Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (6 page)

She rose and started organizing the clothing she’d tossed over a chair earlier. 

“As subtle as you are, one wonders how I was lucky enough to merit your attention.” Her actions were abrupt, a minor display of pique Drew tolerated rather than provoke her further. He did need to work on his charm, or he would have needed to work on his charm, if he’d had any to start with.

She’d been a willing romp, so Drew let her get dressed in peace, obligingly doing up her stays and hooks. She was wise enough not to complain, and he’d send her flowers tomorrow, but their encounter was exactly as he’d intended it to be. 

And likely far less than she’d hoped it could be. 

All the more reason to observe the civilities and see the lady to her waiting town coach. He politely bowed over her hand and thanked her for her company, then took himself back to the comfortable confines of the Rammel town residence. He passed through the kitchen, letting the scullery maid know he’d take a tray in the library. In the hallway, he caught sight of himself in a mirror hung over a cherry-wood sideboard.

The fellow in the mirror was tired, not quite tidy, and going a bit hard around the eyes and mouth. 

Less than three months after Dane’s death, and he was behaving more like Dane,
looking
more like Dane—more arrogant, more self-absorbed, though Dane’s blond, muscular appearance had been at variance with Drew’s taller frame and dark coloring. Dane hadn’t been a bad man, but neither had he been a good man. He’d been a viscount, a title, and no better than he had to be, as with most of the breed.

If dear Ellie were not carrying, Drew would soon become the next Viscount Rammel, and the thought brought no joy. 

Dane, in typical viscount fashion, hadn’t spared the coin when it came to his pleasures, leaving a stable of fine hunters to be dealt with. The thought gave Drew a pang, because it meant he’d be traveling down to Deerhaven the following day to see about the horses. 

And that meant facing Ellie, who was his responsibility as well. Too bad there weren’t broodmare sales for slightly used viscountesses.

He turned his back on the mirror, for that thought was callous even for him, even when not one living soul stood between him and his recently deceased cousin’s title. 

*** 

Men were so much easier to understand than women. If a man was upset with his fellows, he put up his fives, delivered a blistering set-down, called out his detractor, or ignored the whole business with cool, manly disdain. 

Trent dug for his spare handkerchief, for women, unfathomable creatures,
cried.
For the entire five years of his marriage, Trent had been bewildered, resentful, and then downright despairing at his wife’s tears. Nothing stemmed the flow of Paula’s upset, not time, not solitude, and most assuredly not reason. 

Reason, he’d learned early, was the surest way to provoke her further.

Lady Rammel blotted her eyes with the handkerchief he’d given her earlier in this burdensome morning, but when he reached out to pass over the reinforcements, she took his hand instead and used it to haul herself right over next to him on the wicker settee. 

She bundled into his side, weeping against him in quiet torrents, the sound tearing at his composure as visions of brandy decanters danced in his head. His arms went around her even as he bent his head to try to decipher what she was saying. 

“I’m s-sorry,” she whispered. 

“Don’t be inane.” Proximity to her was the price he paid for having been so ungallant with her grief, and the lady wasn’t about to turn loose of him. 

“Do you ever hate her?” 

He’d bitterly resented Paula, for the middle two years of their marriage. “Who?” 

“Your mother. The one who lingered and was stubborn.” 

That mother. “Nearly.” He would worry about his unfilial admission later. “She inveigled promises from my brother and me, promises with lasting and hurtful consequences, and at certain times, if I didn’t hate her, I came very close.” 

“And she was your mother.” Lady Rammel nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer, and the gesture waved her silky dark hair against Trent’s cheek. He resisted the urge to bury his nose in that feminine treasure, but allowed himself an inhalation of her fragrance. 

“You’ve a different scent today from yesterday.” 

“I have my moods. Some of them inconvenient.” She shifted as if to gather herself away from him, but Trent stopped her. 

“Stay.” 

She heaved off another Sigh of Sighs and relented, turning her face into his shoulder. “Earlier, when I said I missed the obligations?” 

Trent’s fingers traced over the knuckles of the hand she rested against his chest. “I recall the comment.”

“I miss paying his bills. I miss scolding him for getting mud all over my carpets and wearing his boots to table. I miss him coming in from the hunt field, bellowing for a toddy and his slippers. He wasn’t company, exactly, but he was
there
.” 

The litany was pathetic in some ways, but at least she had a list, prosaic as it was. “That you miss him is good, a blessing.” 

She snorted, a ladylike explostulation of self-derision. “I missed him when he was alive. I didn’t always like him, but I missed him.” 

For her, this was Progress. Trent laced his fingers with hers and offered her hand a consoling squeeze rather a platitude, Bible verse or tisane.

“I did not matter to my husband half so much as his favorite hunter,” she said, with a tired sort of asperity, “but I comforted myself with the fiction that I did, that I might matter to him someday.” 

When she’d become the mother of Rammel’s heir? 

“You matter to Andy,” Trent said, and that must have been the right thing to say, because along his side, her body gave up a remnant of defensive, resentful rigidity. 

“I do. You’re right about that, and it’s important.” She smiled at his much-abused handkerchief, and a tightness in Trent’s chest eased. 

That smile held something secret, female and sweet, a little maternal, but not without mischief. Trent’s hand, the one that had been linked with hers, lifted as if to touch her smile, but common sense caught up with him, and he settled for returning his rambunctious appendage to his thigh. 

Breakfast should not have concluded with his guest in tears, making awkward confessions as she wrinkled his handkerchief, but he made no move to shift away, and neither did she. In fact, as they lingered on the settee—lingered
cuddling
on the settee—Lady Rammel grew heavier and more relaxed against his side. Her eyes soon closed, and her breathing fell into a slow, steady rhythm. 

The deuced woman had fallen asleep against him. 

He tucked her more closely to his side, stole a whiff of her hair, and glanced at the clock—though he had no appointments, pressing or otherwise, on his calendar. Seven fragrant and peaceful minutes later, his companion stirred, but she didn’t bolt upright, expressing ladylike horror at her behavior. 

She…nuzzled at him.
Nuzzled.
Then gave a soft, sleepy sigh and drifted into stillness.

Arthur nuzzled Trent’s pocket for treats. The house cat occasionally nuzzled Trent’s chin to interrupt his reading or demand to be let out. A nuzzling female was novel and dangerous and stirred urges both protective and unruly. 

Lady Rammel sat up slowly two minutes later, chagrin on her pretty features. “Perishing Halifax. I have lapsed mightily, haven’t I? What must you think of me?” 

“You have napped, a little.” Trent tucked back a lock of her hair that had tried to snag itself on his lapel as he’d retrieved his arm. “Would a glass of lemonade appeal?” 

“Yes, I believe it would, along with a nice big hole in the ground to conveniently swallow me up and rescue me from further apologies. A vow of secrecy would be appreciated as well.” 

“My daughter is a firm believer that after every bout of tears must come a restorative nap.” Also a cuddle. Trent rather missed Lanie’s cuddles. “Napping, in my daughter’s case, is a constructive habit. Her way of leaving the scene of the drama.” 

“You’ve a daughter?” 

“Just the one. I’ve sent my dependents to visit my sister, but my daughter can put the whole household into an uproar when she’s peckish, or tired, or happy, or cranky.” Trent shifted to a seat at a right angle to his guest, intending the distance to support her bid for composure.

Also his bid for composure.

The lady yawned with a sleepy sweetness. “Andy hates her given name. Her mother was a cook, and Andy thinks the name an insult. When the child is determined on her pique, we all hear about it at length.”

She fell silent, smoothing the hanky slowly against her thighs for a moment before raising her head and peering over at Trent. “Having disgraced myself in your presence, my lord, may I make a further imposition?” 

“Of course.” He was a gentleman, after all, and she was a lady in distress. 

“Nobody uses my name,” she said, folding his handkerchief tidily in half over her knees. “Old retainers will call me Miss Ellie, but they’re few and far between, and it isn’t the same. We’re neighbors. I would be pleased if you and yours would not stand on formality with me.” 

Trent had been happy to become Viscount Amherst upon his majority, because it was a step up from what his father typically called him. Now, he dreaded the day he’d be Wilton. 

“I will happily use your name under appropriate circumstances,” he replied slowly. “Except, my memory fails me. Your given name is Eleanor?” 

She shook her head, stroking his hopelessly wrinkled handkerchief yet more. “Most people think it is, but my mother had a whimsical streak. My given name is Elegy, hence, Ellie.” 

“Shall I call you Elegy? The name seems a short removed from ‘eulogy,’ and I can’t think that would be helpful.” 

“Ellie.” She beamed at him, expectation in her gaze. 

“Trenton,” he replied, with a sense of yielding to fate—or doom. “Trent to my family and friends.” Though not to his wife. To Paula, he’d been unfailingly Amherst.

“I will call you Trent under appropriate circumstances and take my leave of you before I conjure more mortification, in addition to bawling like an orphaned calf and falling asleep like a tipsy dowager.” 

Trent drew her to her feet. “I’ve spent my share of time with the bovines and the dowagers, and I can’t recall enjoying the experiences half so much as I’ve enjoyed this time with you.”

“You are kind.” She slipped her arm through his and let him escort her back to the stables. When they arrived, Trent was relieved to see Arthur had been saddled up, Lady Rammel’s groom having been sent the short distance home rather than linger waiting for her at Crossbridge. 

He rode along to Deerhaven with her, assisted her to dismount in her own stable yard, and about fainted dead away when she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek in parting. When she pulled away, she smiled up at him, a woman not given to vapors who had only needed a little comfort. 

A neighborly kiss then, a widow’s kiss. Nothing more.

He bowed and took his leave, letting Arthur amble back through the wood on a loose rein as Trent tried to put his finger on what had pleased him about the morning’s exchange—because amid all the awkwardness and poor conversational gambits, they’d shared something gratifying, too. Lady Rammel—Ellie—was a toothsome woman with a lovely smile and a quick wit, true, but there was something more. 

She’d
trusted
him. A woman did not cry, much less cat-nap, in the presence of a man she didn’t trust. She’d let Trent
in,
to her emotions, her motivations, her thoughts. She should trust him, of course, because he was a gentleman, and yet, Trent found it flattering that she did. 

Also disturbing as hell. 

Chapter Four 

“Isn’t this a sight to restore a man’s spirits?” Catullus Spencer flashed a toothy, charming grin. “Two lovely ladies to grace my morning. May I assist you down?” 

Andy looked like she wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but instead ignored his proffered hand, hopped down from the dog cart, and scampered off a few paces. Ellie didn’t make a fuss, because one remonstrated family in private, and Mr. Spencer was hardly unused to feminine moods or rejections. 

“My lady.” He bowed over her knuckles when he’d handed Ellie down, and while some might call it aping his betters, Ellie appreciated his attentions. 

“My thanks, Mr. Spencer.” His smile leaned to the flirtatious side of friendly. Ellie kept hers closer to polite. “Andy, if you can dredge up some manners, perhaps Mr. Spencer will let you meet Zephyr.” 

Andy studied her half-boots, which—small miracle!—still sported bows at the laces. “No, thank you, Mama. I’ll go with you to the gardens.” 

“Miss Zephyr can wait,” Mr. Spencer said agreeably, “while the weeds are growing apace, and his lordship will be anxious to greet you both. I believe he’s on the back terrace.” 

“Come along, Coriander.” Ellie held out a hand, which Andy took without even glancing at the barn where Zephyr, The Miracle Pony, waited. Last night, the child had chattered on for most of supper about meeting the pony. She’d also included the beast in her prayers—and now this. 

“Are you nervous about meeting the viscount?” Ellie asked as they meandered around to the back of the house.