Page 47 of When She Loved Me
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 BEDROOMlater 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 convincedhimself 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 HOWto 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 hersurely 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 acursory 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.
