Henrietta cringed and Catherine suspected that she feared her brotherwouldbe mad. She had been her age, horned in by propriety—how many times had she fantasized back then about dissolving into a ballroom and finding her own fun?
“I-I-I left Lady Trilling.” Catherine squeezed Henrietta tighter around the shoulders. The girl relaxed into her embrace. “I wanted to see the ballroom. And I was angry with you for leaving me.”
“It was only for one dance,” he said, softly, but Catherine knew Henrietta was right. She knew if Henrietta understood their relationship, she wouldn’t be upset about the dance, but she was in the dark. They hadn’t told her because they wanted to protect her, because their relationship wasn’t appropriate for a girl of her age to know about, and yet it endangered her not to have all the information.
“I know,” Henrietta said. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“How did you meet Falk?”
Henrietta looked down into her lap. “I was walking around the ballroom, taking everything in, when a man approached me and said he knew me. I asked how that could be and he pulled off his mask and it was cousin Pierce!”
“Second-cousin Pierce,” John grumbled.
Henrietta rolled her eyes. Catherine was glad to see that she wasn’t so spiritually maimed that she couldn’t express irritation at her brother.
“Anyway, I remembered him from those times when he would come and visit. You probably don’t remember, but he was always very nice to me.”
John grunted an acknowledgment.
“He asked if I wanted to see the Langley gardens, which were just off the balcony. I thought he was family! Then, when we got down off the balcony, he started kissing me! Which was disgusting. He issovery pasty. And I told him to unhand me but he wouldn’t! And then Catherine came behind him and told him to release me and he did. And then she slapped him!”
“Yes,” John said, with a smile, “I saw that part.”
“Is that what I should have done?” Henrietta asked Catherine. “Slapped him? Is that what ladies do?”
“Not exactly,” Catherine said, “but he was very, very far from acting like a gentleman, so you could have slapped him, or screamed, or done anything to break free of him.”
“Retta,” John said. “You can’t go walking in gardens with men.” He gave Catherine a guilty look. “Even gentlemen you know. It’s not safe.”
“He said back there,” Henrietta murmured, “that my virtue was compromised? Am I ruined?”
“Most certainlynot,” Catherine said.
“Why would he say that, then?”
Catherine didn’t say anything at first. It was John’s place to dictate how much Henrietta knew.
When he said nothing, however, Catherine knew she had to speak.
“You need to tell her, Your Grace,” she said, quietly. “It doesn’t protect her not to know these things.”
John sighed. “He was hoping that he could say he had compromised you enough that the only way out was marriage. That was clearly his aim. It wouldn’t matterwhathe did, of course. I would never consent to a marriage, but he was hoping that…” He trailed off, unable to continue.
“He hoped that, if he forced himself on you,” Catherine supplied, knowing that John didn’t have the heart for this part, “then you would have to marry him.”
“But why?” Henrietta said. “He barely knows me.”
“He wants your dowry,” John said. Catherine saw the bitterness in his face.He almost has it, she thought, and shuddered.
Henrietta’s mouth fell open. “How disgusting,” she said, as if she had found an alley rat in her chamber pot.
“He should be hanged,” John said. “I’m sorry, Henrietta, I should have warned you about him. Father and I never told you, because it was so distasteful, but, when you were twelve, he offered for you.”
“Offered for me?When I wastwelve?”
“Yes. You remember when he visited and made himself pleasant to you?”
“How horrific!”
