Tremont wanted nothing so much as to take Matilda in his arms and simply hold her. While she cried, while she laughed, while she came to terms with new insights about her own upbringing. He settled for holding out a hand and drawing her nearer to the fire’s warmth.

“What an awful purgatory that vicarage must have been for a lonely, curious young lady. It’s a wonder you didn’t run away to join a band of traveling minstrels.”

Matilda stepped closer and then closer still, until she was leaning against Tremont’s side, her head on his shoulder. “I cannot believe that Papa knew my circumstances. He hated Harry, and that just made Harry all the more attractive to me. Harry understood me, you see, and Harry was so forgiving of my understandable lapses.”

“Who was Harry to judge you?”

Matilda shifted so she stood in the circle of Tremont’s arms. “I will say this for Harry, he never once threw my past in my face. He married me, and that was that. I was his wife.”

“And Tommie?”

“He used Tommie to keep me subdued, but he was never overtly unkind to him. I think he saw in Tommie a bit of his old self, a lad born without advantages or allies. Papa, by contrast, wrote to me only to condemn my choice of husband, to wash his hands of me, to remind me that poverty was part of a holy calling, and I would get nothing from him when he died.”

“And yet,” Tremont said, “I doubt you were one-and-twenty when you married this blight upon the human escutcheon.”

Matilda snuggled closer, bringing Tremont the scent of roses. “What has that to do with anything? Papa reminded me frequently that I was old enough to know better, though how is one to know better when one is kept in purposeful ignorance by one’s own parent and a village that won’t cross him?”

Forming words had become a challenge, while exploring the soft skin at Matilda’s nape and reveling in the feel of her body pressed close consumed Tremont’s awareness. He nonetheless answered her question, because only a cad and a bounder would allow her to remain convinced of a lie.

“If you had yet to obtain your majority, then your father could have stopped the wedding simply by withholding his consent. Weddings are rife with legalities—a peer hounded by the matchmakers has reason to acquaint himself with the details. In the absence of parental consent, Merridew’s only recourse would have been a long and expensive trip across the Scottish border. Would your dowry have inspired him to go to such lengths?”

“The cash portion of my dowry would have been barely sufficient to finance such a journey, though we could have sold the silver.”