An Uncommon Courtship Read online

  He took out one of the calling cards. Lady Trent Hawthorne strode across the stiff card in black script. It was there. Undeniable. Real.

  It was time for him to grow up and make the best of it, become a man in at least a few aspects of the word. Life wasn’t going to change, and he really missed enjoying his breakfast. He would like his wife to feel as if she could leave her room for breakfast. Not that he blamed her for not coming down anymore. As he had yet to appear at her bedroom door at night, it stood to reason she wouldn’t want to see him in the morning.

  With renewed if shaky resolve, Trent stabbed his arms into his greatcoat and strode home, unwilling to wait around for a hack to be called. Energy spilled through him, lengthening his stride until he was nearly running toward home, though he had no idea what to do when he got there.

  The thought pulled him to a stop at the corner of Berkeley Street and Bruton Place. Intention was all well and good, but what was he actually going to do?

  A wagon rolled down the street next to him, rattling over the cobbles and jarring him from his introspection. He continued strolling home, though with less power than before. God had put him into this situation, so Trent was just going to have to trust that God was going to tell him what to do next.

  Adelaide’s afternoon in the kitchens had gone better than she’d expected. The staff had welcomed her with smiles and pulled a chair up to the worn worktable for her. She’d stayed to visit with them after eating the snack they put in front of her, even helping Mrs. Harris knead bread. The time had been very educational. Aside from learning the proper way to punch a pile of dough, she learned that Digby, the groom, had started his working life as a chimney sweep before moving to the considerably cleaner and less hazardous job of mucking stalls. She also learned that Lydia and Finch had grown up near each other before going into domestic service. They’d occasionally bumped into each other when they visited with their mothers and that was how their romance was born. It was all very sweet, but she still couldn’t bring herself to look at Lydia’s extended front. The idea that her maid was going to have a child and Adelaide wasn’t was depressing.

  Adelaide even learned more about her own maid, having had no idea that Rebecca had an affinity for licorice candy. It was an insignificant detail, but it made her feel connected to the weird little group that had formed a strange sort of family in the servants’ quarters of the town house.

  She would probably have to look into hiring a cook soon, and it would be an added difficulty finding one that would work well with the existing staff. Mrs. Harris had been overseeing the meal preparation for Trent since he moved in, a simple enough task when the man frequently ate dinner at his club or one social engagement or another. But they were married now and more meals would be taken at home, and eventually they might even have guests. Assuming she ever saw her husband again, of course. She wasn’t about to invite anyone over so they could see that she’d been exiled in her own home.

  As the afternoon wore into evening, she waited expectantly for Fenton to relay the day’s message from Lord Trent.

  Today, however, there had been no message for her. Nor had Mrs. Harris received word that he was planning to dine elsewhere, which meant that he would likely be coming home for dinner. Determined not to miss him, Adelaide plopped herself in the dining room to await her husband.

  The servants hadn’t let her wait alone.

  She’d started out playing Patience since it could be played on her own, spreading the cards out along the table so that it didn’t feel quite so empty. Before long Mabel, the parlormaid, asked to join her, followed by Oswyn, the footman, and they’d started a simple game of Maw, using the silver utensils from the sideboard as markers. After the first round, Fenton joined in, and before long most of the staff were seated around the dining room table. It was somewhat amusing to see a pile of gleaming flatware in the middle of the table. And since none of it represented real money, they were making the most ridiculous wagers and taking outlandish risks with their card play. She hadn’t had so much fun in weeks. Maybe even years.

  “Hullo?” a voice called from the main hall.

  Adelaide jerked at the sound of her husband’s voice and darted a look at Fenton. The butler was in the dining room playing cards instead of manning his post, and it was her fault. Trent had said she wasn’t allowed to fire any of them, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t.

  “We’re in here, my lord!” Fenton called, never taking his eyes from his cards while he decided which one to play.

  Trent entered the room and didn’t even blink at the scene he found. “Ah, Silver Maw. Who’s winning?”

  Adelaide blinked. They’d done this before? No wonder Oswyn had been so quick to suggest they pull out the silver.

  Fenton glanced up. “My lady is rather good at this, my lord. You’ll definitely want to partner with her at your mother’s card party in a few weeks.”

  Adelaide blinked again. She was going to a card party? But she’d already exhausted her entire repertoire of card games.

  “Mother’s having a card party? I didn’t even know they’d arrived in Town.” Trent shrugged his coat off and draped it over the back of a dining chair before settling into the seat next to her. He placed his arm along the back of her chair, leaned in to look at her cards, and grinned at the rest of the players. “I’m afraid all of you are doomed.”

  Adelaide looked at her cards. They were rubbish. She had nothing worth playing and expected to lose every trick.

  Fenton narrowed his eyes in Trent’s direction before looking at Adelaide, obviously trying to discern her hand from Trent’s statement. “Your mother has not yet arrived, but she sent word to her staff in Town to prepare for a gathering and that invitations have been delivered to the most essential guests.”

  Essential guests? Adelaide had never been considered essential anywhere. Convenient, yes, but never essential. The idea caused panic to curl her toes in her slippers. That was easily ignored, though, as her brain was entirely taken up by the confusing man who was her husband. Fortunately her cards were nothing of note, and as long as she made sure to follow suit, no one would notice that she wasn’t applying anything anyone could remotely call a strategy to her playing choices.

  What was Trent thinking? He’d ignored her for days, essentially acting as if he didn’t have a wife, and now he wanted to watch her play a simple game of cards? Looking over her shoulder as if this were a leisurely family evening?

  Her fingers curled tighter around the cards, and the worn edges bit into her palm. She leaned away from the warmth emanating from Trent’s body and sucked slow, steady breaths between her teeth. She’d been ignored a lot growing up, and more often than not she’d found comfort in assuring herself that as long as she was being ignored she at least wasn’t disappointing anyone. Her parents had hoped for a boy when anticipating her birth, so she’d never really blamed them for not having much use for her.

  This man was her husband, though. He didn’t have a single viable reason for ignoring her until her presence was convenient, yet that appeared to be his intention.

  She slid her card carefully onto the table so as not to display the desire to chuck the whole hand—along with the mass of silver in the middle of the table—at her husband’s head.

  The hand finished and the servants rose to return the silver to the cabinet, moving back to their jobs as if they’d often taken this kind of interlude. Maybe they did. They seemed to know their place in the house, know what they were to do, where they were to go. She never thought she’d be even the slightest bit jealous of anything a maid had, but there was no denying that she was jealous of the servants’ comfort and security.

  “I got you something.” Trent pulled a small package from his pocket and set it on the table in front of her.

  Her heart pounded as the muscles in her middle relaxed. What did it mean? Was it an apology gift? Was he regretting the distance of the past week? Perhaps she’d been too hard on him in her mind. This wasn
’t the marriage he’d grown up expecting, after all. Unlike her. She’d always expected her marriage would be little more than a business arrangement. Such a thing would be convenient for her father, after all. She hadn’t even been all that surprised when her mother had played an underhanded part in the situation.

  The string tying the package closed slid away easily and she was soon staring at a small stack of stiff cream-colored cards.

  Lady Trent Hawthorne.

  It was the correct form of formal address, she knew. It was what everyone expected. It was what she’d expected. It didn’t make any sense to resent the fact that the new calling cards he’d gotten her looked more his than hers. Not only did she not have a husband in anything beyond a legal sense, but now she didn’t even have her own name.

  Adelaide was no more.

  The anger that had simmered in her chest since his arrival spewed forth in a volcano of hurt and frustration she’d never experienced before and certainly never come close to unleashing before. He dared to bring her this. After leaving her to wander the rooms of this house for days with only his staff for company, he expected her to be delighted over the fact that she now got to use his name.

  Delight was not what she felt.

  “They’re lovely.” Adelaide pushed the stack of cards back at him. “When you have a wife, I’m sure she’ll be happy to use them.”

  Chapter 10

  He didn’t leave the dining room for hours. Eventually he rose from his seat and paced to the window and back. He leaned on the back of the abandoned chair, the wall, the sideboard—anything in the room that was capable of holding his weight—but always, always his eyes strayed back to the stack of cards still sitting on the table. The servants were worried about him, finding any and every excuse to walk past the open dining room door. Even Mrs. Harris refused to take the opportunity to admonish his choices.

  And his choices were definitely at fault here.

  With the sun long gone and the single candle Fenton had left him threatening to gutter out, Trent finally left the room to meander toward the leather chair he’d already spent too much time in. He didn’t know what to do. Though they’d been little more than strangers before, somehow they had managed to grow even further apart. He was still adjusting to the fact that this marriage was real, that nothing was going to come and magically take it away—that this was his life now, and he couldn’t go back.

  He’d finally accepted the truth, but how was he going to convince Adelaide of that fact? Would anything he did now be seen as genuine effort instead of simply a reaction to her cutting outburst?

  As he passed through the hall on the way to the stairs, a collection of calling cards on the silver platter by the door caught his eye. When he had been a bachelor, people rarely felt the need to drop their cards by to let him know that they’d arrived back in Town. Word of his marriage must be spreading for people to start the formal observance with him now. That or they were hoping to be among the first to receive a visit from his wife.

  His wife who hadn’t been able to do any calling of her own because he’d been so busy trying to pretend she didn’t need to.

  And now that she was trying to pretend the same thing, he realized just how badly he’d handled the entire situation.

  Longing for a distraction, and perhaps even a miracle, he flipped through the cards to see who had stopped by.

  One familiar name caught his eye and made him groan and laugh at the same time. His Grace, the Duke of Riverton. With a handwritten note along the bottom that said he wanted to let Trent know he was back in town but didn’t want to disturb the newly married bliss.

  If only he knew.

  The fact that Griffith was now only a brief walk instead of a grueling daylong ride away started an itch under Trent’s skin. For as long as he could remember, when Trent hadn’t known what to do he’d asked Griffith. Trent knew his brother wasn’t God and that, despite his steadfast personality and rock-solid presence, the man had made a mistake or two in his life, but his advice was rarely wrong. Griffith had a way of cutting to the heart of the matter, simplifying an issue until a person knew exactly what he needed to do.

  If ever an issue needed simplifying, it was this one. In a matter of days Trent had made one complicated mess of his life and marriage, and it needed to get sorted out. Tonight, if possible.

  His hat still hung where he’d placed it on the hooks by the front door when entering. Someone, likely Fenton, had retrieved Trent’s greatcoat from the dining room and hung it beside his hat. A tall clock stood next to the hooks, the hands pointing to an hour somewhere between ridiculously late and insanely early, depending upon one’s perspective. Waiting until true morning wouldn’t hurt anything, but the restlessness and desperation that had driven him to pace the confines of the dining room for hours were now pushing him out the door. He’d reached the edges of Grosvenor Square before he even knew he’d made up his mind to go.

  The imposing yet familiar front of Hawthorne House was unsurprisingly dark when Trent bounded his way up the steps. His knock was still answered promptly, though by a footman instead of Gibson, the butler—further proof that Trent had lost his grip on what was considered polite and appropriate at this hour.

  “My lord?” The footman stepped back to allow Trent to enter, but he looked poised to run around waking the house for what he probably assumed was an emergency.

  “My brother is back in Town, is he not?” Trent shucked his hat and coat and handed them to the anxious footman, whose name he couldn’t quite remember. Odd that he knew everyone on his own staff but not here. It really wasn’t home for him anymore.

  “Yes, my lord, but I’m afraid he’s already retired for the evening. Shall I wake him for you?”

  Trent rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the desperate tension. “Don’t bother. I believe I’ll stay here for the night. Please leave a message for Cook that there will be another for breakfast.” When only one Hawthorne was in residence, the staff didn’t lay out a spread on the sideboard, instead fixing a plentiful plate of the family member’s favorites. Trent had been beyond lucky to have avoided the notice of footpads on the way over here. He wasn’t chancing a walk back to his own house tonight. And since he had high hopes of finding the solution to his problem within the next hour, he wanted breakfast in the morning.

  A good breakfast to welcome the promise of a new day.

  “Very good, sir. Can I get you anything?” The footman looked confused. Griffith liked to have someone manning the door at all hours of the night in case urgent news arrived, but whatever footman drew the duty rarely had to do more than polish a few extra pieces of silver.

  “No. I can see to myself.” Trent ran up the stairs before the servant could respond. He walked right past the door to his old room and down the passage to his brother’s. The elegance and grandeur of the corridor caught his attention like it never had before. Growing up this had simply been home. The gilded frames, spotlessly polished wall sconces, and gleaming floors were things to walk past, not be admired at length.

  But Trent now stopped in front of a tall vase on a narrow table. The artful arrangement of flowers and branches nearly reached the ceiling. Why hadn’t he put such beautiful things in his own home? Trent had made an effort in a few rooms because his mother and sisters had insisted, but by and large he’d left the place in its semi-neglected state of genteel poverty. Hawthorne House might not feel like home anymore, but he wasn’t all that certain his place in Mount Street felt like home either. If he’d been waiting until he found the person to share his future before he made his home, where did that leave him? Sitting on threadbare sofas until he settled things with Adelaide? Sipping from mismatched teacups for the rest of his life because she would never forgive him for ignoring her the week after they were married?

  Trent pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. He needed to talk to Griffith, and it wasn’t going to wait the seven hours until proper morning visits commenced.

  A la
rge lump lay under the simple blue bed coverings. It looked like a mountain in the middle of the room. A light snore reached Trent’s ears, proving that Griffith had more than gone to his room for the night. He’d actually gone to bed.

  The kind thing to do would be to slip quietly back out of the room and let the man sleep. Fortunately, loving brothers didn’t always have to be kind to each other.

  Trent took two quick steps and launched himself into the air, landing on the mattress and sending the slumbering mountain bouncing across the bed while the bindings holding the mattress up creaked in protest.

  Snuffles and snorts accompanied muttered half words as Griffith grappled with sudden wakefulness. Trent turned on his side and propped his head in his hand, taking care to plaster an enormous grin on his face.

  Griffith pushed the covers down and ran his large hands over his face, blinking in the dim light coming through the not-quite-closed curtains. His voice was rough and thick, and it took two attempts to get a single word out. “Trent?”

  “Last time I looked in a mirror, yes.”

  The deliberate blinks Griffith used to focus himself and complete the waking-up process reminded Trent of Adelaide’s blinks. Those infernal, distracting blinks that did strange things to his insides that he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life. He flopped down onto his back and covered his own face with his hands.

  Griffith’s groan as he sat up in the bed sounded like rocks tumbling over each other. “What are you doing in my bed?”

  Trent uncovered his face and turned to look at his brother. “I need to talk to you.”

  “And it couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Trent sat up as well until he was shoulder to shoulder with his brother, a man who’d stepped in to fill the role of father, though he couldn’t even grow whiskers at the time. “I’ve created a bit of a tragedy, Griffith.”