Chapter 6
“Hatred is the madness of the heart.”
~Lord Byron
After Fleur’s stolen night at Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade, thoughts of the stranger who’d broken down her defenses—not that she had put any up—haunted her. Every minute of every day she spent pondering his identity.
He had taken up a place inside her mind: all of him. Every detail. She fell asleep to the remembrance of his low, rough baritone, as he’d extolled her beauty and spirit and professed his hunger—all while whispering Byron’s breathtaking verse in her ear, against her skin.
“…Oh! she was perfect past all parallel… Of any modern female saint’s comparison…”
Along her shoulder. “…In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her…”
That sensitive place just under the shell of her ear: “…A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded…”
Fleur would awake restless and breathless as she dreamed about the sough of his breath—the faint twinge of tobacco and brandy and so very masculine—as he’d worshipped her with his mouth—and lay there, with sleep eluding her all over again.
“…Like Adam’s recollection of his fall…”
The violent way her mystery sweetheart ripped his gloves off—like he’d die if didn’t touch her with his bare fingers.
“…Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth, Mounting at times to a transparent glow, As if her veins ran lightning…”
Then, with an infinite tenderness, he had drawn her close, so her narrow back lay against a chest so broad and big.
“…Sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone…”
She moaned just remembering.
Or she had. Her poignant reminiscences still came—and frequently—but now interrupted by another man.
One who, when it came to romance and swoon-worthiness, was as far away as the moon, but when it came to bossy and domineering and arrogant and conceited, he was as close as Hyde Park.
It was really quite vexing. Everyone was so fixated on helping Meghan and the family recover from the scandal while putting on a unified show that Fleur didn’t have any time to sort through her own matters.
And the icing on the plum cake? Her usual lighthearted, raucous family was all on tenterhooks.
A fresh set of stilted laughter swelled from the center of the room.
Fleur winced. Even she, who had paid only half-attention to her lessons on pre-dinner etiquette at formal gatherings, recognized that no one was adhering to the room’s symmetry for conversation starters.
Cousin Linnie and Captain Jeremy Tremaine occupied the ivory settee on one side of the long Axminster carpet.
Cousin Meghan and Lord August Culross sat on the adjacent, matching curved-back sofa.
In the middle were the rest of the McQuoids and Smiths—careful not to choose sides—hanging at the center of the rug like a jeu de paume net stretched between the players.
Except for Fleur.
Fleur had settled in at the white Carabba marble fireplace because it was the closest place to the gilt-and-porcelain Sevres clock. That way, she could track how much closer she was to this farce ending so she could return to her own more perilous farce.
While Fleur watched from the corner as her family mingled, joked, and chatted, she did her absolute best to not pay attention to the proud, scowling Duke of Hartwell across the way.
Not that he scowled for his close circle, made up of Captain Jeremy, Lords Kilmartin, Alwyn, Beaton, and Linnie—the only McQuoid, in their midst. For them, he was all crooked grins and laughter.
It harkened back to Chilton’s auction, before they’d went from bantering partners to bickering rivals, and eventual enemies.
Was it any wonder that with Fleur’s family’s grim showing that she coveted a spot with their jovial circle?
She had arrived this evening, a little bit expecting—worse, God help her, hoping—Hart had finally gotten over the scandal they had brought about with Lord Byron. The problem was he blamed her.
If he hadn’t been such a big dunderhead that day, Fleur would have done a better job of helping the painfully proud gentleman save face. But she had been, as everyone else, so trapped in Lord Byron’s aura that she hadn’t found her tongue fast enough. By the time she had, the damage had been done.
Fleur’s ears picked up her cousin Linnie’s murmuring. Whatever she said roused the collection of loyal Tremaines to a fresh bout of levity—it only heightened the disparity between Fleur’s family and theirs.
For the thousandth and one or so times that evening, Fleur consulted the time. The night hadn’t even begun, and it was already never-ending.
She inched in and peered at the clock handles. Yes, the second hand was moving.
She squinted more closely.
At that time, it appeared to be moving at normal speed.
Another forced laugh, this time from the countess, pierced the stilted conversations among their family and dragged Fleur’s focus to the mirror. Her gaze caught with the one locked in on her.
Heart hammering, she turned quick enough her neck strained in protest.
Fleur swallowed a groan.
Maybe he hadn’t seen her.
She sneaked a peek. Posted alongside the floor-to-ceiling mirror at the adjacent wall, the illustrious Duke of Hartwell had his group’s attention. Of course he did. He spoke and even the Lord listened.
Fleur should be relieved. The last thing she wanted was to be caught staring, and for absolutely no reason. Hart already had an inflated opinion of himself. All noblemen did. Loads wealthy. Loads landed. Loads arrogant—all men were. Dukes even more so. Obnoxiously so. Loads strangely handsome.
Unfortunately for him, her, and the entire world, Hartwell knew it too. He knew he had all the wealth, all the land, all the power, and the arresting face to stop a person in their tracks.
It made him even more obnoxious—if such a thing was possible.
Fleur appeared to have escaped unscathed, and with her dignity intact.
Fleur didn’t dare risk looking up a third time. The last thing she wanted was to keep company with Jeremy’s bigger, more annoying brother. Rather, she’d been wanting to join his group. That was vastly different.
She bore her gaze into the ticking clock handle and tracked its journey across the pale green painted leaves outside the Roman numeral II.
A shadow fell over Fleur. She stiffened as Hart’s visage swallowed up the same mirror responsible for her current misery.
He flashed a tight smile that would never be confused as friendly, especially absent of a requisite bow.
“Good evening, Lady Fleur,” he greeted. “You have been paying an inordinate attention to—”
Fleur’s toes curled all the way in.
“The clock, Lady Fleur,” he drawled.
Oh, he didn’t even pretend poorly that he had seen her staring.
“It is vastly more entertaining than my current company, Your Grace.”
Fleur flashed a smile.
His lips drew taut at the corners. “The current company being me or the overall guest list, Lady Fleur?”
It was almost too easy with him.
Fleur angled her shoulder to close her response from the rest of the room. “Lest I offend anyone,” she whispered, “I shall leave you to your own conclusion.”
A lightning strike would be safer than the glint that flashed in Hart’s eyes. Unfortunate for him, Fleur grew up adoring a good goustie.
“Are we keeping you from something, Fleur?”
He had dropped the “Lady” and seized her name like it was his to take and keep, to assert his power. The poor gent. He should consult Jeremy as to how well that had worked for him when he joined the McQuoid family as a lad.
“Given we are in my family residence, I’m not certain that is your question to ask.” This time, she gave him the smile she’d bestowed on Byron—only this one had no effect on Hart.
Everything about the man was hard. His punishing gaze. A jaw cast from iron. The bold, slightly heavy hawkish nose, centered within a squarish face, from which he looked down the length of.
With more than a head on her, Hartwell leaned down. “Perhaps you have another masquerade to sneak off to, Fleur?”
She hated how big he was. He made her feel small. Not small. Delicate. Fleur wasn’t used to feeling delicate. Another had made her feel this way, but when he had done so, he’d filled her ears with poetry and praise.
“I suppose I might ask the same of you. Given how many glances I caught you stealing at the same clock, you would also rather be somewhere else.”
It was a bold guess on her part. She hadn’t seen him do a single thing.
“I do not have to sneak about. I am a duke.”
Fleur snorted. “Lest anyone could ever forget.”
His smile, as a rule, was the hardest part of him—as if even in mirth, he resented being made to show the actual human emotion of amusement. He bestowed one of them now on Fleur.
She gave him her best scowl. “I still have not forgiven you for ruining my fun that night.”
One of his goons had found her in the library, buried her in a cloak, and rushed her off. As such, one could say—and she did, at least to herself—Hartwell was the reason Fleur had no idea whom she had given her virtue to.
He gave her his coldest grin. “I did keep your confidence.”
Yes, he had not sung to her parents about her, Meghan, and Linnie’s scandalous escapade.
“Fair enough.” She hated it when he was right.
The duke settled his gaze on the other guests. “To your earlier question, there are any number of things I would rather be doing instead of being part of this farce.”
Fascinating. “I am intrigued.” He had loosened his plate armor. “What are these things of which you speak?”
“Visiting the Tremaine crypt. Being laid in the Tremaine crypt.”
A bolt of laughter exploded from her lips; she buried it fast behind her fingers.
“Good God, you have managed to put all eyes on us with your unseemly guffaw.” His heavy-lidded gaze only emphasized his displeasure.
Even the distaste he currently directed at her came in the big form.
Oh, he wanted to re-don his armor. She thought not.
“Your Grace, has the cow come home?”