Chapter 14 #2
Fleur caught herself at the edge of the table. Gasping, she caught a stone urn and only just managed to drag it close when her stomach failed her. Moaning, she collapsed and hung onto the ornate adornment.
Only Cassia would have a planter in a terraced garden without a plant. She had never been more grateful for Cassia being, well, Cassia. Fleur spat several times into the makeshift chamber pot. She hung there several moments, waiting for the queasy sensation to pass.
An apprehensive feeling ran along her back, just a moment before the heavy tread of footfalls registered.
Tiredly, she opened her eyes.
Long, gloved digits dangled a flute of champagne before her.
Henry.
Fleur’s heartbeat raced, and, fatigue forgotten, she lifted her head.
“Lady Fleur.”
“Lord Cassian,” she said blankly. As in Lord Cassian Kilmartin. Not Henry.
To keep from letting her disappointment show, Fleur took a drink she didn’t want.
As a credit to the gentleman, he kept his gaze carefully diverted at Cassia’s gardens. “Rinse and spit.”
She furrowed her brow—then his meaning became clear.
He wandered over to the balustrade and stared out.
Fleur took small, swift sips and rinsed her mouth.
When finished, she wiped her hands over her cheeks and tried to muster whatever dignity she had left this day. “Thank you for your assistance, Lord Cassian.”
Henry’s man-of-affairs took that as the permission it was to look at her. “I hope you are feeling improved.”
Only slightly. “Much. Thank you.”
Neither of them spoke. The gentleman allowed Fleur to compose herself. Why? Why, when he had done the gentlemanly thing, looking after her, could he just leave?
“I happened to overhear your family’s…discussion,” Lord Cassian said. “Regarding His Grace.”
Ah, this is why he remained.
“How could you not?” she said under her breath. “With the racket they make, it is entirely possible the guests heard over the orchestra and noise.”
He laughed, and with his booming, resonant, unguarded expression of mirth, the walls came down.
“Nor was it a discussion.” A new wave of anger passed through her. “I am sorry for their—”
Henry’s man-of-affairs waved away her words. “You needn’t make apologies for them. You are no more responsible for your family’s actions than I am for mine, or Hart is for his.”
His gaze on her was razor-sharp, intense, devoid of his earlier amusement.
Fleur straightened. What was he trying to tell her?
Drawn by the mystery he had dangled, Fleur joined him over at the balustrade and set her flute down. A breeze gusted over the gardens. Closing her eyes, Fleur leaned forward and let it cascade over her; the fragrant lavender helped to soothe her nausea.
Only a bit.
Saliva gathered at the back of her throat.
Trembling, she collected her drink for a much-needed sip.
“Drinking and swallowing will make the nausea worse. Just spit.”
“You want me to spit in front of you, Lord Cassian?”
“Given your reputation of being something of a hoyden, I didn’t think you’d blink at spitting in front of anyone.”
Fleur would have laughed if she weren’t so deuced miserable—about her family’s disdain for Henry. About a blasted sickness that wouldn’t go away.
As if on cue, her body went suddenly hot and then cold and back to hot.
Lord Cassian rested his palms on the stone railing, leaned out, and spit. “Like that.”
This time, she did laugh. “I know how to spit.”
“Do you? With all the guidance I’ve had to provide thus far, I began to wonder.”
Fleur’s latest bout of amusement was cut short. She scarcely noticed Lord Cassian rescuing her flute. She hung over the side and spit more times than she could remember, until her mouth went dry, and the nausea dissipated.
This time, Lord Cassian dangled a white embroidered kerchief and waved it like a white flag in front of her.
Gratefully accepting the folded square, she wiped at her mouth.
If she were a proper lady, she would have been mortified about having cast her biscuits up in front of Henry’s man-of-affairs and now, nearly a second time.
Her desire for information about Henry from a man who knew him most intimately proved far greater than pride.
A proper lady such as Lady Angela would never.
All her muscles constricted in a violent spasm.
Feeling immensely better—and, at the same time, worse—Fleur pulled herself up onto the railing. She grimaced. “I used to be more graceful at this.”
“Skirts complicates things.”
“Based on your first-hand experience, Lord Cassian?”
They shared a smile.
They also didn’t have much time; she stopped mincing. “You are a friend of Hen—His Grace’s?”
The gentleman stared at Fleur with such intensity that she fought to keep from squirming.
Suddenly, his hard lips eased into a smile. “Ahh, you’re the reason.”
“The reason for what?”
“Hart’s developed a new fixation on whether or not I’m his actual friend.”
Her heart hitched. “I didn’t mean to make him question his friendship.”
Lord Cassian snorted. “You did him a favor. Reminding Hart that he’s fallible, and, in fact, very human is something he could use more of.”
“We can agree there.” But he hadn’t answered, and it mattered, because the idea that Henry didn’t truly have people in his life who cared about him filled her chest with an empty ache. “Are you his friend, Lord Cassian?”
“What do you believe?”
“Yes.”
“Such a confident, quick answer.”
“Because I, as a woman with a clear sense and a brain in my head, can tell by the fact you want Hart to feel what it is to be a normal man that you care about him.”
“Then why ask?”
“To better make my point that it’s hard for him to see himself as a flesh and blood man, the same as all men, if you, his actual friend, haven’t allowed human emotion into your relationship.”
A dull flush lined Lord Cassian’s almost too-beautiful cheekbones. “Men don’t—”
She snorted. “Spare me from proud men and their emotions. If you had actual conversations, Henry wouldn’t need to question; he would know.”
A breeze gusted over the gardens. Closing her eyes, Fleur leaned back and let it flow over her.
“You are a good friend to him.”
Fleur looked at him, specifically at the solemn set of his handsome features. “He doesn’t think so.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“And it doesn’t make any sense,” she exploded. “One moment he makes me laugh like I’ve never laughed before, and the next he is a great big lummox who I want to beat about the ears.”
Kilmartin’s lips twitched with repressed amusement.
“I’m glad one of us thinks this is amusing,” she muttered.
“Everyone wants something from him. His staff. The men of his shipping line. His tenants. His peers. Me. Even Tremaine, his brother. He cannot conceive of a world where there is someone who just wants…him.”
A fresh onslaught of nausea took hold—this one having nothing to do with her abated illness of before. Panic. Sheer, excruciating, mind-numbing panic.
She somehow managed to squeeze out a reply. “Is it that obvious?”
“Given Hart has known me since he was a lad and needs to ask if we’re friends, I would say he remains embarrassingly oblivious.”
He handed her a clean kerchief in anticipation.
A tear slipped out. She wiped it away. “I don’t know why I…why I…”
“Yes, you do,” he murmured gently.
Yes, she did. “The thing of it is, Lord Cassian, I believed my family to be the most honorable and loyal, but then I came to know Henry, and he extends those gifts to people deserving and not just because they are family by blood. And he is obstinate as a bull, but he can be made to see reason.”
A watery giggle bubbled past her lips. “And I, from being surrounded by males of all ages, can attest to the rarity of that. And he is well-read, but not one of those fellows obvious in being well-read, who seeks to show off…but who truly knows verse, and it’s all because of Mary Wolverston.”
“The…pirate?”
“At Jeremy and Linnie’s wedding, my brother Quillon insisted there were few female pirates, and from across the table, Henry called out…Mary Wolverston and then there was the fight, when Lord Culross arrived and accosted Linnie.”
“You saw that, did you?”
She nodded.
“My apologies. That is unfortunate.”
“Do not be. I’m not. His Grace was all too happy to let Jeremy kill him, but then, from the end of the hall, he caught me watching and…intervened. Everyone had lost their heads, and the duke was so…calm and resolute, and I’ve never witnessed that before. McQuoid men are a passionate lot by nature.”
“You don’t say?” he drawled.
“I just felt this sense that Henry could right an upside-down world, because he did, and I never realized how my body could feel amidst a calm. But whenever I talk to him now, he’s smiling and laughing one instant and the next he’s a snarling bear.”
Fleur stared forlornly at the jewels pasted over the front of her sparkling slippers.
“Do you know why that might be?”
“The conclusion I arrived at is that he loathes my family so immensely for injuring his pride that his disdain extends, by very nature of my name, to me.”
“That’s the conclusion you reached?”
“What else could it be?”
“Lady Fleur?”
She lifted her gaze.
“I have known Hartwell nearly all my life. Do you know how many people he’s given leave to use his Christian name?”
She hesitated and then shook her head.
Lord Cassian placed the tip of his index finger against the pad of his thumb, forming a perfect circle. “Not even Tremaine.”
His admission hurt her heart. “No one?”
He looked at her with gentle eyes. “You are missing the point I’m trying to make, Fleur. He allows you a privilege he’s granted no other. He only laughs with those closest to him, me, Tremaine, our crew…and…now you.”
A spark of hope ignited in her breast.
“Have you thought about telling him how you feel?”
A half-laugh, half-sob burst from her chest. “Have I thought about telling the man who was betrothed to my cousin, and made a fool of by my family, and who is repulsed by anything and anyone connected to them that I love him? No.”
Her heart felt like it was attacking her, knocking and pounding against her ribcage.
“Maybe before,” Fleur said, her voice thick with tears. “But…now, I can’t…” That night of Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade she had ensured she was not fit for any respectable gentleman, certainly not Henry. “I’ve done something u-unforgiveable and…”
The Duke of Hartwell’s bride must be as virginal and pure as the fresh-driven snow.
A woman such as Lady Angela.
And not one who lost her head and virtue against a stranger’s bookshelves in the middle of a wicked ball—as Fleur had done.
Burying her face in her hands, Fleur sobbed. She had noted their first set, and after Henry left Fleur to join Lady Angela in the couple’s second, he told the entire room who was his choice.
Kilmartin made a soothing sound and, in the same way that her elder brothers, Dallin and Arran, had soothed her hurts as a young girl, he gave her his shoulder to lean on.
“He is going to m-marry Lady A-Angela.”
He didn’t deny it.
That made her cry even more.
But then weeping began to make her feel better, and she let out all the emotion she had kept buried. Until she cried her last tear and they faded, and she sagged against Henry’s friend.
“Better?”
“S-Surprisingly, y-yes.”
She felt Lord Cassian’s shoulder tense before she heard the menacing words that spread through the air.
“What is the meaning of this?”