“Bloody hell. Where is your shirt, big brother?”
Cursing, Hart glanced down some twenty feet. Tremaine and Linnie and…Kilmartin. Even bloody Kilmartin. That smarted.
“Is bloody everyone here?” he asked, crossly.
“Yes.” Confirmation came from Fleur’s cheeky brother, Quillon, three windows down from Fleur.
“No,” Fleur’s voice rose and carried like bells into the night, ushering her family into silence. “Do not listen to him, Henry.”
His pulse knocked within his veins.
“Youare missing, Henry.” Then, like an absolution, a benediction, Fleur stretched her long, graceful limb and invited him into her life. Into her family. Into her heart. “But please, do not get killed.”
Stepping aside, she allowed him to launch himself the rest of the way.
He sailed through the window with ease and hit the floor even harder with the same amount of ease.
The air knocked out of him, he stared at the floor for several moments while lights flickered behind his eyes. He hadjust gotten his world right and rolled himself over when Fleur launched herself where he lay, taking him down a second time.
This time, he welcomed the lights that flickered and the loss of air in his lungs, because she was in his arms and that was all that mattered—the only thing that mattered.
They found each other’s mouths at the same instant. This kiss, not the angry, desperate, confused one in an alcove at a Drury Lane theatre, but a homecoming of two lovers who had finally found their way.
Hart expected to feel horror at how hopelessly she had ruined him. But he didn’t feel ruined. He felt…restored.
When they’d drunk from one another’s mouths and needed air to breathe, Hart rolled onto his side and brought Fleur gently beside him.
They lay there, staring at one another, looking into each other’s eyes. “I have been such an ass,” he said quietly.
“You have.”
“The words I said to you, Fleur. The accusations I made,” His throat buckled, and he squeezed his eyes shut against a fresh onslaught of tears. “Unpardonable.”
“Yes, they were.” She spoke with a quiet admonishment he was deserving of—and so much more.
“A whipping would be too good for me. Your brothers should call me out.”
“Why should my brothers do it, when I’m the one you offended?”
His lips twitched into a small, pained smile.
Fleur propped herself onto an elbow and dropped her head into her hand, bringing their eyes to the same level. “I have decided I shall make you pay a different way, Henry.”
He would do anything. “And how is that?” Crawl across broken glass. Set himself afire. Whatever price she demanded, he would pay, and happily.
“I want you to spend every day of the rest of my life making me obscenely, deliriously happy.”
“Ah, Fleur. I love you,” Hart whispered. “So damned much.” He leaned in to kiss her—
Fleur edged away.
“I love you, too, Henry,” she said admonishingly. “But there is something you are forgetting.”
“Yes, Fleur.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I vow to fill every moment of every day with your happiness, and…”
When he leaned in again, Fleur pulled back. “There is something else.”
His neck went hot. Suddenly more aware of their audience, he dropped his voice lower. “I vow the part you could have ‘done without’ will be magic from this moment forward.”
