The Ugly Duckling Debutante (House of Renwick #1)(53)

She dressed with as much care as possible in hopes that Nicholas would be there for her to speak with. When she asked the footman where he had gone, he gave her a guilty look and said that Nicholas had some business to attend to in Scotland. He wouldn’t be back for another month.

So Sara went upstairs and cried some more until there were no tears left. Nothing left except a hollow ache in her chest. An ache that she feared would never go away.





Chapter Twenty-Three



Nicholas tried to set his emotions at ease as he crossed the border into Scotland. He had done the right thing. She had trapped him, humiliated him, made him vulnerable. He was right about her all along, yet one part of him couldn’t help but feel guilty over the fact that the first hill in their relationship sent him running to a foreign country. In all honesty, he would have liked to talk to Sara about everything but his pride, the ever-looming presence in his life, kept him from doing so.

It was so hard to believe that she would trick him in this way, after her knowledge of his mistrust of women and much more his mistrust of himself. His heart had been broken in two and now he had not only a son to worry about, but the rest of his life. How was he to put the pieces together? Sara had effectively rendered him destroyed, utterly and completely undone. He had nothing to give whatsoever. At the moment, his only companion was his pride, nothing more. Well, that and the ever-convenient talent for quoting Scripture at the worst moments. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” seemed to repeat over and over in his brain.

He saw the way the servants scowled at him when he left that morning. Sara had naturally been their favorite person since her taking to Duncan just a few days before. In fact, Sara treated them all so well that Nicholas would bet half his fortune that they would side with her rather than him.

What hurt the most was that Sara hadn’t confided in him. She had either been manipulative or she had been afraid. Part of him wanted to wish she was merely scared of what he would do, but the other, saner part figured she just wanted to trap him into a marriage. But why would she need to? Was it merely for the sport of trapping someone like Nicholas?

The very thought of it made him want to punch the first bloke he came into contact with. Now if he could only get his body and his mind to agree that Sara was deceitful and manipulative He’d been in physical pain since leaving her in the garden. His body ached for her. Just by them spending only twenty-four hours together, his body now had a permanent memory of what it felt like to have her skin pressed up against his own. If he didn’t watch himself he would start panting like a dog right there in the carriage. It took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to run back and grovel at her feet. But what would he say? “Sorry that I hurt you Sara, but it was only because you lied to me, and I felt vulnerable and afraid. By the way let’s go to bed and—“

“Sir!” The footman hit the door, totally knocking Nicholas’s thoughts back into order.

“What is it?” he barked.

The carriage came to a stop, and the footman opened the door. “It seems that we need to stay the night at the inn on the border. One of the horses lost his shoe.”

“Very well,” Nicholas said dryly. The day couldn’t really get any worse.

And then…to Nicholas’s despair, it did.

The Horse and Hare was a popular stopping point, making it very likely to be seen by the entire ton on their way to the country. It was excruciating to see smirks from every person within the room. He grunted and took a seat, ordering as much tea and food he could consume in an hour’s time, then once the hour finished, he ordered more. He began to feel quite cheerfully full and miserable until…

“Renwick.”

He recognized the voice. “Ah Belverd. You’re here. Why am I not surprised?”

Belverd lifted one single eyebrow and sat. “You’re not going to get foxed are you?”

“Going to get foxed?” Nicholas mocked. “I want to get so foxed that I forget my name.” He let out a long sigh and pointed to the tea .“But to answer your original question, no I’m not going to get foxed.”

And it was true. His intent and his actions didn’t match up. His body screamed for spirits, yet all he had was tea. Logically speaking he was already well on his way to forgetting more than his name. But it wasn’t the drink that was causing memory loss. It was loss of sleep.

“I can’t let you do this,” Belverd said, pulling the tea directly from Nicholas’s hands. Nicholas pushed his chair away in preparation for a fight, but Belverd hadn’t been wallowing as much as he had. He knew the odds were against him, especially considering he had no real desire to fight anyone lest he win. The goal in a fight would be to lose and get put out of his misery.

He sank back into his chair and felt the room begin to spin. “What do you want?” The words he was thinking and what he was saying were very different.

“I want you to get your sorry self back to London and apologize to your wife!” Belverd’s voice raised to a tone Nicholas hardly recognized. “Confound it all! She is your wife, you idiot!” Belverd was positively raging at this point. Nicholas knew better than to laugh or speak for that matter. “Do you know how the ton found out about her little secret?”

Nicholas shook his head. He didn’t care how they’d found out. She had kept it from him.