Chapter 25
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.”
~Lord Byron
There hadn’t been a scandal Hart himself been responsible for. Not entirely anyway.
He’d been jilted by a bride—thank God, he had only just come to believe in—which caused him a headache and put gossip on him. But not his fault.
Then there had been the whole Byron bruhaha earlier in the year, which he’d allow might have been some of his fault, a sliver, Fleur’s, and mostly Byron’s. After all, they didn’t call him Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know for just any reason.
But cutting out of a ducal box without warning in the middle of an opera and only returning to beg off for the night, and the whole courtship would be a scandal that shook the ton and set tongues wagging, and he didn’t bloody care.
At least for him. He was just beginning to embrace the whole scandal business, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still honorable.
There was Lady Angela. He couldn’t leave her in the lurch, not without an explanation.
As it turned out, when he arrived and explained to Lady Angela that his heart belonged to another and that he must follow it, the lady smiled, patted his hand, and said, “I know.” Lady Angela also explained it was all really a relief, as they wouldn’t suit.
She could never marry a gentleman who didn’t share her love of the theatre.
“It is just a wonder the lady does not, as you could not take your eyes from her the entire night.”
That was when Hart realized it had been so obvious to everyone that he was head over heels in love with Fleur McQuoid—even a stranger had noticed before him.
Which was also when he glanced at Fleur—and saw she, Kilmartin, Linnie, and Tremaine had left.
“Go,” Lady Angela urged. She freed Hart of guilt for loving another, but warned he’d be unforgiven if he ruined Linicius’s grand rescue of Julia in Act III.
And so Hart left.
He did so with a jaunt that had never been in his step.
He wore the goofy smile of the besotted and felt lighter than ever.
There would be a scandal, and it didn’t even matter one whit.
The moment he returned to his once lonely, never-to-be-lonely again residence, now that he would have Fleur…and their babe, he collected everything he needed to collect.
Because, as Lady Angela pointed out, it had been obvious all along—Fleur was his destiny.
As he was hers.
And deep down, Hart himself had realized it, too. The truth had found its way to the darkest corners of his heart and soul that he had kept closely guarded, wrapped in locks and chains to protect himself, and Fleur had found the key.
Of course, she had. She was Fleur. There was nothing the stalwart, exceptional hoyden couldn’t do. That included teaching a cold, heartless beast like him not to love again, but to love for the first time.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could stop him from reaching her now. The longing seared through his veins like fire.
Nothing and no one could or would ever come between them again.
Except for the McQuoids’ new, familiar-looking, younger, and fitter butler.
“I am afraid the lady is not receiving visitors, Your Grace. On account of its past midnight. Perhaps you can try again at fashionable hours.”
Hart had been called out and good…by a servant. Not shocking, as it was a McQuoid servant. Being denied entry, however, was an unanticipated development; certainly not part of the plan, and as such, caused Hart enough of a pause for Young-Strapping-Butler to close the door in Hart’s face.
Almost.
Hart planted a palm on the panel and, through the three-inch gap, sized up the fellow. “I know she is here, and only recently returned from the theatre. I am not leaving until I see her.”
“Very well, Your Grace.”
Hart narrowed his eyes. He realized the insolent servant seemed familiar because he was familiar—one of Arran McQuoid’s crewmen.
Under different circumstances, Hart would have admired the strategic choice.
Placing a capable soldier at the house’s front line was wise.
There was a war between the last privateers, fighting to keep a foothold in a shrinking industry.
“You may wait on the stoop until fashionable calling hours.”
And this time, the wiry servant used a big shoulder and surprise to his advantage.
Frowning, Hart stared at the closed green-painted door.
What in hell had happened here?
Taking several steps back, Hart drummed a distracted hand against his thigh and contemplated his options. He could break the damned thing down. It would take him several good-go’s, but it would also bring the household down, and an army of McQuoid’s sailors turned servants streaming out for battle.
It was a fight they didn’t want. Not with Hart ready to wage war and climb bloody mountains to…to…leap from a tower.
Hart stopped.
And so it was, Hart found himself putting to use very valuable intelligence collected from the Tremaines’ old war with the McQuoids to his advantage, and climbing not a mountain, but a tree.
A sixty-foot—give or take—plane tree, to be exact. Not that he needed to climb all sixty. By his estimate, forty-five feet would suffice. Nothing at all; not when it meant reaching her. After all, it mattered little if he broke his neck; he’d die of a broken heart if he didn’t win her.
It began as an easy enough task.
The McQuoids did him a favor by leaving a mature branch some six feet from the bottom. As he leaped up, caught the limb in his hands, and swung himself onto his climbing base, he made a note to do the McQuoids a favor in the morning light and to hack down the makeshift step himself.
Any scoundrel could use that foothold to reach the McQuoid daughters.
As he neared ten feet, Hart considered that the Earl of Abington might have seen the sizeable tree brought in for this purpose.
But not even another foot later, Hart flat-out dismissed the possibility on two accounts: one, the earl wouldn’t know what day of the week it was if he was sitting in Sunday sermons, and two, the only window nearby was Fleur’s, and she was the only McQuoid worth keeping.
Not even a quarter of the way up, Hart decided the fact Fleur survived as long as she had was a credit to the lady’s own wits and strength. Then, he promptly resolved to ensure she would never have to worry about anything for the rest of her days.
He realized he’d never taken off his jacket, so at fifteen feet he shrugged it off and dropped it on a lower branch before climbing on.
Only to recall what he had left inside his jacket. Climbing down to retrieve what he needed proved much trickier.
For the next twenty minutes, his sole thought was staying alive.
By the end, he was sweaty and his grip was slick; his eyes burned.
Until at last, some forty or so feet, he reached Fleur’s window.
Or as close to Fleur’s window as he could get.
His breath coming hard, sweat continued to sting his eyes.
And since he was fully committed to a scandal, Hart did the logical thing, not the gentlemanly one.
He removed his shirt and wiped his face, and looked with clear vision at the face pressed against the crystal panels.
Hart lost his footing. Shouting, his heart and stomach fell out from under him as he fell. He just managed to catch himself by both hands—two very tired hands.
Dangling there, shirtless, forty-five feet above the McQuoid family’s gardens, and sweat streaming down his back, Hart imagined how the headlines would read about the Duke of Hartwell’s untimely death.
And he knew beyond a doubt he was a changed man because he didn’t care what they—
“My apologies, Your Grace,” a cheer-filled voice called out to him.
Loud enough to wake the neighbors, and certainly the neighboring bedchambers.
Bloody hell. A cousin. “Don’t you have your own home?”
“Aunt Catherine’s home is my second home,” Lady Andromena explained as casually as if they were sipping tea across a table in a parlor. “I—oh, just a moment.” She paused to speak to someone behind her.
He would have told her not to hurry back if his shoulders, biceps, triceps, muscles, and ligaments hadn’t been strained and screamed from the hell he’d put them through.
He couldn’t. He was going to die here.
Fleur. Think of Fleur. Seeing her. Getting to her. Telling her you love her and begging her to never leave you…
Digging deep, Hart let out a gasping shout and hauled himself until he was stomach down across the branch. Flakes of bark fell away.
Panting, he hung there—clung there, to be more exact—his arms wrapped around the rough branch, and watched those remnants of the tree that had served him well, flutter to the end of their story.
This, however, was only the beginning of his and—
Windows were thrown open, and voices came all at once.
“Your Grace!”
“Hartwell?”
“Hart?”
“Henry?”
But the “Henry” was all he heard. The shock, disbelief, confusion, and hope.
And she was all he saw—Fleur at the windowsill. Her fingers steepled in front of her mouth, attired in a modest white nightgown; her hair still damp and plaited, all ready for bed.
“You left.”
Here, Hart had an entire ride over and a lengthy climb to prepare his profession, and that’s what should steal from him.
Fleur cocked her head. “I…” She darted the tip of her pink tongue out. “Should I have stayed?”
Andromena flew over and joined Fleur at the window. Hands planted on the sill, she glared and answered for her cousin. “Why? So you could flaunt Lady A—”
Fleur slid her palm over the other woman’s mouth, and then, after she had her silenced, moved her out of the way. “Henry, what do you want?”
“I’d say a shirt and jacket,” Lady Cassia unhelpfully supplied her younger sister with the answer.
At least an answer. Did none of the married McQuoids have a home of their own?
Hart’s throat worked uncontrollably. “I imagined this going differently, Fleur,” he said. Releasing his death grip, he got to his feet.
Gasps came from all the occupied windows.