Gillian stared at the baroness. “Someone is spreading rumors that Noble and I have had an argument?”
The feathers in the baroness’s elaborately arranged hair bobbed as she nodded. “It is quite the talk, although I beg you to pay no notice to it. It is quite evidently false, as your appearance here tonight has proven.”
Gillian’s hands tightened into fists. How dare anyone spread more rumors about poor Noble! Wasn’t it enough he had to contend with the false ones about his late wife? How on earth could someone know that they’d had an argument that day, and who was spreading the news? “Who is telling you these things, Lady Fielding?”
“Oh, I’ve heard it from here and there. Talk of the Black Earl and his treatment of you is all anyone speaks of now. No one truly expected that he would manage to marry and keep his wife, no matter how”—she eyed Gillian’s bare arms, blue hands, and palm-printed gown—“unorthodox that wife might be.”
“Well, this really takes the cake,” Gillian fumed a few minutes later, when she and Charlotte had escaped Lady Fielding’s presence. “Someone is spreading the most appalling rumors about Noble, trying to create trouble for him, and it’s working! Everyone is blaming Noble for a little argument we had.”
“What was it about?” Charlotte asked following her to the veranda railing.
“That’s the problem, I don’t know!” Gillian slapped her hand down on the stone railing. “One moment he was all warm and loving, and the next moment he was as cold as marble. And now this! Noble leaves me to attend our first ball on my own!”
“You’ve been in England long enough to know how these fashionable marriages work. Your husband goes his way and you are free to go yours. As long as you’re discreet, of course.”
“I’m always discreet,” Gillian muttered, turning around and peering through the crowd, then back across the lawn. “Noble hates crowds; perhaps he’s gone to see the garden. Blast the man, he said he’d be here tonight. Where is he?”
“Don’t be in such a dither, Gilly.” Charlotte took a deep breath, looked toward the doors to the ballroom and, with a muttered prayer that her mother wouldn’t discover her antics, followed her cousin out into the garden. “Oh, look at the lovely cascade! Did you ever see such a sight?”
“Never,” Gillian muttered, giving short shrift to the countess’s fantastic display of colored lights set up to illuminated the water flowing along the mossy paths. She craned her head to catch sight of any tall, handsome earls who might be hiding out in the scented shrubs, trying to avoid their wives’ eyes.
“Look, a waterfall! Isn’t that lovely?”
“Lovely. Oh, blast! He doesn’t seem to be out here.”
“You know how men are — they have so many other important things to do. They visit their friends at their clubs, or they gamble, or they visit their mis—”
Gillian turned to face her cousin. “Visit their what?”
Charlotte peered around her in the softly lit darkness. There was a group of people at the foot of the stairs, near the waterfall, but no one close by. “Mistresses. Gillian, it’s time you face facts. I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you are, dear cousin, but you really must face the truth. Men like Weston simply are not the type to give up their freedom just because they are married. I know you believe Weston no longer has a mistress, but you are not being terribly realistic.”
“I agree,” Gillian said pleasantly after a moment’s thought, and started to move toward the stairs. Perhaps he had gone into the cardroom.
“You do? You agree? Just like that? No argument?”
“No argument.”
“But Gilly — wait, Gilly.” Charlotte hurried to catch up to her cousin’s long stride. “Did you not say you were certain Weston had disported of his mistress’s services?”
“Dispensed, and yes, I did, but I was wrong. He does have one.”
“Oh, Gilly, I am sorry. I had hoped for your sake that Weston was different—”
“I am his mistress.”
Charlotte stopped dead. “You? You think you’re his mistress?”
Gillian stopped and looked back at her. “I know I am.”
“You can’t be his mistress!”
“Whyever can’t I?”
Charlotte waved her hand around. “Because…because you’re his wife.”
“So?”
“You can’t be both.”
“Why not?”
“Well…just because! Wives and mistresses — Gillian, they’re just two separate people. Wives are…wives, and mistresses — well, you know what they are.”
Gillian tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I don’t, Charlotte. What exactly is the difference between a wife and a mistress? Oh, don’t stare at me like I’m an idiot. Other than the obvious, what is the difference?”
Charlotte looked around helplessly, hoping for inspiration. “Well, for one thing, mistresses show affection in public. Did you hear about La Bella Dona and the Duke of Ainstey two nights past?”
Gillian shook her head.
“They were in the King’s Theater, you know, and it’s said that she sat right on his lap. In front of everyone. And kissed him!”
“That certainly is in poor taste, but hardly—”
“While the duchess was in her box directly across from La Bella Dona’s!”
“Oh. Well, yes, then I will agree that your example certainly does show a shocking lack of manners, but that hardly has anything to do with my situation.”
“Yes, it does. The point is that you can hardly behave in such a manner, even with your own husband.”
Gillian thought back to the morning’s activities in the library. “I’m not so sure of that—”
“Oh, look!” Charlotte squealed, and grabbed her cousin’s arm. “There he is.”
“Noble? Where?”
“No, not Weston. His friend. The handsome one. By the shrubs to your left.”
“Lord Rosse? I don’t see him either. All I see is that little man Sir Hugh—”
“Gillian! How can you be so cruel just because the gentleman isn’t a giant like you.”
Gillian stared at her cousin with a slight smile playing around her lips. “My apologies, Char. I had no idea you had a tendresse for him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I have nothing of the sort. Papa would never countenance a marriage between a poor baronet and me. I merely pointed out one of your husband’s friends.”
“Mmm, yes, thank you.” Gillian made a mental note to ask Noble about his friend, and continued to scan the crowd.
“There’s Weston.”
“Where?” Gillian spun around.
“Over there, just at the foot of the stairs. He’s being given the cut by Lord Monteith. Oh, my, Gillian, that isn’t good. I believe Lord Worcester just cut him as well. What are you going to do?”
Gillian looked across the mossy paths, meandering streams of water, manicured lawn, and Arcadian groups of shrubs lit from within by colored lamps to where a group of people had collected to watch her husband be ignored by the crème of the ton. Dressed entirely in black, with a brilliant snowy white shirtfront and cravat, Noble’s austere beauty took Gillian’s breath away. Instantly her anger refocused itself onto a new, and much more deserving, target.
“I’ll show you what I’m going to do,” she said grimly, her hands fisted as she walked quickly toward the group of people.
A hush settled over them as they watched her approach. Noble, standing alongside Lord Rosse, raised one glossy black brow as she walked swiftly toward him. Gillian suddenly hoisted up a handful of her gown, speeded up her approach, and launched herself into her husband’s arms, pressing her eager lips against his.
She kissed him with all the fire and passion that had been smoldering in her ever since she had first seen him. She kissed him with every last ounce of love and devotion she possessed. She kissed him with an intensity that was readily apparent to those who stood by in astounded silence, watching them. She kissed him w
ith abandon and joy and the warmth that only Noble could generate in her. It wasn’t technically a perfect kiss as far as kisses went, but it was a monumental one in the eyes of the ton. It was a kiss that turned the tide of public opinion about the Black Earl.
And then she fell into the waterfall.
Two gentlemen strolled by as Noble tried to help her wring the worst of the water out of her gown. They both paused for a moment, watching the scene while drawing on their cigars, then proceeded on their promenade.
“Silly chits and their dampened muslins.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Mmmm.”
The Black Earl gritted his teeth and refused to lift his eyes from the latest threatening letter that had arrived in the morning’s post. He had no need to gaze at his wife. He knew just how fetching she looked in a hunter green and cream dress, her fiery hair twisted into a simple chignon that he knew would immediately begin to disassemble itself into tendrils that would soften the planes of her face. He knew about the sweet swell of her bosom that led upward to the soft, rounded line of her shoulders, which in turn swept into the graceful curves of her arms, leading down to…blue hands.
He knew also what she would be doing. She was enjoying strawberries. In a manner guaranteed to make a saint fall. He grew hard just thinking about it.
He stared at the paper in his hand, not seeing the threats or the vile words, seeing instead the image of his wife as she had appeared the past night, curled up in his bed. He had been surprised to find her there after the scene at Countess Lieven’s, and especially after he had lectured her the entire way home about his expectations for his countess’s behavior. She had said not a word, sitting quietly as she listened to his reprimands until he began to feel he was an ogre, full of nothing but scolds and remonstrations. And yet she had sought his bed rather than her own. He had puzzled over this as he stood, candle in hand, gazing down on her for a moment that seemed to stretch into a thousand. Her hair had been loose, flowing over the white linen, flickering away from her as if she were a phoenix rising from the flames. His eyes traced a path down her satiny freckled cheek as it rested against her blue palm. She was asleep, and the sight of her so peaceful, so lovely, so very right did something deep inside him.
A tiny ray of light pierced the blackness of his soul and began to glow. He had wronged her, misjudged her. She was no Elizabeth, using his physical desire for her own gain; she was simply his Gillian, his wife, the woman who muddled her way through life with an impish smile and devilish twinkle in her eye. He sighed as he slipped into bed and curled up behind her, sharing her warmth, feeling suddenly as if a burden had shifted, lightening a little.
Why had she agreed to marry him? he wondered suddenly. Marriage to him offered security and a title, but he knew instinctively that neither mattered to her. He stroked the arm curled around her ribs and breathed in the seductive scent of sleepy woman. Why had she married him? The thought tortured him most of the night and into an indescribably lovely English summer morning.
“Mmmmmm.”
Her voice caressed him in a manner that was almost physical, and yet his reaction to it was far more profound than any mere physical reaction could be. The light inside him strengthened, casting the far edges of his soul into dark, forbidding shadows. He stared with unseeing eyes at the letter as he looked deep into the heart of the light. The light was Gillian. She had somehow managed to work her way into the deepest recesses of his being, and there she burned like a beacon. Noble waited with a sick feeling for the black thing that slithered around in his soul to find the brightness, to extinguish it, but the black thing was miraculously banished to a far corner. Noble basked in the glow of the light, feeling for the first time as if life did hold some promise, as if there was some reason for his existence.
“Mmmmm. So good.”
He sighed, unable to bear the torment any longer. He had to look. “Did you wish something, my dear?”
Gillian looked up from the pamphlet in which she was engrossed. “No, nothing, Noble. Thank you.”
He watched her reach for another strawberry and hold it before her mouth, her mind engaged in reading the literature before her. He felt his breathing stop as he watched, waiting. Slowly Gillian parted her lips, the strawberry a hairsbreadth away from that luscious mouth, the very tip of her tongue emerging to lightly stroke the fruit’s heavy round fullness.
Noble felt himself grow hard as steel at the sight. He swallowed back the tightness that threatened to choke him and tried to drag his attention from the erotic sight of his wife eating strawberries to the more important issue of who was threatening to do her bodily harm. The words swam before his eyes and he couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing. Would she have finished licking the essence from the strawberry by this time? Would her small white teeth be pulling at the succulent fruit, tugging its globular, delicate flesh with little nips until it surrendered to the lure of her sweet, hot mouth? Would her tongue make a reappearance as she licked the juices from her soft, warm lips?
He couldn’t help himself. He looked up. She was chewing, a green stem dangling between her long, delicate, albeit bluetinted, fingers.
“More strawberries, my dear?” he asked, his voice strangely hoarse. She looked into the bowl he was offering. “Well, I shouldn’t, but I do love strawberries so. Perhaps just one or two more.”
He deftly turned the bowl so she would have to take the largest one, a veritable giant among strawberries, one that had two distinct hemispheres. He felt himself harden to a degree he would have thought impossible outside the realm of marble as Gillian’s little pink tongue snaked out and caressed one side of the giant strawberry.
“Mmmm,” she murmured happily, her eyes closed in bliss as she gave herself over to the pleasure of tasting the mammoth berry. Noble thought he would either shame himself or swoon when she took one half of the strawberry into the hot, moist, silky cave of her mouth and sucked the juices from its flesh. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, aware only of his overwhelmingly intense desire to throw her down on the table and plunge himself deep into her womanly depths. Repeatedly. For a lengthy period of time, say a week or two. Maybe longer.
A small trickle of red juice escaped her lush, pink lips. Noble’s tongue swelled up at the sight of it.
“Gark,” he said, unable to tear his eyes from it as it traced a path down toward her chin.
“Pardon?” she asked, reaching for her linen napkin.
“Allow me,” he croaked, and lunged awkwardly out of his chair toward her, his own cloth held clenched in his fingers. He glanced at it quickly, calculated the amount of energy it would take to unlock his rigid fingers, and leaned down.
“You have some juice. Just there.” His voice was rustier than iron left in saltwater. “Allow me to attend to it.”
She turned her head slightly, the tempting fruit still held before her lips. Noble inhaled the sweet smell of Gillian mingled with the earthy scent of strawberry just before his tongue touched her skin. He followed the path the juice had made up to its source and paused, looking into her fathomless eyes.
“Bite?” she asked, her voice strange and rough. It reached out and struck a resonance deep within him, like a harp string quivering after it had been plucked.
Gillian’s lips parted. Her tongue pulled part of the strawberry into the sweet darkness of her mouth. Noble was sure he would die if he didn’t taste that piece of fruit. He gripped Gillian’s chair on either side of her and forced her head back as he claimed both her mouth and the strawberry.
He hardened to granite. The juice from the strawberry mingled as their tongues twined around each other, dancing, teasing, sending Noble into a blissful state. Little warning bells began to chime in the back of his head as he slid his tongue along the inside of her silken cheek, tasting strawberry, tasting Gillian, tasting paradise. He started to reach for her, needing to feel himself buried in her warmth, drawing from it, merging himself into it, into the heat that was Gillian. He needed her
warmth to feed the light burning so bravely inside him. He needed her at that exact instant.
“ ’Ere be the kippers ye were wantin’—eh, take ’em back, lads. ’Is lordship isn’t ’ungry for ’em anymore.”
Noble snapped his head back from Gillian just in time to see the insolent grin on Crouch’s face before the door closed. He felt as if someone had doused him with a bucket of ice water. He looked down at Gillian, down to where his fingers were white as they clutched the sides of her chair. Her breasts were rising and falling erratically, her eyes misty with passion. He tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“Good, aren’t they?” Gillian asked hoarsely, and plucked the remainder of the strawberry from between his teeth.
“What is that you are reading so attentively?” Noble inquired some minutes later, when he had managed to wrest control of his mind away from the demands of his body.
“It’s an absolutely fascinating pamphlet I bought off a man in the square this morning when I was strolling with Piddle and Erp. It’s called Celestial Stimulation of the Organs, and it explains how one might, by using special Oils of Araby and balmy, ethereal essences, restore elasticity and good health to those who are suffering from bad humors.”
Noble, keeping his eyes carefully averted as she reached for another strawberry, asked if she were feeling ill.
“No, but you are.”
He looked up at her statement.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you were most restless last night, husband. And this morning, when I asked you why you were looking so peculiar and disgruntled, you said you had a pain in your head. All signs, according to Dr. Graham’s helpful pamphlet, that your organs need attention.”
Noble thought back to the night of torment he had endured, a self-imposed night of torment borne of his desire to show his wife that he was more than just a lustful beast who valued his own urges more than his wife’s need to rest.
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