Page 19 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
For the picnic, Mr. Cransley was recruited tohold a hamper, and Baron Hunsdon carried two bottles of wine. The bottles kept slipping in his grip, but he insisted he could manage the task. In short order, they set off on their journey.
As large as the house and its grounds were, they quickly gave way to much more uncultivated terrain. The ground was indeed rocky, rising up in low, craggy mountains that loomed over the beaches like slumbering giants awaiting someone to sail in and wake them. There were a few stands of rather scrubby rowan trees, but overall, the landscape was windswept and austere. She appreciated the land’s refusal to adhere to conventional ideas of lush beauty. It seemed to take pride in the fact that it wasn’t a soft or coddling kind of place—not unlike Dom’s refusal to fully force himself into the role of gentleman.
They clambered over swells of rock, walking in a single file with Mr. Longbridge in the lead. Most of the men kept toward the front, though Kieran walked with Celeste, and Willa and Miss Steele followed soon after them.
Willa glanced at Dom, striding nearby. “You needn’t shorten your pace on my account.”
“Who says I am?” he asked casually as he clambered over a stony outcropping. The movement made the fabric of his breeches pull across his broad thigh muscles, but of course that didn’t interest her in the slightest. If she looked, it was only as someone who was interested in anatomy. Well—she wascurrentlyintrigued by anatomy, but a person could always shift their interests at any time in their lives.
“You’re hovering,” she noted. “Keeping close in case I or Miss Steele should need your manly assistance?” She gripped the rocks of the outcropping and pulled herself up.
“Miss Steele seems content on her own,” he answered. “And you’ve no need of anyone’s help, manly or otherwise.”
Even so, he lingered atop the rock formation, very much as if he was waiting to see if she needed his help. Determined to climb without his aid, she hauled herself to the top of the grass-covered boulder to stand beside him.
Miss Steele paused at the bottom of the outcropping. She blew out a breath and shook her head. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather have a hot bath and a cup of tea. Enjoy the rest of your trek.”
With that, Miss Steele turned and headed back to the house, which now appeared to be a small fairy-sized dwelling far below.
“All that remain are us hearty souls,” Willa noted as she watched Miss Steele’s figure retreating. “Unless you also want to return.”
It was partly a dare, partly a question, and she wasn’t certain which answer she wanted to hear.
“I’m a city bloke, it’s true, but it’s not often I get the chance to see something like this.” He waved toward the landscape unrolling all around them. “Wasting it would be a bloody shame.”
It was a little aggravating that she exhaled in relief at his answer.
“And I used to think—” He pressed his lips together.
“What did you used to think?” she asked with a frown.
“That this was the sort of thing I wanted to do with you when we were courting.” The words came out of him gruffly, as if he was trying to keep them inside. “Instead of all the pretty promenades and tea shops and tame little scenes we used to visit, we could’ve gone to faraway places, maybe a little rough and wild, where it could’ve been just us.”
“I would’ve liked that,” she said softly. Itdidsound wonderful, away from judgment and preconceived ideas as to who she was supposed to be. Whotheywere supposed to be.
He tilted his head to one side. “That so, princess? You always brightened whenever we’d run into your friends.”
“Not always,” she admitted. “Sometimes, yes, it was gratifying to scandalize the ton. To be outrageous.”
She’d earned a reputation as a hoyden, a reputation she’d purposefully cultivated. It was either that, or be one of those girls browbeaten into docility, which she would never tolerate.
“The way you liked to show me off to your aristo set, princess?” He studied her, his gaze perceptive. “Your big rough dockworker—not one of thosereedy, thin-blooded nobs the other ladies nabbed for husbands.”
She opened her mouth to deny this. Then closed it again. Because it shamed her to admit it, yet shehadreveled in the fact that the man she’d chosen to be her husband was exactly the opposite of what Society—and her parents—had demanded of her.
“The way you liked having a princess—well, an earl’s daughter—on your arm?”
His lips curled. “Suppose we both fancied shocking everyone. Making ’em clutch their pearls.”
“And clutch their diamonds and coral beads and...”
They gazed at each other for a long time, the wind whipping around them, the craggy island spreading out in all directions. Awareness spread through her belly and body as all she saw at that moment was Dom, and he looked only at her.
Before, their conversations had been light, teasing, never with this core of honesty. It shook her. It didn’t feel good to know that to him, she had represented an idea rather than him entirely wanting her as a person. But then, she’d done the same thing to him. Her chest throbbed as she confronted hard truths about him, and herself.
And yet... something about it feltright. That they could be truthful with each other in this way, and admit that they hadn’t been exactly who they had pretended to be. As if layers fell away, revealing a precious candor beneath.
“Catch up, you two,” Mr. Longbridge called back. “Or else we’ll eat your portion of the picnic, and you’ll have to forage for your luncheon.”
