Page 41 of When She Loved Me
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 alertedthem 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 afew 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 toHickory 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 windowbut 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 words. 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.”
