An Uncommon Courtship Read online

  Even now Adelaide’s face flamed as she considered the flimsy garment now draped across the back of a chair. She’d hated being measured for the thing, disliked even more the conversation with her mother insisting she get it. Never had she dreamed that her maid—her temporary, increasing maid—would be the only one to see it.

  What had he thought when he came to her room and found her sleeping with the blankets pulled all the way to her chin? She must have appeared the most unwilling wife in England. The poor man had already been trapped into marriage to her. And now he would think she was a . . . a . . . Adelaide didn’t actually know what to call such a woman, but she was certain a man would know the right word. And now she was one.

  There was no choice but to go down to breakfast and somehow tell him that she was open to his visiting her room. She considered leaving the connecting door between their rooms open, but that might embarrass the maid. Of course, her current maid was married so the regular rules of decorum might not apply in this case. Still, she couldn’t impose upon Trent’s privacy like that.

  “I pressed this lovely blue gown last night. Will it do for the morning? I’ll see to the rest of your garments while you eat.” Lydia bustled out of the dressing room showing only the slightest waddle in her walk. Being with child certainly didn’t slow the girl down as she herded Adelaide into the dressing room and whipped the gown over her head almost before she could blink. Within moments Adelaide found herself sitting on the stool in front of the dressing table with Lydia undoing the loose plait she’d created the night before.

  Her mother had always admonished her to never talk to the servants about anything other than their duties, but Adelaide had a feeling that wasn’t the way things were done in this house. She was going to have to learn some new rules if she wanted to meet her husband’s expectations. “Do you know . . . Has my husband risen yet?”

  “Oh yes, my lady.” Lydia ran a comb through Adelaide’s hair, drawing forth a wince. A good night’s rest hadn’t made the maid any gentler when it came to hair ministrations. “He’s gone riding in Hyde Park, though I expect he’ll be home any time now. He never misses breakfast.”

  Adelaide started forming a mental list of all the things she knew about her husband. There wasn’t much to work with yet.

  Enjoys morning rides

  Likes breakfast

  Writes with his right hand but fences better with his left

  That last thing was one of the few pieces of information she remembered from their conversation on That Night, as she’d taken to thinking of their time in the stone prison that had started this whole business. Despite the fact that she knew for certain there had been no way out of those ruins, the whole story felt a bit pathetic. Trapped into marriage by a mound of vines and stones. And one opportunistic mother.

  “Does he ride every morning?” Adelaide fiddled with a pile of hairpins on the dressing table in front of her, trying to ignore the gouges Lydia was making in her scalp. Honestly, Rebecca couldn’t get there fast enough.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Perfect. She’d have Father send her mount to London and she could ride with her husband in the mornings. If he wanted her to. Oh, bother. Figuring out what Trent expected husbands and wives to do together was going to be quite difficult.

  Or maybe not. Breakfast was already going to be unpleasant enough with the whole conversation about nighttime visits. She might as well throw in a discussion about other marital duties while she was at it. Maybe that would make the whole thing less unpleasant. It certainly couldn’t make it any worse.

  Half an hour later Adelaide was frustrated as well as embarrassed.

  The problem with conversations is that someone had to speak in order to start them. A cordial “Good morning” from one person followed by an equally polite “Good morning” from the other person didn’t create much of a verbal foundation. Obviously he wasn’t willing to ask the other frequent morning question of “Did you sleep well?” and she didn’t really blame him. She wasn’t willing to ask it either.

  The sideboard of the breakfast room was piled with platters of food. Eggs, toast, bacon, and a large assortment of pastries made her mouth water. He gestured for her to go ahead of him to fix her plate. As she took more than she would probably be able to eat, she tried desperately to find something to say. Anything that didn’t sound as if she was mocking him with the previous night’s events.

  When she turned from the sideboard, her mind was absorbed with another problem. Where was she supposed to sit? The small breakfast table was round, so she didn’t know where the foot was. Normally she’d choose the seat with the best view out the window, but what if he did that as well? Not that it was a very spectacular view, as it mostly overlooked the kitchen yard and small stable, but it did let in a bit of sunlight.

  A footman relieved her of the decision by sliding a chair out and bowing her into it. Adelaide gratefully settled in, almost missing the servant’s inquiry as to whether she would like tea, coffee, or chocolate to drink.

  “Oh, coffee!” Adelaide couldn’t contain her excitement. She’d had coffee at her aunt’s house and adored the drink. Her mother considered it too plebeian for an aristocratic household, so Adelaide never got to drink it at home. The fact that as a married woman she would now get to start every day with the hot, bitter beverage made her happy enough to try to start a conversation with her husband.

  Unfortunately, her glee also took over her thought processes because the next words out of her mouth were “Did you sleep well?”

  Adelaide froze with her cup of steaming coffee still an inch above the saucer. The very thing she’d wanted to avoid was now floating between them, waiting to choke them like the infamous London haze.

  What were the chances that he would notice if she excused herself now and didn’t show her face again for a while? A month or two ought to be long enough for the fierce heat in her cheeks to subside. She lifted her lashes enough to peek at him. His green gaze was aimed directly at her, proof he would notice if she attempted to slink away. The only saving grace was that he, too, was in possession of a rather alarmingly red face. He ran a hand through his hair, sending his blond locks tumbling over his forehead, but that did nothing to hide the two spots of color riding his cheekbones.

  If they were both embarrassed by the reference, they should be able to move on to a new topic of discussion without the other one complaining about it.

  As soon as one of them found something else to say.

  “I have a horse.” Adelaide nearly followed her bumbling spill of words with a groan at how desperately abrupt they sounded, but she managed to restrain the sound by stuffing her mouth so full she nearly choked on her eggs.

  “Ah,” Trent stammered before taking a delaying sip of tea. “As do I. Were you intending on having your horse sent to Town? We could send her to one of the estates if you’d rather.”

  Adelaide gulped down her half-chewed mouthful. “Will we visit the Hertfordshire estate soon? You mentioned repairs?”

  Trent nodded. “The bedchamber wing suffered considerable damage during a recent storm or I’d have taken you there last night. The journey wouldn’t have been as grueling.”

  Both of them blushed again. If this kept up they would be able to save a bundle of money on heating the house. Even now she was giving serious consideration to throwing some coffee onto the small fire that had been built to ward off the early morning chill. It was a bit ridiculous to blame her current discomfort on the flames burning so low in the grate they could really only be described as smoldering, but it made her feel better to do so.

  Adelaide determined it was best to finish eating in silence. It seemed safer that way. Surely tomorrow things would be less awkward since the delay, for lack of a better word, wouldn’t be between them anymore.

  Would it?

  What if her falling asleep wasn’t the reason he hadn’t visited her room? What if he had no intentions of truly making her his wife? He was a second son. He h
ad no real need for heirs. He could ignore her, ship her off to one of his estates, and continue living life as he pleased. It had never occurred to her before now that she might not even get children out of this forced marriage.

  Her toast stuck in her throat. Not even a large gulp of her quickly cooling coffee could wash it down.

  Trent cleared his throat and stood. Adelaide looked up at him, not trusting her legs to hold her as she convinced herself this new fear was ridiculous and unfounded. Traveling was exhausting. Surely they weren’t the only couple to wait a night.

  “I usually go over to Grosvenor Chapel for Sunday services. I’m afraid I haven’t rented my own pew yet. I can look into obtaining one at St. George if you’d rather not use the family pew at the Chapel.”

  Adelaide had completely forgotten that today was Sunday. They would attend church together. She would enter on his arm and sit in his pew. Their marriage would be efficiently announced by such an event without her having to suffer through personal introductions and less than subtle questions and skeptical looks at her midsection. “The family pew sounds wonderful.”

  “Can you be ready in half an hour? Most of the servants attend St. George, so I take the curricle over to Hawthorne House and then walk to Grosvenor Chapel.”

  “That sounds splendid.” It did, actually. By the name it sounded like a smaller, cozier place to attend worship. Perhaps even similar to the village church at home. She’d spent a lot of time in that church, visiting with the rector and his wife when Mother would accidentally leave her behind on Sunday mornings, particularly once her brother, Bernard, was born. An even number made such a more elegant picture walking down the lane, after all. The rector had an affinity for jacks, and he and Adelaide would play the game while discussing the sermon.

  She doubted that she would be playing jacks at any point today, but the distraction of attending services and actually having something to do caused the shaking of her legs to cease. She was fairly certain she could walk now, and she needed to if she was to have any hope of being ready to leave in a mere half an hour.

  “May I escort you back upstairs?” Trent gave a half bow, unstyled hair flopping against his forehead once more, making her want to reach out and brush the strands back into place even though they wouldn’t stay there.

  She slid her hand into his arm with a smile of agreement. As she thrilled at the warmth she felt holding a man’s arm with an ungloved hand, it suddenly became real to her. She was married. This man was her husband.

  And for the first time in three weeks, she thought maybe that was a going to be a good thing.

  He could have waited a week. They’d only been married yesterday. Most people wouldn’t expect to see them out and about for several days, if not several weeks. The complete disconnection from everything he was familiar with left him craving a return to his normal routine. Though with Adelaide perched next to him in the curricle, the routine felt nothing like it used to. Her blue skirts draped against the dark brown of his trousers, a stark contrast that he’d never looked down and seen before.

  Taking women for rides in his curricle wasn’t something he did. Unless they were related, he confined his social encounters to more public venues. When he decided to court a woman it was going to be special, as exciting for him as it was for her.

  At least, that had been the plan.

  But now he was riding with his wife, and though he’d expected the worst after they’d bumbled through the morning’s breakfast, there was something thrilling about looking over and seeing the morning sun glinting off her bonnet, highlighting the chin ribbon that had come untied and blown away from her face to tangle in the feathers on the side of the bonnet.

  He smiled. A beautiful woman was riding down the street with him, and he was bemoaning the fact that the relationship was already a guaranteed success? At least guaranteed to reach matrimony. What would he do if he were courting Adelaide? If he’d gone to her house and picked her up like other gentlemen did when they went courting?

  “Have you a favorite color?”

  She blinked at him. “Color?”

  “Yes. Color. Blue, green, brown. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh.” She faced forward again, scrunching her nose until small wrinkles formed between her eyes. “I like blue. At least, I tend to buy a lot of blue dresses. I get to choose bolder blues now, which was a delightful change when Mother took me to the modiste a few weeks ago.”

  This was hardly the first time a woman of his acquaintance had brought up fashion in his presence. He’d even been known to carry his weight in a conversation or two on the subject. But it felt different talking about her dresses. Perhaps because he would now be buying them. “Did you get everything you needed? I don’t expect you were able to outfit yourself for an entire Season in a mere three weeks.”

  “Oh, well, not for a normal Season, no, but as a married woman I’m sure what I have will be sufficient.”

  They fell into silence for the rest of the short ride. Where was the glib tongue that had gotten him invited to every society function in the vicinity since he was fifteen years old? He was the fellow who had talked his way around every bad mark in school, convinced the Earl of Egleshurst’s heir to set up a desk and work on his Latin conjugations in the middle of the Eton athletic field, and very nearly came close to actually convincing one of the patronesses to let him into Almack’s at five minutes past eleven.

  With all of that experience he should be able to find something to talk to his wife about.

  They left the curricle with the grooms at Hawthorne House and walked the short distance to Grosvenor Chapel, stumbling their way through a stilted discussion on tree leaves. Even that topic deserted them as they climbed the chapel steps.

  How many times had he walked through these doors without thought for who else had passed through before him? For the most part he saw these people at various other events he attended. And while many of them viewed church as another place to see and be seen, his family had always been more interested in the service itself, part of the reason they elected to attend Grosvenor Chapel instead of St. George’s.

  Today, however, Trent was aware of every person they were escorted past. As the Duke of Riverton, Griffith had rented a pew at the very front of the sanctuary, and Trent and Adelaide had to walk past everyone to get there.

  And everyone was very interested.

  The door of the box pew clicked shut, putting a period on the statement that Adelaide was now a member of the Hawthorne family.

  Hundreds of whispers created a low murmur right up until the first strains of organ music echoed through the chapel. As a boy, Trent had always prayed for a short and succinct sermon. Today he found himself hoping the message droned on. Not that he was interested in it—he had barely heard a word, highly distracted by the small shifts Adelaide made every few minutes.

  She wasn’t the first spouse to have sat in this box. Both of his sisters’ husbands had sat here a time or two. Colin and Georgina still used the box when they were in London, though Ryland and Miranda now rented the one across the aisle. Adelaide was, however, the first of Trent’s spouses to sit here. The only spouse. Because if this awkwardness was what other marriages were like, he had to call into question the sanity of the men he’d heard about who took more than one wife.

  All too soon the service concluded, and Trent faced the difficult decision of when to leave the pew. Behind them, feet shuffled along the worn floorboards and pew boxes opened and shut in their own form of familiar benediction. It was the sounds of people, and people meant questions. He should have waited a week. Next week Griffith was supposed to be in town. With the duke at his side, no one would have dared approach him. Griffith was simply too intimidating. Never before had Trent considered his innate personable friendliness to be a disadvantage.

  “Shall we get this over and done then?” Trent asked the fretting, dark-haired, unconventional beauty by his side.

  She blinked up at him. He was becoming
addicted to those blinks, crazy as it sounded. Her eyes were mesmerizing, capturing his attention even without the help of the slow blinks or the enhancement of her spectacles that made them appear even larger.

  Trent cleared his throat. “There will be introductions, I’m sure. Are you prepared for them?”

  Adelaide nodded. “Oh, yes. I’m rather good with names, I think.”

  “Once more into the breach, then.” Trent reached across her to release them from the pew enclosure.

  Her soft giggle caressed his ear as he pulled his arm back.

  An answering grin slid across his face. He was glad she found his reference to Henry V amusing, even if Shakespeare would probably scoff at Trent’s comparison of running the gauntlet of church members to a near-hopeless war invasion.

  If the wide-eyed looks sent in their direction were any indication, news of their nuptials had yet to spread through London. He had half expected Lady Crampton to do everything shy of take out a column in the newspaper to let all of the aristocracy know she’d married off her second daughter to the son of a duke. Everyone he introduced Adelaide to seemed thoroughly shocked, as if they’d tried to convince themselves she was a visiting cousin or some such thing, even though all of the Hawthornes’ cousins were considerably fairer in coloring. One young lady even seemed to be fighting to hold back tears.

  That one seemed to bother Adelaide as they broke free of the throng and made their way back to Hawthorne House.

  “Did you know her well?” The hand at his elbow tightened momentarily before the fingers smoothed along his forearm once more.

  “Who?”

  “Miss Elizabeth. The one who cried when you introduced me. Were you courting her?”