“Then why don’t you ask the lady?” Carlisle barked.
“I am not a possession!” Gillian raised her voice to match those of the two men.
“You keep my wife out of this! You’ll answer my question, or by God I’ll have my satisfaction over pistols!” Noble stormed.
“Name your seconds,” Carlisle retorted, his black eyes dancing with enjoyment.
“They’ll call on you this evening,” Noble fired back, his hair standing on end. “Wife! Come with me!”
Gillian recognized that Noble was in a bit of a temper, and with a wisdom that had hitherto been unknown to her, bit back her angry protests at his arrogant display of possessiveness and took the hand he held out. He stalked back to his carriage and would have made a grand exit it if had not been for the others.
“Charles, Dickon, get those ’ounds loaded into the carriage.”
Noble paused in the act of stuffing Gillian into his carriage and looked back. His gaze fell on that of his son, standing next to Charlotte, gray eyes shining brightly in the afternoon sun. “Nicholas, you will come with us.”
Charlotte, who had been hard-pressed to maintain an expression radiating demure, maidenly horror at the thrilling manly display, fanned herself briskly and suddenly realized she would be left to ride home in an ancient carriage with Piddle and Erp as her sole companions.
“Lord Weston!”
Noble handed Gillian into the carriage and turned to look at Charlotte.
She stood looking between Lord Carlisle and Noble.
“I…the dogs…you cannot possibly expect me…my lord, I…”
Gillian leaned out of the carriage. “I do believe this is a first, my lord. I’ve never seen my cousin at a loss for words.”
Noble grunted and would have left Charlotte to the dog’s carriage but for Gillian. There was a motive to her madness — she no more wanted to be alone with Noble where he would feel free to vent his anger on her regarding her visit to Lord Carlisle than she wanted to dance with a crocodile.
“I believe, my dear lady wife, your chances with the crocodile are substantially better,” Noble said through gritted teeth, and proceeded to ignore her and everyone else in the carriage by staring out at the passing scenery.
“We were just off to the zoological gardens,” Gillian started to say, but one look from Noble’s icy gray eyes made it quite clear that the visit was canceled. Gillian sent her son an apologetic glance and was heartened to see the boy give her a warm smile and a little shrug.
She mouthed to him that they would go another time, and settled back next to Noble. Charlotte exchanged sympathetic glances with her cousin and was not in the least bit sorry when the carriage pulled up before her house. Gillian wished to have a word or two with her, but Noble grimly assisted Charlotte down, then leaped back into the carriage and gave the signal to be on the way.
In an attempt to forestall the inevitable tongue-lashing she was sure was due her, Gillian clasped Noble’s hand in hers. His hand was unresponsive and stiff. Gillian mentally created, and discarded, any number of excuses and explanations for her visit to the earl. The carriage rocked as it bounced over bumps in the street, the familiar clop of the horses’ hooves setting up a rhythm in her brain. Although within there was naught but injured silence, outside the carriage horses neighed, dogs barked, people shouted, coachmen and grooms talked to their charges, vendors shouted their wares, and a thousand other noises wove together into the intricate tapestry that was life in London. Gillian closed her eyes and leaned slightly toward Noble, her thumb tracing circles on the top of his hand, feeling suddenly safe and secure even if her husband was shortly to lecture her as she’d never been lectured before. She slid her thumb down to the underside of his hand and made little massaging circles on the pads of his fingers, sliding up and down the length, feeling the strength that lay in those long, elegant hands. Noble did not respond to her caress, but neither did he withdraw his hand.
She continued to stroke and pet his hand while she considered the results of her daring act in visiting the Scottish earl — she was now in possession of a list of four names, women who had been Noble’s mistresses during the last fifteen years, as long as Carlisle had known him.
She hoped they could help her to figure out just what Noble’s relationship with Elizabeth had been like before his dear wife died — or not his dear wife, if what Lord Carlisle had said was true.
Gillian chewed on her lower lip. The earl must be mistaken. She knew Noble, and no matter how strong the provocation, he could never have murdered his wife, not even if he found her with another man, as Lord Carlisle implied. And the hints he made about Noble’s treatment of Elizabeth — well, those simply couldn’t be true.
Gillian rubbed Noble’s wrist and let her delicate, bluetinted fingers massage the top of his hand. No, the earl had to be wrong about Noble. Clearly he had gotten hold of the same misinformation that had flooded the rest of the ton, and just as clearly it was up to her to uncover the truth and clear Noble’s name.
A little sigh escaped her lips as she considered all she had to do, a sigh that went straight to Noble’s heart. He stopped fighting the desire to respond to Gillian’s gentle strokes and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t look at him, but sighed again as she snuggled up against him, content in the knowledge that everything would be all right. Noble wasn’t angry after all.
Noble was furious. He controlled himself in the carriage with an iron will that amazed even him, but once he arrived home, he demanded Gillian’s presence in his library. By the time she left the room, her face pale and tear-streaked, he had made himself absolutely and undeniably clear as to his feelings about his wife visiting the man who was responsible for so much misery and unhappiness.
“But Noble, why can’t I call on him if I’m suitably escorted?” Gillian cried after the bulk of his rage had been exorcised, tears trembling on the edge of her lashes.
Noble hardened his heart against the sight. “Because the man’s a murdering bastard, madam, that’s why you cannot call on him! From this moment forward you will have nothing further to do with him.”
Gillian had blanched at the word murderer. Noble’s accusations were so similar to Lord Carlisle’s, it confused her. “He’s a murderer? Whom did he murder?”
Noble’s jaw set in a manner that Gillian was becoming all too familiar with. He placed his hands on the arms of her chair and leaned down until he was a breath away from her.
“It is of no matter to you. Hear me well, wife. On this you will obey me — you will have no further contact with McGregor. If you see him at a public place, you will ignore him. If he approaches you and attempts to converse with you, you will walk away. If he sends you any correspondence, you will immediately surrender it to me. Do I make myself clear?”
Gillian stared deep into his icy gray eyes and saw Noble’s demons battling for control. There was anger and masculine dominance there, but there was also concern and something she didn’t recognize — something that made her feel warm and feminine and at peace with him despite the fact that she was, at that moment, the target of his wrath.
“What am I to you?” she whispered, unable to keep the words back.
His eyes narrowed. “You are my wife.”
The warm, peaceful feeling evaporated, leaving behind it the tears that had threatened earlier. “Is that all, Noble? It’s true, then — I’m just a possession? Something you purchased with a specific goal in mind? I’m nothing more to you than an object to be kept in its place and brought out when it pleases you?”
Noble didn’t know how to answer her, didn’t know how to erase the pain he saw in her lovely green eyes. The words were written deep in his heart, but they were too new, too fresh to be spoken out loud. The light that glowed inside him, her light, was still too weak to banish all the darkness. He gazed into her eyes and said nothing, damning himself for his inability to speak, for his desire to have that which he’d sworn he would never again seek, and for
allowing her into the secret recesses of his soul, where no one had been allowed before.
He watched with tormented eyes as she first pushed ineffectually at his hands until he released her, then raced, sobbing, out the door. God’s eyebrows, what a mess he’d made of everything. Feeling his legs about to buckle under him, Noble sat in the chair Gillian had just abandoned and let his head slump into his hands. How the devil had things turned out this way? When had life slipped out of his control, turning it from a well-ordered and-structured, pleasant existence into this chaotic farce? How could a man be expected to function when all he planned, all he hoped for was dashed away and replaced…the thoughts suddenly stopped cold.
What was the use, why was he pretending to himself? His life had been well-ordered and structured before Gillian came to it, that was true, but it had also been a bleak and hollow life, a life without joy or warmth or…love. Chaos might dodge her footsteps, but it was a small price to pay to be loved by her. And what had he done in the face of that love? He’d blown up at her, yelled at her until she sobbed at his cruelty, tears streaming down her face when she realized that he would not, could not, give her the words she needed to hear.
Another woman’s tears came to mind, another woman’s tears as a result of his cruelty. Noble clutched the arms of the chair until his nails gouged crescents in the wood, but he paid no heed to the pain in his fingers. He was too busy fighting the crippling pain that gripped his soul.
Dear God, please don’t let me drive her away as I did Elizabeth, he prayed, his thoughts jumbled and confused, chasing each other in circles. Images of that night, that terrible night came unbidden to his mind, the image of finding his son curled up in a little ball in a pool of blood, almost out of his mind with terror. The night his wife died, the night he knew for a fact that hell existed, because he was in it. The feelings of guilt, once thought long gone, swept over him and merged with this new flood of guilt over his treatment of Gillian.
Noble Britton, the twelfth Earl of Weston, sat alone in his library and at last faced the emotions he had refused to acknowledge for five years: sorrow for the horrors he had forced upon his son, remorse for failing his first wife, self-pity for the hell he had lived in for so long. And finally, and most recently, shame for hurting the one person who meant more to him than life itself.
Gillian stood in the doorway of the library and hesitated. She had knocked, but Noble had not answered. Was he ill? So angry still that he refused to acknowledge her? She took a step forward, afraid to draw his attention to her and yet unwilling to face his wrath if he thought she was concealing the letter she had just received.
“Noble?” The word was so soft, even she could hardly hear it. She stepped silently toward the head that rested against the back of the armchair. Was he reading? Asleep? She came around the side and stopped, stunned by the sight.
He was asleep, his head resting at an angle that looked most uncomfortable, his hands curled into fists. His face in repose looked so unguarded, so young, so peaceful, but it wasn’t that unusual sight that made her heart constrict with pain. She bent forward and touched a finger to his cheek. Faint silvery tracks led down the angled planes of his face, down into the darkening shadows of his jaw.
He had been weeping. Her Lord of Rage had been weeping.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Good evening, Lady Weston.”
“Oh, Lord Rosse, good evening.” Gillian peered around the marquis, looking for Noble. “How nice to see you again. That’s a lovely waistcoat. Are those dragons?”
“Yes. It is a gift from my betrothed.”
Gillian looked at him, startled. “You are betrothed? I didn’t know. Noble never mentioned it.”
Rosse smiled. “I’ve been betrothed since I was sixteen. Our fathers arranged it.”
Gillian’s brow furrowed. “Is that legal?”
Rosse shrugged. “It matters not, I’ve pledged myself to the girl, and I’ll marry her. Some day,” he added with an irresistible grin. Gillian couldn’t help but grin in response. She liked Rosse the best of all Noble’s friends. He reminded her of a friendly puppy, all eagerness and enthusiasm.
“Noble had an important appointment, I’m afraid, but I managed to convince him to allow me to have the honor of escorting you to the Countess of Gayfield’s rout, where your estimable husband will join us later.”
Gillian was disappointed that Noble had not remained home to escort her. She not only wanted to discuss the note she had received from Lord Carlisle, she wanted to find out why he had been weeping. Nick was in good health — that had been her first concern. Try as she might, she just could not understand why her Lord of Tempers ran hot one moment, then cold another. Perhaps it would be better if she stopped trying to understand him and just accepted his volatile emotions.
“Er…quite so, my lady,” Lord Rosse said, and held the door open for her.
Gillian blushed, thought about explaining about her Unfortunate Habit, then decided it wasn’t important.
“My lord,” she said once she was seated in Lord Rosse’s elegant carriage, “perhaps you would tell me—”
“Where your husband is this evening? I’m afraid I cannot, my lady.”
Gillian looked annoyed. “I shouldn’t dream of asking you such a thing,” she said. “I have every faith in my Noble, and if he said he had an important matter of business to attend to, then I’m sure that is what he is doing.”
Rosse thought back to the earlier conversation he had had with Noble.
“Just look at this, Harry,” the Black Earl had demanded, waving a letter in front of the marquis’s face. “How dare the blackguard impugn Gillian’s virtue in such a manner? You’ll act as my second, of course.”
“Your second? You’ve called him out, then?”
“Yes, earlier, when I caught the murdering bastard with his hands all over my wife.”
Rosse stared at him in surprise.
“Oh, not in that manner; it was all perfectly innocent on her part,” Noble stormed, continuing to wear a path in the carpet before his friend. “She was suitably escorted by Crouch and three footmen, not to mention Nick, her cousin, and those blasted beasts. No, that was an innocent bit of folly on her part; her cousin wanted an introduction, and you know how Gillian thinks — in a manner so convoluted it’s almost straightforward, she took Lady Charlotte to call on the man with some feeble excuse of seeking a referral from him. But the bastard’s gone too far now. Just look at this!”
“I will if you stand still long enough for me to snatch it from your hand.”
Noble tossed him the letter as he passed his friend.
“Hmmm. So she’s to meet him tonight at the Gayfields’ rout, eh?”
“So he says. Gillian won’t meet him, of course. We had a discussion about that earlier.”
Rosse could just imagine what form the discussion had taken. “It appears to be an anonymous letter. Are you sure it’s from Carlisle?”
Noble snorted as he completed his circuit of the room and turned to begin it again. “Of course I’m sure; who else would send me a note gloating over the fact that Gillian had made an assignation to meet with him right under my nose? He’s baiting me, Harry, and I refuse to be baited.”
Rosse wasn’t sure, but something didn’t smell right about the entire situation. So far the added men he’d put on the investigation had found nothing to justify his intuition that there was more to the matter than just McGregor. He told Noble his suspicions, anyway.
“You’ve been out of the spy game too long. Your nose has lost its sharpness,” Noble opined.
Rosse shrugged and took a sip of his friend’s excellent brandy. “Possibly. But I don’t believe so.”
Noble thought about that for a moment; then his eye caught sight of the blasted note again and his attention was fixed wholly and completely on gaining satisfaction.
“Take Gillian to the Gayfields’ tonight. I’ll meet her there later.”
Rosse looked into the hooded gr
ay eyes of his friend, his mind quickly assimilating facts and trying to figure out Noble’s scheme. “Where will you be until then?”
“In your shadow,” Noble said grimly.
Rosse’s pale eyes blinked behind the glass in his spectacles; then enlightenment darkened them. “Ah. I believe I see. You will pretend to be away this evening, leaving the avenue open for McGregor—”
“—to attempt to seduce my wife, whereupon I’ll burst onto the scene and strangle the bastard on the spot.”
A slow smile stole over Rosse’s face. “And your wife?”
“Will believe I am still angry with her over this afternoon’s debacle.”
“A little hard on her, isn’t it?”
Noble tugged at his lower lip, then sighed. “It can’t be helped, and it will only be for a short duration. It is important that McGregor believe we are at odds, the better for him to succeed with Gillian.”
The marquis warmed his brandy between his palms and inhaled the aroma. “Do you trust her?”
Noble paused in his circuit around the desk. “To not betray me with McGregor? Yes, I do. I’ve—” He picked up the paintbrush on his desk, his fingers running over the softness of the sable brush. As soft as that was, Gillian’s hair was a thousand times silkier. “I’ve treated her poorly, Harry, and I intend to make up for that, but first I must deal with these incessant threats and attempts to drive us apart.”
“I wondered if you had seen that,” Rosse commented mildly.
“Seen what?”
“That the nature of the threats had changed from blackmailing you to promising harm to your wife and now to a blatant attempt to instill distrust and discord in your marriage.”
Noble sat down suddenly. “McGregor’s mad.”
“Possibly. But I think it goes further than just McGregor’s attempts at obtaining justice for Elizabeth. This strikes me as an attempt to destroy you personally as well as socially.”
“Personally?”
“I think, my friend,” Rosse said as he stood and strolled to the window to look at the street beyond, “I think it is a good idea that you have sought additional protection. I fear you are going to need it.”
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