What Happens in London Read Online Free PDF Page B

over in time.
    He’d best chew his food carefully.
    Harry let out a long breath and attempted to refocus his attention on his work. His eyes had been turned toward his papers the entire time he’d been thinking about the girl at the window, but he had not read a thing. He’d got nothing done in the past five days. He supposed he could draw the curtain, but that would be too obvious. Especially now, at half noon, with the sun high and bright.
    He stared down at the words before him, but he could not concentrate. She was still there, still staring at him, imagining herself concealed behind the curtain.
    Why the hell was she watching him?
    Harry didn’t like it. There was no way she could see what he was working on, and even if she could, he rather doubted she read Cyrillic. But still, the documents on his desk were often of a sensitive nature, occasionally even of national importance. If someone was spying on him…
    He shook his head. If someone was spying on him, it wouldn’t be the daughter of the Earl of Rudland, for God’s sake.
    And then, miraculously, she was gone. She turned first, her chin lifting perhaps an inch, and then she stepped away. She’d heard a noise; probably someone had called out to her. Harry didn’t care. He was just glad she was gone. He needed to get to work.
    He looked down, got halfway through the first page, and then:
    “Good morning, Sir Harry!”
    It was Sebastian, clearly in a jocular mood. He wouldn’t be calling Harry Sir Anything, otherwise. Harry didn’t look up. “It’s afternoon.”
    “Not when one awakens at eleven.”
    Harry fought off a sigh. “You didn’t knock.”
    “I never do.” Sebastian flopped into a chair, apparently not noticing when his dark hair did its own flop—into his eyes. “What are you doing?”
    “Working.”
    “You do that a lot.”
    “Some of us don’t have earldoms to inherit,” Harry remarked, trying to finish at least one more sentence before Sebastian would require his complete attention.
    “Perhaps,” Sebastian murmured. “Perhaps not.”
    This was true. Sebastian had always been second-in-line to inherit; his uncle the Earl of Newbury had sired only one son, Geoffrey. But the earl (who still thought Sebastian a complete wastrel, despite his decade of service to His Majesty’s Empire) had not been concerned. After all, there had been little reason to suppose that Sebastian might inherit. Geoffrey had married while Sebastian was in the army, and his wife had borne two daughters, so clearly the man could produce a baby.
    But then Geoffrey had taken a fever and died. As soon as it became apparent that his widow was not increasing and therefore no young heir was in the offing to save the earldom from the devastation that was Sebastian Grey, the long-widowed earl had taken it upon himself to produce a new heir to the title and to that end was now gadding about London, shopping for a wife.
    Which meant that no one knew quite what to make of Sebastian. Either he was the devastatingly handsome and charming heir to an ancient and wealthy earldom, in which case he was without a doubt the biggest prize on the marriage mart, or he was the devastatingly handsome and charming heir to nothing, in which case he might be a society matron’s worst nightmare.
    Still, he was invited everywhere. And when it came to London society, he knew everything.
    Which was why Harry knew he’d get an answer when he asked, “Does the Earl of Rudland have a daughter?”
    Sebastian regarded him with an expression thatmost would interpret as bored, but that Harry knew meant, You nodcock .
    “Of course,” Sebastian said.
    The “nodcock” bit, Harry decided, was implied.
    “Why?” Sebastian asked.
    Harry glanced briefly toward the window, even though she wasn’t there. “Is she blond?”
    “Very much so.”
    “Quite pretty?”
    Sebastian slid into a sly smile. “More than that, by most standards.”
    Harry frowned. What the devil was Rudland’s daughter