The carriage rolled to a stop. Trem opened his clenched lids and saw that they had arrived at the inn.
“Henrietta, Christ,” he said, fear pumping through his body that she would make him wait until they went inside.
She drew back again and looked out the window herself. His member twitched at the movement, yearning to come. He had never wanted to come so badly in his life. He was ready to make love to the carriage curtain.
“Henrietta,” he begged.
“Very well,” she said, smiling up at him, and then, with a few strokes of her tongue, he came, explosively, into her mouth, unleashing a torrent of seed. He watched as she swallowed it all, overwrought at the sight—and the idea that this beautiful, beguiling woman was all his own.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Henrietta could not believe that her and Trem’s week out of time was drawing to a close.
It had been the most blissful week of her existence. The only cloud over it had been the missives that confirmed that life and the people they left behind had very much kept going in their absence. While she was irritated with her brother’s anger and did not relish the thought of seeing him, it was Hartley’s threats that filled her with anxiety. She hoped that he was merely hot air and male bluster, but she felt she couldn’t rely on that assumption. She prayed that Trem was right and Leith and Montaigne could handle the matter.
Tomorrow, they would depart for Tremberley Manor, where they would have to re-encounter all the problems they had left in London. Her brother’s anger with Trem, her scandalous flight and the ensuing newspaper gossip items, and any damage she had done to her and Cassandra’s prospective editorship—they would all need to be faced before they could marry.
She had great trepidation at the idea. However, she consoled herself with the thought that, soon, she and Trem could live together, like they had at the inn, all the time. Henrietta knew she could face any difficulty with Trem as her husband. She just had to actually marry him first.
They were to have their goodbye supper with Mary and her husband—or Mr. and Mrs. Ryerson, as Henrietta had come to think of them. It gave her such peace to know that her mother was happy and that her father, with his deceit and obsessive love for her, hadn’t ruined her life. And she had come to adore her two half-siblings, Thomas and Caroline, and had already begun to think of many schemes for how she might get them all to come and visit her at Tremberley Manor after her marriage. She would have a certain amount of social power as the Viscountess of Tremberley and it pleased her to think that she might use it for the benefit of her newfound siblings.
After dinner that night, as Trem and Mr. Ryerson discussed crop yields, Henrietta knew she had to ask her mother about her final intentions in terms of her wedding. Henrietta hoped she would attend—even though she knew it would cause ripples of tension with John, who was already, according to Leith, Montaigne, and Catherine, quite heated. It wasn’t that John objected to Mary in principle, but rather that, when John was angry, anything else that might overset him further was seldom worth introducing into a situation. But she was willing to make that sacrifice to have her mother there.
“Mary,” she started, when she saw that Trem and Mr. Ryerson were deep in conversation. “Have you thought about the wedding?”
Her mother looked down at her lap. She was silent for a few moments. And Henrietta knew, with a clarity she had not thought possible, that she wasn’t going to attend. The idea saddened her, but it also undoubtedly cleared the way for an already messy nuptials to be calmer.
Her mother reached for her hand.
“You must know how having you here has delighted me. Getting to know you, talking with you—it has been one of the joys of my life. And I hope that, after this meeting, we should never go long without speaking.”
“But you can’t come to the wedding.”
“If it were just your family, I would. But I know who it will be—you mentioned that the Viscount Brightley will be in attendance. I can’t face that man again or any of the people who knew me long ago, as Mary Forster. I can’t. I can’t be that person again. Not even for a few days. Not even for you.”
It hurt Henrietta to hear it spoken so plainly. But after coming here and speaking to her mother, she understood all that she had given up to have the life she had now. She now knew how hard she had fought to become Mrs. Ryerson.
“Of course,” Henrietta said, feeling older than she ever had. “But you will come at another time. You must visit us at Tremberley Manor. And bring Mr. Ryerson and Thomas and Caroline.”
It was strange that maturity would come to her at such a moment. Not when she had lost her virtue, that supposed threshold away from maidenhood, and certainly not when she had received any proposal of marriage. But, instead, right now, holding her mother’s hand and reassuring her that she understood that her life had been complicated and not easy. She felt more grown up now than she ever had.
Mary agreed, her eyes shining, and Henrietta understood that, for the moment, she couldn’t speak.
When they left that night, she and her mother embraced for the first time—and Henrietta felt some of the armor that her mother had built to protect herself splinter and crack. At least as far as she was concerned.
All in all, while it had been strange and painful at turns, Henrietta felt that she had gotten what she wanted. She had wanted to know if she had a mother—and she had found out that she did.
In meeting her mother, Henrietta had sought something that she couldn’t describe. While she and Mary would never be like Cassandra and Mrs. Seymour—at least, not for a very long time, when they could have a bond built across years—they could have another type of relationship. With her mother, Henrietta felt what she had lacked her entire life. It was a feeling of being understood. Her mother did not question why Henrietta did impulsive, reckless things, why she wanted what she wanted so keenly, or why her emotions, when she felt them, seemed so large.
John had always tried to understand but he had a steadiness to him that must have come from his mother—and thus, while he loved her, he had always struggled to comprehend her exuberance. But her mother understood, no questions asked. For that understanding, that calm it gave her, Henrietta could accept that it was impossible for Mary to return to the society that had taken so much away from her.
*
The next morning, she and Trem set out for the manor. It would take one day of solid travel to reach the place. They had decided to sleep in the carriage and drive straight through so that they might reach the manor a day or two ahead of everyone else. Henrietta had seldom been so excited. While she had enjoyed trying on her wedding clothes and picking out items for her trousseau, her feelings had been nothing compared to the pure anticipation of seeing her future home for the first time. Yes, because she would live there (when she and Trem weren’t at his townhome in Mayfair, where she had been on occasion, and which had a very similar design to her brother’s), but because she had heard about Tremberley Manor for years from her brother. She knew it was a beautiful place—and one she associated, from these stories, with happiness.
“John couldn’t hide that the parties you had there were raucous.” Henrietta laughed, as the carriage pulled out of Rampisham. “He was too delighted by them. My father would always sigh when John travelled to Tremberley Manor to see you. Once when I asked him why he looked so grave when John departed for the manor, my father said that an open manor house under the sole jurisdiction of a young lord was the most dangerous thing in Christendom.”
She looked over at Trem, expecting a rakish grin or at least a chuckle. Instead, his gaze was fixed to the window, his expression serious.
