“Is your arm hurting?”
“Well, yes,” he said, with a crooked smile. “But I was shot only a few days ago. It’s a miracle I’m traveling.”
“I told you it was too soon.”
“Nonsense,” he said, lifting his eyes from his sleeve. “Read the letter from John.”
She broke the wax seal, unfolded the paper, and began to read.
Dear Henrietta,
I am very glad to hear that you are safe. Please return to London immediately.
Your brother,
John
“What on earth?” Henrietta exclaimed, nonplussed by the brevity and terseness of her brother’s missive. “He doesn’t even mention your injury! What on earth could have gotten into him? I can’t believe Catherine would allow it.”
She studied the letter again in shock.
“I write to tell him that his best friend has been shot and he sends back—” she counted them hastily “—twenty words in response. I’ve seen longer letters from him on the subject of purchasing a chamber pot.”
Realizing that her fiancé had said nothing, she looked up at him. He had a curious, uncomfortable look on his face.
“Can you explain this?” She waved the letter at him.
“Erm.” His eyes darted to the window, as if he might find an escape there.
“Tell me, Trem.”
“I may not have left your brother on the best of terms. When we last parted.”
“What do you mean?”
Trem twisted in his seat. Or as much as he could, with his arm in the sling. His eyes roved once more around the carriage.
“Trem,” she said, putting all the severity in her tone that she could muster. She would kill her brother. The thought pounded against her skull. “Tell me the truth. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well, there may have been a few things I…omitted about my departure from London,” Trem began.
His fiancée had turned a ghastly shade of white. It rather looked like she had been shot, he thought glumly to himself. He knew that, eventually, he was going to have to relate to Henrietta the fight that he’d had with John. But he had hoped that this could be accomplished, somehow, after their marriage, when she couldn’t decide to not marry him for resorting to violence against her only sibling.
“Trem,” she repeated. When angry, he knew, Henrietta was not to be trifled with. He remembered the time that John had thought it would be a lark to put Henrietta’s favorite bonnet on Edington Hall’s prize pig, Sally. He still shuddered to think of the scene that day.
“John and I fought before I left for London. Therefore, he probably isn’t too anxious about my health at the moment.”
“What did you fight about?”
“Who knows why he gets angry? He’s always been short-tempered.”
“Trem,” Henrietta warned.
“Fine. He thought that I had something to do with your disappearance. I didn’t take kindly to that suggestion—especially since I really didn’t have anything to do with it. And I wasn’t happy about your sudden absence, obviously. I should have known where you’d gone. Ideally to some secure location where I could tup you all day.”
Henrietta groaned. “John. My brother is such a lackwit. How badly did it go? Did he shout?”
