“Do you want to marry me?”
For a solid thirty seconds, she said nothing. He didn’t move. It was restrained of him, she had to admit.
“Please, answer me,” he finally said, and she could hear the real plea in his voice.
She couldn’t refuse him the truth.
“I do,” she let out, in a hoarse whisper.
“Thank fucking God.”
And then he was moving, pressing her to him with one arm, nearly bringing her off her toes. As he thrusted, he touched between her legs. Within second, she came hard, whimpering into the shrubbery.
He followed shortly. The sounds of his climax making her pelvic muscles clench anew. She could feel his cum spilling, thick and luscious, inside of her. It felt like a gift that he was giving her. The proposal, yes, and the deliverance of every dream of her girlhood into actuality, but, maybe more than either, the physicality of him. That he would spend in her with such abandon. More than anything else, perhaps, it signaled to her that he knew he wanted her. That he didn’t see himself as tipping headlong into ruin but, rather, taking what he desired.
As she came back down from the high, still in his arms, she realized afresh what she had done.
She had agreed to marry him.
They were engaged.
Chapter Fourteen
It wasn’t the most conventional engagement, but Henrietta couldn’t let that bother her as she and Trem slipped back into the ballroom. She knew that, very soon, the world would have to know of their betrothal, but, right now, she just wanted to enjoy tonight with him.
As they approached the dance floor, the music stopped. Lady Worthington began addressing the crowd from a small makeshift stage that Henrietta suspected would later be used for some kind of amateur theatrical.
“My dear guests in Arcadia,” she said with an overwrought lilt, “you have frolicked in the garden long enough. Now, I invite you to sup in my private bower.”
A small army of footmen, attired in forest green, swept through the crowd.
“Please follow my merry satyrs—they will lead you to fresh nectar and food from the gods.”
Henrietta turned to Trem and snorted. She knew Lady Worthington had a flair for the dramatic, but she was really outdoing herself tonight.
Then she saw Trem’s face cloud. She looked back to the stage and her heart nearly stopped. Because there stood Hartley.
He was whispering in Lady Worthington’s ear and she saw shock and then glee streak across the lady’s face. She nodded enthusiastically at the young man and gestured for him to walk upstage.
For a moment, Henrietta hoped that the man was acting out some previously ordained part in one of their hostess’s theatricals. Then the suspicion that it had something to do with her turned her blood to ice water.
“Bastard, if he…” Trem took her hand. She squeezed back, petrified of what was to come. She felt how completely she was at Hartley’s mercy—or would have been, if she didn’t have Trem by her side.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the interruption. But I must tell you all of the love that has blossomed here in Arcadia tonight. I confess this news in the hopes that it will inspire your own revels, so generously supported by our hostess.”
Scattered applause broke out for Lady Worthington, who beamed.
“But I wanted to announce,” Hartley said, turning towards her, catching her eye even though she was buried in the crowd, his voice sounding falsely happy and, to her ear, a little unhinged, “that myself and Lady Henrietta Breminster are betrothed.”
*
A murmur ran through the crowd followed by applause. Hartley threw out his thanks from the stage.
Trem could not believe that this bastard had done it. He had feared it from the moment he took the stage, but he thought that even this worthless piece of aristocratic nonsense could not be so daft. He had overestimated this blithering dolt and now the man would need to be put in his place.
Trem walked towards the stage, pulling Henrietta with him. One glance at her face and he knew she was in shock. He squeezed her hand to tell her that he knew what he was doing.
Trem took the stage, guiding her up behind him. Hartley looked murderous at their appearance, but smug—as if he had bested them and there could be no retort.
