“Henrietta.” It was Catherine’s voice. Thank God, Trem thought, far better than John and far better than a gossipy servant. “If this wedding is happening in a month, we need to see Mrs. Warburton post-haste—where is Trem?”
“Ah, here is that fork,” Trem said, pulling from the floor the tiny utensil that he assumed Griffon had dropped sometime in the not-too-distant past. Excellent lad, that Griffon.
He stood. “Hello, Catherine.”
“Fork?” she said, her hands on her hips and her expression incredulous.
“Yes,” Henrietta said, looking up at her sister-in-law and smiling in a way that almost had Trem convinced that they had been doing nothing more than looking for a missing utensil.
Catherine did not seem, however, swayed by Henrietta’s pantomime. “If you expect me to believe—” She broke out and then stopped. She took a step towards them. “Hear me, both of you. I am happy that you are happy. But if you think for a minute that I believe that this engagement has come about through proper sweet nothings and restrained glances, then you are sorely mistaken. John doesn’t want to believe otherwise because you’re his sister and his best friend. I, however, know the aftermath of a tryst when I see one. You’re engaged so I can hardly admonish you. But if you reveal what is really going on and upset my husband, I will not be pleased. After what he has done for you, Henrietta, I think that is the least you can do.”
Silence filled the breakfast room.
Neither of them responded to Catherine. He was not about to admit anything, even if it was obvious that the woman was right.
Catherine sighed. “Very well, come with me, Henrietta. We are needed at Mrs. Warburton’s. We must start on your trousseau.”
Chapter Seventeen
For Henrietta, the next week passed in a queasy medley of happiness, excitement, and anxiety. After their stolen moment in the breakfast room, she hardly saw her fiancé—and, to her consternation, they were able to share nothing more than a few kisses. Catherine had taken to vigilantly chaperoning her and Trem, which was, as far as Henrietta was concerned, highly unnecessary.
The one undoubtedly good thing that had happened, however, was that Henrietta had gotten her courses. They needn’t worry about having to hasten their nuptials for that reason.
After their interlude in the breakfast room, Henrietta had gone to Mrs. Warburton’s with Catherine and put in an order for her wedding clothes. She was to have a gown made up in the latest fashion. Mrs. Warburton had grumbled about having her seamstresses work double to get the garments done in time, but she quietened after Catherine offered to pay each woman and the proprietress herself extra for completing the order at pace. The dress needed to be finished by the time the wedding party left for Tremberley Manor in two weeks.
This morning, Henrietta would earn a reprieve from wedding preparations. She would be attending Mrs. Seymour’s monthly salon, one of her favorite features of the London season. To add to her pleasure, Trem would be there, too.
Thankfully, Catherine saw no need to chaperone her to the event, given Mrs. Seymour’s reputation for propriety. And Henrietta had to admit that her sister-in-law was correct in her assessment of Mrs. Seymour’s vigilance—not to mention her own standards for herself. While she had no qualms about defiling Lady Worthington’s shrubberies, she would never risk Mrs. Seymour’s low opinion.
Because not only was Mrs. Seymour the mother of her best friend, but she was one of the rare members of the ton who Henrietta truly respected. While most of their world had inherited their positions and titles, Mrs. Seymour was the closest thing to self-made that an aristocratic woman could be. She was a lady of singular intellect, political conviction, and—most admirably to Henrietta—decided action.
But not even Mrs. Seymour would object to a quiet conversation between lovers at the corner of her salon. Thus, given that she might have a chance to speak to Trem for more than a few minutes together without Catherine and John listening in, Henrietta hoped that today she could find a way to tell Trem about her illegitimacy. He had told her that he didn’t care about her secret, but it nevertheless weighed on her. It depressed her that he didn’t know this fact of her existence. She wanted—no, needed—to tell him the truth.
When Henrietta entered the Seymours’ drawing room, it was, as usual, a cool relief to her nerves. She heard strains of multiple, spirited conversations at once, each preoccupied with a different political or cultural happening, and thus a welcome contrast to what she usually heard in similar rooms.
Mrs. Seymour’s salon was different from any other ton event. When she had first walked into the Seymour drawing room years ago, she had experienced the sense of intimidation and wonder that the mere splendor of chandeliered ballrooms had as of yet failed to elicit in her. The people here were as finely dressed as they were at other ton soirees and Mrs. Seymour’s wallpaper and trimmings were just as—if not more—tasteful than those in other Mayfair townhomes. However, instead of the usual dull chatter of ton ladies’ visiting hours and tea parties, here politics, art, history, and literature drove the conversation.
And unlike most high-society functions, where most of the guests were white, here Black Londoners predominated. After that first visit to Mrs. Seymour’s salon, Cassandra had explained to Henrietta that, over the years, her mother had cultivated the society of almost every Black family of respectability in the city, as well as the foreigners who visited periodically from other countries. Of course, a few of these families had already been familiar to Henrietta from the regular churn of ton sociability. There was Mr. Wallis, a white man of ancient gentry family, and Mrs. Wallis, his wife, a Black woman who had grown up in the West Indies and emigrated to London in her teens; they had twin daughters who were about to debut and who were currently looking quite fetching in purple morning dresses. And there was, of course, Mr. Pendleton, the only gentleman who could claim to challenge Sebastian’s father for the title of the richest Black man in London. He owned the largest carriage manufactory in England and had acquired half his empire when he had married the daughter of his white competitor, now Mrs. Pendleton, who had fallen in love with him from afar. It had been quite the love match. And quite the scandal. Now, however, the couple could often be seen in the toniest ballrooms at the height of the season. Mr. Pendleton made the most fashionable carriages and many lords wanted to be in his good books—especially since he was known to be generous with credit to those who hosted him and his wife at their fêtes.
Many of those who regularly assembled at Mrs. Seymour’s, however, had been unknown to Henrietta. Most were Londoners—many of them Black, but not all. A subset of the attendees were from the white merchant classes, a group that overlapped with those from Nonconforming and Jewish families, and then there were the single young men of all races whose education and political sensibilities had earned them the notice of Mrs. Seymour. Regardless of their backgrounds, all were supporters of radical or Whig politics and especially abolition, both in the British Empire and elsewhere.
Most of Mrs. Seymour’s guests did not have the social notice of the ton; they were no one as far as Henrietta’s world was concerned. Nevertheless, as Henrietta had learned, many were just as wealthy as members of the ton and appeared and behaved almost indistinguishably from those in high society. She had to admit that Mrs. Seymour’s guests had opened her eyes when she had first attended her soirees. She had never before interacted with the well-to-do people that socialized and lived adjacent to (some would say “below”) those in her world. And she found the existence of such a social echelon thrilling. It had never occurred to her before that first salon at Mrs. Seymour’s that she could inhabit wealth and privilege in a different way—that she could devote her life to pursuits outside of social calls and learning how to run an aristocratic household.
Often, Mrs. Seymour invited visiting Americans and, today, Cassandra had told her, they would receive a much-anticipated visit from Mr. Williams and his wife. Mr. Williams owned extensive real estate holdings in Philadelphia and belonged to a group of wealthy Black abolitionists in that city. Mrs. Seymour had long hoped he would visit England and now he had finally arrived.
By the time Henrietta arrived in the Seymour drawing room, this assembly was almost complete. However, while Henrietta was excited to see Trem, who was currently in conversation with the two Miss Wallises, she was almost equally anxious to speak to her best friend. They had hardly had an opportunity to converse since her engagement. She had run into her on Bond Street, at Mrs. Warburton’s, and Cass had only had time to congratulate her with an embrace and to give her consent to be her bridesmaid. Henrietta hadn’t even been able to tell her that she had secured the editorship from Mr. Redmond. Henrietta felt a pang of guilt at forgetting to give her friend this news and over the unfairness of their relative situations. Henrietta was getting married in three weeks whereas Cassandra’s engagement was much more long-standing—and yet her wedding to Sebastian was still unscheduled.
Henrietta spied Cassandra near the refreshment table and, at the first opportunity, pulled her into the corner of the drawing room. Cassandra smiled and squeezed her arm as they walked away from the others, but Henrietta still felt oddly nervous. As if she had betrayed her best friend, somehow, and now had to confess.
“Do you mind?” Henrietta said in a rush, unable to keep her concerns quiet a second longer. “That I’m getting married so soon?”
“Why would I mind?” Cassandra’s light brown eyes showed her genuine surprise at the question.
“You and Sebastian have been engaged for so long. And I am getting married so quickly.”
Cassandra shook her head. “I am happy for you. I know how long you’ve loved Trem. There is no use comparing our situations—they’re so different.” Cassandra looked over at her mother and Sebastian conversing in the corner and then her eyes returned to Henrietta’s once more. “But you needn’t repine for me. Just this morning my mother and Mr. Burnbridge Senior came to an agreement. And we’ve set a date. Two months from now.”
“No! Truly, Cass?”
