Finally, however, the night before their wedding, Catherine heard the distinctive tap of rocks at her bedroom window at Halston Place. She opened it and laughed to see John down below.
“You can use the front door,” Catherine shouted down, even though it was rather late, and Lady Wethersby and Ariel had long been asleep.
“And scandalize Lady Wethersby?” he whisper-shouted. “I don’t think she would ever forgive me if I publicly compromised your virtue before your wedding day.”
Catherine laughed. Despite knowing well that Catherine’s virtue had been fully compromised, Lady Wethersby had insisted that she and John spend their evenings apart ahead of their wedding.
“You are going to be a great lady of theton,” she kept proclaiming. “You can’t have everyone thinking that this marriage is a patched-up business.”
“But itisa patched-up business,” Catherine had said, before Ariel had strode into the room and started asking what exactly was a patched-up business.
Lady Wethersby had shrieked, “Nothing, my love! You walk so softly I never know when you are about to enter a room, dear,” which tipped off an argument about the right acoustics of a gentleman’s walk. Ariel was confused because she had previously told him to walk less clamorously.
Thus, due to Lady Wethersby’s strong preference (and which Catherine suspected only stemmed from wanting Catherine with her as much as possible for the little time they had left living together), she and John had not been able to reunite in the way that they both so wanted.
After he found his way up a trellis—newly installed by Lady Wethersby, it was, thankfully, bare of flowers as of yet—he hoisted himself through her window and took her in his arms. The feeling of him against her, and the knowledge that after tomorrow she would have him forever, made her press him even closer. His lips were at her neck and he had nearly lifted her off the floor.
“Catherine, I need to tell you something.”
His words struck a note of alarm within her and she pulled back. He took her hand and led her to her bed. Anxiety expanded within her. Was she, somehow, going to lose him again?
He gave her a smile, which nevertheless looked a little weak.
“Don’t worry. No more horrible revelations. I merely never had the opportunity to relate to you what happened after I found out about Henrietta. And I wanted to tell you before tomorrow—because I don’t want to cause you any alarm.”
She didn’t understand. She still feared any new information that might threaten to tear them apart again.
“Of course. I’ve been selfish, thinking only of my own happiness.”
“I’ve been little better,” he said, taking her hand again. “But it’s nothing so terrible. Only I hope you won’t be angry about what I did.”
He had such a strange expression on his face that she had to laugh.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, as you know, I told Henrietta about her mother, almost as soon as I found out. I told myself I wasn’t going to lie to her anymore or keep things from her.”
Catherine had seen Henrietta in the past few days, but they had barely had a moment alone. The girl seemed cheerful, if not a little paler than usual, and Catherine had worried that she hadn’t quite processed the shock of what she had learned.
“And she took it as well as she could, you said.”
“She was Henrietta,” John said, with a little smile. “She was surprised, of course, but she also said that it made sense. She said she had always heard she might not be our father’s daughter. And yet she said that she had always struggled to feel a connection to my mother. But then she had supposed it was because she was dead.”
“Poor Henrietta,” Catherine said, thinking of how her soon-to-be sister-in-law had cried when they first met over the rumors about her parentage.
Realizing he had promised a revelation, she said, “But I already knew all of this.”
“Yes,” he said, “but what I didn’t manage to tell you is that, after I spoke to Henrietta, I knew that I had to do more. Mary Forster is her mother and our last interview… Well, you saw what happened. Partially by our own orchestration. But nevertheless.”
A bolt of ice went through Catherine’s heart.
“You didn’t. You wentback?”
The left side of his mouth kicked up at her horror. “I did.”
“Oh, John!” She clasped her hands to her mouth. “You didn’t.”
He nodded in response.
