“Ah, Jesus,” he grunted and sighed, slowing his rhythm while his own release crashed over him, dizzying him, killing him, it seemed, while at that exact moment he thought, with no small amount of joy, All my life, I will have this with her. He stopped eventually, collapsed on top of her, though yet held the bulk of his weight off her. Every inch of his body was on fire, for her, because of her. He closed his eyes and just reveled in it, let it consume him.
When he was sure his arms were about to fold, he shifted, and rolled to her side, onto his back. He stretched one hand out to touch her still, laying it across her belly, needing to feel her.
With his forearm thrown over his face, while he recovered and relived every sensation, he worked to steady his breathing. He wanted to catch his breath and start it all over again. My God, but it had never been like this before. Nothing even came close.
Next to him, Nicole rolled onto her side, facing away from him, so that his hand slipped up and over her hip and then fell away from her. Suddenly recalling that last night, she’d fairly quickly hinted that he should leave, he moved again, turning on to his side, wrapping his arm around her.
He didn’t want to leave her.
Burying his face into her neck and her hair, they were silent and unmoving for many long minutes. When finally her little voice came to him, “Trevor?” he felt no guilt at all about pretending to sleep, even going so far as to almost snore against her ear.
She was still for a moment, until she temptingly wiggled her bottom against his groin. But she was only settling in, and not trying to entice him, he determined, aware of a tenseness leaving her, her limbs and shoulders going slack as she nestled against him. And then her hand settled over his, sliding down over his wrist until she intertwined her fingers with his. Trevor allowed only a small but pleased grin to crease his lips before he did, actually, fall asleep.
Chapter Fifteen
He believed he did her a courtesy, by leaving before she’d risen. Sleeping the entire night with Nicki wrapped in his arms had been nearly as perfect as any previous imaginings had suggested it might, but he thought not to push his luck, and had spared her any possible uneasiness if she’d waken with him still beside her.
That day would come, he knew, was convinced it would be so, was convinced he would make it so, that one day he would wake her with sweet kisses and lose himself in her smiling love.
Today, however, he planned to show her love in different ways, and waited with a good measure of restlessness for her to join him at breakfast.
And then all his well laid plans went to pot, when it seemed she might not, after all, join him for breakfast, that he slapped his napkin down upon the table and went in search of her. He passed Lorelei in the front hall and was advised that the countess was indeed awake and dressed, but she couldn’t say where she’d gotten to once she’d left her chambers. He strode into the kitchens, and had to shout to Mrs. Abercorn to be understood, until finally Charlie walked by, and answered the question Trevor had been trying to ask.
“Her ladyship is below stairs, with the new servants Mr. Wendell called in.”
Somewhat mollified that she was only busy, and not intentionally avoiding him, Trevor descended the back stairway, certain he had never in his life entered the servants’ quarters in any home he owned. But he was excited to get on with the day, and if that meant helping her to see the new servants settled, or rather convincing her it was a task best suited to Mrs. Abercorn, so be it.
He left the stairs and entered the servants’ quarters, which was naught but a long corridor with rooms and private chambers on either side. Standing at the very far end was his wife, whom he easily recognized in the dimly lit hallway, even as she had her back to him and sported a mop cap similar to the one Lorelei and Mrs. Abercorn always wore; he would know her shape anywhere.
She was talking to a man, one of the extra hired servants, he assumed, striding quietly toward them.
And this is what he saw, what sent everything to rack and ruin: while his darling little wife in her plain gray gown was chirping and pointing her slim fingers, apparently with some instructions, while she and the man stood in an open doorway, the man leaned his hand up against the door jamb, moving provocatively close to Nicole. Even from the diminishing distance, as Trevor was not halfway across the hall, he read well the middle-aged man’s lecherous grin, even as he could not hear his surely cajoling words. This alone provoked him into a swift and inflated anger and lengthened his strides, but the sound of his wife’s answering giggle was what truly sent him over the edge. She’d taken one step backward, just as Trevor reached them, just as the soon-to-be unemployed man lowered his arm and noticed Trevor’s presence. The man understood his own peril rather quickly—the what, if not the why—upon spying the feral gleam in Trevor’s dark eyes.
He tried to duck as Trevor came around Nicole, but perhaps did not honestly believe he was about to be slugged, so that he didn’t stoop completely that indeed, Trevor’s fist caught him squarely across the face.
Nicole screamed, but Trevor ignored her, placing one foot between the fallen man’s legs and growling fiercely above him, “Do not ever—ever!—get that close to Lady Leven again! In fact, get out!”
“Trevor!” Nicole cried, pulling at his arm.
Trevor yanked his still fisted hand out of her grasp, and resisted kicking the man, who was trying to scramble to his feet. “Get out!” He roared again, while the man beheld him with wild eyes, until he lowered his head and spit out a tooth into his palm.
He opened his mouth, to speak or to cry, Trevor did not know, did not allow him the courtesy of listening to whatever pitiful excuse he might announce as reason to be nearly accosting the lady of the manner in the servant’s hall.
“You’ve got five seconds to leave my sight, and this house.” The man bent to retrieve his valise, which had fallen when he’d been hit, and hugging it to his chest, skirted around Trevor and Nicole, giving wide berth to Trevor, before running down the hall and up the stairs.
“Trevor, honest to God—”
He turned on her. “This how you greet all the fresh servants? Letting them avail themselves to your charms? Should I be asking Timsby if he received such exceptional treatment?” Her eyes widened and she gasped, but Trevor didn’t care, allowed the full venom of his gaze to rake over her with abhorrence.
Belatedly, he realized two other new hires, both females, had come to their doorways, hovered just inside their rooms, sending horrified and gape-jawed glances his way.
Ashamed at his lack of control, even as he stood by his action, he strode angrily away from his wife.
In the days that followed, she went out of her way to avoid him, and he didn’t give a damn, seething still with that image of her being seduced—and giggling!—seared into his brain. Truth be told, he avoided her just as much, trying to decide where he’d gone wrong assuming he knew her character. He actually returned to London for a few days, as he did have business to attend, which had been put off by his previous unwillingness to leave the abbey, to leave Nicole.
He couldn’t manage any assessment of every emotion he wrestled with over the next few days, knew only that anger and jealousy were at the forefront. And a profound pain, that he’d been courting and wooing someone who was so far from what he believed her to be, that days later he still could not wrap his head around it.
When he returned to the abbey, though not quite sure why, he found the house in darkness, though the sun had only just set within the hour. He rode around the back, and stabled his horse, entering the house through the kitchen. He found Franklin, still about the chore of polishing whatever silver had been used at dinner, only two pieces, he noted.
Franklin seemed neither surprised to see him nor inclined to favor him with any greeting.
Obviously, word had spread of his unseemly behavior.
And still, he felt the need to defend it. He would not, of course, to the butler, but did bother to ask, “The countess has retired f
or the evening?”
Franklin set the towel upon the counter in the middle of the kitchen, set the silver bowl he’d been wiping down next to it, and turned his head sideways to Trevor. “I’m sure she has,” was all he said in a brutally crisp tone.
Ignoring this censure from his servant, Trevor stalked away from him and through the corridor to find the front stairs and the second floor. He paused outside of Nicole’s room, debating a late-night apology—for his overreaction, not his action—but the blackness noted underneath her door suggested she might well be asleep by now. It would keep until the morning.
The next morning at breakfast, he waited both his wife and Mr. Wendell, accustomed to being the first to show in the morning room, but anxious today to get back on even footing with both of them, and annoyed by their late-coming. Even Franklin wasn’t at his usual post, near the door, directing the footmen during breakfast.
It seemed the entire house had fallen to ruin with him gone but a few days. With a growing irritation, he inquired of Charlie, who’d been in and out of the morning room, where Franklin might be, if not at his post.
With a pained grimace, apparently unwilling to deliver an answer, he only shrugged and darted away, out of the room. Henry appeared then, and announced, without being questioned, “Mr. Franklin is abed, feeling poorly, I hear.” And he deposited the sugar bowl and creamer on the table near Trevor with a fairly strong thud.
The earl nodded. This likely explained Nicole’s absence from breakfast, as she doted upon the man, and was surely at his side now. With a bit of relief he attended his breakfast, still wondering where Ian might have gotten to, and then just as the clock struck ten, he scooped up the newspaper and headed toward his study. Walking through the foyer showed Franklin, dressed in his heavy overcoat, sitting upon a chair near the door. At his feet, sat one squat suitcase and one bulging valise. In his hand he held a walking stick, one Trevor assumed he would refrain from using while performing his duties, but that which he likely needed to give ease to his back.
“Franklin?” Trevor approached, allowed that one word to ask a multitude of questions.
The old man ignored the unspoken queries. “My lord.”
“Franklin, what are you about? Are you going somewhere?”
“I am, my lord. I’ve left my letter of resignation upon your desk.” He nodded with these words.
“Are you unwell, my good man?”
Franklin straightened, as much as his back would allow and fixed Trevor with a hard glare and a curling lip. “I am not your good man, sir.”
This harshness alerted Trevor that this had to do with Nicole, and more accurately, Trevor’s treatment of her, he surmised. “Does she know you are leaving? Shall I fetch her?”
Franklin released a small and tired harrumph. “She left, you know. Ah, but you wouldn’t, would you? You were fair busy yourself, abandoning her yet again.”
Through gritted teeth, Trevor asked, “Where is my wife?”
Franklin shrugged, and Trevor resisted the urge to shake the old man until the answer fell out. “I didn’t want to have hope in you, when you came here,” Franklin said, the hat in his hand held against his knee. “But you did good, for a while. Fooled us all, is what I think now.”
Trevor turned away, intent on finding someone who would tell him where his wife had gone. Franklin’s thunderous voice stopped him, turned him back around. “You will not turn your back on me, young man! You will stay, and you will listen to what I have to say!” When Trevor faced him again, eyes widened in disbelief, Franklin leveled his tone and continued, “I’ve put up with a lot from you Wentworths over the years: your grandfather’s spitefulness and his wife’s rancor, your mother looking down her nose at us, your own father’s utter disregard for this beautiful house over the past twenty years. And I’ve had enough. I owe you nothing, but I will say my peace. That girl came here with her broken heart, crying herself to sleep for months and months, and she never once couldn’t offer a smile to someone here. She lifted up the whole lot of us, cared more for the people and the house than any Wentworth had in a hundred years. And what did you do? You chased her away. And why? Not because of anything that girl had done. Was your own meanness, generations of it, that you can’t even see good when it’s right before your eyes. I know where she went. You’d have to beat it out of me, though. Last thing I’d do to that poor girl is break her heart again by sending you to her.” His wrinkled lip curled once more. “You do not deserve her. Stay in your cold, empty house. Good luck keeping the rest of them.” He tossed a thumb in the air, toward the kitchen. “You’ll drive them away, just as you did her and me. Mark my words.”
Never in his entire life, not even while serving in the army, not in his many years at the staid and strict schools he’d attended, not even by his own cross mother, had he ever been taken to task as he just had by this man. And just when he considered that he didn’t know how to reply to every lash the old man had just whipped across him, Franklin went on, “Why did you come here now anyway? I’ve been wondering that, trying to imagine any other reason but to break her heart all over again, but for the life of me, I can think of nothing.”
Swallowing hard, he answered the only truth he knew just now. “I didn’t want to live...to be, without her.”
Shaking his head back and forth, his eyes still angry, Franklin said, “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Trevor acknowledged this. “I’ve messed up. Repeatedly and brutally, to my regret, and her...heartbreak. But then, Franklin, you did not see her with that man below stairs—”
“I didn’t have to!” His voice was deafening just then, his face turning a mottled shade of red. He blustered, “And even if I did, I’d think nothing untoward! It isn’t her! You don’t deserve her because you don’t know her! You don’t love her! You can’t be this foolish and wrong about her and claim to love her. You just can’t.” The hand, the one that held his hat near his knee, shook with his rage.
Believing it was in both their interests that they end the conversation here, Trevor only wondered, “You won’t tell me where she is?”
His voice much weaker now, Franklin shook his head and said, “Someone has to be true to her.”
Trevor left him, walked up the stairs and found Nicole’s room. He pushed the door open, and hovered just near the entry, glancing around, wondering if she might have left him a note as Franklin had. He found nothing of the sort. He stepped inside, pulled open the wardrobe to show that it had been emptied of its contents. Her brush and comb were gone from the dressing table. No personal items sat near the ewer and basin on the short cupboard near the window. He spared only a glance at the perfectly made bed, not of a mind to revisit what they’d done, how she had loved him underneath those covers.
With a foul curse, for his own unrelenting idiocy in all regards to Nicole, he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Trevor left Hyndman Abbey that same afternoon, riding away on his thoroughbred at a breakneck speed. He had a pretty good idea where she’d gone and rode now for Audley End. To his surprise, his sharp rapping at the door was greeted only by a young maid, who likely had no idea who he was, but made a deep curtsy before lifting inquiring eyes to him.
“Tell Lady Audley that the Earl of Leven requires some of her time.”
“Oh, I would, milord, but Lady Audley is down in Brighton, at her daughter’s home.”
Trevor frowned, “Since when?”
“For weeks now.” The little maid pulled and yanked at her skirts while she spoke.
“And had her granddaughter, Lady Leven, stopped by in the last few days?”
The girl pulled a face and shook her head.
With only a sparse, “Good day,” Trevor pivoted and walked away, collecting his mount from the post where he’d hitched him. More foul language left his lips as he traveled then to London and the Kent residence.
Upon that stoop, the infuriating butler, who knew damn well
who he was, asked for his card, as, “The baron is not at home to callers.”
Trevor rolled his eyes, refusing to give the man his card. “Is he home to Leven?” This, leveled upon the hapless man with some sarcasm.
“I should think not.”
Believing that a clamped jaw might indeed become a permanent thing, Trevor growled, “By chance, is his daughter here? Nicole?”
Meeting the earl’s gaze with his own share of disdain, the butler advised, “She is not. We’d heard she’d been left to wallow in the country somewhere.”
He wanted to hit him. God, how he wanted to strike him!
But he turned away from the maddening servant and now found himself at a loss as to where his wife might have gone. His horse was likely exhausted, he knew, precluding any further search for her just now. And the hour grew late. Franklin knew where she was. If he’d been worried that her destination had perhaps been unsafe, he’d have spoken her location, Trevor believed.
As darkness fell on the city, he found his way to his town home, which he’d visited for several days only a few days ago. He sat in his study, having downed one glass of brandy, and currently sipping at another.
Where she might be was the existing issue, but that was followed swiftly and often this day by, how could he possibly make it right with her now?
Every word that Franklin had uttered screamed again in his head. But he didn’t need these to know he’d erred, and grievously. It was the reason he’d returned to the abbey, to tell her he was sorry for—again—having doubted her. He’d planned to come clean about everything, to tell her the whole ‘make a baby’ ruse was just that, a trick to make her love him, or love him again. He’d thought to win her over with their shared passion. He’d ignored so much else in the interim.
When She Loved Me (Regency Rogues: Redemption Book 1) Page 22
