An Uncommon Courtship Read online

  And he was, tray in hand and frown in place. And ranging behind him in a half circle of disparagement stood the rest of his staff. His goal had been to avoid their disapproving frowns, but he clearly was doomed to disappointment. Only Adelaide’s lady’s maid seemed to be missing. Even Digby had come in from the stables for the confrontation.

  With a groan Trent ripped the tray from Oswyn’s hands and kicked the door closed in their faces.

  He’d taken care of his correspondence the day before, so after finishing his breakfast he settled into the wingback chair with a book. He considered stretching out on the sofa, but the sofa was getting enough of his attention lately.

  The last thing he expected as he turned another page without really knowing what he’d read was for Mrs. Harris to burst into the study unannounced.

  She stomped across the room to collect his breakfast tray but didn’t pick it up from the desk where he’d left it. “I’ve never taken you for a coward, my lord. I’m not sure that I cotton to working for such a man.”

  The book fell from Trent’s stunned fingers and lay open, forgotten in his lap, page lost.

  “She’s such a lovely young lady.” Mrs. Harris picked up the tray. “An utter pleasure to work with.”

  Trent frowned. A pleasure to work with? Doing what? As near as he could tell, Adelaide never left her room. Not that he’d know because he so rarely left his study, but he knew what his house had looked like before, and it didn’t look a bit different now. Even the food was the same, so she wasn’t having much effect on the menus either.

  “Having a woman in the house again is so nice. Not since Amelia was here have I had reason to pull out the fine china.”

  A laugh, born of equal parts despair and humor, threatened to bust through Trent’s lips. The only difference between the fine china and the plates Trent had been served on before he got married was that the fine china had four matching place settings. On the rare occasion that he’d had the family over, he’d borrowed dishes from Hawthorne House.

  Mrs. Harris walked toward the door but turned back before leaving the room. “Hiding in here, reading a book. When’s the last time you read in the middle of the day, my lord? You think about that and what you’re hiding from. I think you’ll agree with my assessment of your recreant tendencies.”

  Trent coughed. “Recreant?”

  “I read it in one of Lady Adelaide’s books. She said it meant to give in to a trial. More than applies in this case, if you ask me.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Trent to stare at his unread book and wonder if she was right.

  After wrecking the drawing room, Adelaide had retreated back to her solitude, finding comfort, as she always had, in books, both novel and academic. By Sunday morning, she had abandoned her plans to cry off going to church, because she simply couldn’t stand to be in the house any longer. She was waiting in the front hall, pressed and coiffed and ready to go when he came trotting down the stairs. He paused in the middle of the staircase when he caught sight of her by the door but did no more than nod and say a quiet “Good” before ushering her out the door to the curricle.

  Church was little better than it had been the first week. They arrived just before the beginning of the service, and Trent ushered her out before most of the other people had a chance to open their pew doors.

  Back home they’d stood awkwardly in the hall, facing each other but staring at points on either side. Adelaide chose a strange still-life painting to inspect, noting that all the fruit in the bowl appeared to have faces. Her humiliation was being witnessed by a painting of sentient fruit. She’d truly reached the bottom of her ladder.

  Perhaps that sensation of having nowhere to go but up was what gave her a spurt of gumption when the sun rose Monday morning. So what if she’d pulled the curtains from the wall in the drawing room? It was simply another sign that they needed to be replaced. Eventually someone—her mother, if no one else—was going to come for a visit, and she would have to use the drawing room. It might as well look presentable.

  All she had to do was pick new curtains and she would be off to a great start.

  Reality splashed a bucket of cold water on her plans for the day, however. She could practically hear the shopkeepers laughing at her trying to buy things under Trent’s name with no proof that she was at all connected to him. Church-fueled rumors weren’t likely to be enough to make them part with their goods. And she had no idea how much money she had to spend. That would require talking to her husband, which would mean spending actual time together in the same room—something he didn’t seem inclined to do.

  Perhaps she should send a note through Fenton? Perhaps ask to have an appointment in his schedule? Did he even have a schedule? Her father did. It was managed by the secretary who came by the house twice a week to assist her father in correspondence and other paper-related things. Being a second son, would Trent have need for such a thing?

  With her hands on her hips, Adelaide stood in the middle of the front hall, unwilling to give up yet another week to melancholy. Where else could she stake a claim in the house? The door to the servants’ domain caught her eye. As the lady of the house, she should know the kitchen—shouldn’t she? What sort of food stocks did they have?

  Simply walking through the door to the lower floor made her giddy. There weren’t many servants in the house, but at least half of them were likely working belowstairs at the moment, and Adelaide was going to go spend some time with them. She might not have any interaction her husband, but she could certainly embrace her bizarre new household.

  After Mrs. Harris’s admonishment, Trent had moved back to his desk. As days passed, he’d gone over every account book, every estate report, until his eyes had nearly crossed. His poor sleep habits had caught up with him, and he found himself nodding off at the desk more than once. And finally, he’d exhausted even the remotest account-related work. For a man who had always taken as little interest as possible in the business of his estate, Trent was finding an awful lot of reasons to hide away.

  Desperate for something that could be deemed productive while still keeping him in the study, Trent yanked open the bottom drawer of the cabinet behind his desk. A pile of papers and a discarded cravat were on top, but he shoved them aside to pull out the farm management book he’d stashed there a few months prior. When he’d come across the book he had flipped through it, thinking it would be something interesting to pass along to his brother. But soon he found himself actually reading it. He’d been fascinated by the discussion of how to grow pineapples in less-than-tropical weather. He even caught himself pondering ways to make the process better as he rode his horse through Hyde Park in the morning.

  That was when he buried the book. The thoughts and ambitions running through his head scared him. They were thoughts of a responsible, take-charge man, not a carefree, athletics-obsessed boy. And he wasn’t ready to be a man, appearances to the contrary. Just because he had his own house and now his own wife didn’t mean he wanted to show God how capable he could be in other areas of his life.

  If he wanted to remain in his study, though, this book was all that was left. All of his correspondence was up to date, even those he’d originally had no intention of answering. He’d had Fenton deliver any and all invitations to Adelaide, but she had yet to tell him which events they were to attend. Granted there weren’t that many to choose from so early in the Season, and the attending crowds would be small—which made it harder to avoid speculative questions—so he wasn’t really bothered by their lack of activity. No one else would think a thing of it either, since the few people who were already in Town wouldn’t expect a newly married couple to spend all of their evenings out and about. They probably didn’t even expect them to stay in Town.

  He should have taken her on a trip.

  But then he wouldn’t have an entire town house in which to avoid her.

  He should ask her to sort through the invitations and accept one or two, to give them something to do.


  But that would mean seeking her out. And the mere thought of doing such a thing caused his cravat to feel too tight. Mrs. Harris was right. He was a coward.

  Since he already was one, it wouldn’t hurt to bear the title one more day. Holding on to the topic would give them something to actually discuss, should they find themselves in the same room. If he sought her out he wouldn’t have anything to fall back on when they accidentally encountered each other again.

  Apparently he was pathetic as well as a coward.

  He plopped the farming book onto his desk, and it fell open to the page he’d marked with a tattered scrap of parchment. Trent grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pencil and began sketching out his idea for growing the pineapples in tiers, thereby saving more of the heat. Though it was rather disgusting to think about, he’d need a steady supply of horse deposits if he wanted to actually implement this process. Trust the Dutch to figure out that the stuff would generate enough heat to keep a glass enclosure tropically warm.

  Adelaide’s dowry estate was in Suffolk, very near to Newmarket, with its abundance of horse farms and racetracks. Getting a steady supply of the necessary product would actually be feasible.

  Not that he had any intention of actually implementing any of this. It was simply something to do while his wife . . . He laid the pencil on the table and sat back in his chair, brows lowered in thought. What was his wife doing? Some of the people she knew from the country had to be arriving in Town. Was she going to visit them? Letting them know of her changed status by leaving cards around the city?

  He jerked upright, bumping his hand against the pencil and sending it rolling across the desk and clattering to the floor.

  Cards. He’d forgotten to have new cards made up for her. She couldn’t visit anyone without them. And if she couldn’t visit anyone, she couldn’t leave the house, which meant Trent could bump into her at any moment.

  Clearly his wife needed calling cards. Today, if at all possible.

  Pleased to have a mission, Trent threw the book back into the drawer and slammed it shut with his booted foot.

  He nearly ran down the stairs to the front hall. “Fenton! My hat and coat, please.”

  His hand twitched with impatience, beating his thumb against his thigh as he waited for the butler to bring the requested items. When had the man gotten so slow? Granted he was on the older side, but he’d always seemed quite spry, despite his lack of hair. It had taken Trent six months to convince the man to stop wearing the ghastly powdered wig and just embrace the natural look. It shocked a few people, of course, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as his brother-in-law Ryland’s butler. Those wishing to visit the Duke and Duchess of Marshington had to get past a hulking man with no neck and a rather prominent scar on his face. In comparison, a bald butler was nearly normal.

  Mrs. Harris came bustling into the hall with Trent’s coat thrown over her arm. Fenton was on her heels with the hat, his lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure. Sometimes Trent wondered if his butler and housekeeper weren’t a married couple as well. They certainly acted like one at times.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” Mrs. Harris crossed her arms over her chest, effectively holding Trent’s coat captive.

  Trent grinned, knowing he had an answer the woman would approve of. “To get my wife calling cards. She needs to be able to tell the world of her new status, doesn’t she?”

  The motherly housekeeper looked torn as she held out the garment. “I suppose. Maybe being able to get out and about will lift her spirits.”

  The triumph he’d felt at getting his busybody of a housekeeper to relinquish the coat dimmed. “She is unwell?”

  Mrs. Harris shrugged. “Don’t know what else you expect when you haul a woman into an unknown house and leave her to her own devices. Poor Lydia’s taken to working in the kitchen because she feels so terrible. Her ladyship cries whenever Lydia enters the room. Makes it awfully hard for a maid to do her work that way.”

  “Lydia shouldn’t be working anymore, anyway,” Trent grumbled. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to be delicate?

  It bothered him, though, that Adelaide was so unhappy. During their night in the ruins she’d told him that she spent most of her time reading and going for walks unless one parent or another wished her to do something else. Trent’s library wasn’t large, but it was respectable. And if her maid wasn’t willing to go out he had other maids and a footman who could escort her wherever she wanted to walk in London. He thought she’d be happy.

  Apparently not.

  Hardly more than a week into his marriage, and he’d already broken his wife.

  “Calling cards.” His voice was thin, like a man taking his last gasping breath before drowning. “She needs calling cards so she can get out more. That’s all.”

  Mrs. Harris frowned. “It’s a start.”

  Trent grabbed his hat from Fenton and restrained himself from running out the front door as if he were a convict escaping from prison.

  Chapter 9

  He took a hack to the print shop, where the helpful man told him he could have a batch of cards delivered tomorrow and send a larger box within a week. Unwilling to return home so soon, he convinced the man to do a small batch right away and have them delivered to Trent’s club. That he was willing to pay for such an extravagance was a true sign of his desperation.

  It was as good an excuse as any to spend the remainder of the day within the walls of Boodle’s. Perhaps now that he was actually doing something for his marriage, no matter how small, he wouldn’t feel so pinned down by the questions and stares. Besides, it had been over a week. Surely it was old news by now. He certainly hoped so, anyway. He couldn’t figure out what to say to his wife, much less what to say about her.

  Trent wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about anyway. Yes, the marriage was a surprise, but it had taken place in the country during the late winter. There was no reason for anyone in London to think it had been anything less than planned. Unexpected, yes, but not scandalous. Unless, of course, someone from Hertfordshire had decided it was interesting enough news to write their cousin about.

  Trent sank into one of the tufted leather club chairs, a book open on his lap that he hoped would be a deterrent to those looking for a casual chat—even if he wasn’t reading it. All he wanted was to breathe. And to not be married. But since the second wish wasn’t about to come true unless God decided to dabble in time travel, the first one was increasingly difficult.

  It was obvious that he’d failed at the one thing he thought this marriage would accomplish. While it was entirely possible Adelaide cringed every time her manipulative overbearing mother entered the room, he was fairly certain no one at Moonacre Park could cause her to cry with their mere existence. So why Lydia? The girl wasn’t always the sharpest mind in the room, but she was very sweet and incredibly loyal. She would never have said or done anything to Adelaide, at least not on purpose. One never knew when a person had hidden issues waiting to be stumbled upon by an unsuspecting person, though. That was why Trent was careful to keep his social interactions as light as possible. He had close friends, but they were carefully selected.

  “How is married life treating you?”

  Trent looked up to find someone who decidedly didn’t make the list of close friends. Mr. Givendale would be one of those who would ignore the unspoken signal of the book.

  “Splendid,” Trent lied. “I happen to be waiting here for a delivery to take back to surprise my wife.”

  Givendale smirked and adjusted the sleeve of his almost too closely tailored blue coat. “Why not have it sent to the house so you wouldn’t have to leave your new bride?”

  Trent turned the page in his book, making a point of looking at the pages. “I didn’t want to risk her coming across the delivery without me. I wish to give it to her myself.”

  “I hear she’s quite striking. You’d think someone that memorable would have been recognized by someone, but no one knows wh
o she is.” As rude as he was loud, the obnoxious man settled into the chair to Trent’s left.

  “She’s my wife.” Trent tried actually reading the book to see if the movement of his eyes would convince the other man to leave. It wasn’t that Trent wasn’t willing to talk to anybody today, he just didn’t particularly want to talk to Givendale. Perhaps he could abandon the book and make his way into the billiard room. If Givendale followed, Trent could accidentally skewer him with a cue stick.

  “Is she a lady?”

  “Of course she is. She’s married to me.” Trent snapped his book shut in a rare show of irritation and rose. “I’m going to get a drink.”

  Givendale raised his light brown eyebrows toward the edge of his carefully waved and waxed dark blond hair, looking at the porter who had just passed them and could easily have gotten Trent’s drink. But the man didn’t say anything and he didn’t rise, so Trent left him there to go in search of a drink he really didn’t want.

  Was this what life was going to be? A series of doing things he didn’t want to do in order to keep himself from thinking about the fact that he didn’t know how to do what he needed to do?

  He got a glass of port and joined a casual game of whist. The conversation was general with no mention of his home or his wife. It was exactly what he’d thought he wanted, yet he found himself having to make a conscious effort to go through the proper motions. Obviously he wanted to be elsewhere—he just didn’t know where that was.

  Mixed feelings shot through him when the package finally arrived with the setting sun. Part of him was eager to get home and see if Adelaide liked the gift, but the rest of him still wanted to avoid his wife. Some delusional part of him believed if he pretended she wasn’t there, he would wake up and discover he was still a bachelor.