Hart dragged both unsteady hands through his hair.
He called to her just as she arrived at the door.
“Fleur?”
She stilled with her fingers on the press-handle. The moon’s light threw an ethereal glow along the lady’s narrow shoulders and played off the proud, queen-like stretch of her neck.
Hart held himself tight.
“Are you all right?” he finally asked, wishing he had asked the minute he walked outside.
Hart dug his nails into his palms. He thought she would leave and knew, for his churlish behavior, she very wellshould.
Her nod came hesitantly, and she didn’t leave.
Despite him being an utter cad, she wanted to stay, but she was too proud to do so without him giving her a reason—as was her right.
She didn’t tolerate his insufferableness the way everyone else did, and perhaps that was why he hungered forhercompany.
“I am sorry,” he murmured gently.
It was the first time in his life that he had ever spoken those three words. Dukes didn’t apologize. They were infallible. Incapable of wrong, and only capable of being wronged by one’s inferiors, had been such a lesson or another that the late duke had imparted.
At this moment, as Fleur let her hands fall to her side and faced him, Hart realized his father had been wrong. Hart didn’t feel weaker for expressing remorse. He experienced a sense of greatness and relief—his sincere apology had kept Fleur with him.
“Truce?”
“Are we at war, Henry?” Fleur canted her head. Her gold curls bounced on her shoulders.
“Sometimes it feels that way.”
“Not to me. You are the one who cannot decide whether you hate or tolerate me.”
He frowned. “I don’t merely tolerate you, Fleur. Ilikeyou.”
And there it was. He liked a woman—this woman. His need for her was not purely sexual attraction. He enjoyed being in her company, and that went against the first and most important lesson the previous Duke of Hartwell beat into him.
“Youlike me?” Letting out a soft, sad little laugh, Fleur shook her head. “Then I should hate to see how you are with someone you don’t like.”
Her barbed lance struck—as it should.
Fleur wandered along the terrace and stopped at the seat she previously occupied with Kilmartin. She stared out.
Hart ran his gaze across her somber figure. Had Kilmartin awaited an invitation or swept over as if it was his right, a rightthat didn’t belong to Kilmartin or any bloody man but Hart, goddamn it.
When he joined her, Fleur gave no indication she registered his presence.
With her stare trained outward, he took in the other details of her appearance, details he formerly overlooked.
Impeccably beautiful, as she always was, he now saw the dark circles under her beguiling eyes. They made the big, greenish-brown pools a stark shade within a wan face. Her exquisitely crafted features were stretched and strained.
A cold knot formed in his gut.
“Fleur?”
She looked at him. Those wrinkles of sadness at the corners of her eyes deepened.
“Areyou all right?”
