Her stomach flipped. She didn’t want to discuss—to discuss meant the end of this, of them.
“Please, sit,” she said gesturing towards the armchair, but instead of sitting there, he took her by the hand and led her to the sofa.
When they sat down, he didn’t relinquish her hand.
She looked into his face and saw consternation there, as if he was uncertain of how to begin. She knew she should stop him from speaking, but she wanted so very much to hear what he had to say—what it would sound like if they had a happy ending.
“Catherine. I must first say what I should have said long ago. I was selfish and vain. I should have never let the past stand in the way of my feelings for you.”
He touched her face.
“I love you. I will always love you. Since that night in the Tremberley gardens, since I was a boy, I have loved you and only you.”
As their eyes met, she said nothing, just letting the words slide over her. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop her tears. They were already sliding down her face. They were the words that she so wanted to hear, but they were also the words that fixed nothing.
“I love you, too,” she said, her voice shimmering with pain. “But I can’t—”
“Catherine, you are the person I am supposed to be with, who I need to be with, and I think I am that person for you. We have let the past interfere long enough. I won’t have it. I love you more than anything, more than all of my past, more than the present and the future put together. It doesn’t matter what you say now, if you turn me away. Nothing could change my love for you. I am yours, to refuse or accept, until the day I die.”
His words took the breath out of her lungs. She looked into his sage-green eyes and felt her vision blur, the tears crowding out his face. How could she refuse him, after all that he had said? But also how could she not?
“I can’t,” she managed to choke out.
She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to be selfish. She wanted to lie her head down on his lap, to run her hands beneath his crisp shirt and over the planes of his chest. But whenever desire began to overtake her, she thought of Henrietta, alone and defenseless, who had no one else in the world but her brother, while she had Lady Wethersby and Ariel.
For a moment, he said nothing. And then he continued.
“Please. Just listen to what I have to say. I have learned the most incredible information, something I suspect you know, or otherwise I would say you wouldn’t believe it.”
Catherine felt her pulse change direction. She looked up at him, sharply recoiling. When she looked into his eyes, she could tell.
He knew.
“You-you know?” she stammered, shocked, the information hot, as if it had scorched her. She didn’t understand how these two things could be true: that he could be here before her and know about his sister’s true parentage.
“You know about Henrietta? I am correct?”
“You know about Henrietta?” she repeated, incredulous. For a moment, they stared at each other wide-eyed. And, in that stare, passed years of communication, decades even—she could feel the cause of his delay in reaching her, why he hadn’t written, and that he must have been doing wonderful things.
Just as quickly, just as that information had passed between them in an instant, she found herself in his arms, her mouth on his, taking him into a full kiss. She could hardly breathe, she felt dizzy from the shock and the lack of air, and yet she didn’t care; she needed to be close to him, to hold him, to have him all at once. He returned her ardor with equal force, pulling her onto his lap. She could feel the heat between them rising to a point where she could no longer think, no longer process, and she was about to give herself over to it, when he pulled away.
“Catherine,” he said, panting, “marry me.”
She answered with another kiss.
During this reunion, John and Catherine didn’t linger long over the particulars. Once he saw in her face that his knowing about Henrietta made all the difference, he found it difficult not to keep kissing her face and drawing her into him, which led to them getting lost in one another again, for minutes on end. Finally, they recalled that they could not quite abandon themselves in Lady Wethersby’s drawing room, particularly when it seemed more probable than not, Catherine reflected, that her ear was pressed to the door at that very moment, interpreting every sound.
Nevertheless, John managed to convey that he had found out about Henrietta from a letter penned by his father and that he had told the truth to his sister, who had taken the news about as well as one could hope. For her part, Catherine indicated that she had only fled because she could not have married him while keeping such a secret. And yet she feared if she told him the truth it would cause a rift between he and Henrietta.
Before they could talk over the details any further, Catherine realized that they had been in the parlor together for three-quarters of an hour.
Her prior intuitions about Lady Wethersby were confirmed when she opened the door to the sitting room and her dear Elena almost fell onto the floor.
*
That evening, Johntruly met Lady Wethersby and Ariel for the first time. Of course, he had met them before, in the small parlor of Halston Place, and he had, of course, corresponded with Ariel. But this time, heproperlymet the little baronet and his mother, and they became the great friends that they would always remain afterwards. Ariel quickly took to seeing John as the older brother whom he could consult on all matters not fit for ladies. For her part, Lady Wethersby doted on John, as if she had only been waiting for permission to do so.
In the ensuing days, Catherine was reunited once more with Henrietta and the three other Rank Rakes, whose townhomes she visited and where they all drank many toasts to her upcoming nuptials. However, in this excitement and the bustle of wedding preparation, she and John spent vanishingly little time together.
