Trem cringed inwardly. “Two vases were broken. Although the second was smashed by Catherine to get our attention.”
“Thank the Lord for Catherine,” Henrietta said, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know how my brother ever got on without her.”
“Not very well. Back then, he only had me and, well, historically, I don’t have a very good record of tempting people to resist vices.”
“I can’t believe my brother fought you.” She bit her lip. “I should have never left. I can’t believe I was so foolish.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” He took her hand. “It’s not your fault John became so…heated.”
“What did he say?”
“That I always cock everything up,” Trem said, remembering his best friend’s words with bitterness.
“That’s not true!”
“It’s not. Not because of my stunning competence, of course. Rather, it is because I’ve never really tried to do anything.”
“What do you mean?” Henrietta asked. He loved the little crinkle between her brows when she looked at him with a question in her eyes. He wasn’t sure how such a lout as himself had convinced her to marry him.
He shrugged. “Other men pursue politics, or literature, or horse racing. But all I’ve ever enjoyed doing is spending time with my friends and bedding complicated women.”
Henrietta rolled her eyes at this, so he caught her hand once more.
“Now, one woman,” he clarified. “I don’t even manage my own estate. Mr. Foxcroft, my steward, is so efficient that I hardly need to do anything. He keeps profits high and the tenants happy. And the entail means that I can hardly change the manor. It’s a national landmark and I’m just its owner.”
“Do you want to do more? I’d never considered that you would.” She stopped. “Not that I’m saying you couldn’t. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that you’re a peer. It’s…” She trailed off.
“I know. You don’t have to do more. And don’t misunderstand me. I do what I should for my tenants and vote in Parliament when I must. I’m not completely useless. I just don’t have…”
“I understand,” Henrietta said, nodding. “I felt that way. Before Cassandra and I stumbled on the idea of the editorship. I wanted to have something that was… It sounds selfish to say, but something that was all mine. An endeavor of my own. Outside of who I am to the people closest to me. Something in the world.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And it has always seemed egotistical to try my hand at politics or writing verses because I feel unremarkable. So, I never have.”
“But you could. You will,” Henrietta said, stroking his hand with her thumb and moving to sit by him on the bench. “Maybe this gunshot wound was all you needed. You can start a hospital and make Mrs. Bercine the head surgeon.”
Trem laughed. With her renewed nearness, Trem found himself realizing afresh how delectable Henrietta looked in the morning light of the carriage. “How do you understand me so well?” he marveled. “I’ve had the same best friends since I was a boy and they know everything about me. And if I said this to them—and I probably have—they would tell me I was being exceptionally morose.”
Henrietta snorted. “They are ones to talk. No one is moodier than John.”
“So moody. The moodiest. Come here,” he continued, pulling her into his lap. “All of this talk has made me forget my real purpose on this earth. Which is to ravish you until you forget your own name.”
“And yours?”
“Never mine,” he said, pulling her into a deep kiss. She tasted like the strawberries she had eaten for breakfast, and honey, and still, underneath that, like the tart Edington apples that he loved so much. “Even in your deepest rapture, you’ll know my name. I’ll never let you forget it.”
She kissed him back, pressing herself into him (on his good side, luckily). The feel of her breasts on his chest sent his cock, long deprived at this point, straining against his breeches. Could he tup her in this carriage with his bad arm? Who was he kidding, he thought, even if he couldn’t, he’d find a way somehow.
Henrietta broke their kiss and looked down at him from her perch on his lap. She ground herself against his straining erection.
“You appear well prepared, my lord.”
It was humorous—that honorific, my lord, had become the way he knew she wanted to bed him. He had had other women try to inject that phrase with sensuality in the past and it had never done anything for him. He did not like the idea of a woman, servile and eager before him, although he knew other men did. But with Henrietta, it was different. Because he had known her for so long and she had never used it, it indicated that they were in a new place in their relationship, one in which they were, paradoxical to the phrase itself, equals. Because she was the only one who knew how to completely undo him.
“I always strive to be, my lady,” he said, kissing her neck.
“I’m not a lady—not really.”
“You are to me. Damn the concept of illegitimacy. You’ll be my viscountess anyway.”
