Brilliana stood in her aunt’s drawing room, staring down at the sealed note a liveried footboy had been ordered to put directly into her hand. Fortunately, that was easy, since Aunt Agatha had been taken with a horrible headache and had been resting in her bedchamber since before Brilliana’s return. Thank heaven. She hadn’t been looking forward to explaining why she’d gone to see Papa.

Now she had something else to deal with. And this dratted note had better not be from Niall, or she’d throw it in the fire.

But it wasn’t; it was from his cursed friend, Lord Fulkham. Apparently Niall had wasted no time in asking the man to intercede.

She glanced at the waiting footboy, who was dressed in a livery unfamiliar to her, probably the baron’s. She’d hoped to have more time to consider what to say to his lordship. Now that the full heat of her anger at Niall had dimmed, she wasn’t as sure of her position.

She was still furious at him for calling her an adventuress, but Niall’s reaction to her remarks about his mistress put everything in a new light. Because his father had been relatively kind, she’d believed him when he’d told her of Niall’s mistress. Had she been too hasty, perhaps? Her accusations had clearly shocked Niall.

It was true he’d once been a spy and was clearly good at lying when necessary, so perhaps he was equally good at hiding his feelings. But somehow she thought there was more to it than that. He’d seemed genuinely horrified by her claim—she’d seen it in his eyes.

And surely her instincts about him hadn’t been as bad as all that back then, had they? Although she’d seen evidence of the rogue in him, she’d also truly believed him when he’d claimed to love her. What if that had been the real Niall after all?

She sighed. And what if it had not?

“Mrs. Trevor?” the footboy prodded. “Do you have an answer for the master? I’m either to bring you with me to the park or carry back a response.”

Might as well get this discussion over with. Perhaps Lord Fulkham knew the truth about the duel. If he did he might not tell her, but even a lack of response would tell her something.

“Let’s go,” she told the footboy.

With a nod, he preceded her to the door.

On the way out, she told her aunt’s footman that she was going for a stroll in the park. He wouldn’t find that unusual since she walked there often, and today it was lovely, with the sun setting over the houses in shades of vermilion, lavender, and citron, the vivid emerald-green plane trees standing in stark contrast below.

Perhaps when she was done with Lord Fulkham, she would return to the house for her watercolor box and attempt to capture all that beauty. The prospect of that calmed her nerves—until she entered the gates of the private park and caught sight of a gentleman dressed in evening attire with his back to her. Then her stomach knotted once again.

Because the man had sun-kissed hair and a familiar build and—

“Here she is, my lord,” the footboy said.

“Thank you, Pip. That will be all.”

Curse Niall to the devil. Pip was his servant, clearly.

As the lad disappeared out the gate and Niall faced her, her nervousness twisted into pique. “I should have known. I suppose you wrote that note.”

“No.” Niall stalked toward her. “Fulkham wrote it at my behest.”

“Of course.” Bitterness sharpened her tone. “He doesn’t want to lose my help, so he sent his lackey to argue on his behalf.”

At the word lackey, Niall gave a faint smile, which made her turn on her heel to head back to the gate. “Don’t go, Bree,” he called after her. “I’ve come to apologize.”

She slanted a suspicious glance back at him. “Because Lord Fulkham requires it.”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

That he could be so flippant about their earlier argument really sparked her temper. Without another word, she marched for the gate.

“I’ve learned what caused the rift with your father!” he cried behind her.

As her heart dropped, she paused with her hand on the latch. “Have you?” she said shakily. Oh, Lord, what had he heard? Because if he’d heard the truth . . .

He came up beside her and turned her toward him. “Although I don’t know all the details, I learned enough to piece things together. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you married Reynold Trevor to keep your father and mother out of debt, didn’t you?”

His pitying expression was almost as awful as his earlier insults about her being an adventuress. Feeling suddenly small and defenseless, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I suppose Fulkham told you all about it. Lord only knows how he found out.”

“He’s a spymaster. He hears things . . . like the fact that you only agreed to marry the man after your father lost a great deal of money to Trevor’s father. So I could only think—”

“I know exactly what you think.” Her throat tightened until it felt raw. “That I was forced into it. That I’m some . . . some pathetic female who couldn’t see her way out of a marriage she didn’t want.” She lifted her chin. “But that’s not true. I went into it knowing exactly what I was getting into. So if you intend to stand there feeling sorry for me—”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, so fiercely that someone passing by on the street cast them a curious glance. With a low curse, he drew her deep into a secluded part of the garden. “But you should have told me.”

“I did! At least, I tried to.” Her emotions had veered so wildly all day that she could no longer resist the tears burning her eyes. Brushing away the few that leaked out, she said, “I put it all in the l-letter that you’re sure I never wr-wrote—”

Tugging her into his arms, he held her close. “Shh, shh, sweeting. Forget everything I said in a temper. I’m an arse. I admit it.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, trying not to sniffle. She hated crying in front of him, especially after this afternoon.

“Tell me about Trevor,” he said in a voice infinitely kind. “Please?”

It was the “please” that did her in. “What do you . . . want to know?” she muttered into his shirt.

He rubbed her back. “Fulkham said he courted you for weeks.” A fractured breath escaped him. “So . . . you did care about him?”

“Of course I cared about him. He was my husband. I had his child.”

His arms went slack. “So you were in love with him.”

Oh, how she wanted to say that she had been. But even if he wouldn’t be truthful with her, she couldn’t lie to him. Not anymore. “I didn’t say that.”

Niall drew back to fix her with a hard look. “So you never loved him.”

“He . . . he was my friend. And he did love me, poor man. He actually proposed marriage twice. The first time was a month after you left. I refused him as gently as I could. I was still hoping that once Mama had . . . passed on, I could be with you.” Her voice hardened. “I hadn’t yet heard the rumors about your fighting over a woman.”

“They were rumors, Bree, nothing more,” he said hoarsely, dragging her close again. “As I told you years ago, the truth was . . . is complicated.”

Fighting to ignore her desire to believe him, she pushed free of his embrace. “Your father didn’t seem to think so.”

Pain slashed across his face. “My father—right.” He thrust his hands into his greatcoat pockets. “Let’s assume for the moment that I’m telling the truth about not having a mistress, and that you’re telling the truth about what my father said. Why did you believe him?”

“He was your father. Why wouldn’t I?”

He raked his hand through his hair. “Because he might have had another motive for blackening my reputation? You may recall I was initially reluctant to introduce you.”

“Yes.” She stared him down. “Because you never really intended to marry me. Admit it: You were ashamed of me because I was not of your station.”

Anger flared in his eyes before he banked it. “I was never ashamed of you.”

“You didn’t even introduce me to your sister or your mother—”

“I didn’t want to burden my sister with my secrets, and my mother is the most indiscreet person in the world—as you ought to know, having met her. She would have told my father at once.”

“Which would have ruined everything,” she said sarcastically.

“It would have indeed, if he’d disapproved of the match and cut me off financially. And back then I did worry that he might, given that your father—”

“Was a wastrel,” she said. “Yes, I know. But your father wasn’t haughty. He didn’t seem to look down on me. Indeed, he was kind, even pitying. He seemed to feel sorry for me that I didn’t know your true character.”

“It was my character once,” he said unsteadily, his eyes burning into hers. “But not after I met you. Then I wanted to have you—and only you—for my own.” His voice hardened. “I made that very clear to him before I left for the Continent. He swore to me that if you came to him, he would help you.”

She fought to breathe. “You’re saying I’m lying about what he told me.”

“I’m saying . . .” He released a shuddering breath. “Perhaps you misunderstood him. Perhaps—”

“I did not misunderstand him!” she cried. “Do you know what it meant to me to hear that you . . . had been deceiving me all along? My world collapsed. I walked around in a state of shock, knowing you were lost to me forever. Your father had no interest in helping me, and Captain Trevor had given Papa only two choices.”

She gulped down air. “Either I accepted Reynold’s hand in marriage, in which case Captain Trevor would forgive Papa’s entire debt. Or I refused it, and our family, including my sick mother, would be carted off to debtors’ prison.”

Horror suffused Niall’s features. “God, Bree, the debt was as bad as all that?”

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “Father never could resist high stakes, drat him.”

Niall paced before her, as if trying to make sense of what she was saying. Then he halted to look at her. “Did you tell my father this?”

“Of course not. And have him think me some sort of adventuress who was after his son’s money?” When he winced to have his words thrown back at him, she went on hastily, “I did have my pride, especially after he told me about your . . . your paramour.”

“Bree, there was no—”

“Anyway,” she went on, unable to hear his protest again, “I’d pinned my hopes on your saving me somehow, perhaps helping to pay off the debt . . . anything that might delay the inevitable. But after your father refused to send the letter, saying that you weren’t the sort of man to honor your promises, I . . . died inside. I agreed to marry Reynold, telling myself that I would grow to love him, that he was a nice man, that it was a good thing he was not you.”

She clasped one fist to her chest. “But my heart refused to believe it. It wanted you.” She glared at him. “I fought hard and long to cut you out of my stupid heart. I’ve spent the last several years doing so, and now you have the nerve to come here and—”

“What do you think I was doing all that time, damn it?” He stepped close to her. “The announcement of your marriage, which Father dutifully sent to me, ended my hopes for us. That was the real reason I went to work for Fulkham—to forget. To put you out of my mind. And my heart.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Did you?”

She glanced away. “Will you believe me if I say I did?”

“No.” He seized her hands. “Because you don’t kiss like a woman who doesn’t care anymore. You don’t look at me like a woman who doesn’t care anymore.”

Drat the man for always seeing through her defenses. “That’s why I didn’t tell you about my marriage! Because I knew if you heard the truth, you would use it to . . . to try to get me back into your bed. You already assume, as all men do, that a widow is eternally lonely for a man, so she would swallow any amount of pride to—”

He cut her off with a kiss. And it was every bit as glorious as the last one, long and ardent and oh so tempting.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she drew back to whisper.

His eyes smoldered like wood about to erupt into flames. “Reminding us both of what we’ve tried and failed to forget.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to be reminded,” she said desperately.

He merely gave her that devilish smile that always ignited her blood, then sealed his mouth to hers once more. He didn’t have to call her a liar or point out her weakness. Her heedless responses to his persistent kisses did that for him.

No matter how much her mind cautioned her against giving in, her heart wanted so badly to remember, and it was her heart that had her rising to meet the wild, ravening caress of his mouth, which took hers so thoroughly that she felt the impact to her soul.

With darkness falling softly around them, she rose up on tiptoe to loop her arms about his neck. He moaned deep in his throat before dragging her to him. His hands flattened her against his body possessively, and she felt every inch of his hard muscle—and his hard arousal—through his clothing.

Heat roared up from her belly, searing away her objections and fears. Oh, unfair. He knew precisely how to make her remember.

Except that now he was making new memories, sweeping her body with his fingers as if to memorize her curves . . . or perhaps just mark them for his own. And the hunger of those hands made her want to touch him, too, to slide her fingers inside his tailcoat and up beneath his waistcoat to where only a thin linen shirt separated his flesh from hers.

“Damn it, Bree,” he whispered, “you don’t know how I’ve missed this—being with you, touching you, kissing you.”

Next thing she knew, he was walking her backward until she bumped up against a plane tree. Then his mouth was on hers again and his hands fumbling with her shawl, and she was reveling in every moment. His body covered hers as he drank of her mouth and she drank of his.

Niall’s eyes gleamed in the dark. “I want to touch you.” He removed her fichu, then tugged her clothing down to expose one breast. “Here.”

“Yes . . . please . . .” she breathed, hardly conscious of what she said.

Need flaring in his face, he covered her breast with his large hand, and started caressing it, kneading it, thumbing the nipple to a fine point that shot sensation down to her toes.

Goodness gracious, that felt amazing. She must be out of her mind. Anyone could happen into this corner of the garden, evening or no. And if they found her and Niall doing this . . .

What kind of wanton creature was she, to allow such madness?

The kind who’d once dreamed of doing this with him in their marital bed.

“Do you like my hands on you, my beautiful rose?” he asked.

“Mmm,” she managed. “Delicious.”

He brushed kisses over her cheeks, her eyelids, her temples. “I love how you blossom beneath my touch.”

She’d never guessed this could feel so wonderful. It had never been like this with Reynold, her rather formal, correct husband, who’d made love to her in the dark with furtive efficiency.

There was nothing furtive about Niall’s caresses, and certainly nothing efficient. They were luxuriously blatant, driving her into more of a frenzy by the moment.

“I’ve waited years for this,” he said hoarsely. He kissed his way down her breast. “I want to taste you.”

“Oh yes,” she breathed, and buried her hands in his hair to urge him down to her bosom.

That was all it took to have him seizing her breast in his mouth, laving and sucking and turning her mind to mush. Every part of her felt liquid and hot, boiling beneath his avid attentions.

As he teased her nipple with teeth and tongue, she moaned and pressed against him, wanting more and more. With a triumphant groan, he dragged up her skirts so he could reach beneath them and between her legs to the part of her aching for him, already drenched for him.

Part of her was shocked by that sudden intimacy. Part of her was fascinated.

And the latter part was winning. “We probably . . . shouldn’t do this,” she said feebly. “Someone might . . . stumble across us.”

“No one’s coming in here, Bree,” he choked out against her breast. “Pip is standing guard outside the gate.”

That really did shock her. “Niall!” She pulled his head back from her breast. “Did you plan this?”

His eyes glittered at her. “I planned a private discussion with you. This is an . . . unexpected reward for managing it.”

Reward? The audacity of the man! “You deserve no rewards, you scoun—”

He cut her off with a kiss so thorough that her argument melted away, and she gave herself into his hands. Oh, how magical they were! One took over fondling her damp breast, while his other continued to delve through her curls until he found her slick flesh.

Then he teased and rubbed her down there like the reckless rogue he was.

“You’re so warm for me, sweeting,” he whispered against her lips. “And so damned wet, it’s hard for me to bear.”

Feeling wild and shameless, she cupped his arousal through his trousers. “Yes, I can see how hard it is.”

He jerked back to gape at her. “You’re not the Bree I used to know.”

Because he brought out the wanton in her. Lord only knew why.

She felt heat rise in her cheeks. “Does that . . . bother you?”

“Are you out of your mind? Not one whit.” With a knowing look, he thrust his hips against her hand. “Show me what you’ve learned while I was gone.”

Not this, to be sure. Reynold had never encouraged her to explore him, so doing such . . . wicked things felt enormously freeing. Because she’d been curious. She’d always wanted to feel and stroke and explore, but Reynold had seemed disapproving of that idea.

Niall was downright eager for it. He swiftly unfastened his trousers and drawers so he could draw her hand inside, then returned to making her insane with his own hands.

So they explored together, finding each other’s most sensitive spots, relishing each other’s soft responses.

And hard responses, too, for the more she caressed him, the firmer and thicker he grew, until his member was sticking out of his trousers like a hound sniffing out its pleasure.

“I want to be inside you, sweeting,” he growled against her throat, which he’d just been tonguing. “Now. I beg you.”

“You’re . . . already . . . inside me,” she teased.

“Don’t be coy. You know what I mean.”

She did. And she wanted him inside her, too. Which was odd, since she’d never really enjoyed the act with her husband, so she doubted she would enjoy it with Niall, but . . .

He cupped her face in his hands. “Do you want me or not, my wanton wench?”

No one had ever called her a wench. Or a wanton. She rather liked it. It fed her urge to rebel, to let him take her right here against the tree.

“Because if you don’t want me—” he went on.

“I do.” When an expression of pure raw hunger filled his face, she added, more softly, “I’ve always wanted you.”

“No more than I wanted you.”

Catching her legs behind her knees, he dragged them up to encircle his hips, so he could slide inside her.

She grabbed his shoulders. My word. It was so . . . intrusive. Rigid. Good. It felt exquisite, even though it had been over a year since she’d done this. She knew from experience that the feeling wouldn’t last and the exercise of lovemaking would grow tedious, but for now, this was enough.

“God, you’re tight as a virgin,” he ground out.

He drove into her up to the hilt, and she gasped. She didn’t feel like a virgin. There was no pain, no awkwardness. It even seemed natural to let Niall take her up against a tree, probably because she had loved him once.

But not anymore. She stifled the very thought. She couldn’t let herself be that foolish again. It always hurt too much when it was over.

“All right?” he asked.

The question took her by surprise, especially since she could feel the strain in his muscles as he held her in place. In her experience, men didn’t care whether the woman was . . . comfortable. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said hoarsely. “Because I couldn’t let go of you now if my life depended on it.”

She barely had time to be thrilled by that before he was kissing her again, fondling her again, thrusting into her with hard bursts of energy that should have hurt or chafed her.

But the more he drove into her, the more heated she grew. Then he shifted her so he was pounding her in an unfamiliar way, rousing her in an unusual manner. It made her hot and hungry and eager for the next thundering thrust.

“God, Bree,” he rasped, “you enslave me.”

“Good,” she said saucily. “Someone . . . should.”

“Watch it, wench. Or I’ll enslave you.”

He already had. With every lunge inside her, he heightened her need, tightening the chains that held her to him and wrapping her in the wild heat that was Niall in full arousal.

He might as well have put shackles on the arms looped about his neck, for she couldn’t let go of him. And the more he drove into her, the more enslaved she felt. Like some harem girl, she rode out her pleasure with her strong, commanding sheik, and every inch of her felt joined to him, part of him . . . needing him.

Then her blood began to rise and her heart to hammer, and she felt herself reaching for an elusive something she’d never felt before. Unable to help herself, she shimmied and arched against him.

“Yes, sweeting,” he whispered. “That’s it. Come for me. Come with me.”

In her feverish state, she wondered fleetingly where he wanted her to go, but then he was thrusting and thundering and she was reaching, reaching up and up . . . and suddenly, as if shooting over a hill into the unknown, she caught the stars she was reaching for.

Then he drove deep and groaned her name against her lips, and the stars exploded all over her, inside her, around her . . . setting her adrift in a sea of pleasure. With him.