So conversational, Fleur could only move her puzzled head side to side. “Kilmartin?”
“I…” She went hot and then cold all over. “I…”I’m going to be ill.“K-Kilmartin.” Her voice climbed to a pitchy octave. “Are you mad?”
He grew contemplative. “I never expectedhewould try to foist his bastard off on me.”
But he had expected Fleur might…
That deafening buzz filled her ears.
“Did the two of you think of making your bastard a duke?” He sounded more curious than enraged. “Kilmartin would know better than anyone just how much the boy would inherit.”
Or girl…
Fleur clutched at her throat. “Why are you saying these things?”
He advanced on her so quickly that she gasped and couldn’t back away.
“Do you know why, Fleur? Because you are a liar, just like every other woman. You believe I don’t know who I took that night? That I am stupid enough to empty my seed into just anyone? I’m meticulous. I used a French letter with my partner.”
A French letter? Her brow puckered. Then she recalled him fumbling between them that night, affixing something, but he’d done it so quickly and returned to caressing her…
“Unfortunately, your lover wasn’t as careful since you’ve been left with a burden to—”
Fleur shot a palm out, catching him hard in the face; her flesh burned and throbbed.
Henry opened his mouth and closed it several times, flexing his jaw, testing out the pain she had caused him.
Good. The lout should hurt.
“I already anticipated how cruel the world would be for my child, but never that his father would be the first to slander him.”
The blood leeched from Henry’s cheeks. Sorrow seized his features and then was gone.
“We are done here, madam.”
Somehow, Fleur found the strength to bring her shoulders back and march toward the door.
He wouldn’t be so kind as to let her off that easily.
“You had been curious to know about my childhood, Fleur. Kilmartin portrayed the previous duke as cruel. But the reality is, he was correct in every lesson he delivered. My mother was a whore. She came to him bearing some other man’s child, and fortunately, she lost that babe. From a real union, I was born. And after that, she went back to her whoring ways with her lover.”
Listening to him talk so, hearing the disdain he carried for women and the respect he had for his father… He had never had a chance. She had just…hoped.
Fleur turned back. “Henry? Did you ever consider the mother you refer to as a whore found love from a man capable of loving her and not some empty ancestral title and the power it brought him?”
He started.
She didn’t remember if he replied. Or if any other words were spoken. Or how she left, or how many steps she had taken before she crashed into a solid wall.
“Woah.” Lord Cassian caught Fleur by her shoulders with a gentleness Henry had lacked.
Henry…
She clamped her lower lip between her teeth.
How was she still standing? How was she holding herself together? “I am afraid you were mistaken about the duke,” she said, thickly. “We both were.”
Lord Cassian’s face darkened. “What—”
