“I assured your lovely wife that you would not be upset at her missing your ride this afternoon. While I’ll endeavor not to interfere in your plans in the future, I’m afraid it was unavoidable today.”
Trent stared wide-eyed at the mother who only that morning had informed him that his courtship plan was nonsense. “Of course I don’t mind. But, er, what were you doing?”
“Spending a great deal of your money, which you should have seen to already. Also, I was making sure no harm would come from your ridiculous plot. You may thank me later.”
She handed Trent a piece of paper. “These are the events I recommend you attend if you want to give her a complete social experience as quickly as possible. I assume once you’ve done that you’ll move back home and stop this nonsense?”
Trent took the paper with numb fingers as he nodded.
“Good.” Mother folded her hands in front of her. “Until that happens I suggest you spend as much time at your clubs as possible. People must see you out and about, not gathering dust here in your brother’s home. You will send Adelaide a note each morning, detailing where you expect to be so that she will not be caught off guard by any visitors looking for you.”
Trent hadn’t thought about that, though his experience with Givendale at the boxing ring had made him a bit concerned. Trust his mother to come up with a solution before he’d even realized the full problem. Because it was better than being shamed by his mother’s accusatory glare, Trent looked at the list of events. Nearly every day had something, and some days even listed two events. They were going to be a very busy couple, which he had no problem with. A bit of excitement unfurled within him at the thought, proof that his courtship plan was working. “It’s not nonsense.”
Mother sighed. “It is. But somehow you’ve convinced her it’s romantic. Miranda seems to agree with her.”
Trent knew there was a reason he liked Miranda. Less than a year apart in age, the two of them had always been especially close growing up. He knew he should have expected her to see what he was trying to do. Still, something about the way his mother was talking about the entire thing made him uneasy. “What do you mean you were making sure no harm would come from my plan?”
Mother tilted her head and sighed, making Trent feel like a foolish child instead of a grown man. “You have left your wife, a woman unknown to most of London, alone. She has no established friends, no history. My son, you are the brother of a duke. A duke with a reputation for actually caring what happens to his family. Do you honestly think no one will try to use her to get to you and by extension, Griffith?”
Apparently there was very good reason for Trent to feel like a foolish child. Had he missed this sort of subtle political manipulation before or had he been left alone, seen as the careless younger brother not yet worth the effort? Funny how marriage suddenly matured a man in the eyes of society. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He swallowed. “I’ll move home.”
“While I would obviously think that wise, it goes against the course of action you have chosen. Your situation is ridiculous enough without your adding bitterness or some other such notion to the mix. You’ve nothing to worry about. We have set up a visiting rotation. As her new family we will be able to chaperone Adelaide without raising suspicion among anyone. And as much as I’ve never understood the familiarity you have with your staff, in this case it is a boon, because they will look out for any mischief as well. Whenever you go out, you will escort her home and send the carriage away. After thirty minutes you will come out the back, where Griffith’s driver will be waiting in a simple hack. There’s no need for all of London to know about this foolishness.”
If Trent had ever wondered how his mother managed to raise a duke after the death of his father, all of his questions would now have been answered. In less than twelve hours his mother had concocted and put into motion a plan that was more thought out than his simple idea had ever been. She’d looked at every angle and effectively planned against potential pitfalls. No wonder his father had always looked at her with such awe on his face.
Trent smiled and leaned forward to kiss his mother on the cheek in a show of affection he hadn’t given her since he’d been a boy. A hint of pink brushed her cheeks.
She cleared her throat and clasped her hands together at her waist. “Now. We’ve a few minutes yet before I need to return home and ready myself for the evening. I hadn’t planned on going out much this Season but that has obviously changed for the foreseeable future. We will be out in full force to show support for your new wife. Speculation about the marriage is already rampant, and that foolish woman Lady Crampton is only fueling it. I’ve always thought that woman would throw her own daughter to the wolves if it achieved greater popularity.” Mother pressed her lips together in irritation. There weren’t many people who bothered his mother enough for her to show it, and even then she only released the emotion in private, but Lady Crampton had always been one of them. The two women had known each other since their own London Seasons, and more than once Trent had wondered if something had happened then to cause the lingering animosity.
Unfortunately, Mother’s irritation was now redirected at him. “In these remaining moments, you are going to sit down and explain to me exactly how you ended up in this situation. And you”—she pointed to somewhere over Trent’s shoulder—“are going to tell me why you didn’t stop it.”
Trent turned to see Griffith coming down the stairs with a stack of papers in his hands. He’d obviously been headed toward his study and looked confused by his mother’s interruption. Though he couldn’t possibly have known what was going on, the confusion soon cleared from his face. “My study, then?”
“No. The drawing room. The white one with all the spindly furniture you both despise. I have a feeling I am not going to like this conversation, and so you are not going to like it either.” Mother sniffed and turned toward the formal drawing room off the main hall.
Trent groaned and followed. He was convinced there wasn’t a man alive who didn’t hate this room, though none of them had ever complained when they came to visit Miranda or Georgina. Done almost entirely in white, it made a man feel like an awkward, bumbling schoolboy. It had been decorated for his sisters to receive callers in during their Seasons, and both of the brothers were convinced it had been intentionally designed to make men feel ill at ease in order to give their sisters every possible advantage.
Now it was their mother holding the advantage. The brothers walked to the drawing room like men headed for the gallows.
The glaring white of the room was broken only by the occasional accent of gold. From the gold-veined white marble fireplace to the thin gold stripes on the white settee and the lightly gilded frames that dotted the white silk-covered walls, there wasn’t an inch that would forgive the slightest bit of dirt on a man’s clothing or boots. The room was famous across London, and Trent guessed that many a man had made sure to come calling straight from his rooms so as not to be the one to mar the white perfection.
Mother preceded them into the room, but instead of sitting to the side on the gold-striped settee she’d occupied through her daughters’ Seasons, she settled into a white-on-white-brocade armchair, gesturing for the two men to share the sofa across from her.
Trent eyed the thin curving legs before easing onto the seat. Griffith plopped his massive frame down with more force than normal, his feet actually lifting from the floor as his back landed against the back of the seat. Trent wished he’d had the foresight to join him. If they’d broken the sofa, their mother couldn’t make them sit on it, might not have even wanted to stay in the same room as the splintered furniture.
But the spindly legs held, and there was nothing left to do but face their mother and smile.
She didn’t smile back.
“I was staying at Riverton,” Trent began.
“Because he didn’t want to stay at his own house while the construction was going on.” Griffith settled farther into his corner of the sofa, trying to look as confident as a large man on a delicate piece of furniture could.
Trent glared at his older brother. “The entire bedchamber wing was in shambles. I’d have been sleeping on the drawing room sofa.”
“But you wouldn’t be married.”
Trent couldn’t think of a single remark cutting enough to be a proper response to that low blow.
“Boys.” The quiet word brought them both to a halt the way it always had. Trent and Griffith never came to actual blows, but when the matter was personal, they could verbally spar with the best of them. It didn’t happen often, but when it did the only one with the nerve to come between them was their mother.
Trent turned back to face her. “I was cutting across the west fields by the ruins—the small keep built into the hill beside the old watchtower—and I heard singing and saw a lone horse. I climbed in to investigate.”
Mother closed her eyes and sighed. “The mushrooms.”
Trent looked at Griffith, who appeared as surprised as he was. “How did you know?”
“She walked out there with me ages ago and asked if she could collect them. It must be nearly ten years ago now. She walked across that old wooden floor, confident as you please, and then climbed down the holes from the old stair supports. But she was a child then. Surely she wasn’t still scampering up and down the wall as a grown woman.”
Mother had always kept strict rules for her girls on what ladylike behavior consisted of. Trent couldn’t imagine her ever letting Miranda or Georgina climb into ruins to collect mushrooms, even when they were children.
Trent shifted in his seat, wondering if he should feel embarrassed on Adelaide’s behalf. “Er . . . yes. She was.”
“But that floor could give way any day now.”
Griffith coughed. “Not anymore.”
Trent frowned at Griffith. “And you wouldn’t have allowed curiosity to trump your good sense for a few moments? I’ll have you know—”
“Boys.” Mother cleared her throat. “I surmise you were the reason the floor finally fell?”
Trent nodded his head. “And it took all night to cut through the vines and find another way out.”
He left off the story there, deciding it was best to keep to as many cold facts as possible. No one else needed to know how scared he’d been or how the miserable pain in his ankle and hands had prevented him from finding a moment’s sleep. It wasn’t necessary to share the despair he’d felt when the moon broke through the clouds, sealing his gentlemanly fate.
“And then he proposed,” Griffith muttered.
“You proposed?” Mother asked with clear surprise. She hadn’t been surprised by the rest of it, knowing that something outrageous had to have happened to force Trent’s unexpected nuptials. But his unforced proposal seemed to knock her off guard.
Trent really didn’t understand why that was the part of the story that seemed to shock everyone instead of the ridiculousness of falling through an obviously rotten floor.
“Yes, I proposed. It seemed the thing to do since we were spending the night together—alone.” How could he explain to them how despondent he’d felt when Adelaide’s ruination became a done thing? When her reputation was lost to the stars and lack of proper chaperone? Within miles of their respective homes, they’d been condemned by circumstances. He knew at that moment he would never get the chance to propose to anyone else. And it had bothered him. Looking back, part of him had wanted to feel like he wasn’t just a victim in the whole mess.
He’d pulled up one of the early blooming violets and twined it into a circle before offering it to Adelaide and asking her to marry him. It was a moment that had been just for the two of them. A moment they’d claimed before the world condemned them. That way, when they finally climbed out of that stone prison, they would be able to declare their fate instead of having it declared for them.
But he didn’t know how to explain that to his mother.
So he didn’t.
Mother’s brow creased. “And in all that time, no one came looking for her? No one came by? I can’t believe no one knew she was going out there.”
“There was a wagon of some sort, or we thought we heard one. We shouted as loud as we could but no one answered.” Trent rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “Her mother knew she was headed to the ruins, but Adelaide said it wouldn’t be the first time the countess had forgotten about her.”
Griffith shifted in his seat. “And you believe her?”
Trent and Mother both frowned at Griffith, but it was Mother who finally spoke. “Why shouldn’t he? You’ve met Lady Crampton.”
Trent wanted to jump to his wife’s defense, but he couldn’t. Griffith had always been able to see the bigger picture, to know what was going on beyond the portrait’s frame. What was he seeing now?
“Consider for a moment if you did actually hear a wagon. How often does one of us ride through there alone? What if she wasn’t simply down there for mushrooms? It’s an incredibly risky gamble and highly unlikely to pay off, but did it really cost them anything? I can’t put it past Lady Crampton to leave her daughter there as potential bait and then come back to help her out of the ruins later. Only this time she kept driving because she’d actually been successful.”
They all sat in silence for a moment until Mother broke it with a rough laugh. “That’s rather farfetched. Even for one of those Minerva Press novels.”
But Trent couldn’t completely shake the idea. They’d been so certain they heard someone drive by. And if someone had, Trent knew they’d heard the shouting. Trent had been able to hear Adelaide’s singing clearly as he approached.
Not that it mattered. Trap or not, he was married, and no amount of plot discovery now would change that fact. “The deed is done. This is the last time we speak of how it came about. Adelaide is now my wife, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He bit his tongue before he could spout the rest of his bitter thoughts. Things like telling the rest of them to go on and enjoy their love-filled marriages, or chance at a love-filled marriage in Griffith’s case. For whatever reason, God had chosen this trial for Trent to bear, and it didn’t matter how much he’d wanted to court a woman and fall in love, this was his life and that was all there was to it.
He didn’t say any of those things because he didn’t know how. There wasn’t a way to phrase them that didn’t sound pitiful and pathetic. And he already felt plenty of that for being forced into marriage in the first place.
He stood and looked at his brother and then his mother. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go dress for whatever event you’ve arranged for me tonight.”
“A card party at Lady Lyndley’s,” Mother said quietly.
“Very good, then. An evening of whist awaits. I will see you all there.” Trent left the room without looking back and tried very hard not to think about the discussion they’d just had. Because if he didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t hurt.