Faith gripped her daughter’s hand as Hawkridge’s carriage pulled to a stop. Arriving at his temporary London townhouse didn’t feel like a homecoming. It felt like stepping out of her own life and into someone else’s.

She didn’t feel like a marchioness. Her very presence seemed out of place, like she was a tired old gewgaw that ought to be swept back into the attic where such trinkets belonged. This wasn’t her home or Christina’s.

It wasn’t even Lord Hawkridge’s.

For her daughter’s sake, she pasted on a delighted expression as if becoming mistress of someone else’s rented townhouse was jolly sport.

Faith dreaded stepping inside not because she and Christina would be alone with Hawkridge, but because they would not.

His mother, they had been told, was too ill to attend the wedding. Regardless of the dowager marchioness’s health, Faith suspected Hawkridge’s mother would sooner lock herself in an ivory tower than witness him pledge himself to a nobody. Particularly not to the common bit of baggage she had warned her son against a decade ago.

Back then, Faith had still been hopeful enough and naïve enough to believe such differences didn’t matter. That of course she could be a marchioness equal to any other. Someday win her mother-in-law’s respect and love, as well as her husband’s.

She was no longer the silly creature she once had been.

When the driver who had handed Christina and her out of the carriage dashed ahead of them up the walkway to open the door and welcome them into their home, it took Faith a moment to realize the young man had not lost his mind.

He was John the footman, the driver, the butler, and likely more.

No matter. Faith knew what it was like not to have servants at all. And although Christina had been raised in comfort, she had not been taught airs. Faith pressed her lips together and lifted her chin in determination. They would be fine. If anything, it should be a relief not to have to manage a large house.

Inside the entranceway to the townhouse, Hawkridge gazed at them in obvious discomfort. “Do you… Are you hungry? I can have the maid—”

Faith shook her head.

“We’ve just come from the wedding breakfast.” This was true, although of the three of them, Christina was the only one who had enjoyed the repast. “Please don’t have her go to any extra trouble on our behalf.”

Hawkridge stared back at her for a long moment. “Should you change your mind, this house is yours to command.”

Except it was not. If his awkwardness was any indication, Hawkridge certainly meant well. But any house with so few servants and an obviously limited budget meant that Faith would be far wiser to ask which meals could be scared up from the larder than to attempt to impose her will upon a meager pantry.

“Christina, may I show you to your room?” Hawkridge asked their daughter.

Christina’s hazel eyes gazed up over the Grandmother Doll and Grandfather Doll clasped to her chest. “Does it have a window?”

Hawkridge’s obvious relief would have been amusing had their situation been different. “It does. Your chambers have the best windows in the entire townhouse.”

Christina nodded. “Then I like it. Do the play chambers have windows too?”

Hawkridge’s eyes met Faith’s over the top of Christina’s head.

She took pity. “This is a temporary townhouse, darling. Remember? There’s no nursery or schoolroom here. But you do have a bedchamber with the very best windows.”

“I want to see them.” Christina held up her dolls. “Grandmother Doll and Grandfather Doll want to see them too.”

“Then, this way, if you please.” Hawkridge led them up a simple stairway leading to the next floor. “Your valises will be right up. I shall be honored to give you the grand tour in the meantime.”

Faith followed her daughter and her husband up the stairs to the sleeping quarters, where her mother-in-law presumably also resided.

How did it feel to have one’s childhood fantasy finally realized?

She was a marchioness. His marchioness. And it made her want to cry. This was not what she had wanted, for herself, for him. She wanted the fairy story. Had expected it. But fate had held other plans.

She hung back to give Hawkridge a chance to bond with his daughter.

Christina was suitably impressed with her bedroom windows. The huge square in front of the Digby house was just visible in the far corner.

Before they had left for the wedding that morning, her parents had offered to decorate the townhouse with anything Faith lacked. Chandeliers, books, Egyptian artifacts, anything at all.

But it was already April, and this was a rented apartment Hawkridge didn’t even intend to keep. In a few months, the Season would be over. Where would she and Christina be then?

“So you did it despite my warning,” came a disgusted voice from the corridor. “You always were too selfish and self-important to consider how your actions reflect on others.”

Faith whirled to face Hawkridge’s mother. “Don’t speak to him like that.”

“I wasn’t,” the dowager answered coldly. Pointedly.

Faith’s cheeks flushed. She laid a protective hand on Christina’s shoulder.

Hawkridge stepped forward, his voice a low growl. “Mother.”

The pale-cheeked dowager coughed into a stained handkerchief. “What can I do? My feelings have never been important in this family, so why should hers be any different?”

“That is enough,” Hawkridge said firmly. “You should be resting.”

“I agree.” She swayed and gripped the doorframe as if the floor had begun to pitch with the tide. “This is nothing to get out of bed for.”

Faith quickly revised her plans. There is no point in insincerely attempting to win her mother-in-law over. All she and Christina could do was to be compassionate, be themselves, and hope for the best.

The sudden wedding had been a shock to all of them. And Faith had dreaded it just as much as her mother-in-law.

“Christina, I would like to introduce you to my mother, the dowager marchioness, Lady Hawkridge.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “She’s very sorry she was too ill to attend the ceremony.”

Christina frowned. “I thought Aunt Faith was Lady Hawkridge now. Is she the same as your mother?”

“That chit is nothing like me,” the dowager spat in fury, pointing a trembling pale finger at Faith. “I would have refused to attend that wedding even if I weren’t sick. I regret living to see a commoner rule over the respectable estate I once managed.”