Chapter 25 #2
He looked down and saw their audience. “It would be just us,” he inched himself closer to her. “I would be outrageously charming,”
“That would be a first,” Quillon muttered.
No one disagreed, and for good reason. The lad wasn’t wrong.
“I had no reason to be charming until you, Fleur,” Hart called.
He reached the end of the branch but not her; his ladder, inside which failed him by four feet.
“Ta beauté m’a séduit, mais c’est ton esprit qui m’a fait tienne pour toujours,” he said huskily.
Your beauty compelled me, but your mind has made me yours forever.
His whispered avowal brought Fleur’s eyes sliding shut, just as they had done when he spoke them to her the first time. But then, there had been a mask between them. Now, they had both been stripped bare—Hart in every way.
“Je ne dormirai plus, car je penserai à toi, ici et maintenant,” he murmured. I will not sleep again, for the thoughts I’ll carry of you, here and now.
Fleur perched her hip onto the edge of her sill and leaned against the jam. “Je suis certain que vous dites cela à tout le monde, monsieur.” I am certain you say that to everyone, good sir.
The teasing lilt of her voice carried him back to that night he had first fallen in love with her—there had been so many times since.
Tears burned his eyes. “Toi. Toi seul, mon amour.” You. Only you, love. He opted to omit the naughty parts he had whispered in between that night.
“Si seulement c’était vrai,” she whispered those same words—If only that were true—of then.
The past melted into their present. Hart abandoned the French talk they’d shared that fateful night.
“It is true, now, Fleur,” he said solemnly. “If you will let it be. I love you.”
Fleur touched her mouth to quivering lips.
“You love me?”
“I—”
“Of course, he does, Fleur,” Oleander shouted in exasperation. “The fellow is naked in a tree to get to you.”
“What is this about being naked?”
There came squawking as the Countess of Abington shouldered her way into the scandal at the back of her house—at the entire back of her house.
And given he was shirtless at her window, and there was family about, Hart reached inside his pocket, and risk of life and limb be damned, got onto a knee.
The McQuoids gasped.
Fleur cried out. “Henry!”
He held the ring up. It turned out even the clouds, and the moon were on Hart’s side this night; for the clouds shifted and the full moon cast a full glow.
Prisms played from his fingers, and he moved those radiant shimmers of light towards her.
“It was you, Fleur. It was always you. I want to step into the rainbow with you.”
“The r-rainbow ring I picked out.” Fleur caught a happy sob in her fingers.
At least, he believed it was a happy one. It needed confirming. “Are you happy?”
“Outrageously s-so.”
His heart was buoyant in his chest. He tucked the ring back into his pocket. Now, he had to get it onto her finger.
He started calling out to her to ask for permission. “Fl—”
“Bloody hell. Where is your shirt, big brother?”
Cursing, Hart glanced down some twenty feet. Tremaine and Linnie and…Kilmartin. Even bloody Kilmartin. That smarted.
“Is bloody everyone here?” he asked, crossly.
“Yes.” Confirmation came from Fleur’s cheeky brother, Quillon, three windows down from Fleur.
“No,” Fleur’s voice rose and carried like bells into the night, ushering her family into silence. “Do not listen to him, Henry.”
His pulse knocked within his veins.
“You are missing, Henry.” Then, like an absolution, a benediction, Fleur stretched her long, graceful limb and invited him into her life. Into her family. Into her heart. “But please, do not get killed.”
Stepping aside, she allowed him to launch himself the rest of the way.
He sailed through the window with ease and hit the floor even harder with the same amount of ease.
The air knocked out of him, he stared at the floor for several moments while lights flickered behind his eyes. He had just gotten his world right and rolled himself over when Fleur launched herself where he lay, taking him down a second time.
This time, he welcomed the lights that flickered and the loss of air in his lungs, because she was in his arms and that was all that mattered—the only thing that mattered.
They found each other’s mouths at the same instant. This kiss, not the angry, desperate, confused one in an alcove at a Drury Lane theatre, but a homecoming of two lovers who had finally found their way.
Hart expected to feel horror at how hopelessly she had ruined him. But he didn’t feel ruined. He felt…restored.
When they’d drunk from one another’s mouths and needed air to breathe, Hart rolled onto his side and brought Fleur gently beside him.
They lay there, staring at one another, looking into each other’s eyes. “I have been such an ass,” he said quietly.
“You have.”
“The words I said to you, Fleur. The accusations I made,” His throat buckled, and he squeezed his eyes shut against a fresh onslaught of tears. “Unpardonable.”
“Yes, they were.” She spoke with a quiet admonishment he was deserving of—and so much more.
“A whipping would be too good for me. Your brothers should call me out.”
“Why should my brothers do it, when I’m the one you offended?”
His lips twitched into a small, pained smile.
Fleur propped herself onto an elbow and dropped her head into her hand, bringing their eyes to the same level. “I have decided I shall make you pay a different way, Henry.”
He would do anything. “And how is that?” Crawl across broken glass. Set himself afire. Whatever price she demanded, he would pay, and happily.
“I want you to spend every day of the rest of my life making me obscenely, deliriously happy.”
“Ah, Fleur. I love you,” Hart whispered. “So damned much.” He leaned in to kiss her—
Fleur edged away.
“I love you, too, Henry,” she said admonishingly. “But there is something you are forgetting.”
“Yes, Fleur.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I vow to fill every moment of every day with your happiness, and…”
When he leaned in again, Fleur pulled back. “There is something else.”
His neck went hot. Suddenly more aware of their audience, he dropped his voice lower. “I vow the part you could have ‘done without’ will be magic from this moment forward.”
“Well, not right now. My family is watching.” Fleur patted his arm. “You redeemed yourself tonight.”
Reaching between them, she took his hand. “Consecrate yourself to our happiness.” She placed his palm gently over her rounded belly, where their child lay.
This time, he didn’t fight the tears. He let them fall. He let her see how she had humbled him, and how he no longer felt shame in feeling. All because of her.
“Both your lives,” he corrected.
Fleur smiled, leaning in. “All our lives, Henry. You, me, and our son.”
He yearned for her kiss.
She gave him…a ring.
Hart brought a stunned gaze to Fleur’s twinkling eyes.
His signet.
“You know, you dropped it at Lord Rutland’s,” she said, returning it to his finger. “It’s quite worn. I needed Mr. Rundell’s help to make the thing out. You’ll need it back to pass on to our son.”
“Oh, Fleur,” his voice caught.
And this time, she kissed him, and because he had already vowed to her happiness above everything, he didn’t inform her that she was certainly carrying a spirited, courageous, scandal-seeking lass, who would be just like Fleur.
A daughter just like Fleur?
He groaned.
They were going to be in the brambles.
Hart decided they would handle the ‘brambles’ business when it came; that for now it was best to just focus on kissing his future duchess breathless.
And that’s just what he did.
The End