Chapter 18
My dear Fleur,
We can wait no longer for you to return—not without creating gossip. We are to the Duke of Hartwell’s dinner party.
I am disappointed in you for becoming lost in your outing and urge you to make haste.
Your Mother
After her long visit at Rundell and Bridge’s, Fleur had wanted to beg off Henry’s soiree. By the time she had returned home, it had been to find her family already gone and a note left by her mother.
The coordinated event between their families demanded her presence, especially after her scandalous swoon at Cassia and Nathaniel’s ball yesterday.
Henry and Fleur’s family thought she didn’t care about propriety, but she did. Far more than she let on.
Fleur couldn’t decide which was worse: missing the duke’s gathering or arriving after dinner.
She told herself the latter was the greatest grievance.
She also knew being there with him after what she learned today would be unbearable.
But she was no coward and had brought herself to go.
Now, Fleur waited outside the music room, where the Duke of Hartwell’s guests were already seated. She assumed the McQuoids, Tremaines, and the rest of the seafaring families were present. She didn’t know why she expected it—she just had.
Fleur had been wrong. So very wrong.
There were so many guests present. It appeared as if all the most powerful peers and their impeccable daughters had gathered for the night’s entertainment.
Her heart thudded sickly against her ribs.
There, in the front row, alongside the Duke and Duchess of Talbert and Lady Angela, sat Henry.
She watched as he conversed with the exquisite young woman. Their conversation and smiles came effortlessly.
Fleur wanted to cry.
Then she remembered why she wanted to cry all the time.
The babe.
Her and Henry’s babe.
But in truth, she admitted to herself, even if there were no babe, she would still want to weep.
Unnoticed, Fleur stood at the entryway, eyes locked on Henry as he leaned toward Lady Angela.
From Fleur’s vantage point, their shoulders curved together; to her, Henry and the lady’s profiles seemed to form a heart.
The fissure in her heart deepened.
Henry smiled the same charming smile Fleur had fallen for at her cousin’s wedding breakfast ages ago.
This time, he meant it; the company beside him was of appropriate origins—a family he respected rather than despised, unlike Fleur’s.
He found Lady Angela flawless, which she was, and Fleur…
tolerable. Just then, he said something that brought a healthy blush to the young woman’s high cheeks.
A painful knot developed in Fleur’s throat.
Fleur’s cousin, Linnie, saved her. Henry, Lady Angela, and the Talberts stood to greet her. His imposing presence stilled the room.
As Henry’s sister-in-law and closest female kin, Linnie acted as hostess. Her words were met with nods.
Fleur watched Henry focus his charm on Lady Angela.
More words passed, then Henry took the lady’s hand. Fleur noticed each detail, including the lady’s simple white satin gloves—never as frilly as Fleur’s.
Fleur reflexively clenched her own gloves at her sides.
He bowed, hovering a kiss above her lily-white gloved hand before turning the floor over to Linnie. As the Duke and Duchess of Talbert and Lady Angela reclaimed their seats, Henry began to turn away but paused. He scanned the crowd as though looking for someone.
Me?
Fleur, her heart beating fast, slid hastily into the shadows and craned her neck to see if Henry had seen her—pathetically spying on him and his chosen bride.
She needn’t have worried.
Fleur’s breath seized sharply in her breast.
Henry had again taken the seat next to Angela, fixing his enigmatic gaze on the person he sought.
Linnie’s voice rang out, making Fleur jump.
“Welcome to Hartwell House. His Grace assures me tonight’s musicale will surpass every Season’s assembly.” Linnie wagged her eyebrows. “Let us see if he spoke the truth.”
Her witty retort was met with the expected, polite laughter.
“I will not keep you from the music, as I know we are all keen to begin. A sincere welcome to you all, and to the ladies set to perform. Please enjoy the evening. Ladies and Gentlemen—Lady Angela.”
Envy pricked Fleur as Henry stood, escorting Lady Angela to the pianoforte. It was a blatant declaration—a cannonball announcement following their two sets at Cassia’s ball.
Lady Angela bent her long, graceful neck; her poise alone at the keyboard captivated the room.
Fleur was petty enough that she wanted Henry’s soon-to-be betrothed to croak like a frog or be as pitchy as a mouse.
And then the lady sang, her lyrical soprano filling every corner of the room. Fleur’s eyes slid shut and she rested against the doorjamb.
“’Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;”
Fleur’s heart wrenched viciously. What had she expected? That Henry would marry a woman who possessed anything less than the voice of an angel?
“All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;”
No. Cherubs would weep with envy…just as Fleur was on the cusp of doing.
“No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!”
Suddenly, the quiet was disrupted. The quick click of a boot heel announced someone’s approach, interrupting Fleur’s watchfulness from her shadowed corner.
Fleur glanced over as Lord Cassian approached.
He bowed. “Lady Fleur.”
“Lord Cassian,” she uttered softly. After giving a small curtsy, she went back to watching. Rather, torturing herself.
“Hesitant to enter, my lady?”
“I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one.
To pine on the stem;”
“What is it precisely that exposed me?”
A smile flashed across the gentleman’s handsome countenance. Henry’s friend settled in to join her. He folded his arms and joined her in taking in Lady Angela’s stellar performance.
“Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them…”
While Fleur shrank inside the shadows, Henry’s man-of-affairs boldly held the entryway. She turned her attention back to the performance.
“Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed”
Only for a moment.
“This is reassuring,” he spoke quietly.
“Lord Cassian?” she said in a low voice.
Lady Angela’s voice drowned out her and Lord Cassian’s conversation.
“I’m not the only one late to Hartwell’s intimate gathering.”
“No.” She smiled. “But only one of us will face Society’s scorn.”
Just as only Fleur would be crucified for begetting a child out of wedlock. Since the age of Eve, women have borne the sole blame for every sin. Such was the world’s unjust way.
“Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead…”
The gentleman kept his gaze on the current performance. “Society is unfair and unforgiving when it comes to women and the standards they are held to,” he said, and Fleur heard the truth from which he spoke.
“So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay.”
Fleur watched Henry’s bride-to-be. Pain knifed her chest anew.
“…And from love’s shining circle
The gems drop away…!”
“Cruel,” Fleur whispered, voice fluttering. “Society is cruel to women.”
“When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown…”
Unease swirled in Fleur’s belly. That flutter and knocking never were just nerves.
Awestruck, Fleur hugged her arms around her middle.
How strange. This morning, she had known nothing of his…or her existence. And now, by nighttime, Fleur had become very attached and protective of the little human who rested underneath her heart.
“Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?”
Her skin tingled.
Fleur glanced over to find Lord Cassian’s piercing stare still on her. His eyes narrowed. The intensity in them promised he knew—if not every person’s secret, at least Fleur’s—which was preposterous, as until a few hours ago, Fleur herself hadn’t even known.
She quickly let her arms fall.
“It is my hope you are finding your health improved, Lady Fleur?”
“Immensely.” She flashed her brightest smile. “Last night was quite a crush, I—”
Lord Cassian quietly interrupted her. “I referred to earlier this afternoon.”
Fleur stilled.
“I visited Rundell and Bridge’s and happened to be meeting in Bridge’s private office, which is next door to Rundell’s.”
She sucked in an uneven breath.
What had he heard? What did he know?
Her mouth went dry. Fleur couldn’t make her tongue move.
She was rescued from replying by the soaring and adoring applause for Lady Angela’s concluded performance, which jolted her back into the present. Henry would abhor such an undignified response from his guests. That made Fleur feel vastly…
Worse…
The duke who favored proper behavior over all else proved as taken as the rest of his party. He uttered something to Linnie.
Linnie rushed to the front, urging an encore from Lady Angela.
Even this hurt.
Of course it did. As a duke, Henry required his wife to be well-trained in song and on the pianoforte.
No one would ever urge Fleur to perform once, let alone twice.
A quiet fell. Lady Angela’s flawless voice soared.
“Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever…!”
“Do you believe he’s horrified that his future bride is performing a ballad by Scotland’s national poet?” Fleur didn’t even bother to keep the bitterness from her question.
And as if Henry heard it, he stiffened and cast a quick glance back.
For a moment, she felt as if their gazes locked, and he saw all the way through her, to the secret she alone carried about them.
“Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him…?”
But that was foolish, wistful thinking. His attention had already returned to Lady Angela’s performance.
“Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me…”
Fleur didn’t need to be here. Even more, she did not want to be here. Suddenly, she realized the preposterousness of worrying about making a bigger scandal for her family by not attending Henry’s soiree. Meanwhile, she was carrying the host’s bastard babe.
“Had we never lov’d sae kindly,