He had taken up a place inside her mind: all of him. Every detail. She fell asleep to the remembrance of his low, rough baritone, as he’d extolled her beauty and spirit and professed his hunger—all while whispering Byron’s breathtaking verse in her ear, against her skin.
“…Oh! she was perfect past all parallel… Of any modern female saint’s comparison…”
Along her shoulder.“…In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her…”
That sensitive place just under the shell of her ear:“…A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded…”
Fleur would awake restless and breathless as she dreamed about the sough of his breath—the faint twinge of tobacco and brandy and so very masculine—as he’d worshipped her with his mouth—and lay there, with sleep eluding her all over again.
“…Like Adam’s recollection of his fall…”
The violent way her mystery sweetheart ripped his gloves off—like he’d die if didn’t touch her with his bare fingers.
“…Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth, Mounting at times to a transparent glow, As if her veins ran lightning…”
Then, with an infinite tenderness, he had drawn her close, so her narrow back lay against a chest so broad and big.
“…Sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone…”
She moaned just remembering.
Or shehad. Her poignant reminiscences still came—and frequently—but now interrupted by another man.
One who, when it came to romance and swoon-worthiness, was as far away as the moon, but when it came to bossy and domineering and arrogant and conceited, he was as close as Hyde Park.
It was really quite vexing. Everyone was so fixated on helping Meghan and the family recover from the scandal while putting on a unified show that Fleur didn’t have any time to sort through her own matters.
And the icing on the plum cake? Her usual lighthearted, raucous family was all on tenterhooks.
A fresh set of stilted laughter swelled from the center of the room.
Fleur winced. Even she, who had paid only half-attention to her lessons on pre-dinner etiquette at formal gatherings, recognized thatno onewas adhering to the room’s symmetry for conversation starters.
Cousin Linnie and Captain Jeremy Tremaine occupied the ivory settee on one side of the long Axminster carpet.
Cousin Meghan and Lord August Culross sat on the adjacent, matching curved-back sofa.
In the middle were the rest of the McQuoids and Smiths—careful not to choose sides—hanging at the center of the rug like a jeu de paume net stretched between the players.
Except for Fleur.
Fleur had settled in at the white Carabba marble fireplace because it was the closest place to the gilt-and-porcelain Sevres clock.Thatway, she could track how much closer she was to this farce ending so she could return to her own more perilous farce.
While Fleur watched from the corner as her family mingled, joked, and chatted, she did her absolute best to not pay attention to the proud, scowling Duke of Hartwell across the way.
Not that he scowled for his close circle, made up of Captain Jeremy, Lords Kilmartin, Alwyn, Beaton, and Linnie—the only McQuoid, in their midst. For them, he was all crooked grins and laughter. It harkened back to Chilton’s auction, before they’d went from bantering partners to bickering rivals, and eventual enemies.
Was it any wonder that with Fleur’s family’s grim showing that she coveted a spot with their jovial circle?
She had arrived this evening, a little bit expecting—worse, God help her, hoping—Hart had finally gotten over the scandal they had brought about with Lord Byron. The problem was he blamed her.
If he hadn’t been such a big dunderhead that day, Fleur would have done a better job of helping the painfully proud gentleman save face. But she had been, as everyone else, so trapped in Lord Byron’s aura that she hadn’t found her tongue fast enough. By the time she had, the damage had been done.
Fleur’s ears picked up her cousin Linnie’s murmuring. Whatever she said roused the collection of loyal Tremaines to a fresh bout of levity—it only heightened the disparity between Fleur’s family and theirs.
For the thousandth and one or so times that evening, Fleur consulted the time. The night hadn’t even begun, and it was already never-ending.
She inched in and peered at the clock handles. Yes, the second hand was moving.
