Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (25 page)

Forgive her, because for five years, Ellie had been unable to present Dane with his heir. 

“No offense taken. I can count on my fingers the number of times Dane exercised his rights with me in the first year of our marriage. He said we were in no rush.” 

Minty delivered a scowl refined in many a schoolroom. “And you blamed yourself. Your husband bore responsibility for the title, too, Ellie. More than you did. He might have exerted himself more consistently in the direction of his own wife.” 

The longer Dane plied his celestial harp, the more Ellie was drawn to similar conclusions. 

“I should have been more like those young ladies I encountered at boarding school,” she said. “They fainted and faded and cried without getting their eyes all puffy, and the entire world hopped to do their bidding.” 

“A woman of that nature could not have survived Dane Hampton’s neglect.”

Neglect
. Minty was ever one for direct speech. Ellie treasured that about her, usually.

Well, Ellie could be direct, too. “A more clever woman would have had such tantrums, shopping sprees, and flirtations that Dane wouldn’t have dared take his eyes off her.” 

“Is that what they’re teaching at fancy finishing schools these days?” Minty set her cup down, having drained the contents. “That explains a lot about the decline of our ruling class, doesn’t it?” 

“My papa attributed it to inbreeding. To me, all that vaporish carrying-on began to make a certain kind of sense.” 

“You’re tired,” Minty said kindly. “You’re expecting and you’re grieving, and this Lord Amherst has inspired you to brooding. Why not marry him, Ellie? He needs a mother for his children, and you need a papa for yours.” 

Perhaps because he hadn’t asked? Because he’d spoken only disparagingly and despairingly of marriage? 

In a backhanded way, Dane had given Ellie the gift of clear thinking in at least one regard. 

“Why not marry Lord Amherst, Minty? I’ll tell you why. He’s charming and conscientious and has many fine qualities, but I will never again be a man’s convenient comfort again, nor will I compete with a dead woman for top honors in his heart. Bad enough I competed with Dane’s horses, dogs, demi-reps, card games, and cronies.”

Of those, the cronies had taken up nearly all of his attention, suggesting his casual regard for women hadn’t been limited to his wife.

Worse yet, Ellie had chosen Dane from among a horde of eligible suitors. What that said about her and her judgment flattered nobody. 

On that lowering thought, she took herself to her pretty, cozy bed, and thought about names for her unborn child. 

*** 

“A caller for you, my lord.” Upton stood inside the door to Trent’s library, interrupting the third attempt at a letter to Darius. 

“Show him in.” Trent rolled his cuffs down, not exactly relieved to be spared his epistolary chores. Heathgate had come calling, or perhaps Hazlit, but that would be fast work for a man who’d left for Hampshire only three days ago. 

“Her,” Upton corrected him. “I put Lady Rammel in the family parlor, and there’s a tea tray on the way.” 

“I see.” 

Trent finished with his cuffs, weighing his options. He was overdue to call on her, but he’d spent the past three days digging out of the paperwork that had built up while he’d retrieved his children from Kent. 

And from before that, while he’d misbehaved with one Elegy Hampton, Lady Rammel. And from before that, when he’d plain misbehaved… 

He made his way through the house with a sense of foreboding. 

Female hysterics were the last thing he sought from life, but Ellie had every reason to treat him to a royal tantrum. He’d meant to call, meant to send her a note, meant to ride over and explain to her how it had to be, and now she was bearding him in his den. Fairness demanded she tear a strip off him. 

Upon entering the family parlor, Trent bowed over her hand formally. “A pleasure to see you, Lady Rammel.” 

She wasn’t supposed to return his call until the second half of full mourning, which was still weeks away, making her visit a breach of strict protocol.

Not that protocol had in any way informed their dealings thus far. 

“You’re not sleeping well.” Ellie rose, and loosened the end of his cravat from beneath his lapel. “Oh, I’ve been so worried about you and apparently with reason. Are your children having difficulty settling in? Or is it this other business that troubles you?” 

Her blue eyes were luminous with concern, her touch welcome.

The urge to kiss her was not welcome. “The heat has made sleep elusive. You’re looking well, my lady.”

Heat, indeed. She was the source of the heat plaguing his nights, and she looked not merely well, but
luscious
.

“I’ve been fretting on your behalf.” She gave him an oddly dear, peevish look. “While I swill peppermint tea and keep my feet up, you’re wearing yourself to a frazzle. Do I need to have a word with your cook?” 

“Heaven forfend,” Trent muttered, relieved when a maid came in with a tea tray.

 Ellie looked over the offerings and frowned. “Do you suppose,” she asked the maid, “we could prevail on the kitchen for a little of this and that? Some fruit and cheese, perhaps, or a muffin with preserves and butter?” 

“Surely, milady.” The maid curtsied and retreated. 

“Trenton Lindsey, you are peaked and you were not in the best form when you returned from Kent. Mr. Spencer said he’s been keeping an eye on you, but he’s only a man.” She gave Trent’s chest a brisk pat, part scold, part caress, all Ellie.

Kiss her, kiss her, kiss
—for God’s sake.

“When did you have occasion to interrogate my stable master?” Heaven help him, Trent was waiting for her to repeat that caress to his chest. 

“I sent around for him to ride over with me. I was sure you wouldn’t want me paying a visit with only a groom as my escort. We took the lanes and a groom, and here I am, except I’m not at all sure I should be.” 

“Why is that?” 

Ellie wandered off to inspect some bit of cutwork that had been gathering dust since Old George’s day, while Trent resisted to compulsion to tackle her and drag her upstairs. 

“I doubt my welcome, my lord, because, while you might have read that manual on dalliances and flirtations, I certainly have not. Are we done?” 

“Done?” 

“With our…flirting, and so forth.” Ellie waved a hand in the air. “Sporting or whatever the polite but obvious term is. If we are, then you must tell me what rules apply. Perhaps when a man says he’ll call but doesn’t, one is supposed to divine his intentions?” 

He
had
said he’d call, and she was handing him the perfect opening for that speech about prudence, appearances, and fond memories. 

“I’ve missed you.” An understatement, albeit not a very helpful one. “I’ve let things here slip, and the children need me at hand if they’re to feel secure, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you, about…” 

About kissing, about how many bedrooms Crossbridge had, about putting his mouth on her— 

She sat and patted the place beside her on the sofa. “Go on.” 

Between lectures to his unruly imagination, Trent perceived that his caller was not having a tantrum. Perhaps this was the calm before the tantrum. Trent did not take the indicated seat. “I don’t know where to start.” 

“You start wherever you can, Trent. And take your time.” 

“This trouble you alluded to,” he said slowly, forcing his reasoning powers into their mental traces, “I’ve concluded it started long before I came out to Crossbridge this summer. Or I’m afraid it did. I have a man making inquiries, but it’s serious, Ellie, and dangerous.” 

“A bullet whizzing by our heads felt dangerous. Tell me the rest of it.” 

He sat beside her, soothed by the scent of summer flowers and by Ellie’s patient listening. When the maid returned pushing a tea cart, he munched and talked, and fed Ellie nibbles of fruit and cheese, and talked some more. 

When the food was gone, he went on talking, about his children, and about Michael having a nightmare the first night but none since, and about Lanie having learned to speak in complete sentences and at a volume Trent hadn’t know a two-year-old female capable of. 

While he talked, he took Ellie’s hand and laced his fingers through hers, feeling as though all the tension and misery in him were draining right out of his body and drifting away on the summer breezes. The lust remained present, but… napping. 

“So, you see,” he concluded, “I can’t in good conscience allow any appearance of a liaison between us. Not now.” 

Ellie brushed crumbs from her lap while Trent tried not to focus on her hands. A lady’s hands were improved by a few freckles. “I thought your investigator said to carry on without yielding to these threats.” 

“He did, but I will not put you at risk, Ellie. I cannot.” 

Her lips flattened, which did nothing to reduce the temptation to kiss them. 

“I can’t exactly climb your castle walls, take you hostage, and hold you for ransom, Trenton.” 

“That’s it?” He kissed the freckles on her knuckles “Bloodless surrender?” Had he
wanted
her to display her pique and argue with him? Even a little? 

“Papa!” Ford barreled into the library, committing a social transgression for which Trent would have been stoutly caned at the same age.

“Papa, you have to come! Michael got my kite stuck in the oaks, and Nurse says I’m not to climb up and get it because I’ll break my head, and it’s soon to storm, and then my kite will run off
into the sky
because a storm will snatch it away, and Uncle Nick made me that kite
for my own
, and Michael’s kite is smaller. I don’t
want
his kite I want… Oh. Beg pardon, sir.” 

How Trent loved this dear, earnest, voluble, energetic little dark-haired boy who’d preserved him at least temporarily from a last farewell to Ellie. 

“Make your bow, Fordham.” 

“Fordham Lindsey, ma’am, at your service.” 

“Hello, Master Fordham. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m sorry to hear your kite has gone adventuring in the oak.” 

“Uncle Nick built it for me,” Ford started up again, only to catch his father’s eye. 

“Let’s have a look, shall we? Lady Rammel, will you join us on this outing? The rain isn’t quite upon us yet.” 

While the wind picked up in earnest and Ellie held his coat, Trent climbed a venerable oak in the hedgerow adjoining a yearling paddock. He rescued the errant kite to the delight of Michael and Ford—and, to appearances at least, Ellie—and they all gained the back hallway as the heavens opened up with a true summer thunderstorm. 

“Come with me.” Trent tugged Ellie past the kitchen and up the first flight of steps, while the boys galloped off for the nursery with their kites. “I have a favorite place here for watching storms.”

Though he hadn’t taken the time to enjoy a summer storm at Crossbridge in years. 

They were on the third floor before he slowed and opened a door into a guest room that boasted a balcony and overlooked the paddocks, the drive, the woods, and—through the tress—the western façade of Deerhaven. 

“If you look out there to the east,” Trent said, pointing over Ellie’s shoulder, “that green rising of the land is the North Downs.” 

She followed the line of his finger, her back to his chest, then shifted slightly and nuzzled his biceps with her cheek. 

“I see it. This is a wonderful view for a guest room.” 

“Ellie…” He lowered his arm slowly. “We never finished our discussion.” 

“We did not.” She turned to face him in the tight confines of the doorway. “Perhaps we should finish it now. We have privacy, and until this storm blows through, I can’t go anywhere.” 

***

Ellie tried to fathom Trenton’s mood as she took in both the clean, spicy scent of him and the heavier, more pungent scent of the storm bearing down on them. She went up on her toes and kissed his cheek, an impulse that had plagued her since the last time she’d done it. 

When he said nothing and made no move to reciprocate her affections, she leaned into his chest. “It’s all right. I understand you never intended anything serious in our…dealings. You don’t have to say anything, just… Hold me, please? I’ve grown gluttonous when it comes to your embrace, and I’ll miss it.” 

More than she missed her husband, which was old news, but still troubling. 

Trent’s arms came around her snugly, though carefully, for her pregnancy had become a tidy little fact where she pressed against him. Everything in her leapt toward the warm, vital strength and goodness of the man holding her.

She nuzzled his throat—naughty of her. At the first touch of his fingers on her jaw, she thought he attempted to delicately dissuade her.

Then he cupped her chin and angled her face, his lips descending to gently plunder her mouth. 

“I thought…” She panted against his neck, as his arousal firmed against her belly. 

“We’ll think later,” he growled, scooping her up against his chest and depositing her on the high tester bed in the gloom of the bedroom. “We have to talk, but…later.”