The Pleasures of Passion: Sinful Suitors 4

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Brilliana gaped at her. “Aunt Agatha! Don’t tell him that. You mustn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth. My nephew always drowned his sorrows in spirits. I never understood it. What did he have to be sorrowful about? He had a wife he adored, an estate of some consequence, and a son and heir. Yet he couldn’t be content.”

  The comment sliced through Brilliana, because she knew why her husband hadn’t been content. He’d never gained her love, and at the end he’d realized he never would. Even worse, he’d found out whom to blame for her damaged heart.

  “Reynold simply wasn’t like other men, that’s all.” Brilliana gestured to the pocket watch in Niall’s hand. “He certainly would never have carried one of those.”

  Niall’s eyes narrowed on her, but before he could retort, Aunt Agatha said, “Of course not. My nephew was rather stodgy, my dear. Everyone knew that.”

  Brilliana covered Silas’s ears. “Don’t say things like that in front of his son.”

  The woman sniffed. “Silas doesn’t know his father from a peddler. And if Reynold had wanted to be known as anything else, he should have stayed around to raise the boy. For that matter, if he’d wanted to be known as a man of character, he shouldn’t have tried to force a woman into wedding him.”

  Swallowing hard, Brilliana looked out the carriage window. She could feel Niall’s gaze searching her, and she just couldn’t meet it.

  “So he really did buy Bree’s hand in marriage,” Niall said. “In exchange for his father discharging Sir Oswald’s debt.”

  “He did.” Her aunt sighed. “Though apparently he had to convince his father to agree.”

  The words caught Brilliana off guard. She swung around to stare at her aunt, her blood thundering in her ears. “What do you mean?”

  “Captain Mace Trevor never cared about anything but money, my dear.” Compassion mingled with guilt in her features. “I suppose I should have told you before. I didn’t want to muck around with your relationship to my nephew, but the truth is that Reynold was the one to suggest that the debt be repaid by a marriage between you two.”

  That took Brilliana entirely by surprise. She’d known that Reynold was a bit obsessive about her, but he’d characterized their arranged marriage as something that had been cooked up by their fathers because of his interest in her and the gambling debt. According to him, he’d merely gone along with what their fathers proposed.

  Apparently that had been a lie. As had so many other things in their marriage.

  “Reynold was nothing if not resourceful,” Brilliana said bitterly. “He tended to want his own way in everything.”

  “Yes, well, that’s a characteristic of men, too, my dear,” her aunt said.

  “Not all men,” Niall gritted out.

  He said that a great deal. As if he were different. As if he would never betray her the way her husband had apparently betrayed her.

  Hah! She knew better. “And you never want your own way,” Brilliana said sarcastically. “You’re perfectly happy to go along with whatever I want.”

  He smiled. “As long as what you want includes marriage to me, yes.”

  She told herself the words were merely part of their subterfuge, but the look in his eyes said otherwise. Unfortunately, his eyes lied.

  Or did they? No matter how much she told herself that they did, she wanted to believe they didn’t.

  “My point is,” Aunt Agatha broke in, “my dear niece has already had a husband who regarded her as nothing more than a beauty to show off to his friends and a means to produce his heir. She does not need another.”

  Niall tore his gaze from Brilliana. “And she won’t get one. Because while I admire her beauty, I also regard her as a woman of intelligence, capable of great things. Why do you think I want her to produce my heir? Because any child would be lucky to have her as a mother.”

  Lord, but the man did know how to make a woman swoon.

  He glanced out the window. “And speaking of that, we’ve reached the estate that my heir will inherit. Lady Pensworth, I do hope you’ll be willing to keep an eye on young Silas this afternoon. Once I’m done with my business, I’ve promised Bree a tour of Margrave Manor, and I don’t imagine it’s something that Silas would enjoy.”

  Aunt Agatha regarded him steadily. “I quite agree.”

  And just like that, Niall managed to get his own way yet again.

  Except that this time Brilliana could not resent him for it.

  Thirteen

  As it turned out, Niall’s business only took as long as it took for Brilliana and Aunt Agatha to eat. Though he was still waiting to hear from an important associate, he told her he’d take her around his estate until word came that the man was available.

  So now the two of them were surveying his property. Brilliana was in awe. The closest she’d ever been to Niall’s estate had been when she’d attended the house party at Stoke Towers next door, and she hadn’t actually seen it. She’d never imagined it could be so big.

  Niall pulled up his gig and pointed to a large whitewashed building. “This is our dairy. We produce our own cheese from our own milk.”

  She sighed. “How I wish we could do the same. But we closed our dairy because we had to sell the cows to keep the estate afloat after Reynold’s death.”

  “That’s a damned shame,” he said.

  Ignoring the pity in his voice, she said, “We do have sheep, however, so we can sell our wool. Just no cheese.”

  “Actually, you can make cheese from sheep’s milk, too. The English don’t do it much, but it’s common on the Continent. There’s a delicious one called queso manchego that I ate often in Spain.”

  The hint of wistfulness in his voice arrested her. “You sound as if you miss being on the Continent.”

  “Not entirely. I don’t miss Portugal.” Something dark glittered in his eyes before he masked it. “But I do occasionally miss Spain. England will always be my home, and I’m glad to be back, but I miss the pleasant days and nights of summer in Corunna. It’s rarely bone-chillingly cold, as it is here in winter. And I miss the spicy food, not to mention the friendly people.”

  “And the pretty women?” she asked, unable to help herself. That ridiculous watch had reminded her that he was a rogue at heart.

  As if hearing the jealousy in her voice, he turned to face her on the seat. “Trust me, there wasn’t a single woman in Spain or Portugal who held a candle to you. And no, I didn’t spend my years there going from bed to bed, as you seem to have assumed.”

  “I know I have no right to complain about whom you might have bedded while on the Continent. I shared Reynold’s bed for years, after all, but—”

  “I had little time for women, Bree.” His expression hardened. “I was too busy keeping up with Fulkham’s tasks and trying not to get myself killed. And there were no other women until you married another man.”

  His jaw tightened. “I won’t lie to you—I didn’t handle that well, especially at first. So I tried to prove to myself that I was still the dashing fellow I believed myself to be.” He stared off into the distance resolutely. “That I didn’t care about being tossed aside.”

  For the first time, she realized how much her marriage so soon after his departure must have wounded him. And despite the fact that his admission to having bedded other women wounded her, she could hardly chide him for it. She’d married another man, and he’d known about it the entire time he was abroad. How could she blame him for finding solace where he could?

  He slanted a glance at her. “Admit it, you were probably feeling much the same as I—it was why you accepted Trevor’s courtship. You could, after all, have rebuffed him so entirely that he wouldn’t have bothered you anymore.”

  “I did rebuff him at first, by not accepting his proposal of marriage.”

  “Yes, but you let him continue to court you, didn’t you? So some part of you must have enjoyed being the center of his attention.”

  She examined
that idea and realized there was some truth to it. Reynold had been so very adoring of her—or at least of her looks, though she hadn’t realized how shallow his interest was at the time. She’d ignored his attentions when she’d been focused on waiting for Niall’s return, but after she’d begun hearing the rumors, her confidence had faltered.

  “Yes, I suppose I did enjoy it a bit, especially after your father told me the duel had been fought over a mistress,” she said. “Reynold treated me like a princess, and he was relatively well educated and able to engage in intelligent conversation. Aunt Agatha called him stodgy earlier, and there’s some truth to that, but at that point all I could see was that he wasn’t a rogue.”

  “Like me,” he said tightly.

  “Exactly. He didn’t duel over mysterious females. He didn’t duel at all. He lived a perfectly respectable life.” She shook her head. “It was only after our marriage, when I realized that his respectability had its roots in a contempt for anything creative or unusual or unlike him, that I found it harder to be with him.”

  And once Reynold realized she couldn’t be as adoring of him as he thought she should be, he’d grown even more determined to make her love him.

  “I tried my best to hide my true feelings,” she went on, not sure why she was telling Niall all this. “But I failed. As I said before, subterfuge isn’t my strong suit.”

  “That’s because you, my dear, are a rebel.”

  She drew herself up. “I am not!”

  “Oh yes, you are. A rebel is anyone who cannot help but be true to his or her own nature, no matter what society tells them.”

  When he reached over and rubbed her thigh through her skirts, she couldn’t keep her breath from quickening or her heart from beating faster.

  As if he could hear her reaction, he chuckled, then released her. “Consider this.” He began ticking things off on his fingers. “One, you used to meet me in secret—because you wanted to and because you liked me, rogue or no. Two, you did your best to avoid marriage to Trevor, and three, when that didn’t work, you refused to love him.”

  “All right, I suppose I was a bit of a rebel in my marriage.”

  “Not just in your marriage. Even when I first knew you, you aspired to draw things for money, when society would say you should only draw them for your own pleasure, like the rest of the ladies.” His eyes gleamed at her. “And today, when confronted with a naughty watch, you didn’t throw it out the window. Instead you critiqued the workmanship. You must confess that at heart, you’re as much a rebel as I.”

  “That’s nonsense,” she said with a sniff, annoyed that he knew her so well. “We should go on. Silas is napping now, but once he gets up—”

  “Whatever you wish,” he said, laughter lurking in his face as he picked up the reins. “So tell me, what would you like to see next, my Lady Rebel?”

  She ignored his teasing. “Show me everything. Or as much as you can before Silas wakes up and begins trying Aunt Agatha’s patience.”

  For the next hour, he showed off his estate with obvious pride. He took her by a well-stocked conservatory, a stable full of prime horseflesh, a working tannery, and several pretty little tenant cottages.

  How she wished Camden Hall could be so extensive and well run. No one who’d visited Margrave Manor would believe Fulkham’s manufactured gossip about Niall’s needing money, so it was a good thing Niall didn’t entertain.

  Yet, anyway. That would surely change once she married him.

  She caught herself. If she married him. Lord, she had to watch that. If she let something like that slip in front of him, he would be relentless in his pursuit, and she needed time and space to think.

  They moved on to the fields. He told her about the equipment he’d bought to increase his barley production, then took her to where the corn was being harvested.

  He fairly strutted around the fields. Clearly, he was rather proud of his crops.

  And she couldn’t blame him. “What are your yields?” she asked.

  When he rattled them off, she gazed at him in awe. “From what I understand, that is very impressive.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” he said dryly. “I’m only a rogue when you’re around. The rest of the time, I try to be a responsible landowner.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Who carries a naughty watch.”

  He smirked at her. “As I said, a man needs a bit of fun.” With a quick glance at the nearby workers, he smoothed his hand down her backside.

  “Don’t do that here,” she whispered.

  “Here is the perfect place for it. All this fertility is in the air, giving rise to thoughts of plowing and planting and—”

  “Stop that,” she said, struggling not to laugh. He was such a . . . man. Moving away, she strolled along the edge of the fields. “And you still haven’t explained how you got such grand yields. You’ve only been back in England a month. How did you manage it?”

  “The planting was overseen by Warren, who managed Margrave Manor in my absence. But while he did his best, he had his own properties to run. So in trying to bring the estate up to snuff, I’ve instituted some new harvesting methods, which have helped to improve our yields a bit.” He led her away from the fields. “I’ve got plans to do much more. Margrave Manor has great potential. As, I imagine, does Camden Hall.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right.”

  They walked to the top of a hill, and she halted as the vista spread out before her took her breath away. “Are those apple orchards?”

  “And pear.” He smiled. “We make our own cider and jam.”

  “This would be a perfect spot for drawing, with the fields behind and the orchards below. And look, we can even see the stream that borders your property! Not to mention the folly over at Stoke Towers. So many subjects to sketch!”

  His eyes gleamed at her. “You can come here whenever you like. We can have picnics. Silas can slide down the hill, as boys like to do—”

  “Oh, he’s much too young for that.”

  “Now, perhaps, but in a few years . . .”

  The words hung in the air between them, a promise of their future together. Oh, Lord, she was already thinking of them as married. She shouldn’t encourage him. And yet . . .

  “Could we see the orchard?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  With a grin, he offered her his arm for descending the path that wound down the hill. She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, trying not to show how the intimacy of that small act was affecting her.

  As they strolled down the path, he asked, “So, what do you grow at Camden Hall?”

  “Flax. That’s what Reynold preferred.”

  “You’re better off with corn. It’s in high demand just now.”

  “Is it?” A sigh escaped her. “I confess to not knowing much about markets and such, though I seem to recall that corn doesn’t grow well in our part of Cheshire.”

  “I can help you find out for certain. And also determine what other crops might be profitable at present.”

  “That would be exceedingly useful. But what about drainage? And where do you get your fertilizer? Oh, and . . .”

  Encouraged by his willingness to teach her, she peppered him with questions about all the things that had perplexed or confused her. He answered each one, appearing to grow more bemused by the moment.

  After she voiced her concern about the feasibility of having a dairy at Camden Hall, he said, “You know more than you let on about estate management.”

  “I don’t know nearly enough. But I’m trying to learn.”

  “You seem to have a clear picture of what your estate needs.”

  “It was hard-won, believe me. After Reynold lost so much at the gaming tables and . . . died, Delia and I couldn’t afford a manager—so it was either sink or swim. And since Reynold had never taught me how to run the place . . .” A lump stuck in her throat. “He would never have explained to me the things you did today. He didn
’t trust me that much.”

  “I doubt it had to do with trust. He probably just thought he should be the one to handle estate matters, so you could take care of other ones. Like raising his son.”

  A harsh laugh boiled out of her. “Yes, he was so concerned about the well-being of his son that he—” She choked back the impulse to tell Niall about the suicide. “It doesn’t matter. Why are you defending him, anyway?”

  “I’m not. I agree with your aunt—he shouldn’t have gambled away so much of Camden Hall, or stumbled off a bridge drunk, leaving you and his sister to handle his property without any training. An estate needs a person at the helm who knows what he—or she—is doing.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. “And you would be fine with having the person at the helm be a woman.”

  “Of course. Warren wasn’t the only one who looked after Margrave Manor, you know. Clarissa had a part in it as well. Did a damned fine job with what she handled, too.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me one whit,” she said stoutly.

  “Me either.” He smiled down at her. “Rather like your late husband, my sister is nothing if not resourceful.”

  “Yes, but Clarissa is the good sort of resourceful. Reynold was the bad sort—he was only canny when it came to his needs.”

  “But clearly not when it came to yours.” He searched her face. “You really didn’t know that the arranged marriage was his idea, did you?”

  “No. You probably think I’m an idiot for it—”

  “I could never think you an idiot. Naïve sometimes, perhaps, but not an idiot.”

  “You may change your mind when you hear that I truly believed he felt as trapped as I, embarrassed to be forced into proposing to the woman who’d already refused him once.” She gazed down at the path. “I don’t know why it has taken me so off guard. In truth, nothing I’ve learned recently about Reynold should surprise me—not his secret machinations, or his losing all that money to Warren’s brother, or—”

  “Warren’s brother!” Niall stopped short on the path. “What the blazes are you talking about?”