The Ugly Duckling Debutante (House of Renwick #1)(52)

It was minutes before he felt her presence behind him. “Go away, Sara.”

“Nicholas I—“

He turned. “Lord Renwick to you.” His face twisted into a sneer. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Were you just going to keep it from me for forever?”

Her eyes scrunched up as if confused.

“Goodness, Sara! Is that even your real name?” He shook his head pitifully. “I felt sorry for you! I did! I thought ‘how sad for Sara to live in the country all her life and have her virtue compromised by London’s most notorious rake,’ and then as if by some miracle I actually felt—“

“You felt what?” She stepped forward.

“Get away from me!” he yelled. “I trusted you! I felt affection for you, I—Sara, I made love to you and now I find out you’ve been keeping this secret from me this whole time? When I trusted you with all of mine?”

“I love you!” she yelled back at him. “I didn’t even know until the day before we were to be married! What was I to do? Tell you and have you panic? Why does it matter who my mother is? I had no idea until Lady Fenton told me!” She was screaming right back at him, which actually took him quite off guard.

“You still should have told me! We are husband and wife, for better or worse! Haven’t you been the one that’s been talking about giving your heart and loving someone? And here you can’t even trust me with your past?”

Her eyes turned suddenly cold as she looked up to him. “Like you trusted me with yours?”

He felt all control snap. “That’s different, and you know it!”

“No, it's not!” She moved closer to him. “The only difference is you knew all along that if you compromised me, I wouldn’t say no, but the whole time I knew—I knew—that you would use any excuse to get out of this marriage. Hadn’t you told me as much?”

She had him there, but would she have ever offered to marry him if he hadn’t suggested an annulment? And wasn’t he doing the right thing in offering her a way out of being trapped?

“I was trying to help you. I didn’t want this!” He was powerless to stop the words from his mouth.

“You…” She turned away to hide her tears. “Didn’t want me? Or you didn’t want to be married?”

He didn’t know what to say. There were always moments in his life when he knew what words should come out of his mouth, but because of the hurt and pain, he would choose the ones that would do the most damage. In his head they made him think he would feel like the person who didn’t get screwed by the whole situation. This was one of those times for Nicholas as he choked out the final words in the coffin of their relationship. “Both.”

Sara looked at him with the coldest eyes he had ever seen. Angry tears streamed down her face, she let out another choked sob and ran back inside. Nicholas was hurt and frustrated, yet all he could think of was the way Sara looked when he said he didn’t want her. He would have welcomed death before seeing that expression on her face again

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Chapter Twenty-Two



Sara didn’t care if people stared, nor did she care that her hair had fallen out of place. Upon entering the ballroom, she immediately found Lady Fenton and was escorted into her carriage. She sobbed the entire way to Nicholas’s house in Lady Fenton’s arms. When they reached their stop, Lady Fenton lifted her off her lap and looked at her.

“He’s not upset at you, my dear. He’s upset at himself.”

Sara cried even harder. “If you heard what he said, if you were there, you would know!” She tried to catch her breath. “He said he never wanted me, that he never wanted to marry me!”

Lady Fenton wiped away some of Sara’s tears. “My dear, we both know that’s not true. He’s just afraid of how you make him feel. He loves you; I know he does.”

Sara shook her head fiercely. “He told me he would never give me his heart, and now I’ve ruined it. I should have told him! I was so afraid it would kill him, he doesn’t even know who my father is, and that’s the worst part. He only knows part of the story if he knew the other part he would…he would never forgive himself!”

Sara couldn’t live with that. She had lived with rejection, fear, pity all her life—she would die before she would let Nicholas feel guilty over something he did so long ago. The man needed to forgive himself before he could ever be whole again. How was it possible to still love him after all the hurtful things he said? She sniffled some more before Lady Fenton took her inside. She explained to the servants that Lady Renwick was sick. They brought her to her adjoining chamber and put her to bed.

Sara cried herself to sleep and dreamt of little boys with blue eyes; little boys that she would never have the opportunity to have. It made her cry all the harder. Her dreams—everything shattered in an instant because Nicholas couldn’t trust her.

It was still dark when she woke up. She felt something next to her head and turned to see what it was. She nearly screamed in agony as she saw the thick pieces of paper. It was the annulment papers Nicholas had talked so much about, and at the bottom it was signed, “Lord Nicholas Devons, Seventh Earl of Renwick.”

She was starring in her own personal nightmare, and Nicholas had thrown the final punch. It made her ill, so ill that she threw up in her chamber pot several times before she was able to focus on getting food into her stomach.