An Uncommon Courtship Read online

  Adelaide fiddled with her discarded serviette, poking at its corners until it stood up like a tent on the table. “I don’t know. We haven’t really discussed it. Trent told me I should go through the invitations and let him know what I wanted to attend, but I don’t know where he left them.”

  Lady Raebourne tilted her head to the side. “Fenton usually piles them on the desk in Trent’s study. I’ve come over with Miranda a time or two to sort through them for him. He neglects them terribly, sometimes shoving them in the bottom drawer of his cabinet and ignoring them completely. For so long he was at the whims of his sisters since he had to escort them. I think he just goes to whatever event he hears people talking about at one of his clubs. I’m surprised Miranda hasn’t been by to coordinate your schedules yet. She arrived in Town two days ago.”

  Adelaide said nothing. What could she say? She’d seen nothing of Trent’s family, other than his brother. She was beginning to think the reputed closeness of the Hawthorne family was a very elaborate ruse to fool society.

  The other woman suddenly sat up, sloshing the light brown drink over the edge of her cup. “Oh my! Miranda doesn’t know, does she? I would have expected her to write me if she knew, but I can’t imagine Trent not telling her he got married.”

  “I . . . well, that is, it was all very sudden and . . . I’m not sure.” Adelaide blinked nervous tears away, hoping the spectacles hid the telltale sheen, not magnified it. She had tried not to let it bother her that Trent hadn’t seemed very anxious for her to meet his family as his wife instead of the neighbor, not even ensuring his mother attended the wedding. It was as if he were trying to pretend the marriage had never even happened. But his sisters were sure to be coming to London with their spouses for the Season and his mother usually returned with her second husband, the Earl of Blackstone, as well, so Trent couldn’t expect to hide Adelaide forever. Especially not now that he’d introduced her to a good portion of the ton at the ball and with their subsequent rides in the park.

  Lady Raebourne clapped her hands together. “Oh, this is going to be fabulous. You must send me word on what engagements you plan to attend next. I’ll make sure to be there in a show of support. The rest of the family should be in Town within the week. I’ll have everyone over for dinner if Lady Blackstone doesn’t take care of that first.”

  Chapter 18

  No matter how old a man got, there was something decidedly uncomfortable about being in trouble with his mother. And if the thin line of tightly pressed lips as she stared at Trent across the expanse of Griffith’s study was any indication, Lady Blackstone was decidedly not happy with her son.

  “You got married.”

  Trent ran a hand through his hair. He should have written sooner. He’d finally drafted a letter last night and sent it off to the post this morning, but that wasn’t likely to appease the woman in front of him. “Yes, Mother, I did.”

  “And you knew about it.” Mother turned her icy blue eyes to the Duke of Riverton, staring him down the way only a mother could—for no one else would dare to glare at such a powerful man that way.

  “Yes, Mother, I did.” Griffith didn’t squirm under their mother’s scrutiny and his voice was calm and steady, but he rubbed his forefinger against his thumb.

  Trent cleared his throat and shifted in the chair beside Griffith’s desk. They’d been talking about the upcoming horse races when their mother had arrived, storming through the house without waiting to be announced. One of these days she was going to regret that habit. This was now a bachelor’s residence, after all. “And how did you find out? The letter couldn’t possibly have reached you yet. I sent it to the country.”

  One of Griffith’s eyebrows shot up in inquiry at Trent’s claim that he’d sent a letter. It was an affectation Trent found annoying and arrogant. Mostly because he’d never been able to do it.

  Their mother could, though. She held a similar expression of skepticism, proving that not all of Griffith’s imperious habits had come from their father. “You wrote?”

  “Yes.” Trent swallowed hard enough to make his ears crackle. Hopefully it wasn’t as obvious to the rest of the room’s inhabitants.

  “Your pen seems to be a bit tardy, as I had to hear about it from my lady’s maid, who heard it from the housekeeper next door, who learned about it from reading the scandal sheets after her mistress discarded them.” Mother folded her hands in her lap and gave Trent the look that always had him squirming as a child. It was still effective on the twenty-four-year-old man. “I have many questions, but the first of which is why you are here instead of home with your wife.”

  Trent tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “How did you know to come here?”

  She sniffed and folded her hands tightly in her lap. Trent thought she might prefer them about his neck at the moment. “I didn’t. I was coming to ask Griffith if he knew more about your situation. I’ve already been by to see Miranda and Georgina. Both of them were as surprised as I was. Surely your wife wondered why I wasn’t at the wedding. I didn’t want to walk into your home without knowing what else I should expect. I’m rather glad I took the precaution.”

  “Oh.” What else could he say? He could claim to simply be visiting Griffith, but that lie wouldn’t hold up long. The family was a stalwart fortress when it came to keeping their business out of the public eye, but within the walls of family, keeping a secret was a difficult endeavor. A glance at Griffith proved he wasn’t going to be of any help, as he’d opened one of his ledgers and appeared intent on ignoring the entire conversation.

  “Why. Are. You. Not. At. Home?”

  He had been hoping she would move on to another line of questioning, but it had been a fairly weak hope. His mother wasn’t very distractible. He looked at her, wondering how to phrase the situation in a way that would cause him the least amount of trouble. Age had added a few lines to her face, but her hair was still mostly blond and her posture still perfect.

  Not that the former Duchess of Riverton and current Countess of Blackstone would have it any other way. For as long as Trent could remember, his mother had been the definition of a well-bred lady. She would never have gone about town with her glove inside out or even a crooked hem. Adelaide couldn’t seem to help it, which Trent found endearing, and it brought a smile to his face even as he worried about what his mother would think of her.

  “I’m courting her,” he finally mumbled.

  “I beg your pardon?” Mother’s reticule slipped from her hand and rolled down her lap before landing on the floor with a light plop.

  He swallowed again and resisted the urge to adjust his cravat, feeling a bit irritated at himself. A grown man shouldn’t feel like he needed to cower when he explained himself to his mother. Of course, he so rarely had to explain himself to his mother. Whatever trouble he’d gotten into at school had been handled with a self-deprecating grin and a well-timed joke. By the time he’d outgrown that, Griffith had come into his own, and more often than not people deferred problems to Trent’s brother instead of his mother. He could only hope this situation felt as strange to her as it did to him and she wouldn’t be willing to drag it out much longer.

  “I am courting my wife.” With some effort, Trent straightened his shoulders and looked his mother in the eye. It wasn’t as if he should be ashamed of his plan. It was a good plan.

  “That is a terrible plan.” She frowned before picking her reticule up and slamming it into her lap.

  No, it wasn’t. “She’s never had a Season, Mother. Lady Crampton robbed her of her chance, and I’m restoring it the only way I know how.”

  Trent and his mother stared each other down. The only sound in the room was the occasional scrape of Griffith’s quill against his ledger. Trent had sat in this room more than once while Griffith worked in his ledgers, and the duke was writing considerably slower than normal. He wasn’t going to wade into the conversation, but he was apparently not above watching with fascination as it played out.

&nb
sp; Mother blinked first, but it was a short-lived victory for Trent. “While you will get no argument from me that Lady Crampton is a poor example of motherly devotion, it is not your job to fix it. Do you think you can keep your living conditions secret? What do you think will happen when everyone finds out you are not living with your wife?”

  Trent hadn’t thought much about it. He’d instinctively been discreet, but he’d never had to think much about gossip and scandal rags. His life was far and away less interesting than those of other young aristocrats. While he’d taken care to never show too much affection toward any particular woman, he hadn’t had to watch much else. His well-known skills in the pugilist ring kept him out of other non-exercise-related confrontations.

  His mother was right—people might start talking—but the past week had proven that his idea had merit. He and Adelaide were forming a relationship, and all of London thought them adorable. “It’s been working quite well for the past week. Much better than the week before, if I’m being honest.”

  Narrowed blue eyes conveyed the mistake in Trent’s statement. “How long have you been married?”

  The scritching of the quill ceased. Even the clock on the mantel seemed to fall into silence. That or it simply couldn’t be heard over the blood rushing through Trent’s head. He couldn’t resist the urge to adjust his cravat this time. “About two weeks.”

  “Two weeks. And the banns were properly read, I assume?”

  Trent cleared his throat. “Yes, Mother.”

  “Five weeks. Five weeks and you’ve only recently seen fit to write to me?” She pushed up from her seat and swept toward the door of the room. “Here is what will happen. While I’m certainly not through talking to the pair of you about how this possibly came about, I’m not going to let another day go by without welcoming your wife to the family. We will be there for tea. See to it that she is aware and your staff prepared.”

  Trent stumbled to his feet, knocking his knee against a table and making a lamp jump. “We?”

  “But of course. You don’t think Georgina and Miranda are going to wait to meet her, do you?”

  “But you’ve already met her. All of you. Surely you all know her better than I do.”

  Mother smiled, that indulgent smile only women seem to be able to perfect—the one that told Trent he obviously didn’t understand and that he was rather pitiful and adorable at the same time. He hated that smile. “My dear son, I’m not coming to your house to have tea with a neighbor. I’m going to meet my new daughter.”

  Bravado can only carry a woman so far before reality intrudes with crushing abruptness. In this case, it came in the form of a door. More specifically, it came in the form of the room on the other side of the door.

  Adelaide had seen Lady Raebourne off with a smile a few moments ago, but she wasn’t really sure how she felt about the tiny woman who knew more about the workings of Adelaide’s home than Adelaide did. That jumble of feelings could be sorted out later. Of considerably more pressing concern was what to do about her social calendar.

  If she were going to build a life in London, she needed to go out. Meet people. See and be seen. It stood to reason that the sooner people got used to seeing her around the sooner they’d stop whispering behind their fans every time she walked by. Besides, she was tired of cowering in the house.

  She could ask Fenton about the invitations Trent had said he’d put aside for her, but that felt like something she should know or should have learned from her husband. Asking the servant meant admitting that she and Trent weren’t communicating. Not that there was any real reason to hide it from the servants. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it out loud. Especially not when Lady Raebourne knew more about where her husband kept his correspondence than she did.

  Which was why she was standing at the door of his study, facing the realization that this wasn’t really her house at all. She could ban her mother from the premises—and in a fit of power-declaring pique had done so by giving Fenton instructions to keep the woman away for the entire day—but at the end of the day the house was Trent’s. He could truly go anywhere he wished, while there were rooms that were nearly impossible for her to enter.

  His study, for instance.

  But if that was where the invitations were, then that was where she needed to be, and it was his own fault that she was going to have to invade his territory to get them. If he’d been home like he should have been, this wouldn’t be happening.

  She built up a large well of irritation at the situation and used it to open the door and propel her way into the room. Once over the threshold, it didn’t seem so scary. It was a masculine room—one of the few in the house that seemed to have had some attention recently—but it wasn’t overly imposing. Trent probably had no need to appear imposing, unlike her father, who had actually set his desk up on a dais so he could always look down on his visitors.

  The desk surface was clear, which meant she would need to go digging in the drawers as Lady Raebourne mentioned. Adelaide’s heart threatened to beat its way through her stomach and down to her toes. It was one thing to enter his room, but quite another to go through his drawers.

  As fascinating as she was finding the strange little group of people living under her roof, though, they all still had jobs to do and trying to have social interactions with a person holding a cleaning rag left her feeling a bit lazy. Useless. In the end it was the thought of spending another week with nothing to look at but the house and no one to speak to but the servants that had her yanking open drawers and looking for cream and white squares of parchment.

  Instead she found drawings.

  In a drawer behind the desk sat sketch after sketch of a greenhouse. It was laid out differently than any other greenhouse she’d ever seen. It didn’t appear to be for growing flowers, though. It looked as if Trent was planning to grow crops inside the greenhouse. Actually, just one crop. She adjusted her glasses and squinted at the words scrawled across the top of the page.

  Pineapple growth plan, adjustments to Dutch method, version 5.

  Trent was planning to grow pineapples? A pineapple was something that grew? She’d read about carvings of them but had never seen a picture. With spikes all around the body and huge leaves sprouting off the top, the pineapple looked nothing like any apple she’d ever seen. How did one go about eating something so . . . prickly?

  “My lady?” Fenton’s voice drifted down the upper corridor.

  Adelaide squeaked and dropped the drawings back into the drawer, slamming it shut with her foot and scampering around to the front of the desk. “What is it, Fenton?”

  Fenton’s eyebrows rose as he stood in the open door to the study. Wrinkles formed, making him look like a pug dog she’d seen one of her mother’s friends carry around. “What are you doing in here, my lady?”

  The curse of Trent’s unusual household. Where else would a servant question the intentions of the lady of the house? Adelaide considered lying and saying that Trent had asked her to get something, but the potential mess such a lie could cause wasn’t worth it, so she opted for the truth. “Lady Raebourne mentioned that this was where you usually placed the invitations. I wanted to go through them.”

  The pug wrinkles dropped into a wide smile. “I’ve been placing those on your desk now, my lady.”

  Her desk? She had a desk? Why didn’t she know she had a desk? And where in the world was it? Unfortunately none of these were questions she could ask the butler. It was embarrassing for a lady not to know where her own desk was. There weren’t that many rooms in the house. She’d be able to find it on her own. “Thank you, Fenton. I’ll just go look at those now then.”

  She stepped forward, but Fenton didn’t shift away from the doorway. “I beg your pardon, but Lord Trent is looking for you. He said his mother is coming for tea.”

  Chapter 19

  Her drawing room was full of blond heads. Three of them to be precise, each more elegantly coiffed than the last. And the women attached
to the heads were equally elegant. Peering at the women through the crack in the partially closed door, Adelaide took a moment to compose herself.

  Would she ever not feel like an intruder wandering around someone else’s home without permission? Her early morning burst of confidence and optimism had lost a good bit of its strength. Even Lady Raebourne knew more about Adelaide’s husband and house than Adelaide did, proving that Adelaide was certainly not the most important lady in Trent’s life.

  And now her shabby drawing room, complete with broken curtain rod, was occupied by the other three women in Trent’s life. She’d met all of them at one point or another, though they may not remember it. If the gossip columns were to be believed, few people in London had even realized Lord and Lady Crampton had two daughters. Being overlooked by her mother and the second choice of her father had never bothered her before, possibly because it was all she’d ever known, but she was beginning to wonder what was so wrong with her that they’d all but hidden her existence from the world.

  There was no hiding anymore, though. Three of the most popular women in London were in her drawing room, and they’d come for the sole purpose of seeing her.

  At least she’d had warning and was now wearing her nicest afternoon dress. Trent had offered to stay, but she’d foolishly insisted he leave. How would it look if she wasn’t even willing to sit down with her mother-in-law for tea without her husband at her side?

  Lady Blackstone was going to expect her son to have married a composed, elegant young woman. And while no one was going to confuse Adelaide with the more gregarious ladies, she could probably manage to appear a bit more put together than normal for the sake of a good impression.

  With one last deep breath and a quick smoothing of her skirts, she pushed her way into the drawing room.

  Three heads turned. Three faces smiled.

  No words emerged from Adelaide’s mouth.

  “It is nice to see you again, Lady Adelaide.” The cultured voice cut through the air, almost drawing a wince from Adelaide. The power had been claimed by the eldest lady in the room, though she didn’t appear nearly as old as she had to be, given that all four of her children had reached adulthood already.