She had only seen the woman once. At John and Catherine’s wedding. She had discovered that Mary Forster was a pretty, albeit faded, woman over forty, with a family of her own. She had the same delicate features as Henrietta. The woman had, as far as Henrietta could tell, barely looked at her. And why would she? According to Catherine, she had two children with a man she loved. What need did she have for Henrietta? She would only be a reminder of a love affair gone wrong.
Back then, Henrietta had put it out of her mind.
But now, after seeing how seamlessly Mrs. Seymour and Cassandra communicated, a mother and daughter not necessarily in agreement, but in the kind of harmony that only came from years of love, that old thought reappeared in her mind. And it carried a keenness that she had not experienced in years.
Perhaps, she appreciated the relationship between Mrs. Seymour and Cassandra all the more for what her friend had told her a few days earlier. Mrs. Seymour loved her daughter so much that she was afraid to let her go, even to a man so clearly honorable as Sebastian Burnbridge. In contrast, Henrietta’s mother had given her over when she was just a baby. To the very man she herself wanted to escape. Her circumstances had, perhaps, been difficult—but they could not have been harsher than those experienced by Mrs. Seymour, who had had to endure the ignorance and prejudice of her husband’s family and half of high society. And yet Henrietta now watched Mrs. Seymour stand in the toniest dress shop in London and ensure that her daughter’s bodice was the right height.
You have no mother.
For the first time in years, the thought brought tears into Henrietta’s eyes, so many that she could no longer see the lace in front of her. She tried to blink and felt the tears stream down her cheeks. She reached her fingers to her face in an attempt to wipe them away and discovered that she must have been already crying for some time.
How could she get married, she thought, when her fiancé didn’t even know who she really was? When—worse—she didn’t even know the meaning of her parentage herself?
“Lady Henrietta!” Mrs. Seymour glided across the room towards her. “Are you sure you are feeling all right, darling?”
In a daze, Henrietta realized that Mrs. Seymour could see the tears on her cheeks.
“Oh, yes,” she said, choking out the words, unable to stifle the sob rising in her throat. “It’s just that I’m so happy.”
Chapter Nineteen
Trem would always remember where he was standing when he learned that his fiancée had disappeared.
He had barely been able to see Henrietta since those stolen minutes in the breakfast room. It seemed every day that she had some fitting to attend and, for whatever reason, whether it was late-season ennui or just the frenetic energy of the moment, there had been few balls or parties that had demanded their presence. Therefore, he’d had scant opportunities to give her even a hasty kiss. And, if it weren’t for the few instances when both John and Catherine happened to be absent from the drawing room on his nightly visits, he would have had not even enjoyed those heated, stolen moments.
In one of those moments, he’d had to waste precious seconds relaying to her that he had sent an apology to Hartley. He hadn’t heard from the man again, so he was beginning to hope that he had dropped the matter and slunk away to lick his wounds.
Therefore, suffice it to say, that when Trem arrived at Breminster House that evening, he was hungry for his fiancée. He had found himself craving her at all hours of the day and reliving what they had already shared together. To his dismay, he found that he was unable to do anything to quench his thirst on his own. He couldn’t bring himself off without her, it seemed, and so he was suffering from a perpetual semi-cockstand, because he could neither stop thinking of her nor cool his own blood.
He had spent nearly all his time that week not at Breminster House with Montaigne and Leith. He had sworn Montaigne to secrecy in regard to the scandalous beginning of his relationship with Henrietta, but Leith had revealed almost instantly that Monty had already told him all. While Trem had been annoyed with Montaigne for being such a gossip, he had also been relieved that Leith knew the truth. Both men, however, thought that Trem was playing with fire. Leith had told him that he worried for his friendship with John. Trem had shrugged off his concern. After all, John was happy with the engagement. Why need he ever learn more about how it had come about?
Mercifully, this evening they were set to go to the Brightley’s annual ball and he had a plan for getting his fiancée alone. Given the heavy rain, he would convince John and Catherine to let Henrietta ride in his carriage (how he would effect this favor, he wasn’t sure, but he would do it somehow). And then he would hopefully have the opportunity to stare into his fiancée’s eyes with heat unwelcome in the Breminster House drawing room. The ride to the Brightley’s town house, on the other side of St. James’s, was, in heavy Saturday evening traffic, at least a fifteen-minute undertaking. He had been optimistic enough to hope that he might even be able to bring her to ecstasy at least once before they alighted at the other end.
Indeed, he’d brought a rather sinful gift for her. There was next to no chance that they’d be able to use it in the carriage that evening, but he still relished the idea of giving her such a present.
But when Trem strolled into the Breminster House entryway, he saw John questioning the head footman in tones that could only be described as desperate.
“What do you mean she left?” John cried. His face was flushed and Catherine, who stood beside him, looked equally unhappy, if less rageful. Upon seeing Trem, she left the room.
“Your Grace, my deepest apologies,” Cresley said, his voice shaking. “I can only tell you what Lady Henrietta told me. She told the coachman that she needed to run a wedding errand. So she took the carriage and she left. That is all I know.”
“Did she say when she would be back?” John bellowed.
“I believe not, Your Grace.”
“Henrietta is missing?” Trem said, stepping forward, his heart doing a strange, horrific waltz in his chest. What if Hartley had taken her? Would the addlepated boy try such a maneuver? He tried to think through the possibilities. And what he could tell John—if it came to it—that would approximate the truth without revealing the extent of the relationship between Henrietta and that piece of toff superfluidity.
“You,” John said, and before another thought could pass through Trem’s mind, he found himself thrust up against the great stone wall of Breminster House. “You have done this! Where is she?”
“Unhand me, you madman,” Trem shouted, irate that his best friend thought he had anything to do with Henrietta disappearing, but even more upset that he didn’t know where she was. He should have taken her somewhere, he should know where she was, but—in a humiliating turn—he had no blasted idea what was happening.
“I never should have let her become engaged to you,” John shouted. “You always cock everything up. You’ve tried to meet her for some tryst, no doubt, and she has been beset by highwaymen in return. She’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere.”
Rage clouded the edges of Trem’s vision. You always cock everything up. That is what John thought of him?
“Take your hands off of me,” Trem growled, and shoved John, hard, in the chest. That was enough to move him backwards and get his hands off his lapels. “I haven’t agreed to meet your sister anywhere. And now that I know she is gone, I want to know where she is just as much as you do.”
“John,” Catherine said. Trem hadn’t even noticed that she had reentered the hall. “I just spoke to her maid. She said that Henrietta’s clothes are missing—at least one dress and a few other items. I think she must be traveling somewhere outside of London.”
