Chapter Fifteen

HE BELIEVED HE DID her a courtesy, by leaving before she'd risen. Sleeping the entire night with Nicki wrapped in his arms had been nearly as perfect as any previous imaginings had suggested it might, but he thought not to push his luck, and had spared her any possible uneasiness if she'd waken with him still beside her.

That day would come, he knew, was convinced it would be so, was convinced he would make it so, that one day he would wake her with sweet kisses and lose himself in her smiling love.

Today, however, he planned to show her love in different ways, and waited with a good measure of restlessness for her to join him at breakfast.

And then all his well laid plans went to pot, when it seemed she might not, after all, join him for breakfast, that he slapped his napkin down upon the table and went in search of her. He passed Lorelei in the front hall and was advised that the countess was indeed awake and dressed, but she couldn't say where she'd gotten to once she'd left her chambers. He strode into the kitchens, and had to shout to Mrs. Abercorn to be understood, until finally Charlie walked by, and answered the question Trevor had been trying to ask.

"Her ladyship is below stairs, with the new servants Mr. Wendell called in."

Somewhat mollified that she was only busy, and not intentionally avoiding him, Trevor descended the back stairway, certain he had never in his life entered the servants' quarters in any home he owned. But he was excited to get on with the day, and if that meant helping her to see the new servants settled, or rather convincing her it was a task best suited to Mrs. Abercorn, so be it.

He left the stairs and entered the servants' quarters, which was naught but a long corridor with rooms and private chambers on either side. Standing at the very far end was his wife, whom he easily recognized in the dimly lit hallway, even as she had her back to him and sported a mop cap similar to the one Lorelei and Mrs. Abercorn always wore; he would know her shape anywhere.

She was talking to a man, one of the extra hired servants, he assumed, striding quietly toward them.

And this is what he saw, what sent everything to rack and ruin: while his darling little wife in her plain gray gown was chirping and pointing her slim fingers, apparently with some instructions, while she and the man stood in an open doorway, the man leaned his hand up against the door jamb, moving provocatively close to Nicole. Even from the diminishing distance, as Trevor was not halfway across the hall, he read well the middle-aged man's lecherous grin, even as he could not hear his surely cajoling words. This alone provoked him into a swift and inflated anger and lengthened his strides, but the sound of his wife's answering giggle was what truly sent him over the edge. She'd taken one step backward, just as Trevor reached them, just as the soon-to-be unemployed man lowered his arm and noticed Trevor's presence. The man understood his own peril rather quickly—the what, if not the why—upon spying the feral gleam in Trevor's dark eyes.

He tried to duck as Trevor came around Nicole, but perhaps did not honestly believe he was about to be slugged, so that he didn't stoop completely that indeed, Trevor's fist caught him squarely across the face.

Nicole screamed, but Trevor ignored her, placing one foot between the fallen man's legs and growling fiercely above him, "Do not ever—ever!—get that close to Lady Leven again! In fact, get out!"

"Trevor!" Nicole cried, pulling at his arm.

Trevor yanked his still fisted hand out of her grasp, and resisted kicking the man, who was trying to scramble to his feet. "Get out!" He roared again, while the man beheld him with wild eyes, until he lowered his head and spit out a tooth into his palm.

He opened his mouth, to speak or to cry, Trevor did not know, did not allow him the courtesy of listening to whatever pitiful excuse he might announce as reason to be nearly accosting the lady of the manner in the servant's hall.

"You've got five seconds to leave my sight, and this house." The man bent to retrieve his valise, which had fallen when he'd been hit, and hugging it to his chest, skirted around Trevor and Nicole, giving wide berth to Trevor, before running down the hall and up the stairs.

"Trevor, honest to God—"

He turned on her. "This how you greet all the fresh servants? Letting them avail themselves to your charms? Should I be asking Timsby if he received such exceptional treatment?" Her eyes widened and she gasped, but Trevor didn't care, allowed the full venom of his gaze to rake over her with abhorrence.

Belatedly, he realized two other new hires, both females, had come to their doorways, hovered just inside their rooms, sending horrified and gape-jawed glances his way.

Ashamed at his lack of control, even as he stood by his action, he strode angrily away from his wife.

IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, she went out of her way to avoid him, and he didn't give a damn, seething still with that image of her being seduced—and giggling!—seared into his brain. Truth be told, he avoided her just as much, trying to decide where he'd gone wrong assuming he knew her character. He actually returned to London for a few days, as he did have business to attend, which had been put off by his previous unwillingness to leave the abbey, to leave Nicole.

He couldn't manage any assessment of every emotion he wrestled with over the next few days, knew only that anger and jealousy were at the forefront. And a profound pain, that he'd been courting and wooing someone who was so far from what he believed her to be, that days later he still could not wrap his head around it.

When he returned to the abbey, though not quite sure why, he found the house in darkness, though the sun had only just set within the hour. He rode around the back, and stabled his horse, entering the house through the kitchen. He found Franklin, still about the chore of polishing whatever silver had been used at dinner, only two pieces, he noted.

Franklin seemed neither surprised to see him nor inclined to favor him with any greeting.

Obviously, word had spread of his unseemly behavior.

And still, he felt the need to defend it. He would not, of course, to the butler, but did bother to ask, "The countess has retired for the evening?"

Franklin set the towel upon the counter in the middle of the kitchen, set the silver bowl he'd been wiping down next to it, and turned his head sideways to Trevor. "I'm sure she has," was all he said in a brutally crisp tone.

Ignoring this censure from his servant, Trevor stalked away from him and through the corridor to find the front stairs and the second floor. He paused outside of Nicole's room, debating a late-night apology—for his overreaction, not his action—but the blackness noted underneath her door suggested she might well be asleep by now. It would keep until the morning.

The next morning at breakfast, he waited both his wife and Mr. Wendell, accustomed to being the first to show in the morning room, but anxious today to get back on even footing with both of them, and annoyed by their late-coming. Even Franklin wasn't at his usual post, near the door, directing the footmen during breakfast.

It seemed the entire house had fallen to ruin with him gone but a few days. With a growing irritation, he inquired of Charlie, who'd been in and out of the morning room, where Franklin might be, if not at his post.

With a pained grimace, apparently unwilling to deliver an answer, he only shrugged and darted away, out of the room. Henry appeared then, and announced, without being questioned, "Mr. Franklin is abed, feeling poorly, I hear." And he deposited the sugar bowl and creamer on the table near Trevor with a fairly strong thud.

The earl nodded. This likely explained Nicole's absence from breakfast, as she doted upon the man, and was surely at his side now. With a bit of relief he attended his breakfast, still wondering where Ian might have gotten to, and then just as the clock struck ten, he scooped up the newspaper and headed toward his study. Walking through the foyer showed Franklin, dressed in his heavy overcoat, sitting upon a chair near the door. At his feet, sat one squat suitcase and one bulging valise. In his hand he held a walking stick, one Trevor assumed he would refrain from using while performing his duties, but that which he likely needed to give ease to his back.

"Franklin?" Trevor approached, allowed that one word to ask a multitude of questions.

The old man ignored the unspoken queries. "My lord."

"Franklin, what are you about? Are you going somewhere?"

"I am, my lord. I've left my letter of resignation upon your desk." He nodded with these words.

"Are you unwell, my good man?"

Franklin straightened, as much as his back would allow and fixed Trevor with a hard glare and a curling lip. "I am not your good man, sir."

This harshness alerted Trevor that this had to do with Nicole, and more accurately, Trevor's treatment of her, he surmised. "Does she know you are leaving? Shall I fetch her?"

Franklin released a small and tired harrumph. "She left, you know. Ah, but you wouldn't, would you? You were fair busy yourself, abandoning her yet again."

Through gritted teeth, Trevor asked, "Where is my wife?"

Franklin shrugged, and Trevor resisted the urge to shake the old man until the answer fell out. "I didn't want to have hope in you, when you came here," Franklin said, the hat in his hand held against his knee. "But you did good, for a while. Fooled us all, is what I think now."

Trevor turned away, intent on finding someone who would tell him where his wife had gone. Franklin's thunderous voice stopped him, turned him back around. "You will not turn your back on me, young man! You will stay, and you will listen to what I have to say!" When Trevor faced him again, eyes widened in disbelief, Franklin leveled his tone and continued, "I've put up with a lot from you Wentworths over the years: your grandfather's spitefulness and his wife's rancor, your mother looking down her nose at us, your own father's utter disregard for this beautiful house over the past twenty years. And I've had enough. I owe you nothing, but I will say my peace. That girl came here with her broken heart, crying herself to sleep for months and months, and she never once couldn't offer a smile to someone here. She lifted up the whole lot of us, cared more for the people and the house than any Wentworth had in a hundred years. And what did you do? You chased her away. And why? Not because of anything that girl had done. Was your own meanness, generations of it, that you can't even see good when it's right before your eyes. I know where she went. You'd have to beat it out of me, though. Last thing I'd do to that poor girl is break her heart again by sending you to her." His wrinkled lip curled once more. "You do not deserve her. Stay in your cold, empty house. Good luck keeping the rest of them." He tossed a thumb in the air, toward the kitchen. "You'll drive them away, just as you did her and me. Mark my words."

Never in his entire life, not even while serving in the army, not in his many years at the staid and strict schools he'd attended, not even by his own cross mother, had he ever been taken to task as he just had by this man. And just when he considered that he didn't know how to reply to every lash the old man had just whipped across him, Franklin went on, "Why did you come here now anyway? I've been wondering that, trying to imagine any other reason but to break her heart all over again, but for the life of me, I can think of nothing."

Swallowing hard, he answered the only truth he knew just now. "I didn't want to live...to be, without her."

Shaking his head back and forth, his eyes still angry, Franklin said, "You've got a funny way of showing it."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Trevor acknowledged this. "I've messed up. Repeatedly and brutally, to my regret, and her...heartbreak. But then, Franklin, you did not see her with that man below stairs—"

"I didn't have to!" His voice was deafening just then, his face turning a mottled shade of red. He blustered, "And even if I did, I'd think nothing untoward! It isn't her! You don't deserve her because you don't know her! You don't love her! You can't be this foolish and wrong about her and claim to love her. You just can't." The hand, the one that held his hat near his knee, shook with his rage.

Believing it was in both their interests that they end the conversation here, Trevor only wondered, "You won't tell me where she is?"

His voice much weaker now, Franklin shook his head and said, "Someone has to be true to her."

Trevor left him, walked up the stairs and found Nicole's room. He pushed the door open, and hovered just near the entry, glancing around, wondering if she might have left him a note as Franklin had. He found nothing of the sort. He stepped inside, pulled open the wardrobe to show that it had been emptied of its contents. Her brush and comb were gone from the dressing table. No personal items sat near the ewer and basin on the short cupboard near the window. He spared only a glance at the perfectly made bed, not of a mind to revisit what they'd done, how she had loved him underneath those covers.

With a foul curse, for his own unrelenting idiocy in all regards to Nicole, he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

TREVOR LEFT HYNDMAN Abbey that same afternoon, riding away on his thoroughbred at a breakneck speed. He had a pretty good idea where she'd gone and rode now for Audley End. To his surprise, his sharp rapping at the door was greeted only by a young maid, who likely had no idea who he was, but made a deep curtsy before lifting inquiring eyes to him.

"Tell Lady Audley that the Earl of Leven requires some of her time."

"Oh, I would, milord, but Lady Audley is down in Brighton, at her daughter's home."

Trevor frowned, "Since when?"

"For weeks now." The little maid pulled and yanked at her skirts while she spoke.

"And had her granddaughter, Lady Leven, stopped by in the last few days?"

The girl pulled a face and shook her head.

With only a sparse, "Good day," Trevor pivoted and walked away, collecting his mount from the post where he'd hitched him. More foul language left his lips as he traveled then to London and the Kent residence.

Upon that stoop, the infuriating butler, who knew damn well who he was, asked for his card, as, "The baron is not at home to callers."

Trevor rolled his eyes, refusing to give the man his card. "Is he home to Leven?" This, leveled upon the hapless man with some sarcasm.

"I should think not."

Believing that a clamped jaw might indeed become a permanent thing, Trevor growled, "By chance, is his daughter here? Nicole?"

Meeting the earl's gaze with his own share of disdain, the butler advised, "She is not. We'd heard she'd been left to wallow in the country somewhere."

He wanted to hit him. God, how he wanted to strike him!

But he turned away from the maddening servant and now found himself at a loss as to where his wife might have gone. His horse was likely exhausted, he knew, precluding any further search for her just now. And the hour grew late. Franklin knew where she was. If he'd been worried that her destination had perhaps been unsafe, he'd have spoken her location, Trevor believed.

As darkness fell on the city, he found his way to his town home, which he'd visited for several days only a few days ago. He sat in his study, having downed one glass of brandy, and currently sipping at another.

Where she might be was the existing issue, but that was followed swiftly and often this day by, how could he possibly make it right with her now?

Every word that Franklin had uttered screamed again in his head. But he didn't need these to know he'd erred, and grievously. It was the reason he'd returned to the abbey, to tell her he was sorry for—again—having doubted her. He'd planned to come clean about everything, to tell her the whole ‘make a baby' ruse was just that, a trick to make her love him, or love him again. He'd thought to win her over with their shared passion. He'd ignored so much else in the interim.

Franklin was right, he didn't deserve her.

But he wanted her. And he needed her.

He lifted his feet off his desk, and swallowed the last of the brandy, when a letter upon his desk, atop a stack of unopened missives, caught his eye. He recognized the handwriting on the address as his mother's and wondered why she might be writing him. He couldn't ever remember receiving a letter from her before. He never had, he was sure.

Curiosity momentarily outweighed all those devastating thoughts of Nicole and the sorry state of his marriage. He retrieved the envelope and tore open the seal, pulling out a two sentence note, signed by his mother.

Your wife is here, though I cannot say why. I insist you fetch her, posthaste.

Of course, it made sense as she was, effectively, family, and was for certain in a place Trevor would never have thought to look.

THE DOWAGER'S HOUSE, about forty minutes north of the city, upon a fresh horse, took Trevor not more than thirty minutes to reach. Almost as if she'd advised her staff to be waiting for him, the door to the modest but elegant country house was pulled open, even as he left his tired steed alone in the drive.

He'd visited so rarely, he hadn't any idea of her butler's name but asked that his horse be tended while he sought his mother.

"In the parlor, my lord," advised the butler, a surprisingly young and handsome man. He lifted a hand and pointed away from the wide foyer. "Second door, just there."

"Thank you."

Trevor found his mother lounging by herself, a sherry in one hand, a book in another. Seeming to recall her once telling Nicole that she certainly did not read novels, he was surprised to see the book was just that, as he couldn't imagine what else A Sicilian Romance might be, if he'd read that title correctly. She snapped the book closed and laid it upon the side table, face down.

"I believe you've lost something," she said in her enigmatic way.

"So I have." He was weary now and had still to convince his wife to come home with him. He didn't suppose he had the energy to deal with his mother's unpleasantness before that. "Where is she?"

"Not, how is she? Or, why is she here? Very curious, indeed."

"I'd rather have those answers from her." He scraped a hand over his face and jaw, impatient to find Nicole.

"Upstairs, likely asleep by now," his mother finally offered. And as Trevor pivoted, she called out, "Don't make the mistake your father did."

He was quite sure he didn't need a lecture from his mother and turned back toward her, allowing his expression to say so.

She smirked but otherwise ignored his dry look and forestalled him. "Did you ever wonder what came first, your father's unfaithfulness, or my wretchedness?"

He had not. He'd absolved his father years ago for his infidelities, knowing how very difficult his mother could be. But as it seemed he would pay a price to her for taking in Nicole, he shoved his hands in his pockets, and gave her a shake of his head.

"I thought not." She lifted a hand and smoothed the gray hair away from her face. "I was very young when we married, and so in love with him."

Trevor's gaze snapped to her face, to her eyes, at the break in her voice.

She continued, "He was much like you, tall and handsome, hard to resist. I absolutely adored him." With a sharply indrawn breath, she told him, "I didn't find out that he'd not given up his mistress until about a year into our marriage. I cried and begged and pleaded, and he promised he would. He never did give her up. Honoria was her name. When all was said and done, when he died, she'd actually had more of him that I ever did. And he'd added others, even if they didn't last. But she always did. She came to his funeral, wailed openly upon the casket. As if the grand open secret of the Earl of Leven's proclivities throughout the years hadn't been bad enough, she did that to me, cementing my humiliation. I've never had set foot inside the city again if not for your betrothal and wedding." She breathed harshly, as if this confession had taken any small amount of stamina she'd had. "The sister was undoubtedly unsuitable for you. But when you married this one, honestly I hoped you had a chance."

Trevor slumped onto the arm of the chair next to him. "Mother, I had no idea—"

She waved this off, so much anger in her still. "But now I see you're just like your father, not chasing the skirts, I'll give you that. But you haven't a clue what to do with a good woman, one who clearly adores you. You'll ruin her, I suspect, as your father did me. Take a good look, son, this is what happens to us, when we're spurned and unloved and broken. We turn bitter and ugly, reject any form of love. It's just too painful. At a certain point, it just becomes so much easier—so damn safe—to be callous, keeping everyone and everything at a distance."

He was at a complete loss for words, staring at her, seeing a trace of tears water her eyes.

She swiped impatiently at her eyes, stiffened her lip. "But there you have it, and that's what you'll have, a mean and wretched wife, if you don't figure this out now."

"I aim to," he insisted, frowning.

She fluttered her hand again, dismissively. "Then go, go to her. The fact that she came here tells me exactly how awful you've been. She didn't want to be found by you, for whatever you've done to her. You've likely got half a chance to fix it. Get on with it."

Almost as if she were a whole new person, or if he absolutely saw her that way, he asked, "You like her, don't you, Mother?"

She wanted to smile, at his assumption, or at his wanting her approval, he could not know, and then she did not, held the smile away from him yet. Instead, she said, "She talks entirely too much, has my kitchen in an uproar, and her needlework is beyond unfortunate." And then, with a rare softening about her once pretty features, "But it's very hard not to like her."

Trevor couldn't say he recalled ever seeing such bemusement upon his mother's face. He stepped forward and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "We're all going to be just fine, mother. I'll make sure of it."

She nodded, one tear finally fell away from her tired eyes. "Third door on the right, son."

He proved how dastardly—and desperate—he was by not rapping upon the door to announce his presence. He had some fleeting and frightful vision of her hearing him call a greeting through the door and jumping up to secure the lock. He couldn't take that chance, and quietly pushed open the door to show him only a pitch black room. Closing the door behind him, he waited until his eyes adjusted, until he could distinguish Nicole's slender form in his mother's guest bed.

She stirred not at all, so that Trevor came close and stared at her for quite some time, his hands shoved into the pockets of his breeches. He spent some time trying to recall the first time he'd ever met her. At the time, his interest and purpose had been set upon Sabrina, so that, honestly, he recalled only her personality from that very first meeting. But of course, that was half her allure, being at that time—before he'd stolen so much of her liveliness and friendliness—such an open book. And beguiling, so much so that when' he'd noticed her at the Clarendon ball, he realized she was so much more than merely Sabrina's younger sister. So damnably exquisite, so perfect for him.

Having kicked himself enough over the past year and a half with would haves and should haves, he spared himself further torment with the one constant that had been screaming in his head since the moment his lips had first touched hers: that he should have, at that instant, realized the full extent of her hold over him, and his feelings for her, and have called off the betrothal to her sister. He'd been overwhelmed by his reaction to her then, but it would have behooved him to have examined it more closely at the time, to have thought of the grand picture, and not only of Leven.

If only....

He was reluctant to wake her, and then anxious to do so. She looked so damn peaceful, her brow unwrinkled, her hair wildly cast about her head and the pillows and the bed. Carefully, he perched on the side of the bed, and gently moved the thick locks away from her face. She slept on her stomach, her slender arms hugging one pillow.

But wake her he did. Her long lashes fluttered, and she blinked several times. Sorrowfully, she startled with a certain annoyance to find him sitting beside her. More gloomily, she pushed his hand away.

"If you touch me again, I will scream this house down."

Sighing, having expected no less than this response, mournful though it was, he stood and afforded her at least a modicum of distance. He sat in the chair near the window, where the closed drapes provided no light, and watched as she scrambled to sit at the side of the bed, finding her dressing gown at the foot and swiftly donning this, effectively closing herself off to him.

"I only want to talk," he said.

"I think we are beyond that or can dispense with the pretense that it will do us any good." While still sleepy, her tone was yet sour.

"Will you at least allow me to explain my...latest screw-up?" He supposed his own voice reflected his weariness, his fear that no words could fix now the total of his misdeeds.

"Honestly, Trevor, there is no need."

"Nevertheless, I will explain it, and I beg you to listen. Things left unsaid are just as wounds left untreated. They fester."

"I fear I cannot stop you."

He saw that her shoulders fell forward, as she sat and watched him in the near total darkness, which showed not much more than their silhouettes.

"Nicole, this is the rest of our lives, decided right here, right now—by what I say, and what you choose to hear."

"I wish I'd thought to instruct you similarly on our wedding day."

"You're angry, and you have every right to be." He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, threaded his fingers together. "I promise you I've only been an idiot because I honestly didn't know where I stood with you. If I knew that you loved me, I'd have no fears, no doubts. I would be so very sure...and secure. But I don't know that, and I can only live on hope for so long. I felt like I was barely treading water with you, and every ripple was like a behemoth wave crashing over me. I overreacted." She said nothing, moved not at all, so that he pressed on, "I'll preface the next part with, I now realize my mistake, but Nicki, when I saw that man leaning into you, when I heard your answering laugh, I...I didn't stop to think. I jumped to conclusions and they were wrong, in a shamefully similar manner to how I treated you at the time of our wedding. And...I don't need an explanation from you—I honestly do not—but I feel these things will just hang between us until all the facts are known...or told."

He wished for light now, to see her, to try and determine her reaction, and then was glad there was none, which might have partially aided her calm manner, and level tone, when she said, "That man—Nester, by the way—did get fresh with me. There is no justification for his behavior, but I've given it some thought, and had concluded that because I was dressed quite plainly, and because I had donned a mop cap, as might any household maid, he might have assumed I was just that. When he...propositioned me, I was so startled, I just laughed. It was so ridiculous, of course. I thought, well, this is going to make for an awkward environment for him, once he realizes what he's done. That was it."

Calm, indeed. But underneath, he heard well the anger still. As he'd said, he didn't need the words, he just wanted everything out in the open.

"Regarding our forced marriage, and my role in that," she continued, to his surprise, and with a glaringly less level tone, "it is true that Sabrina—"

"Nicki, I don't need—"

"Oh, but you do!" She threw at him, her tone piercing. "You'll never forgive me, but I want you to know how wrong you were about me. I found Sabrina sobbing just that afternoon, and she begged me to please speak to you, to beg you to call it off. She wanted me to remind you that you were ruining her life, and only because you needed money. She was, as you know, in love with Marcus. Naturally I agreed to help my sister. I meant only to do as she asked, beg you to consider those other than yourself. Honestly, I was so in love with you, it was all I could do not to beg you to marry me instead. But I did not. I could not force you to love me, after all." She stopped, and sniffled. "I imagine it was Sabrina who'd arranged for her and father and her godmother to ‘discover' us. I'm not sure how she could have known that we...that you and I might...that they would walk in on what they did."

"That was my fault," he admitted, without shame. "There were a few occasions that your sister caught me staring at you. I thought I'd hidden it well, my desire for you."

"Very well," she said, seeming to have control of her emotions once again. "And there you have it, all exposed now. No more guessing. I suggest we forego pretending this has a chance, with such an ugly and tainted history, that would only infect any future."

Trevor stood and reached her, went to his knees before her. With his hands on her legs, ignoring how awfully his wife stiffened at his touch, he said, "But Nicki, I want to fix it, not sweep it away, like it was nothing."

"The truth as I know it, is this: you will, despite a full accounting just now, neither forgive nor forget what nefarious part you believe I played in our wedding, and your purpose currently has nothing to do with me, or us, but is only about begetting an heir."

"Nicki, do you hear yourself? You are angry for my asinine assumptions and what they've done to us; yet, you're committing the same crime."

She brushed his hands away from her thighs, and stood, stomping away from the bed, away from him. "You want to stay married to create your heir and not for any other reason! Do not pretend otherwise!"

Trevor stood as well, and stalked her, but was shown only her back as she hugged the far bedpost. "I don't give a damn if we never have a child, or if there be ten! I used that as a way to get you in my bed. You'd have fought with yourself until kingdom come before you allowed yourself to be loved by me. Yes, you are that stubborn. So I made the choice yours and dangled a carrot of a child before you! And admit it—you're glad I did. You want the lovemaking as much as I. You may cling to your supposed hatred of me, but your body is past it and knows what it wants."

She whirled on him. Tears glistened in her eyes. "It is not love that brings you to my bed at night!"

Trevor threw up his hands. "Dammit, Nicki, open your eyes! I was trying to make you fall in love with me again!" He shouted.

"And this is how you do it? By duplicitous means and shouting at me?"

"I was desperate—not exactly clever! I won't change, Nicole. I rage and react, and I make mistakes. I think you do the same. And I love you all the same, because or in spite of—it doesn't matter. I love you, as you are." When it seemed she would say nothing, just stared at him with watery eyes, he heaved a heavy sigh, and ran his hand through his hair. "Damn it, Nicki. I love you. I can never undo what I've done to us, to you. Not a day goes by that I don't revile and castigate and kick myself for my poor suppositions, and the actions I took because of these. Call me an idiot. Call me a jackass. Call me unsuitable or unworthy. I don't care. But I need you to know that I loved you then, and I love you now. And I will not allow you to end this marriage. I just won't allow it." And then, roughly, while he met her gaze, "I will not—cannot—be without you."

They stared. Ragged breaths met in the air between them. Trevor's nostrils flared. Nicole's lips quivered. He uttered, harshly, "I do not care if there is no child. Ever. I only want you."

Her shoulders slumped. She dropped her face into her hands and cried. Some garbled statement was breathed. He thought it might have been, "I want so badly to believe you."

Trevor took her in his arms, pressed her head against his chest, ran his fingers through her hair, and whispered, "Shh," while she continued to weep. She was soft and pliant in his embrace. Fear diminished as hope surfaced.

"It's terrifying, the exact extent of how much power you hold over me, because I love you so."

He realized this was not exactly a declaration, but only his darling little wife giving voice to well-founded fears, ones he only wished he could put to rest. Alas, "Nicki, I can't undo it. I can only show you, every day, all the rest of our lives, that I will never break your heart again."

He pressed his chin against the top of her head and breathed again.