“He did not force me,” she said quietly. “Yes, I was caught up in the moment, but it was my choice, and I enjoyed all of it.”
She was trying to kill him. Or maybe she was trying to get him to murder the fiend. If only Fleur knew, she didn’t have to try. The only way this nightmare telling ended was with the gentleman dead and ruined in all the ways a man could be ruined.
Fleur grimaced. “That is, all except for the…the part where…you know,”
Christ. He did know. And wished he didn’t.
“I could have done withoutthatpart.”
A man who’d taken a debutante’s innocence wouldn’t have taken his time as he should, as the lady’s tender state required.
Hart was going to be ill.
Fleur went silent; this one was more complete and whole, belonging to a woman who had finished her tale.
Restless, needing to move, but afraid he would snap if he did, Hart raked a fist through his hair.
She insisted they were friends, and the ease with which he spoke to her and she to him made her feel very much like one. But he didn’t speak about anything more than surface-levelthings, moments, or emotions. Or he hadn’t. Gentlemen didn’t waste time with all that. Now, he realized that they didn’t know how. Here and now, he sought to be the friend she’d declared him to be.
He let the quiet go on too long.
She folded her arms close in a sad, lonely-looking embrace. “You probably believe—”
Hart cut in. “What I believe is that there is a man out there in desperate need of killing.”
A tender smile teased the corners of her mouth. She thought he was jesting.
She had no idea of the unholy, blistering rage pumping through his veins, fast as venom spreads, and hot as fire.
“Why are you being so nice, Henry?”
Fleur had expected his condemnation and censure—as she should. The lessons his late sire tirelessly imparted, pointed at this woman, in this very moment, and said:see, Hart. She is one of the spirited chits I warned you of. The only thing an adventurous, bold lady was fit for was the role of mistress, and unworthy of the ducal bed.
With a calm he didn’t feel, Hart rested his palms just under her shoulders. He gently massaged the gooseflesh from Fleur’s arms. “You did nothing wrong, Fleur.”
She needed to hear that. Hart willed her to believe it.
A muscle rolled along his jaw. “He took advantage of you, Fleur. You have no reason to feel guilty.”
Her whispery-soft smile fell; the emptiness there brought his hands to an accidental stop.
“Would you feel that same way if I told you I do not feel guilty?”
Hart’s muscles locked tight; his insides twisting and knotting up. She could have sliced him clear through, and it wouldn’t have felt…like…like…whatever the hell this was.
“I didn’t feel regret,” she spoke quietly. Until now.
Did that hang in the air between them, because he wanted them to be the words she held back?
All Hart could say with any certainty here, as a light breeze shifted the charged air around them, was how he felt—which had always taken precedence—came a distant second.
As if drained of life, Fleur melted onto the edge of a stone bench.
Every lesson drilled into Hart said never to get caught with a debutante, or any unmarried lady, for that matter, shouted for him to run.
If he were discovered alone with her, he would need to marry her, a woman who by her own admission was already ruined.
She sneaked a peek from the corner of her eye—to see if he was still there. Or maybe it was to gauge his reaction.
