“He is of my own choosing,” Henrietta broke in.
“I see you’ve inherited both my spirited nature and my taste for noblemen,” Mary said, dryly. “Until I learned better, that is. Well, only on the latter count.”
“I’ll have you know,” Trem pressed, “that John is vexed with me at the moment.”
Mary regarded him with more interest. “He doesn’t want you to marry his sister?”
“He was happy at first—but then we quarreled.”
“I can only imagine about what,” Mary said, her gaze drifting back to Henrietta. She felt herself redden under her mother’s gaze. It was clear what she thought the dispute had been about. Technically, she was wrong. Well, maybe she wasn’t wrong anymore. John might have been willing to overlook a quick engagement but he was not so naïve as to believe that she and Trem would travel together and keep their relationship chaste. She had sent him a letter that morning informing him that they wouldn’t be returning to London but continuing on to Rampisham. She couldn’t imagine that he had been happy with that response—and what it indicated about his best friend’s premarital involvement with herself.
The quirk in Mary’s smile seemed to have intuited this entire drama. But then, it occurred to her, who was Mary to judge her? As if aware of this same question, Mary turned back to Trem. “But I don’t care about that. I certainly don’t care about scandal. I want to know why you are here and what you plan to do about these rumors. From Catherine’s letter, I divined that John is very unhappy about what they are saying in the newspapers. Why are you here?”
Henrietta bit her lip. She had no reason to be at Mary Forster’s doorstep—other than her foolish desire to speak to her. Mary was probably expecting some grand predicament of the type that John and Catherine had presented her with a few years prior. And all Henrietta brought to this neat, beautiful farmhouse was the confusion of her own heart.
Trem met her eyes. The sly lines of his face were bent, again, in concern.
“I—well,” she began. “It’s that—well—” She had no idea what she was trying to say. Or where she was going.
“We came here to invite you to our wedding,” Trem interjected, brightly.
Mary’s brow crinkled in surprise. “To invite me to your wedding? Couldn’t a letter have performed that office?”
“I did not feel that was sufficiently respectful to your position. I know that the late Duke of Edington caused you great pain and forced you into an impossible situation in regard to Henrietta—and himself,” Trem said, smoothly.
Mary blinked at these words and then nodded.
Henrietta had to suppress a smile. Oh, he was good. Not only was he saying words that could not fail to be appealing to Mary Forster—from all that Henrietta knew of her, at least—but he was using a tone of voice that, she was very sure, had never been resisted by any woman who had the luck or misfortune to hear it.
“We could have, of course, sent you an invitation by post,” Trem continued, “but you are Henrietta’s only living parent. And I did not think it appropriate to regard her brother as her only steward, whatever society might think. I wanted to meet you myself and ask for your blessing of our union. And Henrietta agreed and very much wanted to join me.” He reached over and grasped her hand.
Mary shifted in her seat. Henrietta would have worried that she suspected Trem of lying, but her fiancé had even her convinced that this was their plan. His sincere tone was irresistible.
“But you can see that it would be difficult to depart London together, under the circumstances, as we are not yet married. We planned to have Henrietta leave first and then I would join her at a roadside inn. We had arranged it all—but then her brother discovered our plan and we quarreled. You can imagine how he felt about my plan to travel with his sister unchaperoned. And then I made the foolish decision to approach Henrietta’s carriage without announcing myself. I startled the coachman and was forced to recuperate at the Craven Arms—”
“Mrs. Bercine,” Mary broke in, “a good woman. And a discriminating one.”
Trem bowed his head in agreement. Henrietta was aghast.
“How do you know Mrs. Bercine?”
“It’s a long story,” Mary said, the smile on her face suggesting that the story delighted her. “She helped me once, long ago. When she didn’t have to.” She turned to Trem. “If she has helped you recently, you must have some worth beyond your title.”
“Well, then I must be worth double, as it is not the first time she has helped me out of a scrape,” Trem replied, with a smile. “Although I’m sure Mrs. Bercine is too much of a businesswoman to not capitalize on a lackwit nobleman with a large purse when she sees one.”
Mary laughed. She actually laughed. Henrietta couldn’t believe it. Trem was actually charming Mary Forster.
“But you hardly know me,” Trem continued. “I don’t expect to receive your blessing so quickly. Henrietta and I plan to stay at the inn in Rampisham for the next few days. We are being married at my seat, Tremberley Manor, in two weeks’ time, but we will be stopping here until the wedding. We hope to see you often. Maybe, by the end of our visit, you will consent to bless our union.”
“I will consider it,” Mary said, her eyes flitting to Henrietta. “I must say, Henrietta, that your fiancé significantly improves on Catherine’s.”
Henrietta hardly knew what to do with that statement. It felt disloyal to John to laugh…but she also felt a lightness, a happiness, welling up from her chest at what Tremberley had executed so seamlessly here. Mary looked like a different woman from when they had come into the room—her eyes were no longer wary, her smile easy.
“You would of course be welcome to travel to Tremberley Manor with us. You could serve as chaperone.”
Mary laughed, that open, wild sound, which had an intoxicating freedom to it—it made Henrietta realize with a jolt of discomfort why her father may have found Mary Forster so indelible.
“I don’t think anyone in the ton would see me as chaperone material.”
