“My, someone is in a foul mood,big brother.” Tremaine greeted him with an infuriating amount of jollity.
Hart cursed a second time.
“Case in point,” Tremaine drawled.
From the edge of his vision, Hart caught Tremaine looking to Kilmartin for an explanation. From thefrontof his vision, he stared in annoyance at the throng around her.
“Your brother’s maudlin,” Kilmartin said.
“Hartis?”
“I am most certainly not.” Moody. He wanted to punch a pillar and growl like a bear, but he was definitelynotone of those pathetic fools who got all gloomy.
God spare him from ever becoming someone to make such a fool of himself as those drooling, leering goons.
A McQuoid as a Diamond. Even the idea of it was bloody laughable, and yet there could be no doubting that those curls he had teased her over fit her as an ethereal queen’s crown. Her figure that he’d once taken as shapeless had, in a short span, developed a mature fullness in all the places that mattered—her lush bustline. Her gently rounding hips.
Just then, Fleur folded her arms and shook her head.
She had finally shut them down.
It didn’t matter.
From across the ballroom, Hart contemplated separating the heads of Fleur’s suitors from their bodies. Then, because it made him feel better, he put the cads in order of their execution.
It didn’t actually make him feel better.
Each instinct raged to shield the wild, reckless girl from those leches.
His jaw flexed.
She was no girl. She was a full-bodied, breathtakingly beautiful woman.
Hart cursed her useless family. One could combine however many dozens of the McQuoids there were and not assemble a single brain from the lot of them. The same protective bent he’d had—and still did—for his brother had extended for the littlehellion. Two people he needed to look after were the last thing he needed.
Fleur looked his way. Finally.
When their eyes met, hers lit, and he found himself a lot less cross.
Not that he truly cared if she noticed him. But if she was going to lectureHartabout being a good friend, the very least she could do was recognize his presence—the same way he had been doing forher, for the better part of the evening.
The hoyden gave him a scandalous wave, because what else would she do? Fleur McQuoid couldn’t do anything without creating a scandal in her wake. And he naturally smiled, because her behavior was just that ridiculous.
Hart inclined his head in a discreet and actually appropriate recognition.
Not that the lady noted.
Markham had demanded her attention.
Hart swallowed down the rest of his drink.
Conveniently, he did so the precise moment that same efficient servant came carrying a drink to Tremaine.
Hart slammed his flute down and cut in front of his brother for his third. Or was it his fourth? But who was counting. Certainly not him.
“Has my big brother been this cross all night, Kilmartin?”
“On the contrary,” Kilmartin said, folding his arms at his chest, his flute dangled between his fingers. “This was the first smile I saw from him the whole night.”
