“I do,” he said. “I have an idea. Would you like to hear it?”
“Of course.”
“You remember when I said to you—in the carriage—that I wanted to do something—well, good?”
His voice sounded unbearably earnest to his ears. He cringed.
But Henrietta merely nodded.
“When I was speaking to your mother and Mr. Ryerson, I was outraged by what your mother experienced. How she had no place to go after she left your father. And I admire what Mr. Ryerson does in his parish. I wondered if I could do something similar here but I didn’t know how. When I was riding the other day, I saw this building, and I realized—well, it made me think of all the time we have spent at inns recently and of Mrs. Bercine and of the inn in Rampisham. And I thought, what if there were a place, a kind of inn, that women could come to when they needed it? But they wouldn’t have to pay for the room. It would be free. With child or without, it wouldn’t matter. The only requirement would be that they needed a place to stay. We could do that here.”
Trem’s heart thudded in his chest waiting for her response. He felt foolish speaking so idealistically—but he was also unable to contain his excitement about this idea.
Instead of speaking, Henrietta looked at him intently. And then, before he could process what was happening, she threw her arms around him and kissed him. It was a wild and exuberant kiss, enthusiastic and admiring. Once he recovered from his surprise, he kissed her in return.
When she pulled back, her eyes were shining with tears.
“You’ll help me? Build it?”
“Of course,” she said. “I think it’s brilliant.”
*
When they left the old barn, they walked back into the forest. Trem felt light, relieved that Henrietta had understood his vision.
He had no more plan than to take her back to the manor—all right, perhaps, he was hoping they could enjoy a private liaison in his rooms before the return of the guests from the lake—but then he realized where this path would take them. In the barn, she had heated his blood and he wanted to get fully lost in her, to blot out any other care for just one more moment before the wedding.
Soon, they came across the spot. Henrietta immediately exclaimed at the sight of it.
“Is this a grotto?” She rushed up to the cave and pressed her palms to its walls. It faced out of the woods and, through a strategically placed break in the trees, was visible from a pretty meadow that was one of the most striking spots in the place. In the meadow, between the grotto and the woods, you could feel surrounded by a pretty wilderness, like you were in a kind of natural fairyland. But Trem had always loved the grotto itself. A mural had been inlaid there, crafted of tiles that were now crumbling, but which still showed a bust of a woman.
“It’s Artemis,” Henrietta said, running her hands over the tiles. “Who built this?”
“My great-grandfather—” Trem explained “—when a craze for grottos swept the aristocracy—at least according to Mr. Foxcroft. No aristocrat’s estate was complete without one.”
“It’s beautiful.” But he noticed her glancing at her feet. She kneeled down and picked up something—and when he saw it, he couldn’t swallow a feeling of embarrassment.
Henrietta held in her hand a little wooden horse, clearly carved by a child’s hand.
“You played here when you were a boy.”
“It was my favorite spot in the woods,” he said, rationalizing that there was no point in hiding this history from her, even though speaking about it made him feel unusually shy.
“It must have been strange,” she said, setting down the little horse on the ledge of the grotto. “To grow up in a place that your family built but to have none of them living.”
“It was,” he said, pulling her towards him and wrapping his arm around her middle. She had her back towards him as he leaned on the wall of the grotto. It was easier, somehow, to have this conversation when he wasn’t facing her. “At one point, when I was younger, I wanted to change the whole place. I used to fight with Mr. Foxcroft about how I wanted to tear the ruins out of the garden—”
“You did? But why?” she exclaimed, turning to see his face, but he held her fast. She gave up and instead merely wriggled her backside into him, sending frissons of awareness through his body. “They’re famous, the ruins—they’re what everyone knows about Tremberley Manor.”
“I was tired, I think, of living in a monument to a family I had never met. Like they were taunting me. I always loved to have parties here because, at least, I was filling the place with life.”
“You said about your mother’s room—that you didn’t want it to be a mausoleum.” She paused. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” He pulled her more tightly into him and he heard her breath hitch. He was starting to feel the stirrings of arousal in himself. He would tell her anything that she wanted to know.
“Why do you dislike speaking of your parents? You’re usually so—open. But when it comes to them, you become rather…diffident.”
Trem paused. He knew that she was right. But it was a truth that he hadn’t ever spent much time examining. His parents were dead—and to be dead was a sad, unpleasant thing. Didn’t death make most people uncomfortable?
