Using the lead windowpane as a reflection glass, Fleur adjusted her bonnet. She had just refinished retying the pretty purple ribbons under her chin when she neared Mr. Rundell’s.
With several delivery carriages lined along the street, her driver rolled as close as he could to the heavy, black-painted mahogany single-paneled door of 32 Ludgate Hill. After they came to a full stop, he helped Fleur down.
“Please wait for me,” she said, placing coins in his hand. If anyone could identify a signet ring, it was the jewelers, Mister Philip Rundell and Mister John Bridge. “This will not take long.”
Her driver pocketed his money and bowed. “Very well, ma’am.”
Fleur paused to let a big-boned drayman lead his horse past and then picked her away across the street.
Her uncommonly bad humor this morning persisted.
Hartwell.
Hartlessor Hartbadwould be a far more apt title for the pompous curmudgeon, Fleur seethed inwardly.
She did not feel the least bit guilty about eavesdropping on the duke’s exchange with Jeremy. For Fleur, eavesdropping was a far lesser crime than speaking unkind words. “Not whorish and unseemly,” he had said. Men and women were held to different standards, rules, and expectations.
She had believed dukes were pillars of politeness. Perhaps they simply believed themselves above the rest. Respecting others mattered little as long as they were properly fawned on, about, and over.
“Abominable family,” she said as she crossed the street. He deserved a good clouting and oh, how Fleur wanted to be the one doing the clouting. “I’ll show him abominable.”
A boy in the bow-front windows was just finishing bringing a shutter all the way up. He happened to look at Fleur as she crossed Bond Street, talking to herself.
The lad flared his brows and scampered away from those divided panes.
No doubt, the boy ran to tell the jewelers that a madwoman was approaching and to hide the jewels. Let them hide them. The last thing she wanted was a fancy bauble. Paste ones glittered just as prettily.
She was not cracked in the head.
She wanted to crack someone’s head.
That was completely different.
Embracing a healthy bloodlust, Fleur swung her lavender reticule like a club at her side as she walked.If only I could knock Hartwell over his arrogant head.
Just the thought of braining Hartwell brought Fleur immense satisfaction. Her anger curved her lips into a terrifyingsmile, visible in those same front windows. Oh, if the lad saw that, he’d surely bolt for a constable instead of his employers.
Fleur reached the narrow, arched portico and stopped under the stone overhang.
The infuriatingly accurate answer was everything.
She loathed Hartwell all the more because he had pricked at her own self-loathing. To have had a lover and not even know his name? Tears threatened and she blinked them back. Instead, she fed on anger.
If Hartwell learned her sordid secret, he would view her the same way he would a trollop. It didn’t matter that gentlemen everywhere, including him, bandied paramours about. And she hated herself for caring about his ill opinion.
If looks could sear, she would have burned a hole big enough through the front of Rundell and Bridge’s imposing door for Fleur to step through.
Let her just hope that when she presented her recently acquired signet ring for identification, she found her gentleman to be a favorable fellow and not a bloody, self-righteous prig.
Fleur pressed the brass handle and let herself inside a dark-wooded room even narrower than the columned entrance, and then she reached the shop floor and was surprised into forgetting Hartwell. At least for the moment.
Maybe they had hidden the wares in anticipation of her arrival. She had expected glass cases to be crammed with diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and too many gemstones to name. But they weren’t.
A mix of mahogany and crystal cases, none even close to full, lined the walls and sat near empty. The select pieces displayed plainly showed Rundell and Bridge didn’t need flashiness; luxury shone in those sparing jewels.
Fleur loosened her long bonnet ribbons and ventured deeper inside.
She admitted she had been wrong—jewels did dazzle more brightly than pasted gems.
