“I beg your pardon?”
“You are not Paula,” Trent said slowly, “and I’m damned glad of it.”
“You loved her. She’s the mother of your children.” Ellie gathered speed, until Trent’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“Ellie. Elegy, I love you. May we please sit down?”
“No.” Ellie stared at his hand on her arm, and her breath caught. “I’m cold.” She pitched herself against him, planting her face against his throat as his arms closed around her.
“Don’t say those words, Trenton Lindsey, to comfort the grieving, increasingly pregnant, increasingly distraught widow. My husband tossed them at me before he disappeared for weeks at a time to ride through the mud with a bunch of smelly dogs and drunken peers, to kiss the lads—perishing Halifax—and to gamble the night away. I’m in no condition, to be humored.”
“I love you,” Trent said again, stroking his hand over her hair. “I desire you, I love you, and I want you in my life on any terms you’ll allow.”
“My husband didn’t love me,” Ellie got out. “Now I find he didn’t even want me. God. God in Halifax. No wonder he was least in sight for most of our marriage.”
Trent gave up on words and instead walked her over to the sofa, sat, and pulled her into his lap. She cuddled up like she was cold, but temper and hurt rolled off her in red, steaming waves.
“Dane hardly ever summoned me,” Ellie said, nose against Trent’s throat. “And he’d always been drinking. Minty said that was why he wasn’t eager. Not like you get. Not like you at all.”
“Ellie, hush.”
“He’d blow out the candles, Trent,” Ellie went on, “and apologize, and pat my shoulder, and heave about. Sometimes”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“he’d just give up. I felt so lonely. With my husband inside me, I felt so lonely. Other times, Dane would be all pleased with himself when he was done, and still I’d feel empty, and it was awful, for both of us, and now I see…”
Trent gathered her close. “You see you were both doing the best you could, and even if he was torn in his desires, Dane cared for you. He wouldn’t have got a child on you, Ellie, did he not have some fondness for you. He wouldn’t have tried—he had an heir in Drew, but Dane probably knew you wanted a child.”
Ellie sighed a mightily put-upon sigh. “I will comfort myself with that conjecture, though I also know this: I had a list of nevers, too, Trenton, and a foolish list at that. I would never again be a man’s convenience. I would never again be the dutiful, sweet, biddable wife, content with the odd notes and lonely bed. So I sent you packing and blamed you for my cowardice, when what you wanted was to keep me safe. Blast Dane anyway.”
Trent searched for words, for a truth she couldn’t reach toward herself. “Dane didn’t kill himself to get away from you.”
Ellie peered up at him, putting him in mind of his first call on her, when she’d been bewildered and bereaved. “Oh, Trenton. Is that what you thought? That Paula hated being your wife so much she took her life?”
“I didn’t know. I had no other explanation, but she was so unhappy generally, except for the children, and I denied her any more of those. I took from her the one thing that made her life meaningful.”
Ellie scooted up in his lap. “That is utter nonsense. She had three beautiful children—heir, spare and a daughter—to dote on. Many women aren’t so blessed, much less within five years of marriage. She was simply tired, Trent.”
Ellie sounded very certain, reassuringly certain.
“Tired?”
“I was tired,” Ellie said, very softly. “Dane and I couldn’t talk about what plagued us, and he was staying away longer and longer, and still we’d produced no heir. Maybe Paula realized her children would be safe with you, and she simply put down her tools and went home.”
“She switched her tea with her companion’s,” Trent said. “And when the woman nodded off, Paula took a knife to her own wrists. She was gone before I found her, and there was no note.”
“But she wasn’t buried at a crossroads with a stake through her heart?”
Trent closed his eyes and held Ellie as a tightly as he dared. “Of course not. I wrapped up her wrists, cleaned up the blood, and summoned one of her well-paid physicians who pronounced her dead of premature coronary arrest.”
Ellie hugged him back every bit as tightly. “That is ghastly.”
“I realized this summer that I was carrying the manner of her death around in my head, held at such close range that I’d forgotten other people didn’t know, not even Dare. The manner of Paula’s death was a large part of what made the oblivion of drink so appealing.”
“Do you think that’s why Dane drank?” Ellie sank back in his arms. “Because he was so unhappy?”
“You were unhappy. You didn’t drink.”
“I had Andy. I had made my list of nevers and withdrawn to Deerhaven, even before Dane died.”
“You are very much here now,” Trent said, kissing her temple. “More of you is here by the week, in fact.”
“Awful man. I was fading into oblivion, Trent, as surely as you were fading into your drugged brandy. If it weren’t for Minty, and Andy, I would have soon become one of those reclusive females who sleeps all day and reads Gothic novels all night.”
“No, you would not. You’re strong, Ellie. I love your strength. The first time I saw you, I thought you were a dairymaid.”
“A dairymaid?” This provoked a naughty smile. “I was in mourning and a near stranger to you. How could you have thought me a dairymaid?”
“You were damned near naked, singing, and enjoying my pond thoroughly. I loved you a little bit then, too, for being so pleased with life and yourself and a hot summer morning.”
“You awful man. You spied on me.”
“I spied on a vision of paradise in my own back yard,” Trent corrected her. “Marry me, Ellie.”
She turned her face into his shoulder, remaining silent until Trent felt her tears seeping under his collar.
“Then argue with me, my lady. I deserve a chance to wear you down. You run around heedless with strange men in traveling coaches through the rainy night; you take on lunatic, murdering earls; you lie in wait for my errant self only to find my help misbehaving by moonlight. Somebody should take you in hand.”
“I’m not that sort of female,” Ellie said quietly, miserably. “I’m good old Ellie. My shoulder is pattable, my forehead kissable. I can be forgotten for the entire hunt season. I know this, and I couldn’t bear for you to marry me only to—”
That maudlin and patently ridiculous tripe wasn’t worth considering as an argument, so Trent didn’t fashion words in response. He wrapped one hand around the back of her head and anchored his fingers in her hair, the better to steady her for his kiss. She trailed off on a groan when he brushed his mouth over hers.
“I’m not kissing your forehead,” Trent said against her mouth. “Or patting your shoulder.” He cupped her breast. “I love you, you love me. Marry me.”
He kissed her again, harder, longer, deeper, until he felt her surrender to the truth of his words, then go straight on past to other truths: She desired him, he desired her, and the door wasn’t locked.
“Say yes, Elegy, while I still allow you the breath to spare.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
She said yes frequently as the evening wore into night, and as they awaited the birth of her child. She said yes many more times as the rest of the children came along, and as the years turned into decades.
And Trenton said his share of yeses to Ellie, too.
They named Ellie’s first child Hallifax Chesepeake Hampton. She rode like a demon, could not sew a straight seam, and had a habit of flying her brothers’ kites into trees.
The End
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Grace also recommends:
The Rogue Spy (November 2014) by Joanna Bourne—a beautiful addition to the Spymast
er Series.
Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran.
Between the Devil and Ian Eversea by Julie Anne Long.
And coming from Grace this summer:
The Captive
The Traitor
The Laird
Followed by the fourth Scottish Victorian in the MacGregor series:
What A Lady Needs for Christmas (October 2014)
Or you might enjoy:
The Windham Series, beginning with The Heir, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010.
The Lonely Lords series begins with Darius, an Apple iBookstore Best Book of 2013.
The MacGregor Scottish Victorian Series, begins with The Bridegroom Wore Plaid, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with her debut, The Heir, followed by The Soldier, Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal, and Lady Eve’s Indiscretion. The Heir was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010, The Soldier was a Publishers Weekly Best Spring Romance of 2011, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish won Best Historical Romance of the Year from RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight was a Library Journal Best Book of 2012, and The Bridegroom Wore Plaid, the first in her trilogy of Scotland-set Victorian romances, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012. All of her historical romances have received extensive praise, including several starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Darius, the first in her groundbreaking Regency series The Lonely Lords, was named one of iBookstore’s Best Romances of 2013.
Grace is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.
Table of Contents
Trenton: Lord of Loss
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Other Titles by the Author
About the Author
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 34