A quiet fell. Lady Angela’s flawless voice soared.
“Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever…!”
“Do you believe he’s horrified that his future bride is performing a ballad by Scotland’s national poet?” Fleur didn’t even bother to keep the bitterness from her question.
And as if Henry heard it, he stiffened and cast a quick glance back.
For a moment, she felt as if their gazes locked, and he saw all the way through her, to the secret she alone carried about them.
“Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him…?”
But that was foolish, wistful thinking. His attention had already returned to Lady Angela’s performance.
“Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me…”
Fleur didn’t need to be here. Even more, she did not want to be here. Suddenly, she realized the preposterousness of worrying about making a bigger scandal for her family by not attending Henry’s soiree. Meanwhile, she was carrying the host’s bastard babe.
“Had we never lov’d sae kindly,
Had we never lov’d sae blindly…”
Fleur fought back a giggle—and failed.
“Never met—or never parted—
We had ne’er been broken-hearted…”
And before she burst out laughing completely this time, Fleur edged out of the Music Room. Clamping her hands over her mouth, she ran off. She raced past Henry’s elite golden-uniformed footmen, lining halls that went on forever. Her breathing came in short, ragged spurts until her lungs ached and her side hurt. Until the exertion became too much.
Fleur collapsed against the panel. With unsteady hands, she scrabbled at the handle and let herself inside. Shoving the door closed hard behind her, she slumped against the sturdy oak door and laughed at the utter ridiculousness of it all.
But even she heard the fragile, fraying thread by which she hung, and then naturally it snapped. Through her misery, the hall of overbearing, austere, regal, almost-royal Tremaine ancestors all peered down the lengths of patrician noses at her. Their glacial gazes shouted through the centuries: you are unworthy of a Hartwell. He deserves better. He will have better.
Fleur buried her face behind her hands. A sob ripped from her throat.
How could she survive this?
Any of it.
She would bear Henry a child, while another woman, an honorable, respectable one whom he could actually respect and admire, would share his name and his bed and life.
Fleur hugged herself and cried until she had nothing left to cry, and then breathed deeply.
It was enough. She brushed at her cheeks. Tears would solve nothing. As Mary had pointed out, Fleur needed to form a plan…for her future. For her and Henry’s child.
Rap-Rap-Rap.
Heart beating fast, she turned to the knocking.
As only the owner of this almost-castle in London could, the person on the other side pressed the handle without permission. Fleur’s breath faltered.Henry.
The moment she turned, her enthusiasm drained away. “Oh.”