An Uncommon Courtship

by Kristi Ann Hunter

Having to do something other than go for a drive, however, made him sweat. For all of his reputed charm and grace, he didn’t have much practice in one-on-one situations with females. Particularly ones who weren’t his sisters.

  Perhaps he should treat Adelaide like he did one of his sisters.

  No. No. He shook his head fiercely to shake free any vestiges of that thought. Adelaide was most certainly not his sister, and he didn’t even need to consider trying to see her as such. It was much too disturbing.

  The door opened behind him, and he turned to ask Fenton if he thought the weather would hold long enough for him to take Adelaide to Gunter’s for ices.

  It wasn’t Fenton in the doorway, though.

  It was Lady Crampton and her maid.

  Trent cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Good afternoon.”

  Lady Crampton looked from him to the carriage and back again.

  Trent could only imagine the thoughts that would be running through her head. It must look strange, him standing by the road in front of his house with a carriage that wasn’t his own. Had Adelaide told her mother about their circumstances? What they were attempting? He rather hoped not. He hadn’t told his own mother. Of course, he still hadn’t gotten around to telling his own mother that he’d gotten married either. She was going to be beyond cross with him, but he couldn’t figure out what to say. He started the letter three times a day and always ended up chucking the thing in the fire. She was going to have questions. And he didn’t want to answer them, was afraid he wouldn’t know how to answer them. She was sure to be arriving in Town soon, and it wasn’t going to be pretty when she learned his unintentional secret.

  Very well, his intentional secret. He was going to have to take total responsibility for keeping it from her, but at least then he’d know why she was disappointed in him. That was far better than having her be disappointed and him be left wondering why. And after going against the norm and raising her family to marry for love, she was certain to be disappointed in Trent’s situation.

  He bit his cheek to stave off the urge to defend the carriage on the street. It was much better if he pretended there was nothing curious about the situation.

  “What are you doing?”

  Of course, pretending was so much easier if the other party went along with it.

  Trent went with the simplest answer. “Taking Adelaide to dinner.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “At half past three in the afternoon?”

  Hair flopped against his forehead as he tilted his head to the side and tried for a boyish grin. He hated playing the idiot, but sometimes it was the easiest way out of a conversation. “Is it that early? I must have gotten anxious.”

  “To eat dinner.” She adjusted her spencer jacket.

  He shrugged. “I’d be eating dinner anyway. It’s the company I’m looking forward to.”

  A frown pulled the countess’s lips into a wrinkled pink slash across her face. “One would assume you could have the company regardless of whether or not you were eating.”

  Maintaining his smile and relaxed posture grew difficult. Perhaps he’d bought into this courtship ruse a bit too much and he’d forgotten that the rest of London assumed he was still living under the same roof as his wife. And while it shouldn’t matter if Lady Crampton knew the truth or not, Trent didn’t feel it was in his best interests to let her know. Especially with some people already suspecting. “There’s something satisfying about letting the rest of London know how lucky I am.”

  And while Lady Crampton made noncommittal noises, Trent looked over her shoulder to find the luck in question standing in the doorway.

  Adelaide brushed the hair off her forehead and attempted a smile, though the corners of her mouth pulled down and her lips poked out the way they do when a person clenches their jaw. Her gaze kept flitting from him to her mother and then around the entire area, taking in the number of people witnessing the strange meeting in front of a house he supposedly lived in.

  Nothing about this tableau looked like a man returning home. It looked like exactly what it was—a man coming to visit a woman.

  Trent bit back a sigh as he wished Lady Crampton a good afternoon and pushed past her into the house. He had a feeling life had just gotten a bit more complicated.

  Even though the visit had gone horribly, Adelaide wished her mother had stayed. As uncomfortable and embarrassing as the ensuing conversation would have been, it had to be better than the awkwardness now covering the dilapidated drawing room. She’d just choked down tea with her mother so she wasn’t about to suggest Fenton bring another loaded tray, but without the sights of London to focus on, she and Trent were left without a common distraction.

  The fact that they apparently needed a common distraction was possibly proof that Trent’s courtship plan wasn’t having the effect that he’d planned. Assuming he planned for them to actually become closer—perhaps even find love—during this time. He’d said that was his objective, but then again he’d also moved out of the house, thereby limiting the amount of time they spent in each other’s presence.

  Adelaide didn’t know what to think anymore.

  Trent shifted, causing the settee to creak. His eyes widened as he cast a worried glance toward the thin, curved legs. He rolled his shoulders and sat up a bit straighter. “Did you have a pleasant visit with your mother?”

  Did anyone have pleasant interactions with the countess? Well, perhaps Helena did. The two saw the world in much the same way, after all. “My sister has returned to Town.”

  “Oh. Do let me know if you’d like to visit her one afternoon. I can easily adjust our ride.” He coughed and looked at the holes in the plaster where the curtain rod had once hung. “Assuming you wish to continue our rides, of course.”

  “Oh yes,” Adelaide rushed to assure him.

  Silence fell once more. Should she suggest he take some time to catch up on things in his study? Didn’t men need to spend time on their business things every day? Her father always spent the majority of his time in his study. And Trent had been essentially blocked from his for several days. But if she suggested that, would it start a pattern? Would he keep coming by only to seclude himself in his study?

  He cleared his throat.

  She sniffed.

  He shifted in his seat, causing another ominous creak to cut through the room.

  But none of those sounds could lift the weight of silence caused by two people in a room who didn’t know what to say to each other. If the furniture bore the weight of the silent expectation as heavily as she did, Trent had reason to be concerned about the stability of his seat.

  “You can’t hum while holding your nose.”

  Trent startled, his mouth dropping open slightly as if he, too, had been about to break the silence. Adelaide wished he had. Whatever he’d been about to say couldn’t be as inane as her blurting out a random fact she’d come across in a book one day.

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  And before she could find a way to extricate herself from his embarrassing scrutiny, he lifted one hand and pinched his nose while pressing his lips together. No noise emerged until he released his nose and opened his lips to let a gush of air out. “Fascinating.”

  She blinked at him. Fascinating? While it was true he’d seemed to enjoy her bits of trivia on their rides, she’d never pulled out something so obscure before.

  He leaned forward, bracing one elbow on his knee. “Did you know that you cannot lick your own elbow?”

  Adelaide looked down at her arm. “Why on earth would anyone want to do that?”

  Trent shrugged. His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners and a small smile tilted his lips. “Who knows? But I won two pence from Griffith once by telling him he couldn’t accomplish it.”

  “How old were you?” The words tumbled out along with Adelaide’s laughter.

  “Six. I’d just lost one pence to Henry Durham because he’d challenged me to the same thing.”

  Adelaide’s laugh
ter eased into a quiet smile. “I once dared my sister to climb onto the gardener’s tool shed to get our kite so we wouldn’t get in trouble.”

  “And . . . ?” Trent’s even, white teeth split his face in anticipation of a good story, making Adelaide realize this hadn’t been the best continuation of the topic.

  “She told my mother I’d gotten it snagged up there deliberately and tried to make her bribe one of the stableboys to retrieve it.”

  One hand clamped over Trent’s mouth as he tried not to laugh but it sputtered out anyway. “How old were you?”

  Heat crept up Adelaide’s neck. “Fifteen.”

  A loud crack of thunder cut through their shared laughter. Trent rose and crossed to the window, sighing as the rain began to pelt the glass panels.

  Adelaide stood beside him, watching the rain. Did this mean he would leave? His time in the drawing room had been as long as most men stayed to visit with ladies when they were courting. At least, as far as she understood it. Right now she would have been more than happy to forfeit half her knowledge of various trivia for the chance to have witnessed one of Helena’s Seasons. Any insight would be better than the darkness she now found herself in.

  “I had planned on taking you to the Clarendon to dine tonight.”

  Adelaide blinked. He wasn’t going home? They’d spent a mere hour in each other’s company while they rode the last several days and now he wanted to spend the entire evening with her? In the confines of a dining arrangement? That seemed like considerable progress to her. “Is the food good there?”

  Trent nodded. “French. I had been hoping the rain would hold off long enough for us to enjoy the outing.”

  Did that mean that now that the skies had opened up they weren’t going? If that was what he wanted, why had he mentioned it to her in the first place? Unless that wasn’t what he wanted. “We could dine here.”

  Her voice had been so quiet, she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. Wasn’t even sure the words had gone anywhere outside her head, until he turned his face from the window and smiled at her. The smile was tight and his eyes looked a bit wide and fearful, but her suggestion was rather terrifying. They were going to spend an evening together. Alone. Without a single distraction or activity to refocus their attention on.

  He stared at her, holding her gaze with his own until her eyes started to dry out, and she blinked to break the connection.

  “You would do that?” he asked. “Forgo an evening at the Clarendon to stay here?”

  She blinked at him, partly to relieve the burn from her eyes but also hoping she could somehow find the question he was really asking, because it felt like his words were weighted. By agreeing to this change in plans, was she setting them in an entirely new direction? If she was, she could only hope it was a good one, because she found herself nodding and leaving the room to see to the arrangements.

  They were deviating from the courtship plan, veering into waters no courting couple would dare to go. If it failed, their fledgling relationship would take a while to recover, but if it succeeded . . . Adelaide floated off to find Mrs. Harris, dreams of a real marriage filling her head and raising her hopes.

  Dinner was simple, with Mrs. Harris being torn between grumbling about the late notice and rejoicing over the fact that they were dining together at home. Where no one could see them. It hadn’t stopped Adelaide from dressing for dinner, though, and Trent’s breath had been stolen all over again as he waited for her at the bottom of the stairs.

  Just as she had when he picked her up for the ball, she’d stolen his wits for a few moments, and for the briefest time he’d been inclined to whisk her out onto the Town despite the rain. To show her off in her finery and splendidness.

  But he didn’t. They’d chosen to stay in for the night, and he marveled at the decision too much to take it away from her.

  Sliced roast in their own dining room was of no benefit to Adelaide’s social status. There was no gain from it outside of their own personal connection. It was hard to imagine the daughter of Lady Crampton being willing to eat a simple, private meal when they could have been prominently seated at one of the best restaurants in London.

  But when she tossed a grape at him, daring him to catch it with his mouth, he had no choice but to believe it was true. She was untainted by the desperate measures of the ton debutantes, never having had to weigh a friend’s happiness against her own future well-being, never having had to betray herself or someone else in order to gain social standing. While he didn’t fully understand her view on life, he was willing to admit it wasn’t as tarnished as he had feared.

  She was a different person in the privacy of their dining room. Different than she’d been on their rides, and certainly different than she’d been at the ball, where she’d tried to fade into the background. She hadn’t been successful, of course, with her unique eyes, gorgeous dress, and well-trimmed figure, but he’d seen her try.

  While Mrs. Harris fixed dinner, they’d played chess. During dinner, she entertained him by retelling the story from one of the novels she’d read lately, complete with commentary on the foolishness of the hero and heroine. She never volunteered her opinions, but he soon found all he had to do was ask and she would tell him what she thought. For a woman so inclined to keep her opinions to herself, she had formed surprisingly decisive ones.

  The rain tapered off while they ate, and eventually Trent could put it off no longer. The evening had been splendid, more than he had hoped for. But he was still committed to his plan. After all, wasn’t tonight an indication that it was working?

  She walked with him to the darkened front hall, saying nothing, both of them barely breathing as Fenton saw to having Trent’s coach brought around front. Her hands felt small in his, and he clasped them lightly. In the dim light of a single lantern, he could make out the glint of gold in her necklace. The chain had gotten twisted during the evening and now the brilliant dangling sapphire was trapped near her collarbone, pointing somewhere beyond her shoulder, the clasp twisted against it.

  Somehow the flaw made her even lovelier than she’d been when she’d stolen his breath earlier in the evening.

  “I enjoyed dinner.” He kept his voice low, afraid that anything above the gravelly near whisper would break the peaceful bubble they seemed encased in.

  “As did I.” She must have felt the same as he did, that the glow around them was delicate and needed to be cared for. Her words escaped on a breathy sigh, quiet and deep with meaning.

  He wanted more. She’d been so much more than he’d expected today. He hated that he’d wasted the past weeks, setting their marriage off on the wrong foot because he feared she would be too much like her shrewish mother. It was clear now that Adelaide was nothing like Lady Crampton, and Trent couldn’t wait to start them back on the path they should have been on before he messed everything up.

  Slowly he released his grip on her hands and trailed his fingers up her arms, past the edge of the gloves that draped away from her elbows after the busyness of the evening. Past the puffed blue sleeves of her dress, and over the embroidery dancing across her shoulders. Finally he slid his hands up her neck until they softly framed her face. Fingers that spent most of their time gripping a foil or curled tightly into a fist now trembled in an effort to cradle her head gently. One thumb traced the side of her jaw as he looked into her eyes, wondering, hoping, praying she wanted him to kiss her as badly as he wanted to.

  Her lips parted on a gentle sigh, and he lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.

  It was a mere brush of flesh on flesh. Intellectually he knew this, knew that this meeting of skin couldn’t be all that physiologically different than the holding of hands, but it felt like so much more. It felt like that moment of beauty when the morning sun hits the glass just right, showering the room with tiny crystals of light.

  He brushed his lips against hers again, unwilling, unable, to leave it at a single touch. It felt like the special, stolen moments as a child when he cur
led up in front of the Yule log on Christmas Eve and fell asleep on the settee, waking in the morning to find his mother had simply draped a blanket over him and left him there so he could enjoy the magic.

  Finally he pressed his lips harder against hers, taking her sigh as his own and sliding his hands deeper into her hair until he fully supported her head.

  It felt like home.

  He didn’t know how long they stood there, trading breath and sharing space. When he finally lifted his head, her wide eyes blinked up at him slowly, glazed and unfocused, the large, dark centers threatening to take over the blue he was always tempted to drown in. He could stay here tonight, he knew. The barriers keeping him from knocking on her bedchamber door had been obliterated the moment his hand had grazed the bare skin of her arm. And if the way her tongue darted out to catch his taste from her lips was any indication, she would open the door when he knocked.

  But he wanted more.

  What had seemed like a desperate and almost ridiculous notion a few days ago was now the battle plan that was going to get him what he wanted more than anything in his life.

  Because he didn’t simply want his wife anymore.

  Now he wanted Adelaide.

  Chapter 17

  By morning Adelaide was beginning to understand why she’d never completely understood how God worked. Given that He had made the bewildering, maddening, incomprehensible species that was man from His own image, it stood to reason that the Creator would be a complicated mass of logic never meant to be understood by the female mind. That, or the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had taken them even further off the path than she’d ever realized. Because the fact was, despite a night of tossing and turning and deep contemplation, Adelaide was no closer to understanding her husband than she’d been the day before. And while she was considerably more hopeful this morning—she had that kiss to think about, after all—she was still confused by the fact that she was going to eat breakfast on her own.

  She rose with the sun, tired of lying in a bed that wasn’t granting her any sleep. Again. Rebecca hadn’t come to the room yet, but Adelaide didn’t feel like ringing for her. There was something peaceful about wandering her room in solitude until she ended up by the window, amazed at the view of the city while it was still sleeping.