“Icause problems foryou?”
“Yes! Here.” She slashed her hand with a violence, clipping his chest. “LordRutland’s. A-and then you ruined everything at Lord and Lady Chilton’s auction.”
There would come a time he would acknowledge that slight quiver. But this was not that moment.
He laughed in her face. “I bloody saved you from yourself.”
“Saved me from myself?” she cried a second time. “I neither want nor need saving. I wish to live my own life, free of bother from you.”
Free of bother fromhim? Some unidentifiable emotions blazed away all amusement.
Hart clapped his hands at her shoulders. The feel of her flesh, soft as satin, infuriated him. Her words. Her defiant gaze all pushed him to madness. “You think you’re any match for the devils out there?” A curtain of black fell across his vision. “You’ve been lucky before now, and all because of me.”
She gasped and bucked against his touch. “You swell-headed, pompous pig!”
Unbeknownst to him, Hart’s grip had grown tighter upon her. He made himself unclench, but could not bring himself to release her.
“The men in your life have done you no favors,” he delighted in informing her. “Putting cake-like thoughts in your head thatyou are somehow equipped to deal with the rakes, blackguards, and scoundrels who would happily ruin you.”
“You would be familiar with the ways of fiendish gentlemen.”
“The hell I am!” he barked like a child. Curse her. “I am one of just a few decent, honorable fellows.”
“Yes,” Fleur drawled. “it sounds, looks, and”—she gave his hands that still held her, a wry look—“feels that way.”
He released her.
The confounded minx smiled.
She bloody smiled, confoundinghim!
That bloody, blasted, bewitching smile that had slayed Byron and left her a litter of suitors, she would put on Hart. Thought she could reduce him to one of her bloody lackeys who fought to fetch her a tepid lemonade, did she?
“I am not one of your conquests, Lady Fleur.” He kept his tones low.
“Of course not.”
The sprite’s sparkle in her eyes danced.
Hart didn’t know what was coming, only that when it did, it would enrage—she didn’t disappoint.
“That would mean I want to be conquered byyou, Hart.”
Which meant she wanted to be conquered by others…
Her indifference mocked Hart’s uncontrollable lust and his desire to conquerher.
If he were sensible, he’d remind himself she sought a reaction. From the very beginning, she had turned him into a blithering idiot too many times. And she did so with the kind of relish normal women expressed at receiving exorbitantly priced jewels. She wanted him to break.
The smug satisfaction in her eyes was all that kept him from marching around the store and slamming his fists through the crystal cases as he went.
Hartwell caught the (surprisingly) strong minx by her arms again, dragged her up to his toes, and snarled like the beast she made him. “Listen here, you flea-sized termagant with ridiculous corkscrew curls, I have had about all I can bloody take of you.”
“My curls are not ridiculous,” she raged.
Having deprived Fleur of her makeshift mallet, he knew the lady’s next plan of attack. He caught the lady’s left knee before it collided with his ancestral jewels.
Fire flashed so bright in her eyes, it was a wonder they both didn’t go up in smoke.
