“Yes, it would…for a man who believes in love and affection, which you do not. It wouldn’t be fair to the young lady, giving her something you don’t feel or mean.”
Ah, Christ. Something dangerously close to sorrow pulsed in his chest, unmistakably near his heart….
“Fra queste sacre mura,
Porto un inferno nel mio petto.”
Within these sacred walls, I carry a living hell within my breast.
At his side, Lady Angela murmured. “Do you enjoy the theatre, Your Grace?”
“No.”
I enjoy everything when I’m with F…
As Fleur reclined, Kilmartin hovered closer.
“Ah! Che sarà di me? Ah!”
What shall become of me?
It was to be expected. The other man had been anything but discreet in his admiration for the lady.
“Se cedo all’amore, son perduta.”
If I surrender to love, I am lost.
Unable to take in any more, he looked openly at his brother and sister-in-law. The ridiculously besotted couple who were so lost in each other, they didn’t see Hart sitting there, all alone—but for the exception of the Duke and Duchess of Talbert, who were up to their own machinations behind him, and Lady Angela.
Seated next to Tremaine’s theatre box—a bloody box Hart helped his brother obtain—Oh, it was a flawless view, all right. Hart had direct line access to Fleur and her infuriatingly good-looking companion behind her.
He willed Tremaine and Linnie to look so he could burn them to ashes with a glare.
Hart had dedicated his life to his younger brother, and this was the bloody thanks he got.
Not that he’d expected anything in return.
But he, at the absolute minimum, hadn’t expected his brother would bloody betray him, and in this spectacularly public way.
Granted, Kilmartin was Tremaine’s quartermaster and the men had gone to war together—literally and figuratively—but that didn’t mean Hart and Kilmartin weren’t bonded in the same…
Polite business affairs didn’t trump comrades in arms.
Finally, Tremaine looked over. He said something to Linnie. The couple turned and smiled; Tremaine inclined his head. Linnie gave a jaunty wave.
And Hart was forgotten, left staring at Fleur and Kilmartin.
Kilmartin hadn’t stopped chatting her ears off. Instead of watching the show, he whispered at her nape, in a way Hart knew—because they had gone wenching enough—was deliberate.
The lean-around.
It even had a blasted name of its own.
Kilmartin would come up behind his lovers, lean down enough to avail himself of a better view of the crevice between her breasts, and whisper in a way that forced her to look up.
But goddamn it, this was Fleur.
And Fleur, whom just two days earlier, Hart had left her with stricken eyes and pale cheeks, was smiling and laughing—for the other man.