He made the mistake of checking on Fleur. She smiled, but even across the room, he caught the tension at the corners of her mouth. Fleur’s dance with Markham had left bright enchanting red circles across her delicate cheeks. But beyond that splash of color, her face was a shade of white he’d never believed her olive-kissed skin could manage.
As for Markham. Older, more mature, and more experienced, and damned good-looking in the way fellows went, Lord Markham had planted himself at Fleur’s right shoulder, like a damned centurion guard, and effortlessly dispatched would-be rivals with a single glance.
Hart bared his teeth.
Kilmartin offered his flute.
Locking his jaw, Hart snatched it quickly and took an even quicker sip.
While Kilmartin motioned for another, Hart downed the contents of his in a single swallow. Placing the glass on the server’s tray, he grabbed himself another.
This sip he took befitted a man of his reserve. “See, that is something a friend would do,” Hart pointed out.
“Carry a silver tray and serve you drinks?”
He went hot under the collar. “No.”
“Steal a fellow’s spirits?”
“Share a drink,” Hart shot back.
He noticed Kilmartin’s amusement too late.
“Forget it.” He tossed back his second.
Damn the infernal minx who’d crawled her way inside his head and stayed. Fleur had laid rest to the notion of a wallflower’s corner. She sat alongside those lesser beauties and brought a gaggle of gentlemen in for her rowdy party.
At present, Markham leaned behind Fleur’s rope-backed, armless chair and forced her to look up. The lady caught sight of the good-looking rogue over her.
Like a gothic novel villain, Hart fought to keep from rubbing his hands in gleeful anticipation of her fiery outburst—that never came.
The big-curled minx flashed a damned dazzling white smile that brightened the bloody room, atMarkham.
And here, he had credited her as being clever.
Kilmartin rescued Hart’s empty flute and slipped him a new one.
Fleur had told Hart he had no friends. If she looked his way even once, she would have seen Kilmartin refilling Hart, right on cue.
This time, a gentleman braved Markham’s wrath—Lord Bradburn. Younger than the other gentleman by at least a decade, but undaunted.
Such was the effect Fleur had on men.
She said something to Bradburn and then offered the cad her fan.
Bradburn accepted Fleur’s pencil. As he wrote onto the silly frippery, the gaggle around her oohed like they’d witnessed the first fire being built.
What the hell was she doing?
Pandemonium broke out around Fleur. Her aspiring suitors made a dash to claim her pencil, and then they were allsigningthe bloody thing.
“Clearly, I’m your friend,” Kilmartin said.
“Took you long enough to answer.”
Someone stepped between Hart and Fleur.
Hart cursed.
