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

by Rebecca Ruger

  Breathing raggedly now, slightly worried now she might not enjoy what else might follow, she nodded again, giving him an encouraging smile, having some inkling that they weren’t done yet.

  He began to move again, just as slowly and as tortuously as he had before, sliding in and out of her, soon enough making her forget the pain and feel only him. She cried in earnest now, but only on the inside, so in love with the idea that she belonged wholly and truly to Trevor now.

  And all that he’d aroused in her only moments ago returned, announcing itself as a fire coursing through her, lighting and searing many parts of her. He moved faster, wedging a hand under her bottom to show her how to meet his thrusts. Slick, wet noises accompanied their bumping and scraping, arousing Nicole yet more, until every sensation surged and swelled and roared inside her.

  This, she had not expected,. Her eyes widened, looking to Trevor for confirmation and then unable to keep her eyes open so that they shuttered close, her lids twitching, her toes curling as her orgasm crashed over her. At one point she lifted herself off the mattress while it rolled over her, her fingers clawing at the bed covers. What she felt was nearly indescribable, something she hadn’t imagined existed, and while it ravaged her, heightening every nerve and tingling so many places within, she tried desperately to know and feel and claim each part of it, having some belief that surely it must be short-lived, lest it consume her.

  Her husband continued to pump, faster and faster still, even while Nicole was spent and amazed, until he lunged one last time against her and went still with a low grunt and a drawn out, brutal sigh.

  They were motionless, Nicole half sitting, half lying, her legs limp now against the bed, Trevor between her legs, his breath so choppy now while he held himself perfectly unmoving inside her. Nicole was acutely aware of him throbbing within her and moved again. He shook his head, side to side, though could not lift it. Nicole went still, considering all these naked and perspiring entwined limbs.

  “Honest to God, if I’d known...” she couldn’t complete the thought, didn’t know where she’d been going with the beginning of that statement. Maybe, if her breath came with less harshness, she’d have finished with, I’d not have let you leave on our wedding night.

  Her breath caught. Oh, but...he’d known. Surely, he must have known. And he’d abandoned her anyway. Oh.

  How could he have known this would be the result of what he’d started with that first kiss in the garden at the Clarendon ball, and not want to see it finished? Unless you...unless you didn’t actually want it, save to make your heir.

  Oh.

  Thankfully, just then, he shifted, allowing Nicole to scooch away from him.

  She lifted her leg around him, rolled up onto her side and closed herself off to him.

  She wanted so badly to cry. That such a beautiful thing should be wasted on two people so at odds with each other. However would she survive this? Giving her body and ultimately so much of herself to this man she loved still so much. To know that he could not forgive her, that he would not love her.

  With her eyes so tightly closed, she could only feel him rising up on one elbow at her side. She winced when a tear slid away from her eye despite her efforts to withhold it.

  “Why do you cry, Nicki?” Trevor asked, breaking her heart for the gentleness he employed, wiping away her tears with his thumb. “Did I hurt you so terribly?”

  She had deluded herself, but only briefly, that making a baby had been all she desired. Inwardly, she’d given up this pretense fairly quickly, soon after he’d begun to touch her. But now she had no choice but to face it head on. She wanted him, and his touch, and his loving, and while she would absolutely delight in a child of her own, she was honest enough with herself to admit she hoped she hadn’t conceived this night and hoped she wouldn’t conceive so long as he remained at the abbey.

  But had he harmed her? He had not. He’d been perfectly clear about his objective, had stated unequivocally that there was not love.

  She could only shake her head, drawing a deep breath. Yet, dear Lord, how it hurt! Not physically—that had been brief and quickly forgotten—but inside, she ached for this man to love her. But he would only love her body, and simply to beget an heir. He would show her no affection outside of this room likely, perhaps remain only that carelessly attentive though detached earl. He would enslave her body and eventually her heart but never return the favor, she feared.

  “I was hoping we made a baby,” she said by way of excuse for her silence, but her voice was unsteady. “Shall you return to your rooms now?” She asked, wanting him gone that she might sob into her pillow, worried that it was unavoidable, but unwilling to let him see it.

  He seemed to tense at her side, she felt the slight shifting of the mattress beneath her, but she dared not open her eyes. His hand, settled upon her naked hip, disappeared.

  He stood from the bed. She knew he stared down at her for many long seconds. She could feel his blazing, surely contemplative gaze upon her. When she thought she could hold her breath no more, he finally left the room.

  And sometime later, it occurred to Nicole that his plan had been twofold, and certainly one part had been successful. Of course, she wouldn’t know for some time if he had planted fertile seed, but he’d managed to remove forever any possibility of an annulment by way of non-consummation.

  She had no choice in the matter then, but to cry herself to sleep, unable to staunch the flow of tears, nor the very breaking of her heart once again.

  In his own bedroom later that night, still awake with thoughts of Nicole all around him, with their lovemaking still firing his limbs and his loins, he cursed and railed at the night.

  He was a fool. He was mad. He was so in love, or more in love. He shouldn’t have coerced her. He shouldn’t have left her. He should be holding her now, watching her sleep.

  God dammit.

  Could he do nothing right where she was concerned?

  Just barely before the sun had risen, he finally found slumber, disturbed and uneven though it was. And when he rose only a few short hours later, he knew slightly more peace. He convinced himself everything would be fine. She was so gloriously, so surprisingly passionate, he thrilled at the thought of their life together. Still, some niggling forethought or foresight should have anticipated her later behavior. She’d just made love in the most miraculous fashion, and to a man she wasn’t quite sure she could trust, one she likely believed intended to break her heart again. Of course, she’d been emotional.

  He should have stayed with her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She didn’t know how to face him the next day. If there’d been love between them, she might meet him this morning without this painful embarrassment. Still shy perhaps, but certainly not unable to face him. How was she to act now? Should she pretend as if nothing had occurred last night? As if his lovemaking had not broken her heart? Should she avoid him? Resist him? Thank him?

  She did none of these things, just entered the morning room as she’d done regularly of late and said a brief and low good morning to him, pleased that she was able to meet his eyes.

  His eyes.

  He’d risen from the table upon her entrance, his probing gaze searching her face. His own showed to Nicole—for the very first time—some hint of uncertainty as he watched her with such intensity she was pleased to be able to not lose her footing as she strode first to the sideboard, and not directly to the table, and him.

  She had determined only within the past hour that she might as well enjoy the benefits of this arrangement, to beget an heir. She had no plan to ever again admit any love for him, and certainly not to him, but couldn’t not deny that his lovemaking had certainly exceeded any previous imagined conclusion to their always fervent, though never before fully realized kisses. She was possibly ridiculous to have accepted this pact to make a child, as not one part of her believed she might come out at the other end unscathed, baby or no, but then she was also not so absurd as to
not appreciate that this circumstance afforded her surely the only chance she would ever have to be loved by Trevor, even if it were only her body upon which his attention was lavished.

  She’d staunchly pushed aside a fleeting question this morning—how can he so tenderly make love to me, with such patience and restraint and gentleness, if he harbored no fond emotion at all toward her? She’d pushed that thought back to where she stored another similar and inaccurate assumption, that his one-time hungry and eager kisses had meant that he loved her and truly would have rather married her.

  When she could remain no more at the sideboard, when she’d selected what she might never taste today, when she only stood staring blankly at the selection of jams, though she’d not opted for either the pound cake or the toast, Nicole turned and faced the table. Steeling herself, even as she thought she sensed her husband watching her covertly, she took her seat, a third of the way around the table from him. Nicole made a study of unfolding her napkin and placing it in her lap.

  “What might you have on your schedule today?”

  God’s wounds! But she startled at the sound of his voice. Briefly, she closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down.

  Raising her gaze to him—a bad idea, as his eyes were so captivatingly blue, and fixed upon her with a solicitous bent, superficially at least—Nicole answered in an unwavering voice, “Abby and Lorelei and I will be busy all this week, with cleaning for the Harvest Ball.”

  “So soon? Shouldn’t it wait until the week of, and certainly when you bring in the staff from the city?”

  “No, this will be a deep cleaning, the rooms we haven’t attacked this year. The week of, then, the rooms will need only a cursory cleaning. ‘Twill be much easier this way.” And it will keep me busy, and hopefully exhaust me that I might actually sleep anytime between now and then.

  “Very well,” he allowed. “I’m sure you know more about these kinds of things than I do.”

  As she had no intention of engaging him in conversation, even as it rather hung between them that she might return the question, and inquire of his plans, Nicole attended the two-days’-old newspaper. She hoped Ian might show himself soon, before the tension hanging overhead and all around required something heavier and more efficient than a simple butter knife.

  As it was, he didn’t wait for her to pose any question, but said, “I’ve invited Mr. Percival out here to the abbey, at your suggestion.”

  This piqued her interest, and she raised a brow at him.

  “He demurred, said all could wait until I returned to London. But I think not. Now, while I’m here, is the best time to get right into it. He’ll have numbers from the last twenty years, I should imagine. Ian and I are trying to figure out a way to re-open the mine. With everything Mr. Adams shared with us, we find it impossible to believe that it couldn’t—with a frightfully sizeable initial investment—make money once it was up and running again.”

  Possibly, Nicole heard only some of that, likely comprehended even less. He’d moved his hand once while speaking and her eyes had followed its path, until he’d rested his hand again, wrist bent, just near his plate. She stared at his long, capable fingers, and recalled every tantalizing thing they had done to her last night.

  “Hmm,” she said absently, into the silence when he’d stopped speaking. She caught herself, and with surely red-stained cheeks, jerked her eyes to his, hoping to God he hadn’t been able to read her wayward, but oh so enticing thoughts.

  He swallowed. She saw the motion in his jaw and neck. Pinching her lips, she snapped the newspaper and returned her gaze safely there.

  And when Ian finally arrived to partake of breakfast and have his morning meeting with the earl, Nicole nearly bounced out of her seat, and with a vague and mumbled statement about getting to work, excused herself and all but ran from the room.

  She couldn’t sit through dinner with him, she just couldn’t. Taking the coward’s way out, she sent a message via Lorelei that she thought she might be coming down with something and spent the dinner hour luxuriating in a long and welcome bath.

  She had been quite busy today, and the physical labor had seen her perspiring at times, certainly in the parlor which faced south and saw the sunshine all day long. Poor Abby and Lorelei, she’d worked them straight through tea time, enticing them with the prospect of finishing the entire room in only one day that they might only labor five full days instead of six.

  She’d sent Lorelei off to her own dinner and bath, reminding the girl that she’d seen to her own bath for almost a year here before the earl had come and shaken up their routine.

  “But I cannot leave you, undressed, and unready,” Lorelei had protested.

  “Unready for what?” Nicole had teased with a smile, letting her head fall back onto the lip of the tub. “The fire is stoked, the room warm,” she said, by way of persuasion. “There is my bath sheet and my nightgown. Oh, look, there’s my brush.” She smiled at the always earnest maid. “I’ll be fine, Lorelei. I can see myself dried and dressed for bed, I believe. Go enjoy your free time.”

  Lorelei bobbed a curtsy and Nicole watched her leave. When she was alone again, she closed her eyes, hoping the water didn’t cool too quickly.

  She must have dozed, but some sound woke her. As there was no reason for any person, save herself or the earl, to be upon the second floor at this time of day, certainly since she’d dismissed Lorelei, she could only assume that it was Trevor, possibly finding his own rooms.

  Good Lord! Hopefully finding his own rooms. Nicole stared across the room, watching the door handle, praying it did not begin to turn. Would he come to her again tonight? Was that normal? Did these things have a schedule.

  She heard footsteps, and then a door closed, and Nicole relaxed. She was very thankful, at that moment, that she hadn’t ever assumed the lady’s room of the master suite, as that would have put Trevor very close to her, just beyond the connecting door.

  Thinking it wise to curtail her luxury in favor of not possibly being caught unawares and awkwardly in the bath, Nicole rose and reached for the bath sheet, wrapping it around her shoulders as she stepped from the tub.

  She conceded some thankfulness that she’d dried and slipped into her night rail and dressing gown before any knock might have come to the door. She brushed out the length of her hair, tying the damp locks in a plain ribbon, slid her feet into her slippers, and left her room, buttoning her dressing gown as she walked.

  As she did so, she briefly considered and discarded this as an evasive tactic—being not found in her chambers should he wish to make another attempt at creating his heir.

  Just now, she only desired a bit to eat, as her labors of this day and her decision to miss supper had her stomach now noisily asking to be fed.

  The house was darkened, only a few glass-covered tapers lit here and there to guide any nighttime wandering resident. She knew Franklin and Abby kept very early hours, supposing their advanced years insisted upon this. Tiptoeing down the back stairs, she slinked quietly along the corridor and into the empty and barely lighted kitchen. Grabbing up a taper set into a handled saucer atop the mantle, Nicole lit this and disappeared into the larder at the far corner of the room.

  She’d kept company with Abbey this morning, before they’d begun the cleaning, while the old woman had briskly and efficiently put together a lovely Shrewsbury cake, which the thought of, at one point, had indeed almost sent her into the dining room at suppertime. She spied it now, covered in a gauzy linen, in the cupboard next to the pound cake. Carefully pulling the dish out of the tall cupboard, she left the larder and plunked it down on the long table in the middle of the kitchen. She collected a plate from the shelves in the scullery and plucked a simple kitchen fork out of a short basket of utensils on the table. Plopping herself into the tall stool Abbey sometimes made use of to give ease to her back, she cut a small piece of the moist cake and returned the remainder to the larder.

  She ate slowly then, glancing around the qu
iet kitchen, wondering if Lesser House would ever be returned to the once grand house it had been. Franklin had told her that at one time, while Trevor’s great-grandfather had lived, this house was the main residence of Leven, and had employed more than fifty servants. He’d said at that time, there had been no less than ten scullery maids, and that they’d been possessed of at least two dairymaids, who’d kept chambers in a room off the dairy, which was located at the far outside corner of the kitchen, but rarely used now. Presently, the abbey’s dairy—milk and cheese and creams—was delivered twice a week from a large farm just outside of town.

  She couldn’t say for sure that she would want Lesser House to be so...crowded. While she certainly had not grown up dreaming of living so far removed from London, she very much enjoyed her life here, and was perfectly at ease knowing she might spend all the rest of her days here.

  She smiled, almost wistful, thinking she’d be happier by far, if she had a child to love as well, imagining a cherubic dark-haired lad with perfect blue eyes, sitting in her lap on a night like this, enjoying late night pilfered sweets together.

  “Now there’s a grin that just begs a person to wonder what or who inspires such serene joy.”

  Nicole startled, turning to find her husband idly lounging in the doorway, from the same corridor that she’d come. Her own surprise aside, she recognized immediately that he appeared rather smart in his sumptuous dark banyan, the fitted robe being secured at his waist with a large metal button, the pattern a very subtle plaid in muted colors of gray and blue and green, and seeming to be lined in silk, if she saw correctly.