“Such gallantry!” He laughed. “But I think there must be a fellow in the question if you are talking about matrimony. Has Lord Hartley finally prevailed?”
Henrietta could feel her cheeks heat, but Cassandra saved her by swatting her fiancé on the arm.
“You’re a scoundrel, Sebastian, asking a lady such a question.”
He merely laughed at his fiancée’s tart words, the thought of any intrigue of Henrietta’s clearly chased from his head the moment he met Cassandra’s eyes. Henrietta knew that Hartley and Sebastian sometimes fenced together at his club and that Sebastian liked the man. But, she thought to herself, unable to stop the idea from coming, he probably liked Trem more, given how often she had found the two of them sharing a bit of gossip and horse talk at the side of ballroom.
“Come now, my love,” Cassandra said to Sebastian. “You can have the privilege of walking Lady Henrietta and me back to our carriages. If you behave yourself, I’ll even let you accompany me home.”
As they turned back on the path, Henrietta heard Sebastian whisper to Cassandra, “Only if you command Thomas to ride on the box.” Henrietta bit back a smile. She was happy that her friend could steal such moments—even if it were just a few minutes alone in the interior of a carriage—with her fiancé.
As they returned to the carriages, the three of them chattered about their mutual acquaintances, the events of the season, and the new show at the royal theater. Sebastian was the son of the richest Black man in England, who ran a thriving sail-making concern, and he always had an amusing anecdote about his business dealings with his father to relate. All along their walk, Henrietta couldn’t help but linger on how Cassandra and Sebastian only looked at one another when they talked, how in love they seemed, how every touch and glance between them seemed to smolder.
Could that one day be her and Trem? Could they walk abroad as acknowledged lovers and have others envy their besotted glances? She wondered if Trem could ever care for her in the way that Sebastian loved Cassandra. Last night she had felt the possibility of something between them. Could that thrum of awareness really amount to anything after what she had admitted to him?
As they reached the carriages, Henrietta realized she wasn’t sure if she was just another complicated situation for Trem to enter into and then leave once it had stabilized. She had seen him do exactly that too many times to believe he could really be interested in her for her own sake.
Henrietta bid Sebastian and Cassandra adieu and they spared her a few glances and good wishes.
“Lady Henrietta! Lady Henrietta!”
As she had moved towards her carriage, a voice, a man’s voice, cried her name, and they all turned their heads in its direction. She was already half in the carriage, but she craned to look herself, her hand still in her footman’s grasp.
Then, she saw Justin. He was running across the path, his clothing and hair askew, as if he hadn’t been home from the night before, and her blood ran cold. He drew closer. With a yelp of horror, she flung herself into the carriage. Her footman, Frederick, stood stock-still near the door, clearly uncertain about what to do with the yelling nobleman hurtling towards them.
“For Christ’s sake,” she heard Cassandra exclaim to Frederick. “Get up on the box and go!”
Frederick followed the order, but, for a moment, the carriage didn’t move. Then, she heard Sebastian yell at her coachman, “Good God, man, drive!”
The carriage lurched forward just as Lord Hartley skidded up to Cassandra and Sebastian. Henrietta watched out of the back window as his eyes followed her carriage. She saw Sebastian reach out a hand and touch Hartley’s shoulder in consolation. Hartley accepted the gesture for a moment before cursing loudly and walking off.
Henrietta turned around and closed her eyes.
One thing was for sure.
She had made a hash out of her life.
Chapter Seven
Rather than return to Breminster House, Henrietta spent the rest of the morning loitering on Bond Street. She did nothing more than bow faintly at acquaintances and pass her hands over ribbons, her mind churning in anticipation of her meeting with Trem.
Of all the possibilities that she had anticipated during her Bond Street wanderings, however, the reality that she faced at Tremberley House was one that she had not foreseen.
When she arrived at her town house, she asked Frederick to wait in the carriage. Frederick honored the request, but not without a frown. He understood that he was supposed to be her chaperone on such morning jaunts and that he should come inside. She assured him she would return quickly.
Therefore, she was alone when she entered the hallway and was led by Trem’s butler into his study.
Trem sat behind his desk—and Hartley was perched on the other side of it, his back to the door. When she entered, he turned round to look at her.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Hartley’s eyes on her at the same moment as Trem’s was deucedly unpleasant. She wished with all that she was that Hartley were not in the room with them. Why would Trem have invited him? She could thrash him for not warning her.
“Sit, Henrietta,” Trem instructed. Part of her wanted to resist. More than a part of her wanted to bolt from the room. But she could still see the kindness in Trem’s eyes that had been there last night. And she knew she couldn’t run from Hartley forever. Not looking at the man, she strode to the other armchair opposite Trem’s desk and placed herself in it with all the dignity she could manage.
“What the devil is going on here?” Hartley demanded, the moment Henrietta was seated. “Why isn’t the duke here with us? I know you are a friend of the family, Trem, but surely Lady Henrietta’s brother would be the right man to sort out this matter.”
“It is Lord Tremberley to you,” Trem retorted, and Henrietta could see, when she looked at him, something very close to hatred in the eyes of her brother’s best friend. It gave Henrietta a little thrill to see that hard look there. If Trem was angry with Hartley… But then this thought made her blush. How could she harbor hopes of Trem at such a moment? When he must think her behavior absolutely disgraceful?
“Lady Henrietta does not wish her brother to know of this matter,” Trem continued. “Which is her right. She has asked me to intercede in the affair for her, as a close ally and almost a brother to her myself.” Henrietta’s stomach gave an uncomfortable flip at this statement and she squeezed her hands together. No, she thought, admiring the way the fine hazel of his eyes fairly glowed against his smooth, gold-tinted skin, not like a brother to me.
