When She Loved Me (Regency Rogues: Redemption Book 1) Read online

  When She Loved Me

  Regency Rogues: Redemption, Volume 1

  Rebecca Ruger

  Published by Rebecca Ruger, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Some creative license may have been taken with exact dates and locations to better serve the plot and pacing of the novel.

  ASIN: B081TSCKH5

  When She Loved Me

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2020 Rebecca Ruger

  Written by Rebecca Ruger

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and may contain graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

  Rebecca Ruger

  [email protected]

  www.rebeccaruger.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Disclaimer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  The End

  Chapter One

  September 1816

  “What do you mean, we are bankrupt?”

  Trevor Wentworth, currently the seventh Earl of Leven, stared with angry eyes at his mother. He’d been home less than a fortnight from Spain, having sold his commission the moment he’d learned of the death of his father. His mother had appeared at his townhouse only moments ago, the first he’d seen of her in more than three years. Upon the death of her husband and the return of her son two weeks ago, she’d chosen to retire to the country instead of remaining in London, which somehow did not surprise Trevor at all. After a brief greeting which included no query regarding his health, his time with Wellington, or his grief over the loss of his father, she’d dropped this into his lap.

  “Actually,” his mother clarified, “you are bankrupt.” Elinor Wentworth took no pains to pretend a sympathy for her son’s new predicament. She sat tall and regal upon a fine leather wing chair in Trevor’s study, her black widow’s weeds as stiff as she, her hair the only lightness about her, the soft brown of her youth having given way years ago to dull gray.

  “Yes, you have said as much. I’m asking how,” Trevor said, pouring himself a healthy snifter of brandy. Making it through a decent visit with his mother usually required the casual consumption of spirits. This occasion, here and now, apparently was going to necessitate reinforcements.

  “With your sainted father’s indiscretions,” she sneered. There was something still striking about the woman, despite the contortion of her features. Raising a carefully drawn brow to her son, she added, “Your father was a terrible husband—as evidenced by his penchant for lightskirts and cheap brothels—but even worse, he had no head for business.”

  With his glass of brandy nearly empty already, Trevor sat down upon hearing this news. His father, Harold Wentworth, had been an honorable man. They’d shared much. Trevor had liked to think they’d had no secrets. Yes, Trevor had known about his sire’s indiscretions, but could never find any suitable abhorrence in the habit, and, in all honesty, couldn’t blame him; Elinor Wentworth was not the sort of woman to inspire either affection or fidelity. But Trevor hadn’t a clue that his father, and the estate, had struggled financially. “It cannot be true,” he murmured.

  “And yet, here I am, telling you that it is,” his mother retorted. Nowhere in her tone was there evidence of the discomfiture and shame that should accompany this news. She stood, nearly as tall as any man, and saw to her own drink as her son seemed disinclined to offer her one, pouring out two fingers of sherry into a small stemmed glass. “I’d warned you your hero worship of that man was a wasted endeavor.”

  Shaking his head, to rid himself of both the sudden haziness and his mother’s acidity, Trevor requested tersely, “Explain in detail, if you please.”

  “Your pointless idolism of your father?” Elinor asked with a saccharin smile. “Oh, you mean the dwindling of the estate down to less than nothing.” Elinor Wentworth sipped slowly of her sherry, her dark eyes on her son’s lowered head. “I know nothing about it. The solicitors—and likely the creditors—can give you all the sordid details, I am sure. Your father complained of floods and failed investments and then of droughts and ‘swindling bailiffs’ but in truth, his casual attitude toward the growing debt and his complete ineptitude in all regards to finance likely would have seen him in debtor’s prison if he hadn’t taken the easy way out.”

  “You mean by dying?” Clarified Trevor in a clipped tone, squeezing his hands hard around the snifter of brandy.

  His mother shrugged. “What do you intend to do about it?” Elinor now wanted to know. “I cannot live on these limited funds. I need an increase, not a complete lack of money. You should have returned after the war. It broke your father’s heart that you took up with that retinue attached to the ambassador in Spain,” she accused.

  Trevor lifted his dark head and breathed slowly. He dismissed this last, as he knew well his mother hadn’t any idea or care for his father’s heart and knew just as surely that his father was indeed proud of him, as attested by the numerous letters they’d exchanged during the war and the following year since it had ended. His voice was rough when he said, “You’ll get not a penny more until I get to the bottom of this. And if you have credit in the city, consider it closed.” He ignored the outraged raising of her brow. She might have argued his edict, but he stayed her with a crisp glare that he’d learned well from her. “You can show yourself out, I presume.”

  Without another glance at his cold mother, Trevor left his study. He’d yet to fathom all the ramifications of this news. He obviously didn’t know his father as he’d thought. True, he’d been gone for several years now, but one did not bankrupt an estate the size of Leven in so short a time. And despite what his bitter mother had implied, Trevor knew for certain his sire was not an unintelligent person to have lost a fortune based on poor choices and foolish investments. But what did it matter? Now both his father and his fortune were gone. He would, of course, meet with his solicitors tomorrow, but he knew it was true. His mother—while regretting her own perilous circumstance—did find some macabre enjoyment in the delivery of such news, always having been irrationally resentful of Trevor’s love of his own father.

  Staring out from the third floor window showed the city at rest at this hour of night. A stray light shone here and there, thin plumes of smoke rose over several nearby townhouses in Mayfair, but the streets below were emptied of pedestrians. Idly, he wondered how many other people in this city had only this night discovered some regrettable piece of information that would change the entire course of their life.

  Good God! Near bankrupt. What choice did he have but to marry as his father had done? For money. And suffer the rest of his life as his father had done, too, no doubt.

  Spring 1817

  “I refuse to marry him! I absolutely won’
t!” Sabrina Kent cried to her father, her bottom lip quivering with her desolation.

  “He’s an earl, for Chrissakes! You will marry him.” Baron Kent shot back at her.

  “I love Marcus. I want to marry Marcus,” Sabrina wailed pitifully, which did nothing to diminish her rare beauty. Sabrina Kent was porcelain skin and fine blonde hair, her eyes being a shade of blue God surely had only intended for His sky. She was just shy of an average height with a perfectly proportioned body, one men were sometimes wont to ogle, as they might gawk at something of rare splendor they imagined their hands would never touch. “Why will you not even consider Marcus, Father?” She continued, and tears fell, evidencing Sabrina to be one of those lucky females who, in a sob, suffered not the effects of such. Her nose did not redden, her eyes did not swell, and there was only that quivering lip to bear witness that she cried.

  “Marcus Trent is the second son of a viscount. That will never do.”

  “For me, it will,” she challenged her father yet more. Baron Kent was a gruff man, but Sabrina usually knew what buttons to push, when to smile prettily, when to press on and when to hold back. Nothing—absolutely nothing—had worked thus far. She was desperate now, and truly feeling the pinch of his autocratic decision to marry her to some man she’d never even laid eyes upon, thus the tears and theatrics.

  But to no avail.

  “You will marry the Earl of Leven,” Baron Kent hollered from his seat at the breakfast table, his voice carrying throughout the house. “And that, my dear, is final.”

  With one last sob, Sabrina Kent pushed back her chair and stormed from the room, her cries lingering even as she raced through the hall and up the stairs. Would that her mother were still alive, the baron thought briefly. A quick shake of his head dispelled that ponderous image—wishing the dead undead was an unhealthy endeavor, if nothing else.

  “I will marry the earl, Papa.”

  Baron Kent turned toward his youngest daughter, still seated beside him. He’d forgotten her presence momentarily. He smiled absently at her. “No, poppet, you are too young to marry.” He ignored the scrunched up face she made and set to finish his breakfast, spearing eggs and ham onto his fork.

  “I am already come out, Papa,” she reminded him. “And Constance Garnett was only seventeen when she married.”

  “That’s because her father is a fool, Nicole,” Baron Kent said around the food in his mouth. “He let that miscreant Granville start sniffing around and then the chit had to get married. Least, that’s what I hear,” the baron qualified, following that with a long sip of his morning coffee. “You, my dear, shall not marry for at least another year, and maybe longer.”

  “What if I fall in love, Papa?” Nicole Kent asked.

  Baron Kent chuckled. “Then make sure you fall in love with at least an earl or better,” he suggested.

  Nicole stared at her plate, thoughtful for a moment. “Poor Sabrina,” she lamented.

  “Poor Leven,” the baron observed.

  Three weeks after the contracts were signed, one week before the betrothal ball, Trevor Wentworth’s fiancé finally agreed to an assignation with him. He had met her on few previous occasions, but the last had been in the company of her father and the necessary solicitors, precluding any conversation as Baron Kent considered this solely as a business venture, leaving off the need for pleasantries. And still, Trevor had determined, in his newly betrothed’s company for less than five minutes, that she approached this union as poorly as he did. She’d made it quite obvious that this situation was not to her liking. Five minutes in the staid and aloof company of Sabrina Kent and Trevor knew he was heading down the same forlorn path his father had taken. Was it, he needed to determine, worth it? For while Miss Kent might be the reigning beauty of the ton, truly a creature a man should covet, Trevor read instinctively that she was not of a mind to make the best of this circumstance. Beautiful blue eyes had watched him surreptitiously, but with rancor, and not mere curiosity.

  Were there possibly other heiresses he could pursue? he wondered desperately while he awaited her presence in the London home of the Kents. He knew this year’s crop of available and marriage-minded females had produced few with a dowry to compare to Miss Kent’s. And, too, she was also endowed with a separate inheritance from her mother’s estate, that woman having been the widow of a rich earl when the baron had taken her to wife many years ago.

  Trevor had yet to think of himself as a fortune hunter, though he knew that was exactly what he was, and there was no prettier way to define it. Only, he had a title to offer. His saving grace.

  He’d considered often over the past few months, since learning of the exact state of affairs of the Leven title and estates, just letting the whole damn thing sink into oblivion—to hell with it all! But aside from the very real possibility of he, himself, having to endure such a sentence as living out his years in debtor’s prison, he had the thousands of people of Leven to consider—the servants and farmers and tenants, and churches and villages, too. Their very livelihoods depended upon him being able to wrench them out of the revolting grip of coming financial disaster.

  Checking the ormolu clock on the mantle in the front parlor showed Trevor that his dear Miss Kent had now made him wait almost twenty minutes for her august presence. He’d arrived today with the baron’s permission to call upon his betrothed that they might begin to form a relationship, lest the betrothal ball and wedding show only two strangers who might prefer to be anywhere else in the world at the time.

  Finally, the door to the parlor opened and reveal his betrothed, nearly as lovely as the occasion of their first meeting, save that her eyes would meet his not at all.

  “Good day, Miss Kent,” he greeted when she seemed disinclined to speak at all, but only entered the room and stared at his cravat, her lips pinched rather sourly. At his words, she tilted her head in acknowledgement, though tendered no similar greeting. “Shall we take a ride through Hyde Park?” He offered, reigning in his own discomfiture, stalwart in his determination to make this work, and make it work better than his own parents’ union had.

  “Yes, let’s,” she surprised him by agreeing so readily—agreeing at all. “I’ll call Nicole.”

  His brow lowered. “Nicole?”

  “My sister,” she answered, suddenly perky. “Step-sister, actually. She shall serve as our chaperone.”

  “Terrific,” Trevor murmured as Sabrina left the room to fetch said sister. He considered Sabrina’s classic blonde beauty and knew if, once she warmed to the idea, or mayhap once he’d charmed her to the idea, and perhaps then she showed a personality as pleasing as her outward appearance, this union would stand a chance. He could be attracted to her, he would woo her. As of yet however, she’d shown him little more than a morose and unhappy woman who likely would not even attempt to make lemonade out of these supposed lemons.

  “Here is Nicole, my lord,” Sabrina called as she returned to the parlor, trailed by a younger woman, who couldn’t have been more different from Sabrina than if they’d had different fathers as well.

  Nicole Kent was slightly taller than her sister’s diminutive height, but slim still as she was so young, perhaps two or three years younger than Sabrina’s twenty-two years. Her hair was a dark mahogany while Sabrina was a true blonde. Their eyes were nothing alike, either, though the beauty of Sabrina’s blue orbs was challenged mightily by the captivating green of Nicole Kent’s eager glance.

  “Good day, my lord,” Nicole greeted him. She was neither shy nor aloof, the advantage of youth allowing her to be natural. She walked directly to him and vigorously pumped his hand. “Welcome to our family—well, very soon, anyway. It will be so nice to have a brother, finally. Always, it has only been Sabrina and me. I, personally, could have made grand use of a brother on various occasions growing up. As it is, I still haven’t a sure grasp on fishing properly. My, but you are handsome, my lord.” And she tossed over her shoulder at her still and expressionless sister, “Sabrina, I do envy
you.”

  She took a moment then to draw breath and Trevor could not help but smile. How refreshing was her artless chatter, her very appreciated chatter, such as it was. When she smiled, which he guessed she might do quite often, there appeared on either side of her mouth the most enchanting dimples. Trevor found himself never so happy to meet a person in all his life. If Sabrina should choose to remain so detached, at least he had this little whirlwind to amuse him.

  “Miss Kent, how very nice to meet you,” he said, and bent charmingly over her small hand. She giggled at the bare touch of his lips on the back of her hand and hastily withdrew it, taking a moment now to don her pretty white gloves.

  “Yes, well, now you see why we rarely bring her ‘round,” Sabrina called from behind her sister, her voice slightly acerbic.

  Nicole only laughed at her sister’s jab, in fact did not see, as Trevor did, the shrewd blue gaze settled so unappreciatively upon her.

  “Shall we go, then?” He asked.

  “Oh, yes, let’s,” Nicole chirped excitedly, slipping one arm through Trevor’s and the other through her sister’s as she herded them outside, chattering away.

  “I spied your team from my window, my lord,” she confessed as they neared his open carriage parked in front of the Kent townhouse. “They are truly magnificent. Did you purchase them at Tattersalls?”

  “No,” Trevor answered lightly. “They were brought up from Brighton.”

  “Is it true that no woman has ever been allowed there?”

  “In Brighton?”

  Nicole giggled again, removing her hand from the crook of his elbow as he passed Sabrina up into his fine rig. “No, my lord. At Tattersalls.”

  “Oh, yes,” he answered vaguely, completely disenchanted with his betrothed, who spared him not a glance as she was set into the vehicle and not even a spare gaze as he stood and stared at her for a brief bit of time. He turned then to Nicole to hand her into the rig. She happily placed her gloved hand into his, her eyes merry as she continued to talk.