Chapter 5
The red in Lady Adelaide’s face rose with such impressive speed that Eric knew, before she spoke, that he had chosen his words badly.
“Alone?” Adelaide repeated, drawing herself upright so abruptly that the movement nearly brought her into him again. She avoided that by taking one deliberate step back. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but I don’t owe you any explanation.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Are you sure?”
Her gloved fingers closed around the edge of her cloak while she looked at him as she had when she entered his study without knocking and then argued about drainage as though a duke’s opinion merely required adequate evidence to overturn.
Eric glanced past her, half expecting a companion to emerge from the saddler’s shop or from among the ladies making their way beneath umbrellas farther up the street. No one did. He returned his attention to Adelaide and found her watching the search with increasing disbelief.
“You are soon to be married,” he said, keeping his voice low as two gentlemen passed close enough to notice them. “Your movements will attract attention whether either of us welcomes it or not.”
“My movements have attracted attention since I was old enough to form an opinion aloud. Marriage is unlikely to improve the situation.”
“A lady walking without a maid or footman invites speculation.”
“That sounds remarkably like the fault of those doing the speculating.”
“It usually is. Unfortunately, society has never required fairness before passing judgment.”
The sensible course would have been to apologize plainly, but instead he heard himself say, “You might at least have informed someone.”
Adelaide’s brows rose. “Someone?”
“A servant. Your father. Whoever accompanies you into town.”
“My maid has gone to the apothecary for her daughter’s medicine, and I have come to speak with a man about my saddle delivery. Both errands were arranged before I knew I would be challenged in the street about it.”
“I am not challenging you.”
“No?” She looked around them as though searching for another explanation. “Then perhaps this is the customary Wolverton welcome. Do all members of your household receive an examination after being caught beyond the front gate?”
A laugh threatened him at precisely the wrong moment. He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and looked toward the saddler’s window instead, where an apprentice had become very interested in polishing the same buckle for far too long.
Adelaide noticed him.
“Go on,” she said. “You may laugh. You did so the last time I embarrassed myself in your presence.”
“You are not embarrassed you are frustrated,” Eric murmured and turned his head, disguising the movement as an inspection of the street, though there was no saving the corner of his mouth.
The woman ought to have been exhausting. She was certainly aggravating. Still, the sharpness in her never felt empty. Every answer came with purpose behind it, even when that purpose was chiefly to make him regret speaking.
She shifted again, and the damp light caught the pale strands of hair beneath her bonnet. Her cheeks were still flushed, whether from anger or cold he could not tell, and her hazel eyes held his without apology.
“I will make this plain now,” she said, lowering her voice as another carriage rolled past. “If we are to marry, you must understand that I will not exchange my father’s protection for a husband’s authority.
I have managed an estate, overseen tenants, ridden where I pleased, and spoken where others wished me silent.
I do not intend to surrender all of that because a clergyman records my name beside yours. ”
Her words were controlled, but one thumb rubbed repeatedly against the seam of her glove. Eric watched the small movement before returning to her face.
“I have not asked you to surrender anything.”
“You have not yet, but I have no doubt you will… in all your duke-ness.”
“I simply asked. You cannot blame me for—”
“You asked as though the answer belonged to you.”
He could not deny that. The question had come too quickly, sharpened by the sight of her without an attendant and by some instinct he did not care to examine too closely.
Concern, perhaps. Irritation. Something more primitive than either, born when she struck his chest and his hand closed around her waist before thought caught up with action.
The pressure of it remained unpleasantly clear.
Adelaide drew in a breath, then seemed to reconsider whatever she had intended to say. Her gaze shifted to the street behind him, where a boy struggled to guide a barrow around a puddle. When she spoke again, some of the heat had lowered, though not enough to mistake for surrender.
“Look —I am doing this” she gestured between them.
“For my father, and for the people who would be left to the judgment of a man who has already made plain what he thinks of my household. I am not marrying because I find the arrangement pleasant, and certainly not because I have developed an affection for you.”
“Well,” Eric said after a moment, “that is fortunate.”
Her eyes snapped back to him. “Fortunate?”
“I should hate to begin with expectations neither of us intended to meet.”
Adelaide appeared uncertain whether to be offended or amused. The battle played briefly across her face before suspicion won. “You never wanted a wife, and yet here you are.”
A horse shied at the crack of a driver’s whip near the intersection.
Eric glanced over automatically, judging the distance, the reins, the driver’s hands.
The animal settled after two uneven steps.
By the time he faced Adelaide again, she had tucked the parcel more securely beneath her arm and was studying him in a quieter way.
“Yes, but here I am. As are you.”
There was something in the set of her shoulders that pulled at an old memory.
His sister at seventeen, standing in his father’s library with her chin raised, insisting she would not be instructed into happiness by men who had never troubled to ask what she wanted.
He had admired her courage then and dismissed the argument itself.
Had he listened more carefully, perhaps—
Her beauty caught him again before memory could finish its work. Not merely the symmetry of her face, though that would have been enough to draw notice. It was the directness of her gaze, the complete absence of coyness. She looked at him as if rank were relevant but not decisive.
Eric adjusted one cuff, buying himself a second before speaking. “This began badly.”
“It began with you accusing me of improper conduct.”
“Then let us call it a misunderstanding,” he said, and when she opened her mouth, he lifted one hand. “Not because I think you entirely blameless. You walked directly into me.”
“You stepped into my path.”
“I was standing still.”
“You were broad enough to occupy most of it.”
That brought a genuine laugh from him, low and brief but impossible to contain. Adelaide stared as if he had violated some private agreement by enjoying himself, though her own mouth twitched before she pressed it flat.
“We will need rules,” Eric said once the amusement passed. “On that point, at least, you are correct.”
“Rules we both agree to.”
“Yes.”
“I will continue managing my father’s affairs while he is unwell.”
“I would expect you to.”
“I will keep my maid and her daughter with me after the marriage.”
“That was never in question.”
“It may be to your housekeeper.”
“Then my housekeeper will survive the surprise.”
Adelaide’s grip on the parcel eased. He had not realized how tightly she held it until then.
The street had grown busier while they argued, and they had remained too long in one place. Several passersby had already glanced toward them. Eric stepped nearer the curb, placing himself between Adelaide and a cart whose wheels cut close through the mud, but stopped before touching her again.
“I have business in Westminster for the next few days,” he said. “At the end of the week, perhaps we might continue this discussion somewhere less public.”
Her expression sharpened at once. “Continue which discussion?”
“The one concerning the terms of our marriage.”
“That sounds deeply romantic.”
“I did not promise romance.”
“No. You were admirably clear on that point.”
“Tea, then. And a walk in Hyde Park, weather permitting.”
Adelaide looked at him for several seconds, weighing the invitation with the same practical attention she had given his drainage maps. The pause stretched long enough for the apprentice in the window to abandon his buckle and disappear into the rear of the shop. “With a chaperone,” she said.
“Of course.”
“And you will not interrogate me if I arrive by some route you consider unusual.”
“I will try to restrain myself.”
Her gaze stayed on him another moment before she nodded. “Very well. Tea and a walk.”
Eric inclined his head, formal now because formality was safer than whatever had occupied the space between them a few minutes earlier. “Friday afternoon. I will send the details to Talbot Park.”
Adelaide had only just placed her hand upon the saddler’s door when Eric heard himself speak.
“Lady Adelaide?”
She turned back with visible caution, a question playing on her features.
He stepped forward before giving himself the opportunity to reconsider, reached past her, and opened the heavy oak door. The brass bell above it gave a cheerful ring as warm air smelling of leather and linseed oil drifted out into the street.
For an instant neither of them moved. She looked from the open doorway to his hand still resting against it, then back to him. It was such an ordinary courtesy and odd that it should seem to surprise her.
“Your Grace…” The words came more slowly than usual. “I…” She stopped.
He watched her attempt, with increasing determination, to produce a simple expression of gratitude without appearing indebted by it. The effort played across her face in small contradictions. Pride insisted upon composure while good manners refused to be ignored.