She was smart, or at least she was aware the moment her license was run through any database they would have her location. Merlin had set their system to continuously search for her face over the next week, a task made difficult by her lack of movement – neither traffic cameras nor the airport, and Harry was certain from her display of poise she worked at a high-end company that required a name badge for access, which would leave her working from home to avoid being caught. Clever indeed.
She might've been forgotten if not for the codes she had in her possession, already Harry had convinced himself she was not half as compelling as she'd seemed. It mattered not if he believed it: if she were any other woman they would have found her by then and the fact that she knew how not to be was quite intriguing – and he was forced to admit the only reason he'd stumbled upon her at all was because she allowed it.
It seemed only befitting that his coming across her again was due to nothing more than her whim, and a blind reach from him. The Gala at the Palais Garnier, a woman as sophisticated and tasteful as herself would certainly attend. Or so he told himself, at the end of a week it was appearing less and less likely he would find her before the military codes were sold and a war break out. It truly was a desperate attempt for she had left him on his knees blindly reaching for her, and Harry was not a man accustomed to finding himself on his knees.
She stood alone on a balcony in the Opera House staring silently at the crowd below as she listened to the romantic words of the speaker explaining the importance of the arts. She was the picture of elegance, no unrefined display of skin whether the cheap use of cleavage or the tasteless show of one's back, the dress went from her collar to the floor tight enough to show she was a woman. As if in knowing she turned her head and he felt her eyes, made sharper by the coal that lined them, pierce his face for several heavy moments before she looked back to the display below them. And just like that, with nothing more than a single glance, Harry was spellbound.
"Do you like opera?" she asked when he stood at the place beside her, her accent drawing the word opera out an extra syllable curling an unplanned smile on his mouth.
Taking the glass of champagne she offered he noticed their floor was untouched, not meant to entertain the guests where there were roses adorning every handrail below and tables set for them to dine. She'd known he would come. "I'm quite fond of it on the occasion I have time to be," he told her with a surprising honesty, one he wasn't sure if he meant to give. "And you, my dear, do you enjoy the opera?"
Raising her glass to her mouth she left behind the mark of her lipstick, a brilliant red, as though it were branded. "I prefer ballet," she answered dropping the pretense of listening to the speaker as she faced fully the man she'd known would come for her. "You have found me," she stated simply, wondering more what he planned to do now and how long it would take.
"You did not make it easy."
Taking the glass he refused to drink she exchanged it for the one she'd just sipped. "If you could have it easily is it really worth having?" she asked raising his glass to her painted lips proving she had not poisoned it.
He allowed himself to drink with her, his mouth precariously close to the stain she'd left, truly believing her to mean him no harm though he'd never think she meant to help. "Why did you come, you must've known I would?"
There was no way to know if her eyes gleamed or if it were only the twinkling of the lanterns as she smiled, her lovely face cast in shadow. "If I answer your questions will you answer mine?" she asked earning herself the tightening of his jaw as he thought.
They may very well end as liars, yet he had every confidence they would both come out with something to say for the other; and quite frankly he enjoyed her manner of speech, it was slow, deliberate. "That is an arrangement I can agree upon."
"I knew you thought I'd be here," she told him watching his brows raise in utter disbelief at her having come solely to see him again. "The company I work for makes a great donation every year, I convinced my coworker to let me take her ticket."
"Why," he asked the moment she stopped speaking, an answer had for why her name was not found on the roster but not for her presence.
Again she smiled, and without a clear view of her eyes he didn't know if she were playful or arrogant. "It's my turn." She watched him inhale sharply though he was quick to soften his face as he nodded for her to go ahead. "Is there a camera in your glasses?"
He'd been prepared to answer a simpler, less thought-out, question such as who he was. But not that. "I don't pretend to know how you came to guess that," he said, as close to the question 'how did you know,' as he could get without blatantly admitting that yes there was.
But she heard his silent yes anyway. "You took them off at the sight of my body then put them back on to fight. I'd thought maybe you didn't want to see me naked but you're not wearing them now and you have no reason to not want to see me." She surprised him at her verbalization of her own looks, turning his head with interest, and she further went on to say; "I had hoped you'd like blue."
Harry allowed himself to look down at her, her slender waist and wide hips, the swell of her chest. Fishing for compliments, he absolutely despised it. "My hands are tied, you're most beautiful," he said watching the slow pull of her mouth in a smile, his interest slowly waning.
"I am here because I knew you thought I'd be."
His declining interest paused and turned back before accelerating. She was teasing him, showing how effortlessly she could coax the answer she wanted out of him – he'd played right into her hand. Again, considering she'd stolen the codes from under his nose. "Since you gave the answer before I asked the question I dare say it is my turn." He waited a moment for her refusal, giving her a chance though he knew she wouldn't. "How came you by the knowledge of us?" he asked, giving as much as he could without giving too much.
He was asking the wrong questions, they were quickly running out of time. "The man who wanted the launch codes, he said to be wary of posh men in extraordinary suits."
"What is his name?"
"You can ask when it's your turn," she said seeing his patience grow thin before he masked it. "What is your name?"
There'd been something so intimate in the softness of her voice that had his fervor hesitating as he stared at her half-lit face – the dark lines of her makeup showing she was more than vaguely Asian, and even more beautiful. "Galahad," he answered with a truth he should not have trusted her to give.
Wondering furrowed her brows as she quietly searched his face, a gentleness to his eyes that had her realizing as strange and unlikely a name it was some part of it was true. "Does this mean I'm Morgan Le Fey."
"No dear," he said with a shake of his head, "I am known to some by the name of Galahad."
"Is that the name you'd want me to call you?" she asked seeing in his risen brows he knew she alluded to sexual relations and hearing in his silence that answer was no, which meant he still had an answer to give.
However it was not one he'd give so easily. "Perhaps if I knew your name," he said turning her game onto her, leaving her to smile at his wit.
They were at a standstill, neither would give the other the two words that defined their existence – at least until one of them caved first. And while she didn't know much about this man she knew enough that it wouldn't be him. "A dance," she proposed, taking him off guard so skillfully, again, it may as well have been her job.
"That is the price you put on your name?" he asked drawn to the romanticism of her thoughts. It was simply no longer the way of the world; an actual sum, immunity, something the other person wanted in exchange. The world they lived in was far more prone to self desire than to sentiment.
"A dance avec un beau monsieur," she said further signifying that's what she meant, and all she wanted.
Already his arms were prepared to hold her, his body to lead her and feel her warmth against him. "This is the second time you have referred to me as handsome."
"No," she said, "the first time I called you beautiful." The two shared a smile, their mouths curling at nearly the same moment, the same moment at which their eyes warmed. Their thoughts the same, the space around them tightening pulling them closer; the game might very well have ended that night if they'd gone uninterrupted.
Harry saw her gaze shift behind him, saw first the recognition in her eyes and then her mouth slip into a straight, unamused, line. Stepping directly in front of her he turned with a hand reaching beneath his jacket to find a graying man emerging from the shadows; his beard white though his hair retained some of his color, his jaw wide cut, his mouth stern, his eyes displeased as he looked only to the lady at Harry's back. The trailing of his stare had Harry half turning to see her briskly hurrying away, slipping through a door along the wall.
That action alone told Harry two things, this was the man after the codes and she'd come with the intention to sell them – she'd played Harry a fool, yet again. With more rash anger than thought he turned to the Russian man and cracked his head on the wall before running after the retreating woman. Throwing the hidden door open he turned to his left at the sound of a heel on wooden stairs and hastily ran down them in pursuit, though turning the corner he saw a lone shoe tumbled on its side. A moment's hesitation, Harry finally giving her the credit he was quickly seeing she deserved, and he was lunging back up the stairs. Reentering the hall he noticed first the man he'd left had returned to the shadows – he didn't have the set of numbers that would throw them into war, she did, and so in Harry's heavily clouded mind he believed her to be the more important of the two.
So he turned in the direction she would've gone looking down the hall to see her other shoe laid deliberately on the rail of the balcony for him to find. The sight of which had him cautiously approaching it, not trusting her enough to assume it would do no harm, yet still he almost expected to see a note left for him slipped inside. What he did find was by stepping to the railing he could see the main floor where the guests were congregated, and like a beacon his eyes were drawn to the place directly beneath him where she stood staring up at him – too far below to understand what look was etched on her greatly unhappy face. With so many people as witnesses, and him having been so sure of his ability to charm her, there was little more Harry could do than to watch her escape once more from his grasp.
Thank you to the readers who followed and favorited, and of course reviewed cause they mean the world, and simply to all of you who read the first chapter. Since she's French in a few places I've been having her say part of a sentence in French, such as "avec un beau monseiur," which is 'with a handsome gentleman'. And I've tried to make them small things so that you guys don't feel like you're being left out of the conversation since I'm not really translating what she's saying. My question is, are you all able to understand, or is the sudden French very jarring and takes you out of the story?