“It’s strange, you must admit,” Leith said, “that she would choose this particular moment to disappear.”
“She hasn’t disappeared, God damn it,” Trem bit back, his stomach a block of ice. He couldn’t believe that his fiancée was jilting him. They had been so happy only yesterday afternoon. What could have gone wrong? Was she embarrassed that others had seen them together in the grotto? No one would care once they were married. It was a sterling rule of their world: marriage righted such sins.
John entered the vestibule, looking—as he had of late—quite cross.
“Where is my sister?”
“I have no bloody idea,” Trem spat in response, more than ready to use John to vent his frustration. “She was supposed to be here at eleven o’clock.”
“What did you do now?” John advanced on him. “Perhaps she is too embarrassed to show her face after how you exposed her to everyone yesterday. You’re despicable.”
Instead of rage in the face of John’s words, Trem merely felt tired. He felt one hundred years old. And he felt a bit like crying. He didn’t understand how the man he had regarded throughout his life as his best friend could so willfully misunderstand him.
“Perhaps,” he said, running his hand over his face.
When his hand dropped, he was surprised by John’s countenance. He looked—not sympathetic, but surprised. His face had an openness he hadn’t seen in weeks.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
Trem felt his last shred of patience snap.
“Forster,” he said, resorting to John’s old title, the one he had called him throughout most of their lives, in the hope that his best friend would finally hear him, “I love your sister. I don’t know why that isn’t clear to you. You’ve known me since we were boys—would I have proposed marriage to any woman that I merely wanted to bed? Would anything but the purest, most visceral motivation have led me to this moment, standing paces away from a room full of wedding guests, with my bride not to be found? I didn’t seek to take advantage of you or her. She and I…our relationship changed in an instant. It wasn’t planned. And, if your sister ever shows up for this goddamned wedding, I hope you can accept that I love her and I’m never going to stop.”
John looked at him and his expression softened, just infinitesimally. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. And then he opened it again.
Cassandra Seymour ran into the vestibule, holding her side and breathing heavily. She looked, Trem thought, rather as he had on the night he had tried to warn John that he was about to bed Catherine Forster.
“Henrietta—” she said, struggling to breathe, “—in the orangery—Lord Hartley—pistol—”
“Oh fucking Christ,” Trem said. And then he was off running towards the orangery, barreling out of the chapel, up the aisle of guests, who all exclaimed in shock. He could hear John, Leith, and Montaigne at his heels.
“What—in—the—devil—is—going—on?” John huffed behind him.
Trem didn’t respond but kept running over the grass. He rounded the manor and could see the orangery one hundred yards away, near the back gardens.
“He’s been after her, mate,” he heard Montaigne say to John, and John’s exclamation of anger.
Within seconds, they reached the orangery, and Trem ripped open the door.
The scene before him he would never forget for the rest of his days.
Hartley stood pointing a pistol at his fiancée. She was dressed in her wedding clothes and she was stunning. Henrietta was always stunning, but, right now, she was shimmering. His mother’s tiara perched on her head, in a different setting, would have undoubtedly brought a tear to his eye. And her dress seemed to highlight every exquisite curve of her body.
Sebastian Burnbridge turned towards him. The man gave him a quick nod that said he had shown up at the right moment—and Trem gave him a nod back that he hoped communicated his appreciation for Sebastian stepping in.
And then he faced Hartley.
“Drop the pistol.”
“I’m leaving with her,” Hartley said, shaking the pistol in her direction.
Trem felt John draw level with him.
“Are you mad, Hartley?” John yelled. “Threatening my sister? We’ll kill you, you bastard.”
“I am taking her,” Hartley repeated, his hand with the gun shaking slightly. “I had her first and then he took her.”
“Shut up, Justin,” Henrietta screamed, hurling a small garden ornament at him. It missed him narrowly, shattering on the floor. He startled but the gun remained point at her.
