“The woman you bedded at Rutland’s.”
“I don’t know.”
Tremaine narrowed his eyes. “It’s plausible it was my cousin-in-law.”
Taut and stretched to a breaking point, Hart finally snapped. “You want it to be her because you cannot accept that she is a schemer—”
“Fleur?”
“Who is foisting off someone else’s—”
“As inFleur McQuoid?”
“Your loyalty to that family blinds you from—”
Tremaine reared back and hit him. Not many had the strength needed to bring a man of Hart’s size down. Of a similar stature and carrying muscle from his career at sea, Tremaine wasn’t most men.
With a grunt, Hart hit hard on his arse. He caught his chin in his hand and glared up at his brother.
“Not a word.” The younger man pointed at him, stretched out at his feet. “I think you know what this is about. Your suspicionsof Fleur. Your disdain for women.” He looked Hart hard in the eyes. “Your fear of bastards.”
A tingling dusted Hart’s nape.
He came carefully to his feet.
“Yes, I know about my origins,” Tremaine said. “Do you take me for bloody stupid? Do you think I didn’t have ears when the duke spoke?”
“Ah, God. Jeremy—” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought I protected you—”
The anger left his brother. “Youdidprotect me. You were the one who wasn’t, Hart. You were stuck with Hartwell, and listening to you here today, I don’t know how you can get yourself free of him.”
With a pitying shake of his head, his brother left him there on the floor.
Good. To hell with them. All of them. First, Fleur. Next, Kilmartin. Now his own damned brother.
How swiftly they’d risen to her defense and abandoned him.
And how much Hart wanted them to be right and himself wrong.
Chapter 22
“My soul is dark– Oh! quickly string/ The harp I yet can brook to hear;/ And let thy gentle fingers fling/ Its melting murmurs o’er mine ear.”
My Soul Is Dark
~Lord Byron
The following morning, Fleur received a visit from her cousin Linnie, Jeremy, and Lord Cassian. The two gentlemen—one a longtime friend and fourth brother, the other Henry’s man of affairs—came to Fleur with an offer to help. They urged her to trust them.
Fleur sat off to the side as they animatedly hatched a plan. As she listened, she had been skeptical—at best. But on account of her being heartbroken, the life-draining, soul-crushing type, she agreed to trust them. She loved Henry so much that even with every hurtful charge he’d hurled, she wanted him anyway.
It didn’t matter that Henry had broken her heart. The accusations. She loved him—and love, as all McQuoids knew, was illogical.
Because she knew him. She knew his heart, even if he was determined to prove he didn’t have one.
Back when she was a girl, Arran arrived from one sea voyage with a parrot. Much to the Countess of Abington’s horror—but not surprise—all her children took turns teaching Sir Cursely all manner of inventive words and phrases.
Henry was much like that vibrant green and red, black-beaked bird, uttering years of his father’s deplorable teachings. He would have loathed the comparison.
