Chapter 21
“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”
~Lord Byron
Long after Fleur vanished, Hart’s pulse pulsated in his skull, violent enough to kill. It felt as if it already had.
His chest heaved from the broken breaths he tried to fill his lungs with.
Some dastard had gotten Fleur with child.
The horror refused to fade, no matter how often he repeated it.
Between the bile roiling in his stomach and the overwhelming weight bearing down on him, Hart didn’t know whether he was going to cast up his accounts or break under the force of his rage.
Don’t dwell on Fleur with someone else, he silently commanded himself. Focus entirely on the lady’s betrayal right here and now.
Hart closed his eyes and inhaled, striving to steady himself—failing.
It had all been a facade. She was as deceptive as the others, yet she kept that look of trust. It was infuriating—enough to make Hart question himself. Even now, her ghostly gaze still tricked him into faith.
Yet he wanted to believe her. For too many reasons—most too foolish to name. He wanted her all the same.
Christ. She was going to be a mother…of some other man’s child. Not you. Someone else. A rival who beat Hart to the woman he longed for.
And she had tried to pass that child onto him.
Ah, God, Fleur. Why? Why? Why couldn’t she have been the one real thing in his life?
Maybe because she was desperate. She was young and had been, until that masquerade, innocent, and even after, she still was. What future lay ahead for her? What fate? None that was good or respectable. Dread coiled in his stomach.
She’d be prey for all the rakes.
Shunned.
Just as I did…
Shame bowed his shoulders.
“Oh, Fleur,” he whispered, his voice catching. Perhaps he had only some of it right. Maybe Fleur attempted to give her child Hart’s name because she believed he was a friend.
Instead of telling her he understood the reason she did what she had, and proving he’d stand by her, he’d said the ugliest things. He was a bloody, jealous fool. There he had it. He could admit it to himself and be humbled by it.
Hart rubbed his throbbing temples, realizing that even now, frustration and guilt mingled within him. He was defending her, sacrificing himself in the process.
“…Trust no one, Hart. Trust women even less…”
The late duke’s lessons plagued him, driving him to the brink—or perhaps it was the unbearable reality that Fleur was gone forever.
“Stop,” he hissed.
“I believe that is the best advice you’ve given yourself since you lost your everlasting mind.”
Hart’s shoulders went back, spine whipcord straight. He clenched his fists, mastering his calm.
“Kilmartin,” he drawled. “How strange how you continue showing up whenever a certain lady is near.”
“The lady is not near,” Kilmartin snapped. “I put her in a carriage and sent her home—in tears.”
Hart’s chest hitched.
Bloody hell, do not let them make you waver.
“What did you say to her?” Kilmartin demanded.
“That isn’t your business.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Or is it?”
“You were never one to speak in cryptic terms, Hart,” Kilmartin snapped with a defensiveness that bespoke loyalty—to Fleur. The other man’s affection? Or…more.
A bitter taste of covetousness possessed him.
“I asked you a question—”
“You, Kilmartin, don’t get to put questions to me, unless you’re instructed to.” Hart peered down his nose.
“Sod off, Hart. Since when did you become your father?”
Hart stiffened. He’d spent his life molding himself for the Tremaine name. Kilmartin’s words pierced him more than they should have.
It reminded him there was a young woman waiting for him, a proper, virtuous miss who didn’t have a babe in her belly.
Ah, God. Fleur.
His breath ran ragged. She’d be alone in this. No—she had her family. Society would tear her to shreds.
Just as I did.
Regardless of how they ended, he cared. He worried. He always would. No, he more than cared for her. He…
Hart faltered.
The far-off echo of his father’s voice climbed above his wavering.
“…You bear the name Hart as a reminder that you do not have one…to never let yourself be weak…”
Hart firmed his purpose. “I have guests waiting.”
“Ah, yes, best run along.” Kilmartin jerked his chin a notch. “You have all the most privileged members of the Ton awaiting you. Lady Angela will make you a perfect bride.”
“Actually, she will.” Let the other man wrap a sneer around it.
But she won’t make you happy the way Fleur does…or challenge you…
Fleur, who, with her recklessness, had gone and ensured she could not be his in name…
A cinch about his lungs squeezed.
“I am trying to be patient, but you are making it impossible, you unmitigated arse.” Kilmartin wrapped a hand around his arm and squeezed, startling him. “That lady loves you.”
Hart stared blankly at him.
“Lady Fleur.”
He shook his head.
“…How can you not know, Henry? It is you. I love you…”
He felt a catch in his throat.
Fleur had been the first and only person to utter those words.
Yes, he and Tremaine loved one another, but it was understood; brothers didn’t express those sentiments.
Perhaps that is why he remained here, his chest aching because of her betrayal, letting them repeat in his mind, clinging to them like a child…
Kilmartin gave his arm another squeeze. “You know she does,” he said gravely.
“…How can you not know, Henry? It is you. I love you…”
“I do not know that.” He didn’t recognize the strangled sound of his own voice.
“…I love you… I love you… I love you…”
Kilmartin flashed a small smile. “With the way the lady looks for you and at you, how can you not know it?”
With the way the lady looked for him…
And then the stronger voice, the one of reason and restraint…
“…You bear the name Hart as a reminder that you do not have one…to never let yourself be weak…”
How dare Kilmartin get into his head? How dare Hart get into his own head, questioning himself, questioning things he knew to be true…about women. About Fleur…
Except, she wasn’t like other—
Stop!
“Tell me, have you always been in the habit of sharing my history with others? Or was this a one-off? I had expected more from a man of your caliber.”
A dull flush filled Kilmartin’s too bloody damned good-looking features. “It was not a decision I arrived at lightly. Ultimately, I considered the ramifications of sharing versus not sharing,” he said tightly, “and concluded the benefits to you outweighed the potential harm.”
“I’m to assume this is something you do often.”
“Don’t be an arse, Hart,” Kilmartin said.
“Divulging an employer’s private circumstances is a sackable offense. No one would fault me.”
“Then sack me.”
“You would never work again.”
“Pfft. You have an inflated sense of yourself and underestimate mine. I have built enough connections and wealth of my own. I’m not reliant on yours.”
Damn him for coming back unaffected, over and over.
“But you do not have a title.” Hart sneered. “Is that why you wanted mine?”
“Wanted yours?” Kilmartin stared at him as if a second head had just sprouted from his shoulders. “Do you truly think all these years I’ve been your friend, and in your employ, I’ve been coveting your title?”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“A friend.”
“The longer we speak, the more it becomes increasingly doubtful,” Kilmartin muttered. “Goddamn it, yes, I’m your friend. What leave have I given you to doubt?”
A roll of emotions made him feel like he needed to scratch his skin off until he got back to the baseline of the man he had built himself to be.
“Is it yours?” he asked icily.
“I’m afraid you will have to be more—”
Of a sudden, it was too much.
“The babe the lady carries.” Those agonizing words ripped from him in a hiss, cutting his throat like glass as they left him.
All the blood left Kilmartin’s cheeks. “Christ.”
And that horrified, stunned soft prayer was the moment Hart had his answer. Kilmartin’s look wasn’t that of a man who had been found out. This was the look of someone who had found out something he shouldn’t have.
It didn’t make him feel better. It made him feel like a bloody fiend for revealing her confidence—even if she was a schemer, he would not willingly betray her secret.
He had cut her from his life. So then why was he continuing a downward spiral into insanity?
Hart dusted a hand over his face. “I shall take that as a no.”
“Go to hell, Hart,” Kilmartin clipped out.
I’m already there.
Had Hart truly gotten it as wrong as the other man said? Why couldn’t he think? Why did nothing make sense?
Shaking his head, Kilmartin headed for the door.
A gripping panic anchored in his brain. As Hart watched one of the three most important people in his life go, fear clashed with anger—both stalling him from calling Kilmartin back or letting him walk away.
“That is it?” Hart called out, shakily. “You’ll just walk away.”
Kilmartin didn’t break stride.
Then, unexpectedly, Kilmartin turned back around.
The tall man’s long-legged stride ate away the distance until he planted himself before him. “Did it ever occur to you why you tend to find me with Lady Fleur?”
Hart kept himself motionless.
“Bah, never mind. I doubt you could, even if I handed you the bloody answer in a tied sack, Hart,” Kilmartin said. “As your man-of-affairs, it’s my job to help solve your problems. Each time you leave that young lady, she’s worse off than before.”
A searing pain, cutting as a blade, tore across his chest.
“Yes, I’ve met alone with her. I’ve assured her you are a good man, an honorable one. And yes, I told her personal things about your bloody past, on account of the lady deserved to know some reasons why you’ve become the bastard you have.
“We both have done the lady wrong. I told her you were worthy of her love. I suggested she fight for you, and you…you cruelly hurt the best thing to come into your miserable, rotten, self-indulgent life. Only one of us feels like a fiend for it.”
The look he gave Hart contained every ounce of disdain. “Consider this me tendering my resignation from services.”
“What the hell is going on?”
Both men looked to the front of the room.
Tremaine stood near the entrance, moving a stunned gaze between Hart and his former friend.
“Ask your brother,” Kilmartin said brusquely. “I’m done here.” Throwing up his hands, Kilmartin left.
“Linnie sent me to look for you,” Tremaine said, as Kilmartin filed past. “Your absence has been noted and—”
“More reason to return as swiftly as possible.”
When he got to the door, Tremaine shut the door and blocked him from leaving.
“And I was going to say this is what I find? I overhear Kilmartin resigning, and you think we’ll just carry on.”
His brother’s expression asked if Hart was mad.
That’s precisely what he was. Mad for a maddening bundle of sass and spirit.
Tremaine lifted his eyebrow.
“I’m not discussing Kilmartin.”
“The hell you aren’t. He is our best friend and my quartermaster. I trust him with my life.”
“Would you still trust him if you found he’s been relating tales about my history with someone?”
That brought Tremaine to a standstill. “Who has he been speaking to?”
Hart rubbed the back of his very tense neck and muttered to himself.
“Who?” Tremaine strained closer. “Because it sounded like you said—”
“Fleur McQuoid,” he gritted out.
“That’s what I thought I heard.”
“It’s because you did.”
“Oh.” Confusion wreathed his younger brother’s countenance. “You made it out as though Kilmartin was speaking ill to an outsider. The McQuoids are family.”
Family.
Just weeks ago, he would have chewed his brother’s head off for ever daring to suggest that family was in any way like them.
“…You knew your household was devoid of laughter. You couldn’t have it for yourself, so you ensured Jeremy would—even if it meant you were left behind. My family should have welcomed you as they did Jeremy…”
Even as he berated and shamed her, she grieved for what he—as a boy—never knew he missed. Worse, he had betrayed her confidence. Intentional or not, the betrayal was profound and unpardonable.
Kilmartin would never tarnish a lady’s name. With his devotion to Fleur, he’d likely offer marriage.
A grumble rolled in the bellows of his being.
“Hart?” Tremaine’s quiet interruption broke into his musings. “What is it?”
He ran a tired hand down his face. Hart had no place to speak another word of what Fleur confided, but he was lost.
“…There is so much to say, I don’t even know where to start…”
And so Hart talked. And he talked.
When he finished, silence met his telling. Not mere silence. There in the charged air an accusatory, condemning one. And worse, in his always adoring brother’s eyes.
Mottled color splotched Tremaine’s cheeks. “Who was the woman?”
Henry frowned.
“The woman you bedded at Rutland’s.”
“I don’t know.”
Tremaine narrowed his eyes. “It’s plausible it was my cousin-in-law.”
Taut and stretched to a breaking point, Hart finally snapped. “You want it to be her because you cannot accept that she is a schemer—”
“Fleur?”
“Who is foisting off someone else’s—”
“As in Fleur McQuoid?”
“Your loyalty to that family blinds you from—”
Tremaine reared back and hit him. Not many had the strength needed to bring a man of Hart’s size down. Of a similar stature and carrying muscle from his career at sea, Tremaine wasn’t most men.
With a grunt, Hart hit hard on his arse. He caught his chin in his hand and glared up at his brother.
“Not a word.” The younger man pointed at him, stretched out at his feet. “I think you know what this is about. Your suspicions of Fleur. Your disdain for women.” He looked Hart hard in the eyes. “Your fear of bastards.”
A tingling dusted Hart’s nape.
He came carefully to his feet.
“Yes, I know about my origins,” Tremaine said. “Do you take me for bloody stupid? Do you think I didn’t have ears when the duke spoke?”
“Ah, God. Jeremy—” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought I protected you—”
The anger left his brother. “You did protect me. You were the one who wasn’t, Hart. You were stuck with Hartwell, and listening to you here today, I don’t know how you can get yourself free of him.”
With a pitying shake of his head, his brother left him there on the floor.
Good. To hell with them. All of them. First, Fleur. Next, Kilmartin. Now his own damned brother.
How swiftly they’d risen to her defense and abandoned him.
And how much Hart wanted them to be right and himself wrong.