“Just give me the chap’s blasted name.”
“Why do you care?” She sounded genuinely confused and something else, something he couldn’t identify or name.
The hell he would be turned inside out.
“I thought you should know why, Fleur,” he spoke quietly.
Her eyes widened a fraction. She shook her head.
“We are friends.” She called them that. As for Hart, he had kinder rivals.
He curved his mouth into afriendlysmile and held his palm out for a second time. “Now dance with me.”Damn it.
Except that she ignored his handa second time. She kept them on display. Nor did it feel liketheywere on display, but rather the whole Town gawked solely at Hart. And the longer they squared off, with her defiantly ignoring his hand, the wider the stares got, and a trembling deep inside took hold. People knew better than to make Hart look like a fool. This woman, her family, they made him fodder for gossip.
He was at her mercy, and he cursed her to hell for her power over him in this moment.
Chapter 13
“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”
~Lord Byron
When she was a girl, Fleur scaled an old, soaring oak to follow her elder siblings. She climbed with the speed and agility of a cat—she still could and, on occasion,did. About six feet high, she lost her footing and fell to the thick bed of mud below. Screaming the whole way, Fleur discovered something peculiar about time: a few seconds passed in a blink, but an eternity’s worth of thoughts and movements could fit within a flash.
In this instant, with Hart’s hand held commandingly out, and Cassia and Nathan’s guests watching, time’s march followed that otherworldly continuum.
Fleur didn’t want to dance for a host of reasons: Her head was befogged. Her stomach unsettled. She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry, just that she had the compulsion to do both, and that she couldn’t understand why.
And Hart made it all too easy to decline. With his features carved into an expression of tolerant indulgence, he conveyed to the world that his and hers was a friendly game and a secret. He set the narrative, controlled it, and manipulated it to his favor. Later, she would acknowledge it was as much for Fleur as for him.
But there was one reason she placed her palm in his and allowed him to escort her onto the dancefloor.
The vulnerability that she alone could see glittering in his eyes. She had a glimpse of who this proud, powerful man was beneath his hard exterior, and she wanted to know what else he kept buried, and why he hid who he was, even from himself.
Well, that, and the fact that she wanted to go with him.
Stupid, stupid girl.
Henry settled a powerful hand at her waist. His hold carried the possessiveness of a man who didn’t ask but claimed. The primality of it clashed with his unflinching ducal demeanor. The contrast rendered her breathless—and, worse,shamefullyhungry.
The set began with a sparkling explosion of music.
Fleur used to laugh at her stodgy parents and their friends for calling the waltz forbidden. She had vowed never to be so prim when she wastheirage.
Now, as Henry guided her in sweeping, dizzying circles, she understood.
Fleur’s eyes slid briefly shut.
Did he feel the way his touch made her tremble? Could he know, since they parted at Rundell and Bridge’s, she had dreamed and thought only of his embrace? Not another man’s. His.
“You stubborn minx,” he spoke quietly; his soft, tender tones turned his admonishment into an endearment. “I thought you intended to say no.”
Had he thought? Or feared?
She had fast learned the layers and levels of vulnerability to this man.
“I wanted to,” she confessed, as he swept her through another turn.
