Chapter 15 #2
She had fallen in love with Henry, the Duke of Hartwell. He had always considered her beneath him, and he was right. By Polite Society’s standards, and by the entire world’s standards. It was why he had selected Lady Angela from his list to marry.
And Fleur would be best served forgetting that and him and the perfect pair together, and focus on finding a gentleman who had made her feel special, if even for just a stolen hour at Lord and Lady Rutland’s.
It was far easier to accept that Henry could not love Fleur when he was disparaging and cruel.
A tear fell.
“Fleur?” Henry’s voice bore a panicky quality, one that proved that, despite his bearish temper most times, he did care.
Then he was grasping for her, and it was too much, because if she fell into his arms as she wanted and wept at all the mistakes she had made that ensured what had previously been unlikely was now impossible.
He folded her close, and it felt so very good to be in his enormous arms, surrounded by his warmth. For in his embrace, she felt safe.
That only made her cry more.
He smoothed a palm over the small of her back, making soothing sounds.
But when he spoke, he sounded as desperate as Fleur. “What is it, love?”
Love?
His arm spasmed around her. “Has someone hurt you?” He didn’t give her leave to answer. “Give me his name,” he commanded.
“N-No!” She buried her face in his sleeve.
You did…
I hurt myself…
I ruined everything…everything…
“N-No one d-did.” Because in truth, no one had. Every misery to befall her was Fleur’s own fault.
A low, rumbling groan came from his chest and ripped through Fleur.
Sobbing until she might break, Fleur gripped his shoulders, but then she recalled another woman had just placed her fingers upon them; a lady who would have the right to do so. Fleur pounded her fists against his chest over and over.
And he allowed her to vent her anguish, taking each blow as if they were his due.
And her pain was because of him, but not because of anything he had done.
The man responsible for her suffering held her, conferring comfort, and in doing so simultaneously made the pain inside sharper.
She wept for her loss. She wept with bitter, insupportable jealousy for the Duke of Talbert’s sister, Lady Angela.
And worse, Fleur, who had prided herself on living a life without regrets, wondered if she had done everything that night differently, if there could have been not just a friendship but an actual future with Henry.
At long last, her sobs became tears and then ultimately faded into the occasional watery hiccough.
Hart repositioned his hold upon her; he angled her against the curve of his right shoulder. He held her to him.
“I know what you are thinking,” she said, her words muffled in the soft wool of his handsome black jacket. “About me crying.”
He lowered his cheek against the crown of her head.
“Do you?”
“The drying up a single tear has more / Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore. And I’ll have you know something about you makes me a watering pot.” Fleur knew the reason why.
“I was not thinking that.”
“No?”
“No.” Hart wiped the pad of his clad fingers along her cheeks. “…If I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep.”
Fleur opened her eyes and stared out at the star-studded London sky.
She had believed him cold. Unfeeling. She had expected he would bid a fortune on that coveted copy of Don Juan and did so without any true connection to the work.
Whereas Fleur longed for it because she and her Mystery Gentleman had discussed the brilliance of the work; he had quoted those verses from memory, and she had been unable to because her family didn’t own a copy and she had only secured it once from the lending library.
Now, he’d gone and not only quoted Lord Byron, but Byron’s Don Juan, with such reverence, choosing verses that made her tears things of beauty and not shame.
A crushing strain wrapped around her ribcage.
Why couldn’t it have been him?
With a brush of his knuckles along her chin, Hart brought her gaze up. His eyes over her glinted with concern.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
He proclaimed himself her friend, but would he say so if she told him?
Fleur punished her inner cheek with her teeth.
She stilled. What would he say?
Fleur hadn’t shared her secret from Lord and Lady Rutland’s Masquerade with anyone, not her sisters or her maid, Mary, who was a mix of sister, best friend, and mother. Not her cousins, who were like sisters.
No one.
But with Henry…it made logical sense to confide in him. He despised her family and believed her kin useless, so he certainly wouldn’t bring her trouble to them. He was also honorable and gentlemanly enough that he would never break her confidence.
At best, he could listen, let her rest on his shoulder, and even help her find the identity of the man from the masquerade.
Her heart picked up a hopeful beat.
At worst…
A chill snaked through her.
At worst, he would have his every ugly opinion of Fleur confirmed.
Henry would go back to looking down on her, and she would consider herself silly for having ever thought him a friend and a fool for having believed herself in love with the big, arrogant, condescending Duke of Hartwell.
Either way, she saw him as a friend, wanted him as a partner and husband, and by telling him about what transpired at Lord and Lady Rutland’s, she stood to ensure that, after this, he was neither.
It would be for the best.
A sad smile curved her lips. “You are right, you know,” she said softly.
“Obviously and always, but you know my head won’t tolerate not hearing you say what it is exactly I am right about.”
His attempt at humor teased away some of her sorrow. Why must he be so witty?
It also made it easier to open up to Henry and tell him everything.
Certainly, however, Fleur couldn’t do it with him holding her so tenderly, not when he left her mind scattered from his embrace. From what she wanted in vain.
And so, she began where all McQuoids had begun since that Lover’s Leap centuries ago.
“My family is scandalous, Henry.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And I am too.”
Hart gave her a playful, teasing wink. “You couldn’t not be scandalous if you tried.”
A sharp, stabbing pain twisted in her chest.
Fleur knew he wasn’t trying to be mean. That he spoke in jest to lessen the tension.
And she should be both glad and grateful that, at her lowest, he extended friendship.
She had been so alone in this, carrying, first, only the exquisite joy of that moment last winter, and then so many regrets and no one to share them with.
No, her regrets were recent. They had started and ended with this man.
Before her courage deserted her, Fleur forced the words out. They came in a single quiet exhalation. “I did something terrible, Henry, and if it is discovered, I will be ruined.”