Page 69 of The Pleasures of Passion
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 calledqueso manchegothat 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 werenoother 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 woundedher, 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 unlikehim,that I found it harder to be with him.”
And once Reynold realized she couldn’t be as adoring ofhimas 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 youwantedto 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.”
