When She Loved Me (Regency Rogues: Redemption Book 1)

by Rebecca Ruger

  No, we definitely should not. Her breath caught once again. She seemed unable to lift her eyes from his chest, settling her troubled gaze onto the buttons of his shirt. The last thing she wanted—or thought prudent—was to be held in Trevor’s arms again.

  He waited, while Nicole toyed nervously with the scrap of lace at the top of her bodice and now considered his outstretched hand.

  Oh, but this was a bad idea. With a grimace, she briefly considered those around her, Lorelei’s visible excitement and Ian’s encouraging nod. Franklin, sitting straighter in the chair near the wall, had lifted one brow.

  Slowly, Nicole placed her hand in Trevor’s and finally met his gaze, swallowing hard. Still, she could read nothing in her husband’s eyes, and only belatedly, as he led her toward the center of the room, noticed the pulsating twitch in his cheek.

  Timsby began to play as Trevor spun her slowly around to face him. He dropped her hand to make a bow at her, which bade Nicole offer a brief dip of a curtsy. While their eyes were locked once again, Trevor lifted his left arm and opened his hand. Nicole stepped forward, setting her hand into his, trying in vain to keep her breathing even. As soon as her fingers touched him, he shortened the distance and lifted his other arm even as Nicole did the same. His hand settled high on her back and her fingers touched the very top of his hard arm, just shy of his shoulder.

  And then he moved, stepping forward into her, propelling her backward as they traced the very simple but delicate steps of the waltz. They made no sound, spoke not one word, but spun around the room, in time to Timsby’s moderately timed and credibly plucked out tune. One by one, the watchers and the setting and the purpose fell away from Nicole’s awareness, her gaze riveted onto Trevor’s wildly magnetic stare as he deftly maneuvered her around the dance floor. So attuned was she to only him that when the slightest hint of a smile curved his gorgeous lips, she responded naturally and offered her own wispy, tremulous smile.

  Heat fused into her back where his hand touched. A warmth permeated her chest and face, likely pinkening her cheeks, while a fairly wistful peacefulness settled over her. Timsby alerted them of the coming end with a bit of a crescendo, so that Trevor directed their turns back toward the watching group.

  Applause followed their display, but Nicole could only manage a half-hearted smile for the praise. As they stood before the others, she pulled her hand from his, not daring to look at him now. It was unfair and unfortunate. She could so easily read promise and hope in his gaze if she but allowed herself such a luxury. She could not, though. She would not.

  And when Lorelei suggested they repeat the waltz, this time with untutored partners to teach them the dance, Nicole objected, dampening the smiles around her with the insistence that the hour they’d just spent on the dancing lessons was truly all the time she could spare for today.

  Intentionally ignoring Lorelei’s crestfallen expression, Nicole scurried from the room then, thanking everyone for their time, determined that the next lesson needed to take place when her husband was nowhere around. She refused to subject herself to that tangled and bittersweet circumstance again. She just couldn’t do it. She absolutely could not allow herself to crave his touch, or heaven forbid, fall in love with her husband again.

  She found solitude in her own chambers and did not show her face again until dinner. By then, she had fortified herself with a minute-by-minute recounting of her wedding day, and precisely how unbearably cruel Trevor had been to her. It served as a fine and much needed reminder of the power he held over her, and just how much pain she would know when he left her again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two afternoons later, Trevor stumbled upon Nicole in the nursery on the second floor. He’d only been visiting different rooms in the big house, trying to elicit any happy memory from his childhood. He’d discovered few, as they had only rarely spent time at the abbey as a family. And, too, most of his happy memories were anchored to his father, and the majority of these were lodged at Wentworth Manor.

  But quietly pushing open the door had shown his wife sitting upon the cushioned window seat, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her gaze somewhere out the window itself. She hadn’t heard him, didn’t realize his presence at all that he was allowed several moments to watch her, to enjoy her unguarded expression, shown to him in bare profile.

  And while he appreciated, as always, how very alluring, how very beguiling his pretty wife was, he was not immune to the melancholy found in her countenance. Trevor leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms over his chest while he considered her, wondering first and foremost why she’d chosen this room in which to find solitude, as that seemed her only cause just now. The view out this window would show only the gray skies, threatening rain once again, and naught but the east yard. The parkland setting on this side of the abbey was indeed trim and tidy, but he imagined offered no great escape, all rolling lawns and short, pruned trees.

  This room, even less so than certain others, shared no memory with him, and he wondered if he’d perhaps already graduated to the heir’s chambers when his family had begun to spend a few weekends here. The green and yellow paint and paper, the carved wooden cradle, an armoire decorated with clock and cat and mouse in an obvious ode to Hickory Dickory Dock, none of this was familiar to him.

  He stared for many long minutes, so entranced by this version of his Nicki. She was by nature, a very animated person, even when taking pains to ignore him. Her persona of the other day, during the dancing lessons had captivated him, teasing him with her sweet smile and graceful movements, enthralling him as he’d held her in his arms once again.

  But this, now, this was a version of Nicole he’d never met, quiet and still and fragile.

  “A nice quiet place to sit,” he mused, finally alerting her of his presence.

  She startled, but not greatly, and truth be told, seemed none too pleased to see him. A sigh was noted, escaping visibly.

  Trevor feigned ignorance of this and stepped fully into the room. Nicole loosened the arms wrapped around her knees and leaned her head back upon the side wall, within that window seat, watching him. Her gaze showed no hostility, only an insubstantial light to match the gloominess he’d attributed to her posture.

  He sat in the tall arm chair, between the window and the armoire, stretching out his legs, crossed at the ankles. Should she decide to give up the room, she’d be forced to trod over his feet, as they nearly met the legs of the cradle, which sat at the end of the long and narrow bed.

  She hadn’t spoken, had made no response to his initial statement, seemed content now to stare not again out the window but at the short wall opposite her in that spot, where her feet touched.

  “No dance instruction today?” He wondered.

  Nicole shook her head, moved her gaze out the window once more. Away from him. He’d missed dinner last night, he and Ian having been waylaid longer than expected with Mr. Adams in a fairly helpful discussion regarding the shuttered mine. The night before that, the day she’d waltzed so brilliantly with him, she’d been quiet at dinner, perhaps with this melancholy, he imagined in hindsight.

  As he’d intruded upon her, he thought the making of conversation then fell to him. “Ian and I had—”

  She turned, just as he’d started speaking, and cut him off. “Why have you come, Trevor? Why now? Why at all?”

  Trevor met her gaze. Gone the melancholy he’d suspected, replaced by something stronger and greater than curiosity.

  “As I’ve said,” he said, keeping his tone even, casual, “I have done you wrong, and I intend to make it right. I had hoped—”

  “If I had come to London,” she interrupted again, “if I had come to find you, say only weeks or months after we’d wed, would you have given me the chance? Would you have suffered my presence? I think, more than likely, you would have thrown me out of whatever house I’d found you in, or you would have abandoned it yourself.”

  He could detect no anger in either her pose or her wo
rds. Her head was yet tipped back against the wall behind her. But something stirred her words, some emotion he could not name.

  “You might be right,” he allowed, half a shrug lifting his shoulders.

  “And had that been the case, it’s certain that there would have been nothing I could have done to persuade you to give me your ear, to hear me out, to at least give our marriage a chance,” she supposed.

  Having now a fair idea where she was going with this, and knowing it would not end well for him, he nevertheless spoke truth, having no trouble recalling exactly the height and breadth of his anger at the time, and for a long time afterward. “That may well be true, also.”

  “But I’m expected now to suffer your presence, when I’ve made it very clear that I am not interested in you, or our marriage, or whatever it is that truly brings you here.”

  It was not a question.

  He knew it would serve him well to keep his own tone level, unthreatening. He knew he might only benefit from showing her how far he was willing to bend to repair what damage he’d done, but for the life of him, he still found himself rather grounding out his reply. “Was the love you swore on our wedding day, at this very house, not a real and true thing, then?”

  She did not hesitate, did not demur. “It was absolute truth.” She looked him straight in the eye. “At that time.”

  “And no more?” He knew the answer she’d give, and pressed on, “Or never to be resurrected?”

  She shook her head. “I won’t allow it.” And here was an emotion, still not anger—which he so rightly deserved—but resolve.

  He nodded, considering her words, and his next, staring at her while he steepled his fingers, his elbows on the arms of the chair. He wondered, “If you had somewhere to go—a place to hide, to flee—would you have left by now?”

  “Lesser House is my place to hide,” she surprised him by saying. “But then you came, and now—yes, if I could, I would run from you.”

  “Why? Why run? Why not give it a chance?”

  She shook her head again, slowly this time. He thought her teeth might be clenched, until she said, “I owe you—and this marriage—nothing. And frankly, I’d not put myself through it again.”

  So few words with that response, but oh, so much information. He felt incredibly small and hateful just then, for what he’d done to her. “You still plan to seek an annulment?” He would never allow it.

  “I feel I have no choice, if you will not leave. As I’d said on the day you appeared here, I don’t want to be married to you, but I’m willing to stay so, if I can be left alone here.”

  He could tell her he loved her, likely had been in love with her since before they married, but would she believe him? He thought not. In her shoes, he would certainly question any similar statement from her. He needed to show her, needed her to know it before he revealed it as truth.

  “So if I wish to stay married to you, I must do so from a distance.”

  With her gaze fixed steadily on him, with some fearlessness that he’d truly not have thought her possessed of, she said, “Very similar to the choice you gave me, is it not?”

  Trevor let an entire minute pass while he contemplated his next move.

  “Will you allow me to stay until after the harvest ball, at least?”

  He’d caught her off guard, he could see. Perhaps the disinterested, wounded mien she conveyed today was meant only to befuddle him, but here, just now, she showed something else. Her perfectly arched brows dropped, settling over her green eyes that showed for the barest of seconds, a wariness.

  “I suppose that should be all right.” Thin veins stood out in the creamy skin of her neck, suggesting once again that her jaw was tightened.

  Somewhere inside, he smiled with gratification. Six weeks then. That was more than enough time to show her that he loved her, to show how damnably sorry he was for what he’d done to her, to their us.

  But then she’d had enough, he supposed, watching her remove herself from the window seat, standing, and then surprising him by stepping over the lower part of his legs, not waiting with any harsh glare directed at him to move his feet.

  She said nothing else, did not turn at the doorway, just walked away.

  Trevor sat for a few minutes, replaying the conversation in his head. It was indeed sorrow, he decided, that he’d detected in her voice. He stood and glanced around the room, his hands on his hips, trying to discern still what had brought her here, to this room.

  He turned and considered the window seat again. He walked over to it, and sat where she had, taking in the view. As he’d suspected, it showed not much more than the lawns, in need of greater attention, and only a few squat trees directly beneath, close to the house itself. In the distance, the sky showed blue but that was the going and not the coming weather. It would certainly rain, he decided, and soon. Trevor stood, having no answer to what might have drawn her to this spot, even if only occasionally. But then his gaze was snatched by something on the side wall, within the depressed area of the window seat. Leaning close, Trevor read some scraggly scratched words, carved into the paint, Trevor Wentworth was here, 1796.

  He smiled, though still had no recollection of this room, nor even this event, that had seen him defacing the wall.

  “What a little beast,” he called the very small child of himself, considering the damage done to the wall.

  His smile stilled then.

  Was this what brought her to this room? To this spot?

  With some new awareness, and with a clock rather ticking in the back of his mind, Trevor approached dinner with a renewed energy to win over his own wife. Oh, but she did not make it easy, being as taciturn and unreachable as she had been in the afternoon. This, then, had him shifting his plan altogether. It was too effortless at their dinner, with only the two of them, for her to practice her guardedness, even as he knew that was not her actual character.

  After the delicious but very quiet meal, he saw her only to the bottom of the stairs, and even withstood her foregoing wishing him a good night, knowing tomorrow was indeed, another day, with more potential. Going forward, he would make grand use of all the times she was in mixed company, where she displayed more evenly her true self, and would be hard pressed not to be polite to him—or, he hoped, more engaging.

  So it was at breakfast the next morning, when Trevor had been at Hyndman Abbey now a week, he invited Nicole to drive out to the mine with him and Ian, as they had plans to inspect what remained. As she’d taken such an interest in the affairs of the estate, he was sure this would be to her liking.

  It was not.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said, glancing up from the newspaper before her, which was likely several days old, “but you and Ian go on without me. I’ve too much indoor work to attend today.”

  Deflated, but not deterred, he suggested they might wait until she was available, if that suited her.

  It did not.

  Vaguely, as if she hadn’t a care for this pursuit, she shrugged, “Truly, my schedule all this week is quite full. Pray, do not wait for me.” And she turned the page, studying some article while she sipped her morning chocolate.

  And when he and Ian had returned from the mine, and he requested Timsby’s presence in the ballroom, that they might have another hour of instruction for dancing, his valet informed him that they had done so already today, while he and Ian had been gone.

  “We’ve got a right fine start on the waltz now, my lord,” Timsby said with no small amount of pride. “The countess was fabulous, taking special care to show Henry the motions.”

  Trevor was sure that he made some appropriate reply to this, but truth be told, he was examining his own feelings toward this, that he’d now been thwarted twice by his wife, whether intentionally or not, in a matter of hours.

  He walked into the library at tea time with greater resolve, bound and determined to engage Nicole in some fashion and have her drop this ridiculous façade of disinterest.

  Bu
t she wasn’t there. And she didn’t show. At quarter past the hour, Trevor casually inquired of Franklin if she might be summoned, perhaps reminded of the time.

  “She might be,” said his unflappable butler, “save that she’s not here, my lord.”

  Frowning, wondering how that might have escaped his notice, he asked, “Where is she?”

  “Gone to town, I believe,” replied Franklin.

  Lorelei’s head spun around, her pinkie lifted away from the thin porcelain tea cup. “Oh no, Franklin. I thought she was abed, said she had a headache after dancing this morning.”

  Henry spoke up, raising his gaze from his book. “I saw her out in the stables, but she weren’t getting the gig ready, but her favorite mare. I think she went riding.”

  Annoyed now, Trevor glanced at first Ian, and then Timsby, to see if they might offer yet another possible location for his errant wife. Ian shrugged and his valet gave him a look that Trevor interpreted to mean, I’m new here, so I’m sure I have no idea.

  Later, he was surprised that she bothered to show herself at dinner, making no apology for having avoided him all day.

  Adopting an air of indifference, he remarked, from across the long table, “We missed you at tea this afternoon.”

  Nicole lifted her glorious green eyes from her soup. “Did you?” She asked, her expression blank.

  When he said nothing immediately, she applied herself again to the first course, which gave Trevor leave to grind his teeth unnoticed. Dammit, he knew it was an act, the coolness she strove to achieve. She was making it very difficult for him to win her over. How was a man expected to court his wife if she would not make herself available for the wooing?

  By the time dinner had ended, and he had again chastely and frustratingly seen her to the bottom of the stairs, Trevor had come to a decision. He hadn’t wanted to resort to this, but he felt, certainly with time being a factor, that he had no choice but to seduce his wife. Oh, he absolutely wanted to seduce his wife. He wanted nothing more than to once again feel her untried but so very provocative lips pressed against his; he wanted to crush her to him and vow he would never risk losing her again; he wanted so badly to explore all the promise of their once upon a time petting and kissing, of which he’d only dreamed on for months and months.