Only Kilmartin would take that as a reason to grin and seat himself in the empty chair next to Tremaine.
“A mistress and a wife, Hart? As in securing both, at the same time?”
“He is nothing if not efficient.” Kilmartin touched his glass to Tremaine’s and drank deep.
“He is nothing if not dead inside.” Tremaine drank, grimaced, and then set his snifter on the edge of Hart’s desk. “Who are the lucky ladies to have earned my brother’saffections?”
“Doesn’t have them,” Kilmartin took it upon himself to share.
He and his brother spoke at the same time.
“Go to hell, Kilmartin.”
“You don’t have them?”
Kilmartin roared his bloody stupid head off.
Tremaine dragged his chair closer to the desk. “You are telling me you are too busy to clear time in your schedule, when you have Kilmartin finding both your wife and mistress.”
“I have the mistress part taken care,” he muttered. His bewitching, uninhibited green-goddess of the gardens.
“Yes, he’s seen to that on his own.”
“Reassuring,” Tremaine said to Kilmartin’s intrusion.
“He’s bedded the lady, but he forgot to learn the lady’s identity before taking off.”
Tremaine went still and then laughed uproariously.
Hart didn’t take either man’s bait. That was the difference between him and them or anyone.
As their amusement ebbed, Hart sharpened his gaze on Tremaine. “Tell him why, Kilmartin.”
His cool command sucked the last of the humor from the air.
Kilmartin hesitated. He shifted in his chair. “I found the duke and informed him of his future wife and sister-in-law’s presence and location at Rutland’s.”
“Your in-laws, Tremaine,” Hart said. “That very family you would still ask me to help.”
In fairness, their brotherhood of three and partnership in business demanded there weren’t any secrets between them.
“Ah, you resented being dragged away from your fun with some tart to find your future wife.”
With every day, Hart’s brother made less and less sense. “Wouldn’tyou?”
“No.”
“Well, that is the difference between us.” One of a very many.
“And here I took yours as resentment at Byron’s cut direct over your treatment of Lady Fleur.”
Hart froze.
“Most would choose the word ‘person,’ but given the empty-headed fluff you keep company with, Hartwell, you likely mean ‘woman.’”
“…I pity your future wife….”
A candidate of which she would never be. He needed to marry his social equal, or otherwise be burned—as he almost had been. Not that she had expressed any interest in the role.