“But now I need you to tell me what this ridiculous secret is. I want to know. Not because it matters to whether I will marry you, but because I want to know you. And anything that concerns you concerns me, particularly something that would have you traveling to Dorset in the middle of the night.”
Henrietta sighed. He was right, of course. If they were to be married, she should tell him the truth. She reached across the seat and took his hand. When he winced, she realized that he had grabbed his wounded arm. But when she tried to remove her hand, he clutched it, not letting her move.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice more grave than she had ever heard it.
She nodded. Best to get it over with. It was what she wanted, after all.
“You remember when my father almost left my dowry to my cousin?” she started. Her voice sounded tentative and small even to her own ears. She didn’t understand why speaking of these events had always been so hard for her. She remembered when she had first told Catherine about her parents, when she had still thought she and John had the same mother. Back then, she had burst into tears talking about how her life seemed to have been ruined before it had even started.
“Of course,” he grunted. “Bloody hard to forget your best friend almost losing sixty thousand pounds.”
“Well, as you know, he found Mary Forster and saved my dowry. Only, once he told our solicitor, he learned that my father had left a letter for him.”
Trem’s gaze locked once more on her own. “John never told me that.”
Henrietta shook her head. “He told no one but me and Catherine.”
“What did the letter say?”
Henrietta swallowed hard.
“You can tell me,” Trem said, squeezing her hand again. “It doesn’t matter to me—whatever it is.”
She closed her eyes. She knew she could tell him, that he would be kind even if he didn’t want to marry her anymore, but the words stuck in her throat. She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“Henrietta,” Trem said, squeezing her hand.
She opened her eyes, resolved to speak.
“John and I do not have the same mother. My mother is Mary Forster.”
Henrietta watched him process her statement. He looked confused and then, briefly, the corner of his mouth quirked up. Then his expression stayed grave. She waited, painfully, for him to respond.
“How is that possible?” he finally said. “John always said that you were born at Edington Hall. I remember—well, after it happened, when we were boys, he told me he heard his mother screaming. I’ve never forgotten it.”
“Mary Forster and John’s mother were with child at the same time. And when John’s mother died in childbirth, with the babe, a week before I was born, my father and Mary Forster made it appear that I had been born to his wife—to John’s mother. John didn’t hear his mother’s screams that night. He heard Mary Forster’s.”
“Why didn’t they marry?”
“Mary Forster didn’t want to marry my father anymore. My father had said that he and John’s mother were no longer…intimate. When she discovered that John’s mother was also pregnant, and that the child was his, she felt deceived.”
“Henrietta,” he said. “You must know that none of this matters to me. It doesn’t change what I feel for you at all.”
Relief permeated her body, as if she had put down a weight she hadn’t known she had been carrying—or, rather, she had known she was carrying it, but she hadn’t realized quite how heavy it had been. Still, she couldn’t see how it didn’t matter to him at all.
“But I’m illegitimate. I’m not Lady Henrietta Breminster. Not really.”
Trem smiled at her. “I don’t deny that your title is technically incorrect. But even if your father hadn’t made it appear that you were his late wife’s child, he would have owned you. You would have been Henrietta Breminster, minus the title. And you would have been yourself, still, all the same.”
She had never thought of that. It did make the ache in her chest ease somewhat. That her name would have still been hers, even without the courtesy title.
“Are you sure that you still want to marry me?”
“Come here,” he said, pulling her off the seat and tugging her towards his own.
“Your arm,” she said in protest, loath to hurt him further.
“It’s not that bad.” Still, she could hear him wince as she settled next to him.
