Page 60 of Lady Tempts a Rogue

I have just returned to London, and I am married. Can you come for tea this Thursday? I shall explain all then. It is quite a tale, I assure you. I also need your advice, discretion, and influence.

I need an annulment as quickly as possible.

~ Trinity Everingham in letters to her girlhood friends:

Joy Morrisette, Mercy Brockman, Chasity Terramier, Purity Rutland, and Faith Kellinggrave

Devin’s Berkeley Square house stables

Fifteen days later

A quarter of ten in the evening

Bone weary from having ridden straight from Essex, only stopping long enough to change horses, Devin left the exhausted gelding in the stables. Mile after mile, he had chastised himself with blistering castigations for being an utter arse.

He would not be surprised to find his bride had left him, though where Trinity would go, he did not know. She had a few friends in England, but he had not bothered to find out who they were.

That truth only reaffirmed what a selfish blighter he was.

If she had gone, he would turn London—no, all of England and beyond—on its head to find her. She was the best thing to ever happen to him, and he’d ruined it. Somehow, he had to make it right. Even if it took months. Years. A lifetime.

He must tell her he loved her.

Even if she threw the words back in his face.

Devin had deserted Trinity—his beautiful, sweet bride—on their first night back in London. He had left her with a skeletal staff she did not know and to manage a strange house when she had no experience with such matters. But far worse, he’d made her a target for gossip amid a society not known for its kindness and acceptance.

Knowing Shillingford would ensure she did not want for essentials did nothing to ease his mind. She did not care about possessions and things. Trinity had told him that.

It had taken a week of berating himself for fleeing his mother and mourning her passing to come to his senses. Leaving his bride, the woman who’d captured his heart and shown him nothing but kindness, compassion, and gentleness, was a far worse offense than escaping a woman hell-bent on finding him a bride of her choice.

Fate or providence or perhaps God Almighty had brought Devin Trinity. A far better wife than he could’ve imagined and certainly beyond anything he deserved.

His cruel words haunted him—bludgeoned him.

Lord, how they must’ve eviscerated Trinity.

You’re everything my mother would’ve despised in a bride for me.

God above, that utterance had been inexcusable, was deserving of purgatory, but the rest—

That is precisely why I picked you.

Recalling Trinity’s stricken expression gutted Devin. She had done nothing to deserve his cruelty. Like a wounded animal, he’d lashed out when she only tried to comfort him.

Another week of drowning his sorrows—a first for him—and trying unsuccessfully to blot the memory of that night from his mind had passed.

Two things brought him to his senses.

The first was an unsettling dream, so real that he expected to see his parents in a lush garden when he awoke. His mother and father—holding hands, laughing, and appearing happier than he could ever remember them being—strolled a magnificent garden path.

They paused, staring at him with such intensity that his nape hair raised even now.

“You have made a terrible mistake, Devin,” Father said. “One you’ll regret the rest of your life.”

“Hurry back to her, son.” Mother smiled up at Father, their love surreal. “Before it is too late.”

The second, a terse letter from Shillingford, launched Devin from his chair and onto a horse within half an hour.