Cassandra shook her head. “You didn’t endanger our lives. Hartley did. And I dearly hope he is enjoying his time in the root cellar.”
“However,” Sebastian rejoined, casting his gaze towards the table where Mrs. Seymour sat, “there was, perhaps, one advantage of this unfortunate event…”
Cassandra laughed and buried her head in Sebastian’s shoulder.
“What?” Henrietta said, mystified by their mirth.
“Well,” Cassandra said, “as I told you, I alerted Trem and your brother about Hartley. As I did so, however, my mother had come into the vestibule, unnoticed by anyone in the commotion, and overheard my warning. When I attempted to follow the gentleman back to the orangery, she forbade me to go. And I, well—”
“She pushed past her and ran out of the chapel anyway!” Sebastian laughed.
“I was in a panic!” Cassandra exclaimed. “I tried to reason with her. I told her that she couldn’t keep me from doing what I wanted, that she couldn’t protect me forever, but she wouldn’t hear reason.”
Henrietta cast her gaze over to Mrs. Seymour who was still deep in conversation with Lady Trilling, her mother, and Lady Wethersby.
“She seems to have recovered from the experience,” Henrietta observed.
“Yes,” Cassandra said, her eyes on her fiancé. “She’s learning.”
Then, Henrietta felt a hand on her waist and found herself swept into her husband’s arms.
“Are you content, my Artemis?” Trem said, his voice low and hungry in her ear.
Henrietta looked around the room. She saw John and Catherine playing with Griffon in the corner, Mrs. Morrison and Mrs. Foxcroft grinning wickedly at each other over glasses of champagne, Leith and Montaigne flirting with the Miss Willises, and Mrs. Seymour, Lady Trilling, Lady Wethersby, and her mother talking animatedly—it seemed—about how, in their day, the breeches on gentlemen had been so tight that these young ladies today wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. And, of course, Cassandra and Sebastian in each other’s arms.
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. “Truly, I am.”
Epilogue
Eight months later
Since their marriage, Henrietta had taken to reading to Trem in the evenings. Now that she was heavily pregnant, she was most comfortable performing this office in the bath. He had no complaints about this mode of delivery, he said, because it enabled him to experience erotic and intellectual titillation at once.
They were at the town house for the season. She knew Trem was looking forward desperately to the day when he could send the Rank Rakes’s special symbol—each of their title initials piled up to make that little window—to John, Montaigne, and Leith.
But that day had yet to arrive. Right now, she was seated in her tub in front of the fire, steam curling around her ears. She was reading a novel entitled Pride and Prejudice to her husband. He was seated happily on an armchair he had pulled up towards the edge. His back was towards the fire so that he could see her fully.
Catherine had recommended the novel to her. The truth was that Trem and Henrietta’s tastes tended towards the light and entertaining—they both eschewed serious books. The author of this novel was little known and not wildly popular but Catherine said that she wrote the kind of tales that she and Trem favored. And she had been right. They liked realistic tales about people falling in love under all the usual circumstances and this authoress was delivering exactly that. However, they both agreed that perhaps a bit more premarital lovemaking would have enhanced the story—or, at least, Trem had complained, a kiss. The only characters who had done anything of the sort thus far were practically villains, which Trem objected to.
This evening, they were nearing the end of the book.
“How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence she could imagine,” Henrietta read aloud. “But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.”
Henrietta felt her cheeks warm at the lines, even though she had long learned not to be ashamed of her own conduct. She knew she had nothing to apologize for. Nevertheless these lines so strongly recalled her own courtship with Trem that she could not let them pass without a blush.
“I do think that the authoress is severe here,” Henrietta said, interrupting her own reading. “Don’t you, Trem?”
“As one part of a couple brought together by passion and finding myself quite happy, you know I have to agree with you, my love.”
“It does seem rather close-minded. Surely many couples do as Lydia and Wickham have done.”
“Undoubtedly,” he said, catching a hold of her foot and rubbing it. She exhaled in bliss. “Although I fancy myself better than a Wickham.”
“And why is that? You are ten years older than me, after all.” He splashed her and she howled. “The book! You’ll ruin it.”
“I’m not in debt, for one. And you weren’t sixteen.”
“True,” she said, pretending to soberly weigh the case. “You also didn’t try and elope with Montaigne’s youngest sister first.”
