Page 1 of When She Loved Me
Chapter One
September 1816
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WEare bankrupt?”
Trevor Wentworth, currently the seventh Earl of Leven, stared with angry eyes at his mother. He’d been home less than a fortnight from Spain, having sold his commission the moment he’d learned of the death of his father. His mother had appeared at his townhouse only moments ago, the first he’d seen of her in more than three years. Upon the death of her husband and the return of her son two weeks ago, she’d chosen to retire to the country instead of remaining in London, which somehow did not surprise Trevor at all. After a brief greeting which included no query regarding his health, his time with Wellington, or his grief over the loss of his father, she’d dropped this into his lap.
“Actually,” his mother clarified, “youare bankrupt.” Elinor Wentworth took no pains to pretend a sympathy for her son’s new predicament. She sat tall and regal upon a fine leather wing chair in Trevor’s study, her black widow’s weeds as stiff as she, her hair the only lightness about her, the soft brown of her youth having given way years ago to dull gray.
“Yes, you have said as much. I’m asking how,” Trevor said, pouring himself a healthy snifter of brandy. Making it through a decent visit with his mother usually required the casual consumption of spirits. This occasion, here and now, apparently was going to necessitate reinforcements.
“With your sainted father’s indiscretions,” she sneered. There was something still striking about the woman, despite the contortion of her features. Raising a carefully drawn brow to her son, she added, “Your father was a terrible husband—as evidenced by his penchant for lightskirts and cheap brothels—but even worse, he had no head for business.”
With his glass of brandy nearly empty already, Trevor sat down upon hearing this news. His father, Harold Wentworth, had been an honorable man. They’d shared much. Trevor had liked to think they’d had no secrets. Yes, Trevor had known about his sire’s indiscretions, but could never find any suitable abhorrence in the habit, and, in all honesty, couldn’t blame him; Elinor Wentworth was not the sort of woman to inspire either affection or fidelity. But Trevor hadn’t a clue that his father, and the estate, had struggled financially. “It cannot be true,” he murmured.
“And yet, here I am, telling you that it is,” his mother retorted. Nowhere in her tone was there evidence of the discomfiture and shame that should accompany this news. She stood, nearly as tall as any man, and saw to her own drink as her son seemed disinclined to offer her one, pouring out two fingers of sherry into a small-stemmed glass. “I’d warned you your hero worship of that man was a wasted endeavor.”
Shaking his head, to rid himself of both the sudden haziness and his mother’s acidity, Trevor requested tersely, “Explain in detail, if you please.”
“Your pointless idolism of your father?” Elinor asked with a saccharin smile. “Oh, you mean the dwindling of the estate down to less than nothing.” Elinor Wentworth sipped slowly of her sherry, her dark eyes on her son’s lowered head. “I know nothingabout it. The solicitors—and likely the creditors—can give you all the sordid details, I am sure. Your father complained of floods and failed investments and then of droughts and ‘swindling bailiffs’ but in truth, his casual attitude toward the growing debt and his complete ineptitude in all regards to finance likely would have seen him in debtor’s prison if he hadn’t taken the easy way out.”
“You mean by dying?” Clarified Trevor in a clipped tone, squeezing his hands hard around the snifter of brandy.
His mother shrugged. “What do you intend to do about it?” Elinor now wanted to know. “I cannot live on these limited funds. I need an increase, not a complete lack of money. You should have returned after the war. It broke your father’s heart that you took up with that retinue attached to the ambassador in Spain,” she accused.
Trevor lifted his dark head and breathed slowly. He dismissed this last, as he knew well his mother hadn’t any idea or care for his father’s heart and knew just as surely that his father was indeed proud of him, as attested by the numerous letters they’d exchanged during the war and the following year since it had ended. His voice was rough when he said, “You’ll get not a penny more until I get to the bottom of this. And if you have credit in the city, consider it closed.” He ignored the outraged raising of her brow. She might have argued his edict, but he stayed her with a crisp glare that he’d learned well from her. “You can show yourself out, I presume.”
Without another glance at his cold mother, Trevor left his study. He’d yet to fathom all the ramifications of this news. He obviously didn’t know his father as he’d thought. True, he’d been gone for several years now, but one did not bankrupt an estatethe size of Leven in so short a time. And despite what his bitter mother had implied, Trevor knew for certain his sire was not an unintelligent person to have lost a fortune based on poor choices and foolish investments. But what did it matter? Now both his father and his fortune were gone. He would, of course, meet with his solicitors tomorrow, but he knew it was true. His mother—while regretting her own perilous circumstance—did find some macabre enjoyment in the delivery of such news, always having been irrationally resentful of Trevor’s love of his own father.
Staring out from the third-floor window showed the city at rest at this hour of night. A stray light shone here and there, thin plumes of smoke rose over several nearby townhouses in Mayfair, but the streets below were emptied of pedestrians. Idly, he wondered how many other people in this city had only this night discovered some regrettable piece of information that would change the entire course of their life.
Good God! Near bankrupt. What choice did he have but to marry as his father had done? For money. And suffer the rest of his life as his father had done, too, no doubt.
Spring 1817
“I REFUSE TO MARRY HIM! I absolutely won’t!” Sabrina Kent cried to her father, her bottom lip quivering with her desolation.
“He’s an earl, for Chrissakes! You will marry him.” Baron Kent shot back at her.
“I love Marcus. I want to marry Marcus,” Sabrina wailed pitifully, which did nothing to diminish her rare beauty. Sabrina Kent was porcelain skin and fine blonde hair, her eyes being a shade of blue God surely had only intended for His sky. She was just shy of an average height with a perfectly proportioned body, one men were sometimes wont to ogle, as they might gawk at something of rare splendor they imagined their hands would never touch. “Why will you not even consider Marcus, Father?” She continued, and tears fell, evidencing Sabrina to be one of those lucky females who, in a sob, suffered not the effects of such. Her nose did not redden, her eyes did not swell, and there was only that quivering lip to bear witness that she cried.
“Marcus Trent is the second son of a viscount. That will never do.”
“For me, it will,” she challenged her father yet more. Baron Kent was a gruff man, but Sabrina usually knew what buttons to push, when to smile prettily, when to press on and when to hold back. Nothing—absolutely nothing—had worked thus far. She was desperate now, and truly feeling the pinch of his autocratic decision to marry her to some man she’d never even laid eyes upon, thus the tears and theatrics.
But to no avail.
“You will marry the Earl of Leven,” Baron Kent hollered from his seat at the breakfast table, his voice carrying throughout the house. “And that, my dear, is final.”
With one last sob, Sabrina Kent pushed back her chair and stormed from the room, her cries lingering even as she raced through the hall and up the stairs. Would that her mother werestill alive, the baron thought briefly. A quick shake of his head dispelled that ponderous image—wishing the dead undead was an unhealthy endeavor, if nothing else.
“I will marry the earl, Papa.”
Baron Kent turned toward his youngest daughter, still seated beside him. He’d forgotten her presence momentarily. He smiled absently at her. “No, poppet, you are too young to marry.” He ignored the scrunched-up face she made and set to finish his breakfast, spearing eggs and ham onto his fork.
“I am already come out, Papa,” she reminded him. “And Constance Garnett was only seventeen when she married.”
“That’s because her father is a fool, Nicole,” Baron Kent said around the food in his mouth. “He let that miscreant Granville start sniffing around and then the chit had to get married. Least, that’s what I hear,” the baron qualified, following that with a long sip of his morning coffee. “You, my dear, shall not marry for at least another year, and maybe longer.”
