Page 26 of When She Loved Me
But had he lost her completely? The very idea sent a sudden ache through his chest. He could not let it be. He would exhaust every available means to have her back, to have her smile at him as she had done once.
When the meeting seemed to be drawing to a close, long after the threesome seemed to have forgotten his very presence, Trevor sat a little straighter, and watched Nicki bid a polite farewell and thank you to Mr. Adams. Just as that man left, the odd and crooked butler, Franklin appeared, requesting Ian’s assistance in some matter, leaving Nicki looking about, as if she’d like to bolt as well.
Trevor stood, drawing her gaze to him. “Walk with me.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said, as if surprised that he spoke at all.
“I said walk with me, take a stroll outside.” It was easy then to keep his tone level, when he considered all that he could lose if he screwed up again.
“I haven’t time,” she resisted. “There is much to do yet. I’ve the pantry to inventory, and luncheon will be—“
“Just walk with me,” he coaxed, still his voice was even.
Damn her, but she shook her head, staring longingly at the door, and within the minute, she was through it, having escaped him. Trevor sighed audibly but considered her defiance his due.Patience, he thought,I only need to be patient.
THE DAY CARRIED ON, this household moved along without pause for his presence then. He thought to join her for luncheon but found her not at all in either of the two dining rooms, and not in the breakfast room. Thinking she might be taking her meal out of doors, he walked out upon the courtyard terrace, where he recalled his father had often liked to sit. She was not there. Wondering then how he might come about a meal for himself, he decided he hadn’t any choice but to find the kitchens and request one.
And there was Nicole, sitting at an old painted wooden table, the servant’s table, happily engaged in conversation with both Franklin and Abby, and that bothersome Ian, along with one other young maid, a slim, dark haired girl, and two youngmen. They turned as one as he pushed open the swinging door, staring at him as if no one had ever intruded upon their cozy little gathering before. Upon the table were empty dishes—apparently their own lunches—so that they only remained now, evidently, to keep company.
After a long quiet moment in which everyone just stared at him, Abby finally pulled herself up from the table and begrudgingly offered him something to eat.
Trevor accepted graciously and might have taken a seat at the table, but Abby said while she gathered items, “I’ll put your meal in the gold dining room.” To which, he might have replied that he would be happy to eat right here, but one by one, as they continued to regard him with wary eyes, people left the table, suddenly recalling chores to be done. The small unknown maid skittered by him without so much as a glance. Franklin clucked his tongue as if Trevor’s disagreeable presence had ruined a satisfying meal. Ian gave him another silent snarl, stating his unchanged opinion, as it were. And Nicki cast him only one short and tight-lipped glance, before she too left the room. The two very young footmen followed closely on her heels, though it was apparent they only followed suit and hadn’t offered any opinion of him upon their hasty departure.
Bereft now of any company, Trevor sank onto the bench at the table, uncaring that Abby might have preferred him gone from her kitchen.
Chapter Ten
NICOLE ROSE EARLY THEnext morning, as she often did, and pulled on a dressing gown over her night rail. It was still dark in the house, the sun not yet risen. She slid her feet into her soft slippers and went downstairs. In the kitchen, she started the fires at both the large and smaller fireplaces, as she’d been taught to do. She filled a basin with water from the barrel tucked into one corner of the kitchen. There was a second barrel in the scullery and Ian was very good at keeping these filled for the household’s use from the well outside the kitchens. She set a huge kettle to boil over the larger fireplace, knowing this would take some time.
Carefully, she returned to her room with her filled basin, at the opposite end of the hall than the master suites and closed the door by kicking it with her foot once she was through. She stripped herself of her robe and night rail and spent some time on her toilet, washing her face and arms and hands and cleaning her teeth. She dressed quickly in one of her muslin gowns, still wearing pastels as that was all she’d owned prior to her marriage. The silks she’d packed for what she thought was to be her wedding trip hung unused and useless in the wardrobe since her coming. She tied a kerchief around her head, knowing she hadn’t any planned outings or visitors today, and added her more serviceable walk-about slippers, as they were better suited to the daily chores of the household.
With that, she left her room and skipped down to the first floor, where she found the kitchen still empty—Abby and Lorelei and Franklin wouldn’t rise for another hour or so—and grabbed up a bucket and rags from the scullery. The water fromthe kettle was only just warm now and she dumped half of this into the bucket, leaving the rest for breakfast needs and morning tea.
She found the small wooden cart that Ian had made for her, with the pole handle and the four wheels and placed the bucket on this, using the handle to steer it out of the kitchen and down the corridor, across the entire length of the house to the library at the opposite end.
This room was by far her favorite, but it was also the room most in need of attention. It was easily twice the size of what she had once imagined was a grand library at the Kent house in Mayfair. It sat on the northwest corner of the house and two entire walls were made up entirely of windows, from floor to impossibly high ceiling. The remaining two walls housed the manor’s complete library, in shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling—twenty-four shelves in each column and twenty-four columns upon those two walls. She’d started cleaning this room in January and had spent several hours, several days a week about this chore. She’d managed to clean the entire center of the room—the ornate and now gleaming wooden desk, the smaller free-standing book shelves, the fabulous Aubusson carpets, the many chaises, chairs, and settees, the beautiful and well-preserved hardwood floors all gleamed now as if they’d been regularly attended over the last decade. Now, she had only the built-in bookcases to address. She’d finished only two as of yet and Franklin had teased her that by the time she’d gotten through cleaning each and every book and shelf in this room, she would likely have to start over just to keep it up.
She moved the library’s ladder to where she’d left off, sliding it along the rail near the top of the shelves, and climbed up withthe bucket and rags in one hand, the other hand on each rung of the ladder as she ascended. At the top, she moved several books out of the way and set the bucket onto the shelf. She was by now, quite comfortable with this height, and working upon and around the ladder but still managed just now to accidentally drop a dusty tome to the ground.
“There goes Voltaire,” she said to herself just now as it crashed with a loud thud on the floor directly below her.
She began the tedious but rather mindless job of cleaning the cover of each book and scrubbing each shelf as she went. Previously, this monotony had allowed her to focus her mind on what other chores or business she had set for the day, but today she found that her mind could think of little else but Trevor. She had yet to think of him as her husband. While they’d been married almost a year, they had spent so few hours together, she might count them on one hand.
But why had he come? And why, when he’d been received so poorly by every person under this roof, had he stayed? Abby had accosted her late yesterday wondering, “What’s to be done with ‘im, miss? He wants to stay the night!” Nicole had worried her bottom lip, hoping it was only for one night, and had instructed Abby to put him in the master’s chamber. She tried not to be bothered by this and knew her friends all understood when she chose instead to take her supper in her room, fearful of the earl finding his way once again to the kitchens and forcing himself upon their private meal. But that had been poorly done, she’d decided much later last night. She would henceforth not allow Trevor’s presence to upset any of her routine. He hadn’t that right. If he wanted to sit in on their daily luncheons or dinner,so be it. He’d find no great welcome, she knew, and thought it might actually assist in speeding along his departure.
She hadn’t allowed him much explanation yesterday, being as she was so shocked by his presence, and then so rattled, but she hoped he was only here to be curious, as she’d suggested to Ian, and that he would leave soon and let them get back to their lives here at the abbey. What little he had shown her yesterday had been a great reminder of how unyielding and implacable he could be, trying to control her still.
Obviously, she was still unsettled, she thought, as another book slipped from her hands.
“Apologies to Mr. Pope,” she said, grabbing up the next volume.
“You have no liking forEloisa to Abelard?”
Nicole started, having to grab at the ladder to keep herself from falling off it. She clutched her arm fully around the side rail and glanced down the twenty or so feet to where stood Trevor at the bottom, holding both fallen tomes in his hands, staring down at them as if he might discover the reasons for her tossing them about. He was dressed simply in fawn colored breeches and a white lawn shirt, his hair and eyes gleaming as he lifted his gaze to her.
“It slipped,” she said softly and faced the shelves before her again, closing her eyes, praying for an equilibrium she certainly did not feel. When he said nothing else, she looked down again to where he stood but found him gone from the foot of the ladder and now settled behind the desk in the middle of the room. He’d placed upon the desk a newspaper—either brought with him or procured from the village sometime yesterday, as theabbey received no daily paper— and began to peruse it leisurely, much to Nicole’s annoyance.
She might have insisted that he leave this room, make use of any of the other thirty-six rooms in this house, but held her tongue. She’d be damned if she would allow him to know how much his presence alone affected her. With an outward air of calmness, she continued with her chore, being now more careful to not let any more books tumble to the floor. She knew that he watched, or at the very least, stole glances at her. She could just feel his blue eyes upon her, tickling the hair at her neck.
