The Accidental Countess (The Aristocrat Diaries 3)

Adelaide rubbed her hand across her face, looking far too much like our mother for a moment. “How does the divorce work?”

The same way all divorces worked, I wanted to say.

I doubted that would go down well, though.

“Amicable, two years after the birth of a male heir. He’ll make sure I have a place to live, and that all the child’s expenses are covered.” I shrugged again. It really was simple. “There’ll be no need to make it nasty. We’re both going into this with the same expectation.”

“Okay, what if you don’t get pregnant at all?”

“That’s why we’re getting the fertility test.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll get pregnant.”

“No, but it does mean I’ll have fulfilled my end of the deal by being able to fall pregnant, and if I don’t after two years, then it’s done.”

“Evangeline, are you aware you are literally putting your womb up for rent?”

Yes. And the roommate was going to suck.

“Surrogates do it, and they don’t even get laid for it. I get to live in luxury in a small castle, get great sex, and get looked after for the rest of my life and save the hotel. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.”

“I don’t like this, Eva. I think that’s a very slippery slope you’re going down. It’s not a marriage, that’s a contract. It’s nothing more than a convenience for you both.”

“It happens all the time, Addy, especially in our circles. I don’t mind if I have kids or not, but I don’t want to get married. Matthew needs kids and doesn’t want to get married. This works for us both, plus I get a shiny little title that I can lord over Charlotte because the Anglesey earldom is older than the Coventry one.”

Look—I never claimed to be a nice person.

And I did so dislike Charlotte. She really did think she was better than everyone else because she was engaged to the future Earl of Coventry.

Newsflash. It didn’t make the bitch better than anyone.

“What about your life?” Adelaide asked after a moment, and I swallowed back a sigh, shrugging.

I really didn’t have all that much to give up. I hated my job, I was going nowhere with my dreams because I was putting all my money from painting into the hotel to keep it afloat, and my spare time was at a big fat nil for the same reason. Moving away from my parents and my best friend would suck, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

“I hate that damn art gallery,” I said firmly. “I can paint from wherever. I’m not too enthused about moving up there, but it’s not for that long, and his estate is beautiful. I could do worse things with my life.”

“No, I mean your life. Will you see other people?”

“No. It’s in the contract.” I shook my head. “We both must remain monogamous, or the contract is void.”

“You’re going to do it no matter what I say,” Adelaide said, swatting at Betsy to leave the rest of the sandwich fillings alone. “I’m just going on the record and saying that I think it’s going to end badly.”

Well, for what it was worth, I didn’t think it would end in a carnival myself.

“Thank you for the advice, Professor Cupid.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“Next month.”

“Next month?” Adelaide blinked at me as though I’d just told her it was tomorrow. “Where?”

“Anglesey. Of course.”

It wasn’t, but the look of pure shock on her face was just too good. I’d tell her later it was at The Fox and Hound.

As for next month… Well, the start of the one after that was close enough, wasn’t it?

I grabbed my bag and stood up. “I have to go. I need to hand in my notice at the gallery.”

She jumped up and chased me. “Have you thought this through?”

“No. Cheerio!” I threw a wave over my shoulder and left, letting the heavy doors close behind me.

Adelaide, being the level-headed one of the two of us, was going to need a lot more time to get used to the idea than I was. Talking anymore about it today was not going to yield any positive results.

All that would happen would be her telling me all the five thousand different ways I was making a terrible decision, and really, I didn’t need her to do that.

I already knew I was making a potentially horrible decision.

I’d never been to Anglesey. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for moving up there, and the reality was that I’d be three hundred miles away from my parents and almost two hundred away from Adelaide.

She would no longer be an hour up the road, and I would be in, quite literally, the middle of nowhere.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I was. Way too scared, and I could scarcely believe that I was still going through with this insanity. There was the potential for so many things to go wrong, and I’d run through every possible scenario that I could since we’d had that conversation at the hotel.