Trem stifled another laugh at this bathetic description.
“Hart,” Drent said, no longer trying to hide his irritation. “Sleep it off.”
“You have to find her,” Hartley said, now sounding more agitated than foggy. “Take this note to her. Make her see me. Grosvenor Square. Breminster House.”
Trem’s blood ran cold. The smile snapped off his face. Because only one duke’s sister lived at Breminster House. And he knew her very well.
She was the younger sister of his best friend.
It couldn’t be.
No, it must be someone else.
“Henrietta…Henrietta…” Hartley began moaning, as if he were trying to speak to the lady in question himself, as if she were there in the room with them.
Henrietta.
Henrietta Breminster, his best friend’s younger sister, practically his younger sister, had thrown the ton into a frenzy from the moment she had debuted. He remembered her when she was an innocent country girl who had never seen London. But it felt like an age since she had been that girl, much longer than three or four years.
Because in that time, she had become the jewel of London society. He could hardly believe it at times, how she had changed. At almost two-and-twenty, she was one of the most beautiful and sought-after young women between Park Lane and Regent Street.
Her ascent made sense, of course. He knew that. Really, he shouldn’t have been surprised. She was the sister of a duke and she had a notoriously enormous dowry. And John and Catherine had themselves gone from potential pariahs for their union to the center of the ton after their marriage. They hadn’t sought it out, but high society had gone wild for their story. After their wedding, their popularity had soared. Now, there was no family more fashionable than the Breminsters. Their prominence was only enhanced by their own indifference to it.
Well, Henrietta wasn’t quite indifferent to it.
He knew she cared. At least a bit.
What girl of her age and station wouldn’t?
In the past, Trem had always laughed when he saw little Henrietta making high society bend to her will.
He knew from John that quite a few gentlemen had already asked for her hand.
But she hadn’t wanted any of them.
It had pleased him, that knowledge, unaccountably. It was true that, if she married, it would be another change. She certainly wouldn’t be little Henrietta anymore if she became some aristocrat’s new wife.
Of course, she was still changed, whether she was single or married. He had seen her last week at the Countess of Whitmore’s ball and even he, who knew her so well, had been taken aback by her mature beauty. Her light brown hair, which seemed to shift a shade each time he saw her, flittering lighter and darker, playing tricks with her pale skin, had been done up in an elaborate coiffure. Her slim, elegant figure had attracted every eye. Her delicate features, doll-like in their prettiness, created an intoxicating contrast to her knowing, fun-seeking gaze.
Not that she had any sort of effect on him personally.
Any man would notice such obvious charms.
“Go to sleep, mate,” Drent said again, and his voice broke Trem’s reverie and brought him back to the present moment.
“Henrietta…” Hartley responded, his voice sounding fainter but no less like a whine.
Trem sighed.
In this situation, only one action lay available to him.
Whatever the Earl of Hartley thought had happened between him and Henrietta Breminster, it needed to be resolved now. He couldn’t leave when this fool was blubbering madness in the premier gentlemen’s club in England and risking the reputation of his best friend’s younger sister with every word he spoke. Who else might overhear these falsehoods?
“I advise you to stopper your mouth at once, Hartley.”
Trem had crossed the room to the two men.
Only one set of eyes met his own, however. The Earl of Hartley had passed out cold and now snored softly in his armchair. His face appeared a pasty, alcohol-blanched mask. Grabbing him by the throat, which had seemed so tempting a few seconds ago, was now pointless. Still, he itched with the desire to throttle the man. How dare he claim to have touched Henrietta? He shouldn’t even be allowed to think of her.
