Chapter 1 #2
Fleur was still staring at the extravagant eyewear the duke had slipped into her palm with all the adroitness of a pickpocket when the gentleman explained, “You required a monocle, did you not?”
Just as she had suspected, he could have a pineapple drizzled in chocolate served on a plate before the auction even commenced.
Fleur managed to pull her gaze from the magic trick in her fingers. “And you got me one just like…that?”
Hartwell shrugged. With all that casualness, he might have proffered his umbrella on this rainy day. She tried to make sense of the ease with which he commanded and the speed with which he had his wishes met.
“Are you going to use it, Fleur?”
Oh, the Devil.
Fleur realized too late that he’d not delivered a monocle; he had thrown her a gauntlet.
“Should I call my man-of-affairs over to retrieve his eyepiece?”
Laughter choked his voice.
Good, she hoped he did choke on it. The big-head.
“That won’t be necessary, Your Grace.”
No one in this crowd would bother with her and Hartwell. To be safe, she checked the library for buzzing gossips. Everyone had already claimed their spots closer to the auctioneer’s podium and the velvet-draped table.
Fleur lifted the surprisingly heavy dodaddle.
He stopped her before the glass reached Fleur’s eye.
“I might suggest you kneel to find whatever it is you think you’ll see.” He justified his suggestion. “On account of your being a tiny slip of a thing.”
This was the moment he expected she would be outraged with him, referring to her as a thing—“a tiny slip” she could let pass, as it made her feel delicate. No lady would be offended at that.
Poor Hartwell. The illustrious duke made mistakes as well as any average human.
The fact that Fleur was outraged was neither here nor there.
Fleur wasn’t one unsettled by people. Fleur did the unsettling.
And with this driving thought in her mind, Fleur gripped the monocle and turned to face her eminent opponent. “Thank you, Your Grace,” she murmured in her most pleasing tones. “For the suggestion.”
In a bold standoff, she met his sardonic gaze with her innocent one. The entire assembly could look at this point, and she wouldn’t care.
Not once did she break eye contact with Hartwell.
Not when she curled her glove-encased fingers at the sides of her skirts, just below her knees.
Not when she raised her taffeta skirts a fraction—and oh, how glad she was for the band of passementerie and crystal embellishments along the hem that tinkled and rustled—and ruffled him.
Nor when his gaze slipped to her knee on the thin upholstered padding…
But then something happened…
While Fleur carried on, in control of the situation, Hartwell’s gaze slid a fraction lower and just beyond Fleur to where she’d outrageously exposed her ankle.
This time, he couldn’t even muster the one-winged arch. Both of his brows crept up.
She saw desire, hot and dark as volcanic ash, in Hartwell’s eyes.
Fleur heard the quick catch of his breath.
In this instant, Fleur had lost all control, but the duke had even less.
This wasn’t the manner of unsettling him she had intended, but now that she had done so in this naughty way, Fleur felt the glorifying satisfaction of being looked upon as a desirable woman.
She fought the urge to fan herself. She knew all too well what came from feeling this breathless way about a rogue.
Fleur brought the monocle up and studied him, then wished she hadn’t—for close as she was, she caught the faintest hint of growth at his rugged cheeks that said he had missed a shave. Breathless when she oughtn’t be, Fleur dampened her dry, parted lips.
Her eyes found his. The silky brown of Hartwell’s had grown a shade darker.
“Have a care in how you conduct yourself,” he said, his curled lip evincing his disgust. “At least in my presence, madam.”
At that mean ducal chastening, Fleur slid her legs to the side and let her slippered feet slide back to the floor. Her skirts settled in a soft, noisy whoosh around her.
Fleur suffered a brief, paralyzing moment of humiliation. Staring at the backs of many heads, she did not know whether she wanted to beat the duke about the ear with her reticule or slink under her seat and hide.
Her cousin Meghan had recently confided in her about the duke.
“He ordered me to sit on his lap…like a child…and spoke to me like one too…”
Now Fleur understood how the other woman had felt, and her relief in avoiding marriage to the Duke of Hartwell.
Very aware Hartwell had deemed her unworthy to speak with any longer, and deemed the items list in his hands the only thing worthy of his attention, Fleur was also very aware she had no intention of letting him have the last word.
“We are at the farthest back corner in the room, with half a dozen rows between us and the nearest bidders, Hartwell. They are all at the edge of their chairs in anticipation of the auction and have no idea”—thank God—“you and I are even present.”
“My dear,” he said, pulling his gaze from his pamphlet, “I am the Duke of Hartwell.”
Spoken like a true swell-headed duke. Not that—given his taciturnity—he wanted to speak to her.
“Not here, Hartwell.” Fleur took great delight in informing him. “Here, you are surrounded by scholars and bibliomaniacs.” She discreetly pointed to the front row. “First seat on the far left. Do you recognize the handsome gentleman?”
“If you are asking whether I recognize the gentleman or note his appearance, I can do neither.”
Shocking. “That is Mr. Heber. Mr. Richard Heber, to be precise. He is outrageously wealthy and once said, ‘No gentleman can be without three copies of a book: one for show, one for use, and one for borrowers.’” Fleur kept on down the row. “Next to him is none other than—”
“I recognize the 2nd Earl of Spencer.”
“I forgot you recognize all peers.” Hartwell neither denied it nor detected her snark.
“Beside Lord Spencer and flanked by the 5th Duke of Marlborough, whom you most certainly recognize is a mere mister.” Sarcasm proved to be a waste on this one.
She carried on. “Mr. Thomas Phillips. He is the illegitimate child of a textile…” Her words trailed off at the hard stare he trained on her.
“And how is that pertinent to your explanation?”
He had the look of her pup, Lord Pink Nose, from long ago, who ran off, returned, and needed Fleur to pick burrs from the pads of his big paws.
No doubt, he believed she was rambling.
“I do not suppose any, Your Grace. When Mr. Phillips attended Rugby School in Warwickshire at the age of thirteen, and he began collecting books. By 1811, there was a notable change in his collecting.”
The duke no longer appeared angry. Shockingly, the Duke of Hartwell seemed interested.
“Enlighten me.”
Correction…
Fleur had the Duke of Hartwell’s undivided attention.
And she, who was drowned out by the noise of her big family, did not dislike finding herself the center of someone’s focus.
She would take it where she could get it—moody Duke of Hartwell included.
“Previously, Mr. Phillips only collected Gothic chapbooks. When he was just sixteen, he began to expand his library to titles I expect you would approve of, Hartwell.”
“Just what type of books do you think I read?”
“Debrett’s,” she said, without thinking. For it didn’t really require much contemplation on her part.
He smiled.
Fascinating. She hadn’t expected he could take himself anything but seriously.
Well over a foot taller than Fleur, he leaned down and made her see his eyes up close.
Not that he made her, but they were close, and she looked. They were a deep brown. Ordinary but not. Familiar and compelling, they distracted her from what she had been saying, and…
“Phillips began acquiring Debrett’s?”
“No.”
“No?” he echoed.
She shook her head.
“I see.”
Fleur doubted as much, given he sounded lost.
“Do you read Debrett’s?” she asked.
“I don’t need to.”
Fleur paused to consider his response. “On account you already know it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I suspected as much.”
She had gone too far. This time, he didn’t smile.
She preferred the safer smile. Who wouldn’t when faced with such a grim set to such hard lips?
It was then that Fleur discovered the Duke of Hartwell had vastly competing personality traits: charming and witty, and dangerously frosty. There was no in-between, and it was jarring enough to cause a neck complaint.
Her. It left Fleur thrown.
He kept staring at her.
That threw her too.
Only a moment. Fleur recovered nicely. “Oh, you would like me to finish.”
“I had begun to give up,” he said, smiling.
Banter was back, as was the crick he was giving her.
“I believe we are at Oxford, Lady Fleur.”
Fleur looked about.
“In your telling,” Hartwell clarified.
“Oh, yes. That makes more sense.”
“I am beginning to believe nothing is making sense today,” he muttered.
Hartwell could be speaking of any number of things: a McQuoid and Tremaine meeting for the first time since the jilting.
That it should occur between, of all the McQuoids, him and Fleur, who had yet to make her debut, and at Baron Chilton’s auction, no less.
Or the moments of shared levity they had found.
Fleur opted not to seek clarification. “Mr. Phillips grew his collection to include serious works. What began as a pastime became an obsession. It is known he spends per annum four thousand to five thousand pounds, and acquires forty to fifty each week, and it does not take much math to confirm his accessions are anywhere from two thousand to twenty-six hundred.”
“And you know all this how, Lady Fleur?”
“On account, I sought the names of the gentlemen I would be bidding against. I was unaware you would be here.” She paused and gave him a pointed look.
He ignored it. “You are bidding?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I’ve heard it all,” he drawled.
Had she thought him charming?
If so, it was only because Hartwell had bounced her back and forth and all around with his competing personalities.
He must have sensed her irritation…