“God damn it, why would she do that?” John shouted, turning back to Trem. “What did you do? Only something you did could make her run off like this. I should have never agreed to this betrothal. I should have known.”
Trem and John hadn’t fought in years. It had been a long time since their schoolboy scuffles at Eton or their drunken rows at Oxford. Their fight over a courtesan, which had lasted a week and required the intervention of Leith and Montaigne, was over a decade resolved. But it was not until this moment that Trem realized that he and John had never truly quarreled before. Their earlier fights had been about nothing more important than their young, inflated egos. Back then, they had only been quibbling about who in their friendship got to be the best at something—at sport, at drink, in bed—but now they were fighting about a matter of actual importance. Now Henrietta was at stake.
If John wanted to resort to violence, well—Trem wouldn’t sink to his level.
He would sink below it.
Grabbing John by his lapels, Trem thrust him up against the wall. “Don’t make me thrash you, you absolute bastard,” he shouted, aware that he had lost all composure and feeling the thrill of not caring in the slightest. “She was under your roof, under your care, and perhaps if you, as usual, weren’t so preoccupied with yourself, then maybe you would know where Henrietta is right now. You’ve never looked after her properly.”
At these words, John shoved him into a credenza on the other side of the hall.
“I’ll kill you,” John said, as Trem fought back, struggling to regain his leverage. “You fucking…orphan…buzzard.”
“Orphan buzzard? Are you fucking jesting? How are you any different?” With a heave, he threw John off of him and onto a giant vase in the corner, which promptly popped with the cheery alacrity of a bubble. He strode across the room and grabbed his shirt, pressing him to the wall once more. “You’ve always ignored her. She has been alone, scared, shunted to the side, and you haven’t given her a thought. For years. I can’t believe I trusted my fiancée in a house with you.”
John opened his mouth to respond, but, just as he did, an enormous crash sounded through the entryway. Trem turned towards the noise and saw Catherine standing over a broken vase.
“You are,” she screamed, “the two largest, most spoilt children I have ever encountered. You are arguing over Henrietta like she is a toy. A possession. When she is likely upset, on the eve of the most momentous moment of her life—at least up to this point. And she is clearly in need of the comfort of someone who isn’t a complete arsehole.”
Her words caused a little shame to trickle into Trem’s consciousness. He released John roughly, which caused his supposed best friend to nearly topple over, but he righted himself at the last moment.
“Trem,” Catherine said, her voice still shaking, “you are her fiancé—”
“I beg to—” John started, but he stopped when his wife held up her hand. Trem would have shut up too—the look on Catherine’s face was deadly.
“None of your nonsense. Henrietta said yes to him and so only Henrietta can break her engagement to him.”
While this entire interlude had been positively bathetic in comparison to the evening he had imagined, Trem had not felt true horror, but rather, shock, until this moment. Of course, Henrietta wanted to break the engagement. Why else would she have run away? He racked his mind for what he could have done. Perhaps he had pushed her too hard on the timing of the wedding. She had thought it fast. Maybe he had scared her off.
John nodded once, quickly, at his wife.
Good, Trem thought, looking at his chastened face, he deserved it.
Catherine turned back to him. “I don’t know if she left because of you, Trem,” she said. “It’s possible. I’m not in her confidence. But I do have a sense of where she could be going.”
“Back to Edington Hall?” That had been Trem’s first thought. If she had, he would chase her there. He would fix whatever had broken between them.
“Maybe,” Catherine said. “I think she has definitely gone back to Dorset.”
“Where else would she go in Dorset?” Panicked, paranoid thoughts floated through his mind. A lover? Someone she loved more than him?
She had told him that there were things about her that he didn’t know. Why hadn’t he pressed to know the answer? He had been unable to imagine that anything she would tell him would matter. It was dawning on him now, however, that that had very likely been a mistake.
“That’s for her to tell you,” Catherine said quietly. “But, if I were you, I’d go after her.”
“We should go after her,” John broke in. “We are her family. Catherine, my love, you don’t know what this man is capable of—what I have seen him do.”
“Oh, please, John,” Catherine countered. “As a woman who has run off a time or two myself, I can tell you that any lady would rather be pursued by the one man that she has always desired rather than her brother and his wife. And while I can’t say I am particularly impressed with Trem at the moment—” she cast him a scathing look “—I well know that there isn’t one sin he has committed that you are not guilty of yourself.”
“Good God—and I’ll have you know, I’ve never, not once—a Parisian girl—and a bathtub—a blancmange and a turtle—”
At this moment, Trem hated his best friend, but even he had to stifle a smile at this garbled retelling of his own night of debauchery.
But then John switched tack, seemingly realizing what Catherine had said.
“Desired? Why do you think Henrietta has desired him?”
John turned his gaze towards Trem, regarding him with the expression that he usually reserved for Montaigne’s story about catching his roué uncle copulating with a farmer’s daughter in a pig pen.
