An Uncommon Courtship Read online

  “I’m surprised Mother didn’t make it back for this. You received a letter from her yesterday, didn’t you? Did she say why she wasn’t coming?” Griffith sliced through the sweet roll, releasing a waft of steam from the still-warm pastry that simultaneously made Trent’s mouth water and his stomach roll over.

  Although the queasiness in his stomach probably had more to do with the fact that the reason his mother hadn’t made it to the wedding was because he hadn’t told her. He’d tried. Sort of. He wanted to believe there was a way out of this situation, though, and putting it down on paper made it seem so permanent.

  Rather like the parish register they’d signed a mere hour ago.

  Trent cleared his throat and avoided Griffith’s gaze. “Er, no. She didn’t mention the wedding.”

  Griffith’s eyes widened in surprise. “Really? I had no idea she disliked Lady Crampton that much.”

  “I am certain I once heard her say that one of the best things about getting remarried was that she didn’t have to live next to the countess anymore.”

  The countess, Trent’s new mother-in-law, didn’t appear to be having any of the discomfort that the bride and groom were experiencing. She stood next to her daughter, smiling and talking, while Lady Adelaide’s serene smile tightened and her unfocused eyes began to look panicked. Trent looked a little closer, trying to see if there was a problem or if the attention was simply getting to her. As she stumbled to the side it became clear the heel of her slipper had somehow gotten snagged in the hem of her dress and she was trying to free it without anyone noticing. She wasn’t being very successful, if her mother’s warning looks were anything to go by.

  This was something Trent could save her from. If nothing else good came of this wedding, at least Trent would be removing Lady Adelaide from her mother’s influence—and perhaps save London from one more vapid attention seeker.

  “I’d like to make London tonight.” He had a closer estate, a small one his brother had sold him for a pittance, but the bedchambers had been damaged in a recent storm and were still under repairs. Besides, going to London meant they had to leave right now, and even then it would be a hard ride.

  “It’s quite a large party, and you are the guest of honor.” Griffith dabbed at his mouth with a serviette, but Trent was fairly certain it was with the intention of hiding a forming smile.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.” Griffith had always warned Trent that one of his schemes would one day blow up in his face, but this hadn’t been a scheme. This had simply been him coming across a lone horse tied up by the ruins and investigating out of curiosity. Regardless, consequences like this were a bit much for even a brother to revel in.

  “No. Though I have done a bit better job resigning myself to it in the past few weeks.” Griffith set down his fork, and the smile fell from his face, leaving it solemn and thoughtful. “I’d take your place if I could. I considered it. Lord Crampton wouldn’t have protested such a switch.”

  “As if I would have let you make such a ridiculous proposal.” Trent closed his eyes and sighed at the idea of Griffith stomping his way into Moonacre Park with his younger brother dragging at his heels. It was a funny picture, and this situation could certainly use a bit of humor. “In all honesty, Lord Crampton would have fallen down and kissed your feet. After he shoved Lady Crampton out of the way, of course.”

  Griffith’s answering smile was small and a bit sad, still tight with a look of regret as he shifted in his chair. Since boyhood Trent had marveled at his brother’s size, wondering why God had chosen to make a man with such incredibly broad shoulders. Now it was obvious. Without them, Griffith wouldn’t have been able to carry the abundance of responsibilities he’d claimed for himself. Responsibilities Trent had been unwilling to help with as he’d gotten older.

  Watching his older brother rub his forefinger against his thumb like a world-weary old man instead of a young fellow of twenty-eight, it occurred to Trent that his own twenty-four years meant it was time for him to shoulder a bit of the manhood himself. As much as he wanted to avoid the consequences of his circumstances, he would never have been able to abide Griffith suffering in his place.

  “God doesn’t make mistakes.” Trent’s declaration cut through Griffith’s guilt-ridden pondering.

  “What?”

  “God doesn’t make mistakes. You told me that. When I was starting school and I said it was wrong that Father wasn’t there with me.” Trent swallowed hard at the memories. He hadn’t cried over his father in years. Now was not the time to renew the old habit. “You said God doesn’t make mistakes and He had something planned for our lives even though we didn’t understand.”

  “Well, I . . .” Griffith eased back into his chair, looking once more like the sophisticated duke. “That’s true.”

  “Then we trust Him in this. Yes, they’d love to have married a daughter off to the duke. But they got me instead.” God willing, it was a title he’d never hold. “So I’ve married Lady Adelaide. And we’re going to see what He has planned for that.”

  Griffith smiled. His proud, fatherly smile. The one that puffed up Trent’s chest even as it broke his heart. “When did you become so wise?”

  Trent grinned back, doing his best to look boyish, trying to bring Griffith back to being a still-young older brother. “Must have been when I was trying to be you.”

  Chapter 2

  Lady Adelaide Bell—now Lady Adelaide Hawthorne, she supposed—had always thought the day her mother was finally proud of her would be a very happy day.

  It wasn’t.

  She’d rather go back to the days of listening to her mother complain about how horribly average her second daughter was. As far as insults went, it wasn’t such a bad one. Weren’t most people in the world average? Wasn’t that the very definition of the word? Honestly, being lumped in with the bulk of the populace wasn’t such a bad thing. It meant you blended in better and were quickly forgotten.

  Being forgotten was a mixed blessing, though. It was nice that the dressmaker, haberdasher, and various other local merchants forgot that her mother had at one point or another left her at each of their shops and she’d had to walk several miles back home. Of course, if her mother hadn’t forgotten her in the first place, it wouldn’t have been necessary to be thankful for the shopkeepers’ lack of memory.

  Today, though, Mother was determined to make up for all the years she’d ignored Adelaide. When Adelaide had woken this morning, her mother had been watching her from the foot of the bed, ready to impart wisdom upon wisdom on how to make the most of this day. Adelaide hadn’t been out of her sight since. Thankfully, Mother had stopped speaking during the actual ceremony, but she’d been making up for lost time since they’d arrived at the wedding breakfast.

  Adelaide smiled at Mrs. Guthrey. At least she thought it was Mrs. Guthrey. Without her spectacles—which her mother had insisted she not wear today—everything beyond the length of her arm was a complete blur. Not that it really mattered who was speaking to her. She’d done nothing but smile and nod all morning, unsure what to do with all of the attention being sent her way. Until three weeks ago most of these people wouldn’t have even been able to remember her name. She doubted it’d been very far from their lips lately though. A hasty marriage to one of the favorite local bachelors tended to make for fine gossip, especially when the woman in question abruptly left town until the day before the wedding.

  There was a break in the conversation, and she tried to nod and say her good-byes so she could move on to another group, but she had to free her slipper first. And she had to free it without being able to see what was actually caught. She was going to have to bend down to rectify the problem. And her mother was going to be mad.

  She took two shuffling steps out of the conversation circle and knelt down to free her shoe. Sure enough, as soon as she rose, her mother was there, a smile on her lips but not in her eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Adelaide blinked. Wasn’t it obviou
s? She’d felt she was rather quick about the entire business, but it had taken her a moment or two to free her slipper. “My shoe—”

  “Mrs. Guthrey was telling you how delightful she thought you’d find the Blossom Festival this year, and you simply dropped out of the conversation.” The disappointed whisper in her ear was considerably more familiar than the praises her mother had been heaping on her since her engagement to the son of a duke.

  “But you hate the Blossom Festival. You always say you wouldn’t set foot in it even if they did give you an invitation.”

  Mother frowned, more a flattening of the lips than an actual turning down of the corners. She wouldn’t want to cause wrinkles, after all. “That was before I understood what the event really was. Now that Mrs. Guthrey has expounded upon its virtues, I am anticipating her invitation with considerable excitement.”

  Adelaide resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She wished her brother, Bernard, had been in the vicinity so they could exchange knowing glances. The saddest part was that Mother actually believed the reason she’d disliked the Blossom Festival was because she didn’t understand it and not the fact that she’d never received an invitation to the house party. Because that was what the “festival” really was—a prettily named house party to show off Mr. Guthrey’s impressive collection of tropical plants residing in his conservatory. And now she was going to have to go so that her mother could go as well. “I’m sure it will be delightful.”

  With a small smile and a nod, the same combination she’d been doing for the past three weeks, Adelaide turned to walk across the room only to have her mother catch her arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Over there.” Adelaide gestured toward a table in the general direction of away. She couldn’t see what was on it, but there was a high probability it contained food. “I’m hungry.”

  She took another step, only to trip on her hem again and have to take two quick steps to keep from falling. The bottom seam must have come loose.

  Lady Crampton sighed the beleaguered sigh of a countess doomed with incapable children before leaning down and snapping the loose thread Adelaide kept stepping on. “I’ve never known you to be so clumsy. This is the third time I’ve had to fix your clothing today.”

  And that was the truest indication of how much attention had been paid to Adelaide in the last few years, because her maid was constantly pointing out various things amiss with her clothing.

  As the middle child of a very busy family, Adelaide had shifted back and forth between her parents and the governess, doing and being whatever she needed to in order to make everyone around her happy. And they always seemed happiest when they forgot she was there. She became the quiet daughter who smiled at the guests and then trotted up to the nursery or softly played the piano while everyone else visited or played cards. Adelaide played the piano as passably average as she did everything else.

  Mother sighed. “I suppose we should at least be thankful that trains are no longer in fashion. They made all the gowns so elegant during Helena’s first year in Town.”

  Adelaide tried not to wince at the mention of her beautiful, blond, spectacle-less elder sister. For as long as Adelaide could remember, Mother had been preparing Helena for a great future, molding her to be the most sought-after woman in the land. A future princess or at the very least a duchess. The fact that she’d ended up a mere viscountess still gave their mother fits of vapors. And now, somehow, Adelaide had stumbled into the position Mother had always wanted for Helena—well, nearly the position she’d wanted—and the expectations were heavy indeed. It was enough to make a girl long to be forgotten at the modiste again.

  Not that she’d been forgotten recently. And she’d spent the better part of the last three weeks at three different modistes, selecting dresses, getting fitted, and hearing her mother badger the poor seamstresses into making the dresses in a ridiculously short amount of time. Didn’t they know Adelaide was to marry the Duke of Riverton’s brother? It had been awful, but at least they’d traveled to another town to do it. Adelaide was never setting foot in Birmingham again.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt you to smile. People are watching, you know. This is your wedding. Never again will you be able to command so much attention, and you’re more interested in the food. No wonder you weren’t able to catch the right brother.”

  Adelaide stopped trying to squint at the table to determine what type of food was laid out on it and turned wide eyes to her mother. “I wasn’t trying to catch one at all. I was hunting mushrooms.”

  “And that, my dear, is the problem. How difficult would it have been to ask the duke to help you? You were on his property, after all.” Mother brushed invisible dust from her skirt. “I was hoping you’d realized what a boon your unfettered access to his property was. Why else would I have left you down there all night?”

  “Given how often I used to get mushrooms from the old keep, I could hardly ask him to . . . Wait. What do you mean you left us down there? There was a wagon!”

  A stinging burn pricked Adelaide’s eyes, and she blinked rapidly to keep the tears from forming. Once during that long afternoon they’d thought they heard someone driving by the old ruins so they’d shouted as loudly as they could. The lack of response led them to believe that they’d only heard their horses shifting around, moving from the patch of grass to the nearby creek. Only they hadn’t been hearing things, and her mother had deliberately left her abandoned.

  “Please do not call my visiting chaise a wagon. And yes, I was coming back from visiting Mrs. Pearson and I cut through Riverton lands. I thought you’d landed the duke, but I should have known not to get my hopes up that you would make such a lofty connection. Still, the younger son of a duke is a sight better than you were likely to attract during a summer in London.”

  Adelaide blinked while her mouth dropped open and snapped shut as if she were a fish. She wanted to say something, should say something, but what was there to say? The knowledge that they could have been saved or at least had a witness to their proper behavior changed everything and nothing at the same time. They were still married, would still have to be married, because if her mother had been planning to save her from the potential loss of reputation she’d have done so already . . . but what would Lord Trent do when he found out? Would he think they’d somehow planned the encounter, despite the fact that he’d climbed into the ruins out of his own curiosity?

  “Pardon me, but may I claim my wife for a moment?”

  The deep voice broke into Adelaide’s thoughts, and she let out a squeak as she spun around to find her new husband less than a foot away.

  “It’s not my fault,” she blurted.

  “I’m aware of that.” His lips curved into a crooked, dimpled smile. The brilliant green eyes didn’t convey the same joy and charm of the smile, but she really couldn’t blame him for that. She was certainly gaining more by this marriage than he was.

  “Of course you can steal her away, my lord.” Mother put on her most gracious smile and curtsied. “After all, you are family now.”

  His smile lost some of the little radiance it had, and his eyes flinched in a quickly disguised wince.

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you. My lady?” Lord Trent extended his arm in Adelaide’s direction, and she took it numbly. Were they going to dance? Mother had hired a string quartet, but they were hardly playing anything lively at the moment. She clutched his arm tightly enough to feel the tensed muscles beneath. He might look like a relaxed gentleman, but the day was obviously wearing on his control. Not that she could blame him.

  He led her up the short flight of stairs at the end of the room and paused in the open double doorway.

  “Where are we going?” Adelaide whispered.

  “To London,” Lord Trent whispered back.

  While she blinked repeatedly in an attempt to comprehend his statement, he turned them to the gathered crowd. “I want to thank you all for joining us today.”


  His voice carried over the room without sounding like he was shouting. One by one the conversations stopped until everyone faced the newly married couple. Even at this distance she could sense the expectation from some of the revelers, though she didn’t know what they were hoping for. As far as scandals went, this one wasn’t very interesting, and Lord Trent wasn’t about to reveal what few details there were. Perhaps the crowd was hoping for something worth writing to their friends about. She found herself rather glad that she couldn’t make out any faces at this distance.

  Lord Trent smiled down at Adelaide. “My wife and I couldn’t have asked for a better celebration, and I want you all to enjoy the hospitality of Lord and Lady Crampton for as long as you like.”

  Adelaide bit her lip to keep from laughing. Her mother had driven the servants to distraction preparing for a morning full of people, counting on all of them to have left by noon because her father refused to provide the funds to keep them happy longer than that.

  “The time has come, however, for us to bid you farewell.” Lord Trent’s voice carried over the rush of gasps. “I’ve a new life in front of me, and I’m afraid staying here won’t let me start it.” He patted the hand Adelaide had wrapped around his arm.

  The crowd melted in a unified sigh. Adelaide tried to smile because people were looking at her and it wouldn’t do to look terrified as her new husband led her away, but she was. Oh, she was. His speech contained all the right words, and his demeanor would make even the most skeptical people question what they’d heard about this hasty marriage, but they couldn’t see his eyes or feel the tension that ran through his body until his muscles quivered under her hand.

  He escorted her from the room, and every step away from the gathering brought another measure of relaxation to the man at her side.

  Neither of them said a word as he handed her into a waiting carriage and climbed in after her. The door closed, and he rested his head against the red velvet cushion, letting his eyes drift shut as his mouth flattened into a grim line.