Chapter 9
“Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.”
~Lord Byron
The bloodthirsty, little hellion was determined to brain Hart to death.
In fact, if Fleur had access to a match, she would have burned Rundell’s and everyone inside, to the ground. As it was, her eyes flashed fire, her cheeks blazed red. The only actual thing missing from the lady were actual flames.
This time when he caught her bag mid-swing and disentangled it from her ruthless fingers, he had learned his lesson, and tossed her silly bag to the nearest associate.
It would be nothing to lift Fleur in a single hand and toss her out on her unconventionally big-bustled-hidden arse.
For a moment, he entertained doing just that.
Fleur gasped. “You bloody jackanapes.”
A still descended over the shop; a dangerous energy that crackled in the silence and fed off the fear of onlookers; every last man present knew to besmirch the Duke of Hartwell meant ruin and destruction.
The one woman glaring with radiant fury was the only person who failed to recognize the peril in crossing him, in public. Twice now.
“Go.”
The rumble of his warning sent Rundell and his staff running. They fled, with the head proprietor clever enough to set Fleur’s frilly weapon-of-choice on the shelf far away from the chit on his way out.
Those men fled because they had more than half a brain in their heads—unlike the she-devil in a standoff with Hart. For if she did, if she possessed an iota of intelligence, she’d have run screaming in the opposite direction of Hart. But then she was a McQuoid.
As if he could ever forget.
In a breathtaking display of spirit, Fleur whipped her cloak behind her, shoved her shoulders back, and glared, even more impressive in her silent fury than her ornery fire of before.
A soft, velvety flush spanned her daring neckline. His gaze locked on her full generous breasts, which strained against the neckline of her silly gown.
Animal-like hunger sent blood surging to Hart’s cock.
Debutantes didn’t possess the full-figured lushness of Lady Fleur McQuoid.
A siren. An Aphrodite. Venus. She was all three, possessed of a form built for bedding.
And there, Hart corrected a misjudgment he had made months at Chilton’s auction.
Her breasts were far more ponderous than he had credited that day.
“I am not happy with y—”
“Not a word,” he said tightly. “Not a single bloody word.”
He drew a breath in slow through his nose, furious at his despairing animal awareness of her.
Finally, she seemed to sense the very real danger just lurking under the surface—she went quiet.
A silent McQuoid. Imagine that.
“I have had about all I can take of you, you overbearing shrew.”
The lady’s mouth trembled with fury. Hart damned himself thrice-fold to hell for appreciating her full crimson lips. Torn between kissing the entrancing minx bloody senseless and turning his full fury on her, he exercised restraint.
“Time and time again,” Hart said coldly, “you go out of your way to make a mockery of me, my name, my title.”
You do that all on your own…
Was the response he anticipated from the sharp-tongued chit. Her continued silence unnerved him.
Hart took slow, measured steps to reach her. “I am a gentleman, Fleur.” He stopped less than a pace away; using his height to his advantage; knowing she must look up to meet his gaze: knowing even more how much she would despise that. God, she would prove contrary even in this.
Hart clasped his fingers about the delicate point of her jaw. He angled her head, forcing her to look, and instantly regretted his own rashness.
The long, sultry fringe of her lashes shaded her eyes, casting a mysterious, inviting shadow.
“Be warned,” he said, for himself as much as her. “I have taken all I’m willing to take. I have tolerated you showing up, wreaking havoc, and chaos around me and on me. All that ends today.”
“Or what?” A laugh trembled in her voice. “You’ll have me thrown in Newgate? Shipped to the penal colonies?”
His neck heated—his entire body went hot. No one challenged Hart. No one except this woman.
“I wreak havoc on you?”
Then, now, and always.
To that point—God help him—Fleur planted her lace-gloved hands on the soft curve of gently rounded hips.
Her body’s posture at odds with words she spoke with a quiet calm.
“You believe the sun and all the planets revolves around you. You have this inflated sense that every space you step into, you own. Lord Rutland’s masquerade.
Chilton’s. Rundell’s.” Her eyes glittered.
“You don’t care who was there before you.
A man with your conceit cannot even conceive that your presence is anything but a gift, so you stay when your company is not desired—”
“Not desired?” His lips twitched.
“Yes,” She kept schooling him in those governess tones of hers. “As in unwanted. Not welcome. Unsought.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I regret to break you of your illusions, Fleur, but my company is in fact well-sought—”
“Not by me!” she cried, shattering the illusion of calm Hart had bought into. “Not by me.”
He drew back.
“Everywhere I go, you are there interfering, Hart, causing problems for me—”
“I cause problems for you?”
“Yes! Here.” She slashed her hand with a violence, clipping his chest. “Lord Rutland’s. A-and then you ruined everything at Lord and Lady Chilton’s auction.”
There would come a time he would acknowledge that slight quiver. But this was not that moment.
He laughed in her face. “I bloody saved you from yourself.”
“Saved me from myself?” she cried a second time. “I neither want nor need saving. I wish to live my own life, free of bother from you.”
Free of bother from him? Some unidentifiable emotions blazed away all amusement.
Hart clapped his hands at her shoulders.
The feel of her flesh, soft as satin, infuriated him.
Her words. Her defiant gaze all pushed him to madness.
“You think you’re any match for the devils out there?
” A curtain of black fell across his vision.
“You’ve been lucky before now, and all because of me. ”
She gasped and bucked against his touch. “You swell-headed, pompous pig!”
Unbeknownst to him, Hart’s grip had grown tighter upon her. He made himself unclench, but could not bring himself to release her.
“The men in your life have done you no favors,” he delighted in informing her. “Putting cake-like thoughts in your head that you are somehow equipped to deal with the rakes, blackguards, and scoundrels who would happily ruin you.”
“You would be familiar with the ways of fiendish gentlemen.”
“The hell I am!” he barked like a child. Curse her. “I am one of just a few decent, honorable fellows.”
“Yes,” Fleur drawled. “it sounds, looks, and”—she gave his hands that still held her, a wry look—“feels that way.”
He released her.
The confounded minx smiled.
She bloody smiled, confounding him!
That bloody, blasted, bewitching smile that had slayed Byron and left her a litter of suitors, she would put on Hart. Thought she could reduce him to one of her bloody lackeys who fought to fetch her a tepid lemonade, did she?
“I am not one of your conquests, Lady Fleur.” He kept his tones low.
“Of course not.”
The sprite’s sparkle in her eyes danced.
Hart didn’t know what was coming, only that when it did, it would enrage—she didn’t disappoint.
“That would mean I want to be conquered by you, Hart.”
Which meant she wanted to be conquered by others…
Her indifference mocked Hart’s uncontrollable lust and his desire to conquer her.
If he were sensible, he’d remind himself she sought a reaction. From the very beginning, she had turned him into a blithering idiot too many times. And she did so with the kind of relish normal women expressed at receiving exorbitantly priced jewels. She wanted him to break.
The smug satisfaction in her eyes was all that kept him from marching around the store and slamming his fists through the crystal cases as he went.
Hartwell caught the (surprisingly) strong minx by her arms again, dragged her up to his toes, and snarled like the beast she made him. “Listen here, you flea-sized termagant with ridiculous corkscrew curls, I have had about all I can bloody take of you.”
“My curls are not ridiculous,” she raged.
Having deprived Fleur of her makeshift mallet, he knew the lady’s next plan of attack. He caught the lady’s left knee before it collided with his ancestral jewels.
Fire flashed so bright in her eyes, it was a wonder they both didn’t go up in smoke.
He smirked—and underestimated his bite-size opponent.
She reared her leg back and buried her ankle-length half-boot in his shin.
Hartwell laughed. “You could have tossed a feather and hurt me more, you she-witch.”
Fleur leveled him another ineffectual kick. “I hate you,” she cried. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
And then, her shoulders still clasped in his hands, the lady sagged—and burst out crying.
Hartwell’s fingers curled and uncurled reflexively.
“Oh, no,” he gritted out, over her noisy blubbering.
“I’ve seen you woo Winterly at an auction, Byron on his final return to England, and every last damn fop, rake, and rogue, circling you like sharks.
I’m not a trick monkey to dance attendance on you, Fleur McQuoid. ”
Except this wasn’t the pretty cry of a lady using tears the way Fleur had used her lashes when she wanted what she wanted. This was raw, noisy.
An unpleasant sensation.
“Do you hear me? I will not fall for your tricks,” he hissed.
As quick as she had let them fall, her fake tears vanished. “You are horrid!”
Hart caught her wrist mid-slap. “Horrid for letting you make mistakes that will destroy you.” He laughed, this time one that was forced, angry, and ugly. “You still haven’t realized men are rotten and care about one thing and one thing only, getting between your legs.”
Deprived of her fighter’s fingers, the chit set her adorable toes into action against his shin.