Chapter 5
“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
Lord Byron
“You cannot possibly believe my idea is bad, Hart.”
Hart stretched back in his seat and steepled his fingertips at his chest. From across the surface of the ducal desk, he wryly considered the one who had spoken that understatement. That was the conclusion his brother had reached? His passionate brother couldn’t be more wrong.
“Love has ruined you, little brother.”
“This isn’t about love!” Tremaine exploded.
Hart arched an eyebrow.
“Both can be true: I’m doing this for my wife whom I love and it is a bloody good idea!” Tremaine, too hot-headed to wait for Hart’s cynical response, turned to the tall figure standing off to the side, by the windows, who had remained silent throughout.
“Kilmartin,” Tremaine said to their partner, a man cold as ice on the inside and all affability on the outside. “Will you tell Hart I’m being the logical one here?”
Wisely, Lord Kilmartin lifted his palms, as was all three men’s way when neglecting to become involved.
The gentleman knew better. Though Tremaine’s quartermaster, Kilmartin, when not on a mission, alternated in the role of Hart’s man-of-affairs.
Unbeknownst to Hart’s brother, Kilmartin’s very role in his life was Hart’s doing.
He’d inserted the nobleman into Tremaine’s life when they were but youths and handpicked him as Tremaine’s quartermaster before Hart had even known he would need a quartermaster.
The finger Tremaine lifted at his quartermaster only earned grins from Kilmartin and Hart.
Ruddy color splashed across his volatile brother’s cheeks. “Your schedule is too busy for you to clear at least a few nights for time with my in-laws?”
His in-laws.
An image rose up, as it all too often did, since Chilton’s auction and the scandal that McQuoid chit made of Hart.
“…Lady Fleur, shy of stealing my own book from this selfish fellow, and delivering them to your gentle hands, I cast my regrets and a promise to deliver a smile for you…”
Curse Tremaine’s in-laws.
Hart sat up and got back to the work he and Kilmartin had attended before Tremaine’s arrival.
“I have given enough of my time to that family,” he said, coolly dispassionate. “This is what comes of me lowering my standards. If you’ll excuse me, Kilmartin was helping me with a matter.”
His brother outright ignored that order. “Might I remind you, my wife, Linnie, is a member of that family of which you speak so poorly.”
“How could I ever forget, little brother? I’m the one who put forward the match, as a way to exact revenge and block an alliance between the McQuoids and Culross.” Curse me to perdition. “I failed to consider you would get all”—Hart slashed a hand at the air—“tangled up emotionally.”
What else should he have expected? Tremaine was the same hot-headed, passionate son of their whore mother.
“I believe the word you are looking for is love, big brother.”
“Actually, it is not. You know my feelings on that sentiment. You carried them yourself not very long ago.”
With a stupid smile reserved for poets and dreamers, Tremaine threw his arms wide. “Ah, but I’ve been saved by love.”
“Destroyed by it, more like.” Hart reached for the pen he had set down when Tremaine arrived for this meeting. “One of us has not forgotten that family you are so loyal to you attempted to secret away your wife, and the Earl of Culross, so she could live as the man’s whore.”
That reminder had the intended effect.
Blistering hate blazed from his brother’s narrowed gaze. Their mother’s eyes, the duke insisted. Hart had been favorably born with the Hartwell browns. But Tremaine had always been as hopeless as their weak mother, unable to gird his temper, or his emotions.
“They also got Lady Tremaine caught in a sea-fight that gives her nightmares still.” Hart dragged forth his leather journal and dipped his pen into his inkwell. “But yes, do tell me, little brother, about this great alliance.”
His brother popped to his feet and headed for the sideboard stationed along the northern wall. While he fetched a decanter of brandy, the previous Duke of Hartwell’s likeness in the gilded frame above sneered down at the man who had been his son in name only.
The click-clack of his pen while he made annotations in his journal collided with the steady stream of Tremaine’s pour.
He handed a glass to Kilmartin, and then offered the other to Hart.
Hart waved it off.
“I am not suggesting you marry one of their girls, Hart,” Tremaine said, after he set the bottle down.
“This time,” Kilmartin drawled.
Tremaine lifted another finger, earning a big guffaw from their shared friend.
“I’m talking about a handful of events we both make appearances at.” Brandy in hand, Tremaine returned and reclaimed his seat. “A couple of familial dinners to show there are no hard feelings over the end of your betrothal to Miss McQuoid-Smith.”
“Hard feelings?” He snorted. “Not only does the chit come from an undesirable family, I discovered my betrothed sneaked off to Rutland’s affair, I had to attend the bloody thing and then fetch the chit before she was discovered.”
Granted, on his way to find her, he had also stumbled upon an enchanting creature, his very own masked Green Rose in the flesh. His body grew hot at the memory of that entirely too-quick joining and the elusive lady he still searched for.
Tremaine gave his snifter a smooth swirl. “You are such a prig, Hart, begrudging a lady for a night of fun.”
“Ensuring my future duchess doesn’t come to me bearing some other man’s babe.”
Hart kept writing. “The fact she let herself be carried off and fell for her abductor, Culross, the same man responsible for Lady Tremaine’s trials is unpardonable. In the end, I was spared.”
His brother laughed good-naturedly. “God, you’re a bastard, Hart.”
From the corner, Kilmartin lifted his glass. “Will toast that.”
They were all bastards…of different sorts.
Hart added another title to Kilmartin’s earlier list.
“What is the business that has my brother fit to be tied?” Tremaine settled into his seat, looped his ankle across his opposite knee, and made it clear he was there for the duration.
“None of your—”
“A mistress and wife,” Kilmartin supplied.
Hart scowled at his man-of-affairs.
Only Kilmartin would take that as a reason to grin and seat himself in the empty chair next to Tremaine.
“A mistress and a wife, Hart? As in securing both, at the same time?”
“He is nothing if not efficient.” Kilmartin touched his glass to Tremaine’s and drank deep.
“He is nothing if not dead inside.” Tremaine drank, grimaced, and then set his snifter on the edge of Hart’s desk. “Who are the lucky ladies to have earned my brother’s affections?”
“Doesn’t have them,” Kilmartin took it upon himself to share.
He and his brother spoke at the same time.
“Go to hell, Kilmartin.”
“You don’t have them?”
Kilmartin roared his bloody stupid head off.
Tremaine dragged his chair closer to the desk. “You are telling me you are too busy to clear time in your schedule, when you have Kilmartin finding both your wife and mistress.”
“I have the mistress part taken care,” he muttered. His bewitching, uninhibited green-goddess of the gardens.
“Yes, he’s seen to that on his own.”
“Reassuring,” Tremaine said to Kilmartin’s intrusion.
“He’s bedded the lady, but he forgot to learn the lady’s identity before taking off.”
Tremaine went still and then laughed uproariously.
Hart didn’t take either man’s bait. That was the difference between him and them or anyone.
As their amusement ebbed, Hart sharpened his gaze on Tremaine. “Tell him why, Kilmartin.”
His cool command sucked the last of the humor from the air.
Kilmartin hesitated. He shifted in his chair. “I found the duke and informed him of his future wife and sister-in-law’s presence and location at Rutland’s.”
“Your in-laws, Tremaine,” Hart said. “That very family you would still ask me to help.”
In fairness, their brotherhood of three and partnership in business demanded there weren’t any secrets between them.
“Ah, you resented being dragged away from your fun with some tart to find your future wife.”
With every day, Hart’s brother made less and less sense. “Wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“Well, that is the difference between us.” One of a very many.
“And here I took yours as resentment at Byron’s cut direct over your treatment of Lady Fleur.”
Hart froze.
“Most would choose the word ‘person,’ but given the empty-headed fluff you keep company with, Hartwell, you likely mean ‘woman.’”
“…I pity your future wife….”
A candidate of which she would never be. He needed to marry his social equal, or otherwise be burned—as he almost had been. Not that she had expressed any interest in the role.
The pen threatened to snap under his grip.
“My treatment of Lady Fleur,” he repeated silkily.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Kilmartin shaking his head at the other man.
Tremaine wisely held his silence.
It was too late, though, for Hart’s brother.
“How could I have forgotten the Lady Fleur?” He hadn’t. “Thank you for the reminder, little brother. You’ve given me another reason to turn down your suggestion. Which reminds me, little brother, of a long overdue conversation.”
At Tremaine’s side, Kilmartin drank and looked up at the ceiling.
“We have not discussed your falling in line with the McQuoids and refusing any repayment from Culross.”
It was all the ton had—and still was—talking about. Culross showed up outside the McQuoid’s residence, squawking about love, and giving Hart, Tremaine, and Kilmartin all stakes in his shipping enterprise. All of London heard. Embarrassing stuff, really.
He continued. “As partial owner of Tremaine shipping, that offer was made as much to me and Kilmartin.”