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“Mama…”

She swallowed her protest when the maid appeared pushing a silver-laden tea cart.

“Thank you. I will serve,” said Mama, dismissing the maid.

Adele waited as her mother poured a cup of tea and handed it to her.

“Would you care for cake?” Mama lifted a slice to a plate before Adele could say anything.

Adele accepted the cake, catching the sharp scent of lemon as she did. Despite the rumble in her stomach, she set it aside. There were more important matters at hand.

“I was surprised to receive your summons,” she started.

“Summons?” Mama tsked. “You speak as though you’re a reluctant courtier being called to account for something you’ve done.”

Aren’t I?

The frustration that had sat like a knot in her chest for weeks tightened. What had Mama been thinking, demanding she leave London? Her travels had meant that she’d missed the annual migration up to Scotland for the September balls, and even now the little Season was underway—not to mention preparations for Cousin Margot’s wedding.

How Margot had managed to capture the attention of James Benson—a member of Parliament of rising importance whose grandfather had made his fortune building railways in the north of Britain—was still something of a mystery to Adele. She loved her shy, delicate cousin, but it had baffled her that Mr. Benson had first approached Margot rather than Adele to ask for a dance at Mrs. Martineau’s ball. However, any sting Adele had felt at Margot’s good fortune soon evaporated when Adele saw the real devotion the pair shared, and three months later, Aunt Hyacinth was crowing about Margot’s engagement to whomever would listen.

“I know you are disappointed that your Season was truncated—your letters made that plain enough—but it was clear how little progress you were making toward finding a husband,” said Mama.

Adele stifled a wince. Mama had always delivered her barbs like an expert archer, drawing back her bow to its greatest point of tension and then letting loose a verbal arrow that could strike home with painful precision.

“There were several men who showed interest in me,” she started.

“Come, Adele. If there were a real prospect of a proposal on the horizon, Hyacinth would have written to me. Instead, all my sister’s letters seemed to draw the same conclusion: that you have gained something of a reputation for being unduly prideful, which gentlemen understandably find unappealing.”

Adele took a sip of tea, hoping the action would hide her rapidly flaming cheeks. “You did raise me to be discerning.”

She remembered all the lessons Mama had taught her. Lectures about how Mama and Aunt Hyacinth had both aspired for something greater than their own mother, the wife of a physician who had to work for his living, could have ever imagined and married gentlemen respected and embraced by a higher echelon of society. Now it was Adele’s turn to set her sights higher still, to ensure that her children were something more than simply the grandchildren of a gentleman. If Adele was very clever, she might even acquire a title in the process.

“It is vital that a lady knows how to be discerning, Adele, but if she is not careful, she risks becoming known as a snob. I regret that you did not accept Mr. Bates’s offer. If you had, you would not find yourself having gone through three Seasons without an engagement,” said Mama.

Mr. Bates. The only man who had proposed her first year out, whom Mama herself had strongly dissuaded Adele from accepting because he was merely a department store owner’s son, working in his father’s office.

Although well-educated and the heir to a modest fortune, Mr. Bates was not the sort of man Mrs. Pearce had envisioned for her son-in-law. The eldest son of a baronet or baron might do or, if Adele was very clever and a little lucky, a viscount or even an earl. Fueled by the twin motivations of her desire to become Adele, Countess of So-and-So, and her mother’s ambition, Adele had rejected Mr. Bates as he stood in front of the fireplace of her parents’ drawing room. She would not be the sort of woman who foolishly jumped at the first middling proposal of her first Season. She was certain greater opportunities would come.

As the months stretched on and debutantes began to announce their engagements, however, she experienced her first niggle of doubt. What if no one else proposed to her? Then there would be next Season, Mama reassured her. The right sort of man was worth waiting for.

What a blow it had been then when, the following Season, Adele had danced and laughed and flirted just as she’d been taught, yet nothing happened.

“You are twenty-two, Adele,” said Mama, surrounded by the gloom of the Moorish Room, “and you have not received a single proposal in nearly three years.”

“Sarah Woodley married at twenty-four,” she said quickly.

“Sarah Woodley’s dowry was twenty thousand pounds and the gift of a house on Eaton Square,” said Mama sharply. “Sometimes it is necessary to admit when something has been a failure.”

She cast her eyes down at her folded hands in her lap. “Perhaps if I could go to New York or Boston—”

“You will winter with us in Pasadena,” said Mama.

“I hardly think that keeping me from balls and parties is a good way to find me a husband,” she pushed.

“You have proven that continuing to accept every invitation that comes your way in London is futile. There is nothing quite so pathetic as a young lady who is so ubiquitous in the ballroom that she might as well be a part of the furniture.”

Adele swallowed hard. It was true that this past Season she had begun to notice that the very same gentlemen who were polite enough to her when they were waltzing drifted off to speak to other ladies as soon as they were able. Neither could she ignore the whispers ill-concealed behind fans and gloved hands as she walked by her fellow young ladies. She was in danger, she knew, of becoming a cautionary tale: a young woman who set her sights higher than she had any right to and suffered the embarrassment of no husband and no prospects.