“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.
