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.