Chapter 4
“Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”
Lord Byron
London, England
Heart of the London Season
There it was again, that word Hart loved to bandy about her face—a favor.
Without a doubt, slaying a duke was an offense punishable by death.
When it came to Hart, the Duke of Hartwell, Fleur thought it might very well be worth the forfeiture. Fleur gave it consideration—a real serious consideration. Then, in short order, decided she very much enjoyed living, and Hart was the last person on the planet she would die for.
He believed he had come to her rescue like some valiant knight. Just as he prided himself on saving Fleur the night of Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade. Seated next to him as the auction continued, Fleur wavered between bawling like a babe and planting a knee between his ducal jewels.
“You claim to have lost your auction item, but still remain.” Hart’s low rumbling voice put her in mind of another—the key distinction being only one of them possessed a romantic spirit and naturally charmed, not infuriated.
“Is it your guilt that has you trying to get rid of me, Your Grace?”
“‘Your Grace’ now, am I?”
“You’re right, I shouldn’t show you that courtesy,” she muttered. “Charles Edward William Henry.”
“I thought it was William Henry Edward Charles?”
“You tell me; it’s your name.”
He grinned.
She was glad one of them was feeling pleased with themselves.
Why shouldn’t he? Hart had come the same way Fleur had, determined, confident, and hopeful.
No. A man like Hart wouldn’t believe his victory anything but certain. From the minute he stepped inside the bibliophile arena, he knew he’d carry the copy of Don Juan out with him.
She had been the na?ve fool. As if she could compete with any gentleman, forget Hartwell, who likely owned most of England’s acreage.
“We now come to Lot 601. A fine epic tale in six cantos and containing an epilogue, Ruslan and Ludmila by Aleksandr Pushkin…”
Hart spoke quietly at her side. “Are you familiar with Pushkin?”
“Are you asking because you want to point out how inappropriate it is for a lady to be versed in the Russian poet and his romantic poems, or to suggest I bid as some sort of consolation? Let me save your time on both. One, I read what I damn well please and two, I’m not interested. Why don’t you purchase it?”
“Do I have five guinea—five bid!”
Fleur’s fingers trembled into fists and she tucked them against the side of her skirts. The hell she would let him see her misery. It’d only make him gloat even more.
“That’s not what I was going to ask,” Hart said.
Something must be wrong with her ears or head or both, because the Duke of Hartwell sounded…contrite.
“I am sorry, Fleur. I wish we hadn’t been competing for the same book.”
He was contrite. Hope popped its head up, as that sentiment was wont to do. She waited and then couldn’t stop herself. “Sorry enough to let me purchase the copy from you?”
“No.”
“…I have ten guineas—ten guineas bid!”
Fleur sat back in her Trafalgar seat.
“Do I hear twelve…? I have twelve from Lord H…”
Bidding took a surprisingly frenzied turn.
Fleur couldn’t resist looking at Hart. He remained focused on the auction.
She forced herself to put aside her own hurt at the loss of Don Juan.
She had been so absorbed in her reasons for wanting, nay needing, Byron’s cantos that she had naively and selfishly failed to consider why Hart had been so determined to have the title for himself.
Was it a gift for another? Or was it, in fact, a title he intended to keep for himself but was too proud to admit.
Either she could understand. Could forgive.
But if Hart simply wanted the book so he could tuck it away, forgotten, on his shelf, just for the sake of having and not reading and appreciating… God help him, his was a crime worthy of whipping at the Cart’s Tail.
“Hart?” she whispered.
He slid his focus from the bidding action to meet Fleur’s gaze and waited.
“Did you purchase it for her?”
The dark bold slashes of his eyebrows came together.
“Your…” Wife. She couldn’t say that. Not when doing so would remind him that Meghan had jilted him and accounted for the tension between Hart and Fleur.
He stared at her quizzically.
“Your future bride.”
One side of his hard mouth kicked up. “My bride will not read such material.”
Fleur couldn’t tell whether that was a smirk or joking grin.
“Ah, that’s right.” She tipped her head back. “She’ll read Debrett’s.”
His previous half-smile became a full one. “Obviously.” He winked.
It was in that instant Fleur came to the decision men should be banned from fluttering their lashes so. It confused the senses and made even the most disagreeable (that being, Hartwell), agreeable.
“Gentlemen, we continue with Lot Number 621. The illuminated work of poet and artist, William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
Fleur pressed her knee lightly against Hart’s.
“Because you wouldn’t allow it, or because you will not marry a woman with an expansive appreciation of literature?”
“Both.”
Hart returned to the heated back and forth between a pair of bidders—the matter settled.
For him, anyway.
Hart spoke of some illustrious, impeccable lady, too lily-white to ever dare read a tale of passion.
Someone not like Fleur, who would read whatever book she pleased—and did—and sneaked out to attend forbidden balls, and lost her head and senses to a charming rogue.
Not that she wanted to be a candidate. Good God, no. She would rather chew off her own toenails.
“Why could you possibly want Don Juan?” she asked while he attended the bidding.
“Given the scandalous nature of the work, I should be the one asking that of you.”
His mouth twitched like it didn’t know what it wanted to express more—disdain or amusement. Both were unforgiveable.
“No, you shouldn’t,” she said, as calmly as she could manage. “I, as a woman, have as much a right to read any work of literature as you or any man.”
“Not if you give a jot about your reputation, which…” He glanced her over. “Given your history, you clearly do not.”
How dare he shame her and make her feel even a little guilty about her stolen night of passion? Why should she or any woman, for that matter, be held to such exacting standards, when he and his fellow man everywhere were free to conduct themselves without any censure or oversight?
He thought that her greatest sin was she attended the Rutland’s masquerade? She could only begin to imagine his horror were he to learn the full extent of her transgressions. They two were oil and water. Fire and ice.
She nibbled at her lip. When thought of in those terms, her and Hart’s butting heads made complete sense.
“Hart?”
He cast a much less patient look at Fleur. “What?”
“Without Contraries is no progression.” She kept her voice soto voce. “Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence…”
“My God, are you quoting The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?”
“You lummox. You would focus on that and not the quote’s actual meaning.” She frowned. “I was pointing out the irony of our presence here together and Blake’s views on the dichotomy of life.”
Hart kept staring at her like she had three heads.
Heat painted her cheeks. “I pity your future wife.”
The minute she said those thoughtless words, she wanted to call them back.
“Hart,” she said, stricken.
“It is fine. I’ll be sure and pass along your condolences.”
She eyed his impassive frame. Everything about him said he didn’t care about anything. But after what he had shared earlier, she knew that wasn’t the case. His pride mattered a great deal.
“It isn’t fine,” she said. “It was very insensitive of me.”
“I have twenty in the back!”
“I’ve told you before. The marriage wasn’t a preferred one. The only thing insensitive is your refusal to adhere to any silence.”
Splendid. He wouldn’t let her apologize. Now, he was being the bigger party here and even making light—just doing it in his blustery way.
“I am sorry I said what I did.”
“Then we are even as I bought your book.”
“About that… Are you certain you aren’t open to the possibility of selling?”
“No.”
Fleur sighed.
They didn’t speak the rest of the auction—though it was a chore for Fleur to keep from speaking or asking him questions. She was a McQuoid, after all.
When the gavel hammered home the end, applause went up, and the patrons began taking to their feet at various times.
She and Hart stood, both with seeming reluctance.
No. It was imagined.
The duke bent Fleur a polite bow and started to go.
Now, that definitely did not bother Fleur. Not even a speck.
“Lady Fleur.”
She turned towards that voice which had raised up over the various conversations taking place all at once. Baroness Chilton moved gracefully through the milling crowd to reach Fleur.
Propriety bid that Hart remained to greet the hostess, and the Duke of Hartwell would never do anything less than what Polite Society dictated.
They waited until the lady’s arrival.
Lady Chilton reached them with a smile. The enormous birthmark upon the lady’s face had earned her society’s indiscreet pity, and yet, up close, Fleur marveled at the woman’s unique beauty.
“My dearest Lady Fleur,” she greeted softly, with the warmth reserved for a dear friend that could not be feigned. “I do so love seeing young women at my auctions.”
“My lady,” Fleur sank into a curtsy. “It is a true honor to meet a fellow bibliophile and bluestocking.”
The lady’s thin eyebrows lifted. “Bluestocking?”
“One of His Grace’s preferred terms for a well-read lady,” Fleur explained.
“Is it?” The baroness finally paid the duke attention.
He would hate that and hate even more that Fleur had put him on the spot.
“Given a bibliophile’s appreciation for literature, I would not expect anyone here would find a woman reading anything except customary.
” But being called out, he would hate the absolute most.