“True,” he said. She wasn’t completely wrong there, after all. “But I should have probably announced my identity before approaching Percy the coachman on a dark road at night. I had no notion that the man would carry a pistol.”
“Neither did I.”
“I can’t blame him for wanting to protect you.”
She shook her head in response.
“Although he might want to ask a few questions before he shoots the next bloke who comes across his path. We wouldn’t want to see Percy in Newgate.”
“I think he’s afraid you’ll send him. He has been moaning about how he shot a peer.”
“Luckily for him I’m not an important one. Anyway, I’m a liberal man. This first gunshot wound I’ll excuse. I can’t promise that I’ll be so understanding next time.”
She laughed but then her expression clouded again.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself.”
He hated the look of consternation on her face. He would do anything to ease her pain. Especially when he knew that this accident was his fault as well.
“Darling, we both should have been more careful. You should have told me of your plan, but I should have listened when you tried to tell me about your mother. But we’re just at the beginning of this—we’ll learn. Together.”
He tried to give her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. She returned it, her expression still watery, but at least she nodded in response.
As she did so, an unpleasant thought occurred to him.
After two days lying in his own filth, he must be a horrific sight to behold…and smell.
He cleared his throat. “Will you order me a bath?”
She laughed again. The sound suffused his chest with a feeling that was embarrassingly close to joy.
“You nearly died and all you care about is bathing? I never thought you were so vain.”
“I can’t imagine that I’m a sight fit for you at the moment, after two days in a bloody, unconscious state.”
“I’d have you any way. But I’ll get Mrs. Bercine to bring up the bath. However, you aren’t supposed to get your wound wet.”
“I promise I won’t.”
She left the room to find Mrs. Bercine. Trem had never been a particularly religious person, despite all the school chapel and musings about God he had heard in his lifetime, but, at the moment, he wanted to thank some higher entity for saving his life. He had only just found Henrietta—or discovered her, as it were—and he would have been enraged if he had died before he had the opportunity to marry her.
And bed her again, he added, mentally, feeling a ghost of a stirring in his cock. He didn’t know whether to be proud of himself or disappointed.
But he supposed that was just what Henrietta did to him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
While Trem had lay unconscious, Henrietta Breminster had time to think. When she had thought her fiancé was dying, these thoughts had been very sober indeed. She blamed herself for his injury. Through her own foolishness and impulsivity, she had nearly brought on the death of the man she loved. But, worse, the thing that really haunted her more than her own culpability was how she had regarded their relationship. The engagement had come about so quickly that she had taken it for granted. Having had no time to hope for such an outcome (beyond the wild daydreams of her debutante years), she had—she found, to her horror—been ungrateful.
The truth was, she had to acknowledge, sitting for hours by her fiancé’s bedside, that their connection had come on so suddenly, so powerfully, and it had seemed so real and so tangible, that she hadn’t treated it with care. The love that led you to tup in a bower, she reflected, was of the type that seemed unusually robust. But this incident had taught her that love was only as impervious as the flesh of her beloved. In short, their love could be powerful and still be fragile at the same time. It needed to be protected.
She had even gotten down beside his bed and, through sobs she fought to quiet, prayed, nay, begged, to a god that she did not much believe in for his life. She promised anyone listening that, if Trem was saved, she would change. Going forward, she would be a better fiancée, sister, and friend. Anything, for his life. She wouldn’t fly off without any notice—and she wouldn’t leave their love to chance.
Never again, she resolved.
The morning after their arrival at the inn, she had sent a letter to John and Catherine relating the calamity. She sent another when she knew Trem would make a full recovery. She had yet to hear a response from either her brother or her sister-in-law—which surprised her, she had to admit. She had half-expected John to arrive on horseback, frantic to ensure that his best friend made it through his injury.
To her immense relief, that evening, Trem looked almost normal. The gray had receded from his countenance and his bath had given him an air of renewed health. He had even decided that he was well enough to venture to the dining room of the inn for his supper. Mrs. Bercine had fashioned a sling—Henrietta personally found the comely older woman’s proficiency in dealing with gunshot wounds highly suspicious—and she helped Trem put it on. Somehow, impossibly, the sling made him look even more rakish. It was even a little irritating—what didn’t make him more handsome? She was sure that if she were to wear a sling it would make her look like a peaked child.
