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“Then I suppose we have nothing further to discuss,” he said.

Adele was halfway to the door when she heard her husband say, “I should never have allowed your mother to convince me to ask you to marry me.”

She stopped abruptly. “I beg your pardon?”

“After the Gills’ Thanksgiving ball, she came to me, practically begging me to take you off her hands,” he continued. “She said you’d gone round the houses so many times in London, you’d gained a reputation. No one wanted you.”

Despite herself, hot tears stung her eyes.

“She convinced me that you would be everything I needed in a wife.” Guy gave a bitter laugh. “I can see now how wrong she was.”

“You cannot blame me for your failings, Guy. No matter how much you try.”

“Leave,” he said, the word sharp and full of bitterness.

“Gladly.”

In the hallway, she clasped a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. She gasped out a breath, then another as sadness and anger and pity washed over her.

Had it been worth marrying this man when, only three years after their wedding, she found herself in a frightfully similar situation to the one Mama and Papa had presented her with in their suite at the Hotel Green—near financial ruin and desperate? She had allowed herself to go from the protection of one profligate man in her father to another in her husband, and she had little to show for it except Rosewood House.

“Adele? What is the matter?”

She looked up and saw Mama at the corner of the hallway.

“Mama.”

“Where is Guy?” asked Mama.

“In his study. He will not be having supper tonight. In fact, neither will I.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Before our engagement, did you approach Guy and ask him to propose to me?” she asked, her humiliation still raw and close to the surface.

Mama folded her hands in front of her, her expression suddenly somber. “Yes, I went to see him. I was concerned that you would fail in Pasadena, much as you had in London.”

Adele pressed her hands into her skirts, fists clenched. So that was why Guy had begun to court her. Not because he had found her enchanting. Not even because he’d risen to the challenge when he’d realized that other men might be interested in her. It was her mother’s manipulation, plain and simple.

“You told me that I must marry, and then you had so little faith in me that you arranged it all behind my back?” she asked.

“I could not trust you,” said Mama.

“No, I can see that now. Goodbye, Mama.”

She began to stride away from her mother, who shouted, “Where are you going?”

“Away.”

It was nearing ten o’clock by the time Adele pulled into Rosewood House’s drive. The moon was high and heavy in the sky, and its silvery light guided her up into the foothills of Altadena. As she rode, she occasionally heard a coyote howling. It was an eerie thing, and one that had been so very foreign to her just a few years ago when she had arrived from London. Now it seemed only right that the mournful howl should accompany her alone into the night.

When she pulled her horse to a stop, she climbed down from the buggy, lifting her traveling case off the seat next to her. She would deal later with the small trunk strapped to the back of the buggy that Maggie had insisted on packing for her when Adele explained she would be going away for a spell. She unhooked the buggy’s lantern that hung from a pole and loop and mounted the steps to the front door.

She pulled the house’s key out of her case and unlocked the door, a strange yet familiar thing. Usually Hildy, sent ahead by Mrs. Jarrett, opened the front door for her. She would have to become used to doing things for herself from now on.

Just as she was turning the key, she heard the cracking of a twig underfoot. She whirled around and spotted the beam of another lantern on the side of the house.

Macalister.