Brilliana’s stomach knotted. He was the most impatient fellow she’d ever met.

Sometimes she adored that boldness. And sometimes she wanted to throttle him for it. Because it smacked a bit too much of bullying, and she’d had more than enough of that from Papa.

“I don’t know what I want, don’t you see?” she said. “I’ve never before had the chance to choose.”

“Yes, apparently Trevor couldn’t resist gaining you at the expense of your choice.”

That was certainly a hit direct. And perversely, she felt compelled to defend her late husband. “It wasn’t like that. Reynold loved me. He was upset that his father forced my hand, but he was as trapped as I. If he’d refused to marry me, Papa and Mama would have gone to prison. He couldn’t let that happen. And neither could I.”

Niall snorted. “I gave you the chance to choose all those years ago. You could have chosen me.” He scowled at her. “Instead, you chose your family—your mother.”

“She was ill, and you weren’t. Of course I chose her.”

Apparently that argument held some sway with him, for he let out a frustrated breath. “Damn it, Bree. I hate this.”

“So do I.” She wanted to throw caution to the winds. But the last time she’d done that, she’d ended up with a man who’d fought a duel over another woman. Or so the gossips—and his own father—had said. “Fine. I’ll go with you. We’ll take Aunt Agatha and Silas, and we’ll see what happens.”

It would give her a chance to see how he was with Silas over an extended period of time. And to see if Niall would make a good manager—or help her to be a good manager—of Camden Hall.

To see if he cared about her beyond the bedchamber. So far, he’d said lots of nice things, but nothing about love.

Not that she blamed him. This wasn’t about love for her, either. Because loving Niall was what had landed her in trouble the first time. If she hadn’t fallen so hard for the scoundrel, she might have learned to love Reynold later.

But Niall had spoiled her for any other man. So if she let him court her again, it would merely be because it was practical. She refused to give him her heart only to have it trampled upon again. She’d never survive that twice.

He eyed her warily. “And after our ‘outing,’ you’ll give me your decision about my courting you?”

“Yes.” She supposed she owed him that much. “I promise.”

That seemed to mollify him. “Very well. That sounds fair.” An enigmatic expression crossed his face. “And after our outing, I may be able to . . . help your decision along.”

She assumed he was speaking of using his “wickedness” against her again. “We will have Silas and Aunt Agatha with us. So there will be no wickedness.”

“If you wish,” he said.

That was a noncommittal answer if she’d ever heard one, but it was enough. Because she didn’t want any more seductions. Truly, she didn’t.

You can lie to him, but you can’t lie to yourself.

Oh yes, she could. She’d been doing it for years. “Then I suppose we should go speak with Aunt Agatha.”

His broad smile gave her pause, but she refused to dwell on it. He was going to teach her how to manage an estate. And perhaps from that she could deduce his true character. That was all that mattered.

Or so she told herself.

An hour later they were in his carriage, headed for Margrave Manor. It was just her and Aunt Agatha and Silas. Brilliana had left Nurse behind. But not because of what Niall had said about letting Aunt Agatha be occupied with looking after Silas, and thus unable to chaperone them. Certainly not.

Liar.

“So, Lord Margrave,” Aunt Agatha said. “I understand that you’ve been suffering some financial difficulties at Margrave Manor since your return.”

“What?” Brilliana exclaimed.

When he lifted an eyebrow at her, she belatedly remembered what the gossips were supposed to be spreading around. Drat it, this subterfuge of Lord Fulkham’s grew more onerous by the day.

“That’s what I’ve heard in town,” Aunt Agatha said.

Niall flashed the woman a bland smile. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“I should hope not.” Aunt Agatha stared him down. “I wouldn’t wish to see my niece forced to deal with an estate mired in debt when she already has a struggling estate of her own.”

Brilliana choked back a laugh. Niall was clearly going to regret having invited Aunt Agatha along.

“Surely it’s not ‘of her own,’ ” Niall said. “Doesn’t it belong to young Silas?”

Hearing his name mentioned, Silas, who’d been bouncing happily up and down on the seat beside Niall, crawled onto his lap, then sat staring up at the earl with rank curiosity.

The expression on Niall’s face was priceless. It was obvious he’d never had to deal with a small child, for he shot her a helpless glance, as if to say, What the devil do I do with him?

“Silas, come here,” she said.

Silas simply cocked his head and continued to regard Niall with interest. “Jack.” He held out his hand. “Jack. Jack.”

“I’m sorry, lad,” Niall said. “But my name isn’t Jack. It’s . . . er . . . Margrave.”

Brilliana and Aunt Agatha burst into laughter, which elicited a scowl from Niall.

“That’s what he calls his jack-in-the-box,” Brilliana explained. “He remembers that you helped him with it, so he thinks you can get it for him.”

“Ah,” Niall said. “Sorry, lad, no Jacks here.”

“I told you we should have brought it along,” Aunt Agatha said. “The lad is very attached to it.”

“Literally,” Brilliana said. “And I didn’t want to deal with his catching his fingers in it all the time.”

“What about this, lad?” Niall pulled out his pocket watch. “It makes music just like your ‘Jack.’ ”

He turned it over to wind it, then pushed a button. As a familiar tune from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik began to play, Silas clapped his hands. His pleasure was so infectious, even Niall smiled.

When the song ran out, Silas grabbed the watch, scrambled off Niall’s lap, and brought it to Brilliana. “Jack,” he said. “Jack.”

“Give it here, lad,” Niall said.

“It’s fine—I can do it,” Brilliana said as she wound the music-box portion of the watch and pressed the button. “Looks like ‘Jack’ has become his word for ‘make it go.’ ”

She started to hand the watch back to Niall, but her aunt took it instead. “Is this one of those automaton watches?”

An odd look of alarm crossed Niall’s face, but before he could answer, Aunt Agatha had opened the watch to look at the inside panel. Then she froze.

“What is it?” Brilliana asked.

Aunt Agatha snapped the watch shut and held it out to Niall, her features as stiff as her starched pelerine. “Perhaps you should take this back, sir.”

Brilliana got suspicious when a flush rose over Niall’s features. Snatching the watch from her aunt’s hand, she opened the panel to stare at it. Then she, too, froze as she saw what was inside.

Opposite the exposed inner workings of the watch was a little scene of a naked man standing between the legs of a reclining naked woman and doing that with her in perfect time to the music.

“Oh, good Lord,” she muttered.

She couldn’t take her eyes off it. It was so very awful. The man was freakishly well-endowed, with ballocks the size of oranges and a thing the size of a club. Worse yet, the woman’s breasts were the size of cantaloupes, with badly rendered nipples.

The artist in her rebelled. “Whoever drew this has no sense of anatomy whatsoever.”

Niall’s bark of laughter shook the carriage. “That’s what concerns you about it? The quality of the art?”

“Jack!” Silas cried and tried to take the watch. “Jack!”

She snapped the watch shut and tossed it to Niall. “Oh no, my lad, there will be none of this sort of Jack for you. Not now, not ever.”

Niall only laughed all the harder, while Aunt Agatha muttered, “Good luck, my dear. I daresay Silas will grow up to be as incorrigible as the rest of them.”

As if to prove his great-aunt right, Silas climbed up on the seat next to Niall, crying, “Jack, Jack!”

“Sorry, lad,” Niall choked out. “Your mama says ‘no Jack.’ ” He leaned over to murmur, his eyes twinkling at her, “Not until you’re twelve at least.”

She bristled. “If you think you are going to corrupt my son as early as twelve, Niall Lindsey, you have another think coming! I will throw that thing away first, I swear.”

A strange look crossed his face. “When we marry, sweeting, you can throw away every watch I own. Including this one.”

Oh, dear, she’d as much as said that he would be in her life when Silas turned twelve.

Then he added, rather gleefully, “Although, to be fair, it’s not mine. It belongs to Warren.”

“Of course it does,” she snapped. “The two of you are peas in a pod.”

“Warren asked me to hide it now that he’s married—at least until he can convince Delia that he’s not the rank scoundrel everyone believes she married. If you want it gone, I’ll give it back to him. Or to Edwin, who gave it to Warren when they were both bachelors.”

Now she was truly shocked. She wouldn’t put anything past Delia’s husband, but Clarissa’s? “Lord Blakeborough made this?”

“No, I think he picked it up in some shop. You know how he likes automatons.”

“Well, he ought to have better taste in them. That rendering is horrendous.”

“Not as bad as some,” her aunt put in. “My late husband had a Swiss one. Dreadful artwork. He used to leave it open to shock the maids, until I gave him a piece of my mind.” She polished her spectacles with her handkerchief. “Men are children, my dear. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”

That sobered Niall a bit. “I don’t think there’s any harm in having fun from time to time. For men or for women.”

Brilliana snorted. “I prefer other entertainments, myself.”

“Right.” A sudden twinkle appeared in Niall’s eyes. “Like a stroll in a garden, where you can observe the bark of the plane trees up close—for your sketches.”

The blatant allusion to their activities yesterday was beyond the pale. Infuriating.

She tipped up her chin. “I do enjoy a good stroll—especially a solitary one.”

He flashed her an impish smile. “I should think you’d have had enough of solitary strolls after the past year.”

“Reynold wasn’t much for strolling, anyway,” Aunt Agatha put in. “My nephew preferred to drink.”

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.