The Ugly Duckling Debutante_FINAL-3 (25 page)

He didn’t blame them; she looked absolutely breathtaking in a deep crimson gown that flowed all the way to the floor. She looked like royalty, and sometimes he felt like nothing more than a footman on her arm.

He smiled at her but noticed her own return smile didn’t reach her eyes. Was she ill?

“Sara?” he whispered into her ear.

“Hmm?” she answered, not looking at him.

“Are you well?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” she snapped.

“I uh,” he was again at a loss. Had he said something wrong or done something to offend her? Quite possibly she was upset over the attention.

“It’s nothing.” She waved him away making him feel like an irritating fly. “Let’s dance.”

So they did. They danced twice before Sara was swept away by Hastings, another old duke whom Nicholas found hardly dangerous for her to be dancing with.

He took a sip of punch and looked around. All eyes were still positively fixed upon Sara. It was enough to make even Nicholas feel uncomfortable. Upon closer inspection people weren’t exactly looking at her in awe, nor were they trying to cut her, in fact they just seemed morbidly curious about something.

He shook his head and took another sip of champagne.

“Renwick!” A booming voice said behind him before slapping his back three times.

He turned to see Belverd. “Ah, how are you?” Nicholas asked politely.

Belverd chuckled. “I should be asking you the same thing.”

Nicholas felt his chest swell with pride. “Well, marriage has been good, I will admit that much.”

Belverd looked at him curiously then back at Sara. “Tell me you know, Nicholas.”

So maybe there
was
some sort of scandal that happened. “Know? I don’t know of anything. Why, what’s going on?”

Belverd looked extremely uncomfortable. Nicholas stood in front of him to keep him from escaping. “Belverd?” he prompted.

“It’s really not my place to say,” he responded hoarsely.

“How am I to know what is and is not your place? Just get on with it before I go mad.” Nicholas half-laughed, half-wanted to punch him.

Belverd leaned in and whispered as softly as a man could, “It was in the gossip pages this morning. I thought you had seen it. Actually, I thought you already knew.”

“You’re driving me insane Belverd. Just tell me; what am I supposed to know?”

Belverd swallowed, then his eyes darted back to Sara. “Your wife…she’s Lady Fenton’s illegitimate daughter.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Nicholas felt the room begin to spin. He looked at Belverd then back at Sara who was now coming toward them, then back at Belverd. He couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t even see straight. She had lied to him? So he would be manipulated into marrying her? To honor her family name? Did she even need money for her family? She played him for a fool. Of course she’d grown up in the country; most bastard children did until it was time for them to—He couldn’t finish the thought. He needed air or brandy, and considering the brandy was on the far side of the room, he chose air. He pushed past Belverd, and out of the nearest door, knowing very well that many eyes were on him, and wondering what his next move would be, including Sara.

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

.

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.

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—“