Chapter 16 #2
Fleur had expected his condemnation and censure—as she should.
The lessons his late sire tirelessly imparted, pointed at this woman, in this very moment, and said: see, Hart.
She is one of the spirited chits I warned you of.
The only thing an adventurous, bold lady was fit for was the role of mistress, and unworthy of the ducal bed.
With a calm he didn’t feel, Hart rested his palms just under her shoulders. He gently massaged the gooseflesh from Fleur’s arms. “You did nothing wrong, Fleur.”
She needed to hear that. Hart willed her to believe it.
A muscle rolled along his jaw. “He took advantage of you, Fleur. You have no reason to feel guilty.”
Her whispery-soft smile fell; the emptiness there brought his hands to an accidental stop.
“Would you feel that same way if I told you I do not feel guilty?”
Hart’s muscles locked tight; his insides twisting and knotting up. She could have sliced him clear through, and it wouldn’t have felt…like…like…whatever the hell this was.
“I didn’t feel regret,” she spoke quietly. Until now.
Did that hang in the air between them, because he wanted them to be the words she held back?
All Hart could say with any certainty here, as a light breeze shifted the charged air around them, was how he felt—which had always taken precedence—came a distant second.
As if drained of life, Fleur melted onto the edge of a stone bench.
Every lesson drilled into Hart said never to get caught with a debutante, or any unmarried lady, for that matter, shouted for him to run.
If he were discovered alone with her, he would need to marry her, a woman who by her own admission was already ruined.
She sneaked a peek from the corner of her eye—to see if he was still there. Or maybe it was to gauge his reaction.
Hart could sooner lop off an arm than leave. For a second time, he had made her feel shame.
He sat.
Somehow, from a place of strength he didn’t believe even he possessed, Hart smothered the embers of white-hot jealousy. “You are not the only woman who has been swindled by a scoundrel.” But only one of those women was Fleur.
“He didn’t swindle—”
Hart exploded to his feet. “Bloody hell, Fleur, will you stop defending him?”
Chack-chack-chack. A trio of blackbirds startled from their sleep, burst from nearby shrubs, and took flight.
The calm after they’d gone ushered in an ominous quiet.
So much for composure and self-control. Knowing what she needed from him, but unable to summon it forth, Hart yanked his gloves off and tossed them across the terrace. They hit somewhere with a thwack.
Fleur flinched.
She feared him. Worse, he had made her fear him. Both made him want to toss his head back and pound his chest.
When he trusted himself to speak, he dropped to a knee before her. “Did he offer you marriage?” Would you allow the dastard to marry her, either way?
“It happened so quickly…”
Dead. Hart had his answer. He would kill the man before he let him wed Fleur.
Hart sluiced a look, imploring her to silence.
“And then he had to leave.”
What had he been? Late for a bloody meeting?
“Who is he?” This time, the question came easily. He absolutely needed the name. Because Hart was going to kill the wretch, anyway.
Hart froze. A strange humming rose in his ears. With a sickening horror, he looked to the door his man-of-affairs exited, and then slowly back to Fleur.
His abdomen clenched.
“Kilmartin,” he said thickly.
Oh, God. It felt like his insides were being torn apart.
He didn’t wait for her answer, because he dreaded it too much.
“St. James?”
Her eyes glimmered and sparkled.
Tears.
Did that mean…?
“Markham?” The scoundrel’s name ripped from his throat.
“I don’t know, Henry.”
His nostrils flared. Would she lie to him to protect the fiend? This feeling was even worse. “You do not know,” he repeated, silkily.
“I don’t. I want to,” she explained.
Oh, God. She truly didn’t know to whom she gave the gift of her virtue.
He was going to be ill.
“It was the night of the masquerade,” Fleur said. “He was—”
“Masked,” he supplied dully. That’s why she didn’t know.
Fleur nodded. “He was dashing and debonair and romantic.”
All things no woman in her right head had or ever would say about Hart, but everything a winsome innocent like Fleur McQuoid said about the fiend who robbed her of her innocence.
“It wasn’t only about,” She grimaced. “Passion, Henry.”
Did she think that would make what occurred between her and some other man somehow better… for Hart? Later, he would rationalize his way around that. Now, he was trying to be the friend she wanted him to be.
“We were united in so many of our thoughts and dreams.”
No doubt trusting, romantic, Fleur McQuoid shared hers first, and it had been easy enough for the fiend to develop newfound interests.
He was going mad.
“We spoke about things that mattered.”
It was too much. “Yes, I’m sure he was there for your stimulating conversation,” he snapped.
She looked like he had slapped her across the face; so why did it feel like he had taken a blow to the heart?
Hart ran a hand over his face.
The irony. They had both had their own secret affair that night. He was with a skilled French lady who had matched Hart’s passion for passion. And Fleur…with…some mystery gentleman.
Fleur stared at a point beyond his shoulder and tried to get his head right. “You said I would get myself ruined, and you were right. You just didn’t realize that I had already done it.
Hart’s body jerked.
“I’m not saying that because I want you to feel like you should have saved me, because you shouldn’t have. I wasn’t your responsibility. It wasn’t your role.
An insupportable feeling of bitterness welled up in his throat, nearly strangling him.
“And I…didn’t even want saving. That night, Henry,” her eyes radiated brighter than all the stars overhead. “All I wanted was—”
He exploded to his feet, needing to move, and at the same time fighting the need to clamp his hands over his ears to drown out the sacrilege she spoke.
She kept going, continued twisting the blade. “I need you to know,” Tears choked her voice. “I didn’t even regret it until…” Until…
No answer she gave could make this right; could make him feel all right.
Fleur stood slowly. She waited there, looking like she wanted to say more. Or waiting for him to speak?
Only, he couldn’t speak.
And as she walked off, her proud shoulders bent, he proved Fleur right. He had no idea how to be a friend.
“Fleur!” For a second time, he stopped her at the door.
Fleur turned back and faced him. Her pale face was as stark white as the moon overhead.
“Your secret is mine. I will help you find his identity,” he uttered quietly. “We will find it together.”
Fleur pressed her fingertips against her quivering mouth. “Truly?”
He gave a smile for her benefit. “Never say you’re calling my honor into question?”
She laughed; a watery laugh, filled with tears. “Never. You are the most honorable man, Henry, and I…I…”
His heart thundered with renewed force.
“I am so fortunate to have you for a friend.” Lifting her hand, she gave him an innocent wave.
Hart let her leave this time.
When she had gone, he uncurled his clenched hands at his sides.
She believed he was motivated by friendship. He wasn’t so magnanimous. His motives weren’t the pure, selfless ones she took them for.
He wanted that information for himself.
Hart narrowed his eyes.
And when he had a name, the gentleman would regret his artful seduction of Lady Fleur McQuoid.
Reaching a shaky hand inside his jacket front, Hart withdrew one of his cigarillos and touched the tip to the candle inside. The catch of flame filled the quiet. Hart took several long, slow pulls. It didn’t have the calming effect it usually did.
An insupportable feeling of bitterness welled up in his throat, nearly strangling him.
He stared out over the soft cloud of smoke left by his cigarillo and flicked the ashes.
The night of Rutland’s, Hart had been there in different capacities.
First as an attendee, where he had enjoyed the services of a delectable French siren; that woman he intended to make his mistress—or had intended. Since he had gotten himself all tangled up with Fleur, he hadn’t thought of his enigmatic lover once.
And then, when Kilmartin knocked three times and brought his tryst to an end, to inform Hart the future duchess was in attendance at the forbidden affair.
He had reluctantly put aside his demonstrative French lover and gone to find Miss Meghan McQuoid-Smith.
He would find her name and identity later.
Extracting his flitty betrothed before she brought a scandal crashing down on both of their heads had become the priority.
Through all that, Fleur had been in attendance.
Hart took another, this time slower, draw from his cigarillo.
Somewhere between the time he arrived, had his assignation, and ferreted out his bride-to-be, starry-eyed, na?ve, trusting Fleur was being corrupted by some nameless wretch who had made her feel beautiful. Made her feel beautiful?
Which implied she had no bloody idea she possessed a face to launch one hundred thousand ships.
Hart took an unsteady pull from his cigarillo.
She should have been garbed in Italian white lace, lain on a white satin sheet, and made love to in a proper four-poster bed like the queen she was, not taken in some alcove or hidden room like a tart.
His eyes clenched shut.
He had dispatched Kilmartin and several of his other men—he couldn’t even remember which ones—to find whatever other McQuoids were in attendance.
His gut churned.
What if it was, in fact, Kilmartin?
Certainly the other man knew a thing or two about charming ladies. A profligate rogue with a smooth tongue and effortless charm—
Hart drove his spare palm against his forehead several times.
It didn’t help.
Insidious ideas and images continued coming: the ease with which his man-of-affairs held Fleur; the protective way Kilmartin had cradled her, held her while she cried…
His stomach revolted.
I’m going to be ill…
But…why?
Wouldn’t it be ideal if the gentleman who ruined her had been Kilmartin? Rogue though the other man might be, it would not take much to make the other man do right by her.
“Timing your entrance?” he asked without looking back.
Kilmartin stepped onto the terrace. “The same way you did?”
Hart didn’t admit the truth—there had been nothing timed or planned in his earlier arrival. He’d followed Fleur’s flight and that of her family’s at her heels.
His friend had just joined him at the bench where Fleur had cried when it became too much.
“Did you fuck her?”
Kilmartin stilled mid-movement and then completed his step. “I’m afraid you are going to have to be more spec—”
“Bloody hell, Fleur,” he exploded on a hiss. “Did you…did you…?”
Sedate as a Quaker, Kilmartin reached inside his jacket and helped himself to a cheroot. “‘Fuck her,’ is the term I believe you used?” He held his rolled scrap out for Hart to light.
When Hart made no move to help, Kilmartin arched a brow. He availed himself of the nearest glass lantern and then returned, calmly puffing at his Spanish papelate.
Kilmartin exhaled through the left side of his mouth. “At what point did my responsibilities to you include sharing the names of women I’ve bed—”
Snarling, Hart released his cigarillo and grabbed Kilmartin by the front of his jacket. His chest moving like a billowing ship, he dragged Kilmartin in and gave him a shake. “She is Tremaine’s in-law—”
“Since when did you care about the McQuoids?” his man-of-affairs drawled.
Hart’s vision tunneled to black. He shook the equally built man harder.
“I’ve tolerated enough of your temper, Hartwell. Unhand me, now.” Kilmartin’s cordial tones were belied by the steely warning underneath them.
My God, what was happening to him? His pulse pounding inside his head, Hart abruptly released his friend.
His friend who might or might not have been Fleur’s mystery love—
Insanity won out. “Did you, Kilmartin?”
“No.”
He braced for a rush of relief, but it didn’t come.
Because knowing it wasn’t Kilmartin didn’t erase the fact that there was some man out there who had wooed Fleur with pretty words, ruined her, and likely forgot all about that night that had meant so much to her.
Hart swept a tired hand along his face. “I have several jobs for you. They take priority.”
Kilmartin waited.
He explained the first order of business involving Fleur. “I want that delivery made to Lady Fleur before she leaves her sister’s affair and waiting upon her return. When that’s done, I want a list of every man in attendance at Rutland’s masquerade on my desk this evening.”
Kilmartin bowed his head and waited to be dismissed.
Hart thought a moment. “One last thing. I want discreet inquiries made on the morrow at Rundell and Bridge’s.”
“What specific inquiries?”
“I want to know what business Lady Fleur had at Rundell’s. That will be all.”
With a bow, his friend strode off to see to the assignments laid out.
Hart remained on the porch for another cigarillo.
There was a reason Fleur had been at Rundell and Bridge’s, desperate for a meeting with the goldsmith and desperate enough to fight her removal—a reason that could only have to do with the fiend who took her innocence.
Hart was going to find the man and, when he did, destroy him.
Exhaling a white circle, he flicked the nub of a scrap to the terrace floor and crushed it under the heel of his boot.