“I am not sure,” Henrietta said, looking deep into her cup of chocolate. “He didn’t ask for my hand very clearly—that may have been the problem.”
“The poor fellow,” John said. “One almost feels bad for him.”
“Yes,” Henrietta said. “Almost.”
Of course, she felt no sympathy for Hartley. He had deliberately tried to trap her into marriage, knowing that she had no desire to wed him. The man was worse than a fool. He had become something decidedly more dangerous.
“But let us forget Hartley. When did it start? With Trem?” John asked. “Come now, Retta. You can tell us.”
The pitch of Griffon’s whine only grew louder.
“Really, John,” Catherine scolded. “Henrietta might not want to share that with us.”
At his mother’s words, Griffon threw a handful of porridge across the table.
Neither parent noticed, so trained were they on Henrietta.
“Why should she care now?” John said. “Now that they are engaged?”
Her brother was the head inquisitor. Catherine was a little more circumspect—and seemed a bit more wary of the entire story—but was clearly no less curious.
“Would you want the details of our courtship discussed at the breakfast table?” Catherine teased. Henrietta stifled a groan of disgust. From what Henrietta understood—from tidbits and the sheer logic of circumstances and her brother’s new post-marriage liberality—the Duke and Duchess of Edington’s courtship had involved lots of premarital tumbling. Still, Henrietta doubted her brother’s enlightenment would extend as far as his sister doing the same.
“Our courtship was highly unusual, my love. I’m sure that Henrietta and Trem’s has been all the more conventional.”
I wouldn’t be so sure, brother, Henrietta thought to herself.
She looked across the table at her sister-in-law and had to work to control her facial expression. Catherine was gazing at her like she well knew that her courtship with Trem had been anything but proper.
Griffon chose this moment to throw another handful of porridge. As this blob landed not far from Catherine’s plate, it could not be ignored.
Henrietta grinned. She loved Griffon. The boy had impeccable timing. He was always on her side. Or he always seemed to be, at least. It was a bit hard to tell when he largely spoke in two- and three-word sentences.
“Griff, really!” Catherine exclaimed. Her words might express exasperation, but the tone was suffused with such love that Catherine knew Griffon had no hope of being anything other than horribly spoilt.
“Your Grace,” said Cresley, no longer able to contain himself with such an appalling display of table manners from the heir. “May I take his lordship to the nursery?”
Catherine sighed. “Yes, I suppose that would be for the best. He becomes rather irascible when he is ill, don’t you think, darling?”
“Indeed,” John said. Henrietta swore inwardly at her brother’s absent response. Usually John was an absorbed, even obsessive father. But his tone suggested that he had not finished thinking about Henrietta. Blast.
As she had suspected, once Cresley had removed Griffon, her brother turned back to her.
“So, when did it start?”
Henrietta suppressed an audible sigh. She wasn’t going to be able to avoid the question.
“Oh, a little while ago,” Henrietta said, looking down at her plate and hoping that her concentration on her morning cake would stop her brother from continuing his questioning.
“Three weeks?” John pressed. “Three months?”
“Something like that,” Henrietta said, emitting a fake laugh and waving her hand.
“Which one?” John said, his eyes narrowing.
Henrietta had learned much about her brother over the past few years. As a girl, she had regarded him as a remote hero, who brought good cheer and joy and then swept away leaving the world at Edington Hall much grimmer. She had had no notion then of his inner turmoil. She hadn’t known that he had been mortified and humiliated by their father’s scandal. He had hidden it so well from her. And she hadn’t known that, at the age of one-and-twenty, he had fallen deeply in love. He had met Catherine at Tremberley and become besotted. But then he had discovered that she was the niece of the woman with whom their father had had his notorious affair. Even though it tormented him, he had denied himself ever seeing Catherine again. And he didn’t. Not for seven years.
Henrietta could not imagine having that kind of restraint. If she had been John, she would have married Catherine anyway. Father or anyone else could have hung. Before his marriage, her brother had fancied himself quite a rake, but, really, in her opinion, he had quite an excess of willpower. She had scruples about marrying Trem and yet she had agreed. She wasn’t like John. She couldn’t deny herself the things she wanted.
