, darling.”
“Why? How do you know that?”
“Because no two people in a million have the kind of connection we have, the connection we both felt from the instant we first saw each other, up on the attic stairs. If we walked away from this house today and went our separate ways, if God led us to marry others and live our lives without ever seeing each other again, I would always know who you were. I would always know you in my heart.”
She couldn’t speak. Not a word, not a syllable, not a single vowel.
He touched the curve of her ear. “Dearest, practical Olive. Be reckless for once.”
“I already have been reckless. I have been very reckless indeed.”
“Stay with me tonight, here in our room. In the morning, you can pack up your things. We’ll go to your mother’s house and explain everything. I’ll book us passage on the first ship out. There’s nothing to stand in our way.”
Nothing and everything, Olive thought. Everything in the world.
“You can’t say no. You know all this as well as I do, only you’re too practical to say it out loud. So I’ll say it for us: We’re in love, and we’re going to run away together. Do you hear me, Olive? Say it. Say, I love you, Harry.”
He was so beautiful. She loved his cheekbones, his jaw, the wave of hair in his forehead, the small bump on the bridge of his nose, his lips, his eyes that gazed down at her in such priceless sincerity. She could see her own reflection in them, the way she looked at Harry. Her adoration, hopeless and eternal.
He bent to her ear. “You can whisper it, if you like.”
Well, what was the point in denying it? She had nothing else to give him.
Olive linked her hands at the back of his warm neck and lifted herself on her toes.
“I love you, Harry.”
Twenty-four
JULY 1920
Lucy
He didn’t love her.
A heat haze rose from the streets, obscuring Lucy’s vision. Or maybe it was the fine mist of tears she refused to shed. What a fool she was! To think herself in love with a man she had known for, what? All of two weeks? Less than that, even. When all along, all he had wanted was to know more about the Pratt family.
There was a certain irony to that, but Lucy wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.
It was before I knew you, he had said, as he followed her to the El, dogging her footsteps, his broad frame casting a dark shadow against the sidewalk in front of her. You feel it, too, don’t you?
Lucy did. She couldn’t deny that she did. That was part of why she’d left him there on the El platform, his words lost in the din of the oncoming train. He’d been gentleman enough not to follow her onto the train.