Henrietta turned to her fiancé. His hazel eyes were filled with a delicate mirth. He seemed poised between laughing at her and laughing with her.
“Yes, poor Justin, I feel dreadful that he got the wrong notion. And, in terms of our courting, perhaps the subterfuge was unnecessary,” he finally said, his gaze turning away from her and towards John and Catherine. “But we wanted to explore our potential felicity away from…” Henrietta watched John and Catherine hang on his words “…prying eyes.”
John looked contented with this response and bit into a pastry.
When he had swallowed, he wiped his mouth free of crumbs and said, “When will we have the wedding?”
Henrietta winced at the question. She had hardly wrapped her mind around her engagement and now she was being asked to pick a wedding date.
Before she could formulate a response, her fiancé’s voice, warm and rich, startled her.
“One month’s time.”
One month? My word, that seemed soon. She had imagined she would have more time with him first. Alone. And in bed. Maybe this time they would actually make it to a bed. They hadn’t managed that yet. There, she imagined she would finally tell him what she had been reluctant to fully share last night. That she wasn’t legitimate. That her title was false.
John shook his head. “That is too little time to prepare.”
“We don’t want a long engagement,” Trem countered.
A month was fast. And while she had appreciated last night that Trem had been so accepting of her, that he had insisted whatever he didn’t know about her didn’t matter, she was bothered that he hadn’t seemed to particularly want to know about her secret.
“There is no rush,” Henrietta supplied, hoping that between her fiancé and her brother, she would have some say over the day that was, at least conventionally, supposed to be the most momentous of her life.
Trem turned towards her.
“I can’t wait too long. It would be unbearable.”
“Now, now,” John said, his voice going high and thin. “Here now, she’s still my sister, old boy.”
But Henrietta had caught his real meaning. Of course. He was worried that she was with child. However, Henrietta felt the telltale signs of her courses coming. They would arrive tomorrow, if she wasn’t mistaken. And she never was. There was no need to rush the wedding on that account.
“Of course,” Trem replied. But she could see a muscle ticking in his jaw as he drank his tea. “I still insist on a month, however. I will not wait longer.”
“Surely two months would suffice,” John countered. “Enough time for Henrietta to get her wedding clothes—and to discuss settlements.”
“I don’t care about settlements. I’d marry her without a farthing. You can keep the dowry for all I care.”
“The dowry is Henrietta’s,” John bit back. “And you know the devilry I went through to maintain it.”
Her brother reached over and grasped his wife’s hand over the table.
Henrietta felt another pang of deep irritation at her brother.
She was grateful for all that he had done for her—but still she had never asked him to rescue her dowry. She would wish he hadn’t tried to save it, except that it had brought him and Catherine together. If he hadn’t gone after the dowry, though, she wouldn’t know the truth of her parentage. She would be a different person. Potentially a happier one. She wouldn’t have debuted with the sense that she was a fraud. It wasn’t that she would rather not know the truth of her parentage. But, that said, the truth hadn’t been easy.
“Give it to her or don’t,” Trem said, his voice rising ever so slightly. “I’ll never touch it. I don’t need it. When we marry, it’s hers to do with as she pleases. But we marry in a month. I won’t wait any longer.”
“Trem, really,” she broke in. “We don’t need to rush.”
“I need to rush,” Trem said, turning towards her and taking her hand. “I want you to be my wife.”
“I will be,” she said, her throat constricting. She cleared it with a shake of her head. “But I don’t want to marry at St. George’s. I want to do it at Tremberley Manor. A country wedding.”
“Everyone marries at St. George’s,” Trem and John said nearly at the same time.
“And when have you two been guardians of convention?” Catherine challenged.
“You’ve never been to the manor,” Trem said. “Why there? I’d rather Edington.”
