“Linnie sent me to look for you,” Tremaine said, as Kilmartin filed past. “Your absence has been noted and—”
“More reason to return as swiftly as possible.”
When he got to the door, Tremaine shut the door and blocked him from leaving.
“And I was going to say this is what I find? I overhear Kilmartin resigning, and you think we’ll just carry on.”
His brother’s expression asked if Hart was mad.
That’s precisely what he was. Mad for a maddening bundle of sass and spirit.
Tremaine lifted his eyebrow.
“I’m not discussing Kilmartin.”
“The hell you aren’t. He is our best friend and my quartermaster. I trust him with my life.”
“Would you still trust him if you found he’s been relating tales about my history with someone?”
That brought Tremaine to a standstill. “Who has he been speaking to?”
Hart rubbed the back of his very tense neck and muttered to himself.
“Who?” Tremaine strained closer. “Because it sounded like you said—”
“Fleur McQuoid,” he gritted out.
“That’s what I thought I heard.”
“It’s because you did.”
“Oh.” Confusion wreathed his younger brother’s countenance. “You made it out as though Kilmartin was speaking ill to an outsider. The McQuoids are family.”
Family.
Just weeks ago, he would have chewed his brother’s head off for ever daring to suggest that family was in any way like them.
“…You knew your household was devoid of laughter. You couldn’t have it for yourself, so you ensured Jeremy would—even if it meant you were left behind. My family should have welcomed you as they did Jeremy…”
Even as he berated and shamed her, she grieved for what he—as a boy—never knew he missed. Worse, he had betrayed her confidence. Intentional or not, the betrayal was profound and unpardonable.
Kilmartin would never tarnish a lady’s name. With his devotion to Fleur, he’d likely offer marriage.
A grumble rolled in the bellows of his being.
“Hart?” Tremaine’s quiet interruption broke into his musings. “What is it?”
He ran a tired hand down his face. Hart had no place to speak another word of what Fleur confided, but he was lost.
“…There is so much to say, I don’t even know where to start…”
And so Hart talked. And he talked.
When he finished, silence met his telling. Not mere silence. There in the charged air an accusatory, condemning one. And worse, in his always adoring brother’s eyes.
Mottled color splotched Tremaine’s cheeks. “Who was the woman?”
Henry frowned.
