“How could I ever forget, little brother? I’m the one who put forward the match, as a way to exact revenge and block an alliance between the McQuoids and Culross.”Curse me to perdition.“I failed to consider you would get all”—Hart slashed a hand at the air—“tangled up emotionally.”
What else should he have expected? Tremaine was the same hot-headed, passionate son of their whore mother.
“I believe the word you are looking for is love, big brother.”
“Actually, it is not. You know my feelings on that sentiment. You carried them yourself not very long ago.”
With a stupid smile reserved for poets and dreamers, Tremaine threw his arms wide. “Ah, but I’ve been saved by love.”
“Destroyed by it, more like.” Hart reached for the pen he had set down when Tremaine arrived for this meeting. “One of us has not forgotten that family you are so loyal to you attempted to secret away your wife, and the Earl of Culross, so she could live as the man’s whore.”
That reminder had the intended effect.
Blistering hate blazed from his brother’s narrowed gaze. Their mother’s eyes, the duke insisted. Hart had been favorably born with the Hartwell browns. But Tremaine had always been as hopeless as their weak mother, unable to gird his temper, or his emotions.
“They also got Lady Tremaine caught in a sea-fight that gives her nightmares still.” Hart dragged forth his leather journal and dipped his pen into his inkwell. “But yes, do tell me, little brother, about this great alliance.”
His brother popped to his feet and headed for the sideboard stationed along the northern wall. While he fetched a decanter of brandy, the previous Duke of Hartwell’s likeness in the gilded frame above sneered down at the man who had been his son in name only.
The click-clack of his pen while he made annotations in his journal collided with the steady stream of Tremaine’s pour.
He handed a glass to Kilmartin, and then offered the other to Hart.
Hart waved it off.
“I am not suggesting you marry one of their girls, Hart,” Tremaine said, after he set the bottle down.
“Thistime,” Kilmartin drawled.
Tremaine lifted another finger, earning a big guffaw from their shared friend.
“I’m talking about a handful of events we both make appearances at.” Brandy in hand, Tremaine returned and reclaimed his seat. “A couple of familial dinners to show thereare no hard feelings over the end of your betrothal to Miss McQuoid-Smith.”
“Hard feelings?” He snorted. “Not only does the chit come from an undesirable family, I discovered my betrothed sneaked off to Rutland’s affair, I had to attend the bloody thing and then fetch the chit before she was discovered.”
Granted, on his way to find her, he had also stumbled upon an enchanting creature, his very own masked Green Rose in the flesh. His body grew hot at the memory of that entirely too-quick joining and the elusive lady he still searched for.
Tremaine gave his snifter a smooth swirl. “You are such a prig, Hart, begrudging a lady for a night of fun.”
“Ensuring my future duchess doesn’t come to me bearing some other man’s babe.”
Hart kept writing. “The fact she let herself be carried off and fell for her abductor, Culross, the same man responsible for Lady Tremaine’s trials is unpardonable. In the end, I was spared.”
His brother laughed good-naturedly. “God, you’re a bastard, Hart.”
From the corner, Kilmartin lifted his glass. “Will toast that.”
They were all bastards…of different sorts.
Hart added another title to Kilmartin’s earlier list.
“What is the business that has my brother fit to be tied?” Tremaine settled into his seat, looped his ankle across his opposite knee, and made it clear he was there for the duration.
“None of your—”
“A mistress and wife,” Kilmartin supplied.
Hart scowled at his man-of-affairs.
