“Can you tell me what the devil is going on?” he demanded, rounding on her.
Henrietta felt herself shrink under his gaze. It had been so much easier, she thought, when all she had to confess was neglected Christmas baskets. She had no idea how she would reveal the truth to him—it was too embarrassing.
“I have no earthly idea why you have brought a dead-drunk Lord Hartley to my door,” she hedged. “Not to mention Lord Drent, who seems very ill at ease.”
Even as she crossed her arms and looked away from him, the truth constricted her breathing: she knew she needed help, just like back then, when she had been fourteen, overwhelmed and scared. She had risked everything with Hartley: the prospect of the editorship; her brother’s trust; and, most of all, her status, her very identity, within the only world she had ever known. If she definitively refused him and Justin was able to circulate a credible rumor about her losing her virtue, she would be accepted nowhere. Not unless she married him.
She swallowed. And she couldn’t do that. It went against everything in her. The prospect made her feel like she had come down with the ague. Sweaty and more than a little feverish.
“I was at White’s,” Trem started, his tone still forbidding. “And Hartley was blabbering to Drent—where anyone might have heard, mind. He said that he was in love with you, which is all very well—” Henrietta saw a faint blush, likely invisible to anyone who didn’t know him, suffuse his cheeks at the word “love” “—but he said that he had—” He broke off, his eyes dropping for a quick moment. “That he had—had carnal relations. With you.”
“I see,” she said, feeling herself shrink back even further.
“I see? I see?” Trem repeated. “Such talk could ruin you. I had no choice but to drag him here and demand he answer for himself.”
Henrietta gaped at his assuredness. His only choice? Women whispered about men of the ton doing similar things each day and no one was dragged to anyone’s doorstep.
“Because he is obviously lying,” Trem continued, flatly. “And such lies cannot be tolerated.”
Even in the low candlelight she must be crimson. Her silence was incriminating but it was better than an outright confession.
“Aren’t you concerned about this development?” Trem said. “About a young lord spreading such rumors about you?”
“Yes,” she managed to squeak out. “I—I’ve told Justin to stop. But he won’t.”
“Justin? I didn’t realize you were so intimate.”
“You know Justin and I are friends.”
His glower was fearsome now.
Bollocks.
“John shouldn’t have allowed it. Hell, I shouldn’t have let it stand.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m not going to dignify that question with a response.”
“It’s a valid question.”
“It isn’t. I shouldn’t have let the friendship with Hartley stand.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can have any friend I want.”
“So your brother says. But you see yourself what has happened.”
“Hartley wants to marry me,” she tried to explain.
“His behavior is hardly the way to court a lady.”
“He is upset. Because I don’t want to—to marry him, that is.”
He smiled at the words. The sight caused her pelvic muscles to flutter. Embarassing. How could he do that to her with a simple grin? And in such a conversation as this one?
“Henrietta, I know he is your friend, but he can’t spread such lies about you, no matter how dumbstruck with love he may be. But worry not, John and I will make it so he never speaks your name again.”
“Don’t tell John!” she burst out, panic pushing the words from her chest. “He can’t know of any of this.”
