He didn’t always go with Henrietta to visit her mother. Most evenings they dined with the Ryersons, but during the day, when Henrietta would go and call on her mother, he insisted that she go alone. And these solitary meetings between mother and daughter seemed to soften Mary Forster’s heart more than anything.
In the evenings, after supper, Trem and Henrietta would sit with Mary and Mr. Ryerson. Trem had instantly liked Mr. Ryerson upon meeting him—he was an independent farmer of considerable success and a land manager for the local squire. He reminded Trem vaguely of his own Mr. Foxcroft.
Furthermore, Trem admired Mr. Ryerson’s commitment to enriching not just himself, but the community of Rampisham. He was staunchly anti-enclosure and had used all his power with the local squire to defend the communal pasture where the local folk could let their cattle graze.
“As of now,” Mr. Ryerson said one night over a glass of port, as he and Trem talked on one side of the room while Mary and Henrietta conversed on the other, “the commons remain open—but the drive to privatize won’t go away anytime soon.”
“Why is this issue so important to you?” Trem asked, curious about the man’s deeper thinking. “I don’t disagree with you—in fact I commend it. But you have your own lands. Why do you care if it doesn’t affect you?”
“But it does affect me,” Mr. Ryerson said, his voice firm but friendly. “When we live in a society, or a neighborhood, that is cruel to its people, the people become unkind as well. And I don’t want to live in a world in which the same creeping misery felt by the majority is only kept away from me and mine by force.”
“What my husband is saying,” Mary broke in from across the room, “with more art than matter, is that he could be a richer man than he chooses to be.”
“Mary,” her husband objected. “You make me out to be a braggart.”
His wife crossed the room towards him and embraced him around the shoulders.
“No,” she said, “I’m the braggart. And more people should know how much you give up for yourself so that the village has what it needs.”
Strangely, observing this scene, Trem felt a lump form in his throat. It wasn’t just the love that this couple felt for one another that moved him—it was the admiration that Mary so clearly felt for her husband. He realized how deeply he wanted Henrietta to admire him in that way. He wanted to do something in which she could so wholly feel pride; for her to appreciate him not because he was powerful and titled and skilled in the bedroom but because he did good for the world.
He had spent so much of his life not having ambition. He had been to the finest schools in England and into the nation’s most rarefied spaces and he had not found ambition there. But here, in this modest drawing room, he felt its first inklings.
*
A few mornings after their arrival in the Rampisham inn, Tremberley received two letters. They had been brought up on a tray by one of the errand boys. He read them in the one chair their room afforded; Henrietta dozed on the bed, sated after a bout of morning lovemaking. He felt drowsy and satisfied himself and dreaded opening these missives from the outside world.
Recognizing the scrawl on each, Trem braced himself for their contents, opening one and then another, scanning them for their essential parts.
Dear Brother,
You’ve done it now—John is in high dudgeon. He has threatened to forbid the marriage half a dozen times in the past three days alone. I’ve had to make him see sense. I’ve told him twice now that if you don’t marry her, Henrietta will be ruined, especially after the mess with Hartley and what the scandal sheets made of her little jaunt from London.
We’ll all be at the Manor at the agreed-upon time, but don’t expect happiness from our most difficult mate. I know Catherine has advised him to control his temper on this matter but he isn’t easily cowed these days (and when has he ever been, after all—I’m sure you remember the time at Eton when Curzon took those hot cross buns from him…). I personally can’t see why he is fussed if Henrietta is safe and—I assume—quite contented with her company, but he won’t see reason.
He may throttle you upon greeting. I’ll do what I can to stop it, but I can’t promise much.
Monty
Dear Trem,
I would scold you but I know it will only fall on deaf ears. What could have prevailed upon you to fly from London as you did? I know that she left first, however, you should have brought her straight back. It looks too much like an elopement and John is rightfully furious. I don’t understand why you would vex him in such a manner. On more than one occasion, I’ve been fearful he will have an apoplexy.
I still can’t believe that you have lost your senses with Henrietta to the extent that you have. I fear for your life if John ever discovers that you have been bedding her every chance you get—although I am sure you know he already expects as much. I can’t quite keep civil with myself that I did not give you at least a bit of a thrashing for your conduct when I had the chance.
I will see you at the wedding. And please wear buff breeches to the ceremony. If I catch you in buckskins, I’ll have to horsewhip you myself.
Leith
Utterly typical, Trem thought, scanning the letters once more. That said, until this moment, he felt that he had never fully valued Montaigne. While he was annoyed with Leith, he was mostly glad he wasn’t more outraged. For someone who bedded so many courtesans, he could be an awful prude and a devotee to convention—and it could only be blind regard for Trem himself that made him even as measured as his letter.
It upset him deeply that John was angry with him. And about Henrietta. It was agonizing. If it weren’t for his intense, pressing feelings for his fiancée, he would have found such a division with John unbearable. As it was, it made his stomach churn. He knew how John could be in anger—implacable, unrelenting, and prone to lasting resentment. He only hoped that he could make it right when they were next together.
“What is that you are reading?”
He started, realizing Henrietta had come up behind him.
“Nothing,” he said, trying to stuff the papers in his pocket.
