All Fleur’s resolve, hope, and optimism vanished in an instant, replaced suddenly by anxiety as Henry extended his arm and urged her ahead.
He didn’t walk next to her. Instead, he marched her ahead, like a shepherd guiding a recalcitrant child he had no time or patience for.
Stop it. You’re being irrational.
He was simply being formal.
Whatever row she came upon with him and Lord Cassian had been between them. The business Henry’s man-of-affairs had been attending was the source of their quarrel. Why should it have anything to do with Fleur?
It really had been irrational to believe it had to do with her. Frustration melted into embarrassment; her emotions were tangled and difficult to name.
In fact, by the time she arrived in the Portrait Hall and Henry shut the door with a firm click behind them, Fleur had already composed herself as she faced him.
“I wanted—”
The sight of Henry lounging against the strong oak panel, his enormous arms folded across his enormous chest, froze the words on her tongue.
She stared unblinking at his glorious frame. A tender emotion choked her, making it hard to swallow. She had wanted it to be him. So badly, she had wanted that stranger—laughing and discussing poetry and books—to be this man.
Now she wondered that she had been so blind. How had she failed to see that the warrior’s physique of her lover could belong to this man and this man only?
Henry’s impervious voice penetrated her sigh-worthy musings. “You were saying?”
Fleur frowned. “You are upset.”
He raised a frosty, ducal eyebrow. “What gave you that impression?”
“You’re not smiling and sound like a bear, and you were putting your hands on Lord Cassian when I came upon you. Oh, and I also heard you shouting,” Fleur replied, ticking off her observations.
Fleur had forgotten how easy it was to disarm him.
He steadied himself and asked evenly, “What reasons would I have to be upset?”
She had forgotten how proud he was. It also provided her a window to explain everything. “I failed to arrive at your affair. There will be gossip.”
“I’m not upset, madam. I do not get upset. I’m annoyed that you keep creating little scandals around me. I’m annoyed you’ve called me away from my event,” Henry replied, his voice edged with annoyance.
Fleur’s voice quaked as she asked, “And Lady Angela?” Bitterness crept in despite herself.
His lack of a denial was a confirmation.
Anguish knotted deep inside her, pushing away the fleeting confidence she had relied on yesterday. What had become of yesterday’s avenger? Where was the man who held her close and pledged to help?
Head and heart equally heavy, Fleur turned around slowly, passing sorrowful eyes around the room as she did. She noted the Hartwell duchesses through time. All of them regal. All of them pure. All of them perfect like Lady Angela.
“…You need to tell him, Lady Fleur. If you don’t, you will regret it, and I have known Hart long enough to promise you, he will too…”
Fleur was beginning to think Lord Cassian didn’t know the Duke of Hartwell as well as he claimed…
This was futile…
It is only futile if you let it be.
Fleur didn’t realize she’d done a full circle until she came back around and faced Henry.
“There is something you wanted from me, Fleur?”
She stared unblinkingly at this big, proud, powerful man before her.
