“I have a feeling it’s better if I find her myself, Crouch,” he replied as he marched up the stairs. He wondered what Gillian had done now to bring out the protective instincts in his staff, then chuckled over the thought. She had endeared herself to them just as quickly as she had to him. Although he couldn’t let them think he supported such a notion, it warmed him to know they would protect her against what they perceived to be his unholy temper. He chuckled again as he turned down the hall toward her sitting room. Surely it would soon become apparent that no matter what outrageous act she committed, no matter what sort of a mess she embroiled herself in, he would bear it all with nary a word to the contrary. What could she possibly do, he asked himself as he opened the door, that could raise his ire now that he knew he loved her?
“…once pretended that I was a wheelbarrow and he a gardener…oh!”
Blast it, she had friends paying her a visit. He smiled pleasantly and was about to make a bow when the woman who had been speaking, a chestnut-haired beauty with vivid blue eyes, caught his attention. She looked familiar. She looked very familiar, quite like…dear God, it couldn’t be!
Noble stared at his former mistress, his mind doing cartwheels as it tried to manufacture a reasonable explanation for what Beverly would be doing in his wife’s sitting room, talking about…wheelbarrows? A groan slipped past his lips as he recalled another time he had been feeling inventive, a most successful invention as far as he was concerned, but not one he wished discussed in front of his wife. Not with his co-inventor, anyway.
His eyes, feeling like a particularly sticky boiled sweet, swept the room to find her but stopped on the figure next to that of his ex-mistress. Surely that couldn’t be…he closed his eyes and shook his head. No, he was seeing things. Perhaps the wound to his arm had given him a fever and he hadn’t realized it. He must be delirious.
He opened his eyes again. No, there they were, standing together, Beverly and Laura. By dint of grinding his teeth together and squeezing his hands into fists he managed to keep from screaming, but it was a near thing. He took a deep breath and prepared to ask his wife just what the hell she thought she was doing, inviting his old mistresses to tea.
“Good afternoon, Lord Weston,” a smiling blond woman bobbed a curtsy. Anne, that had to be Anne; no one else had that saucy tilt to her head. Noble’s mind started to go numb around the edges. Three mistresses? No, there was Madelyn; that made four. All together, here, in this room. How lovely. He peered suspiciously at a fifth occupant. No, it wasn’t Mariah; it was Gillian’s cousin. Which meant the other person, the sixth person, the person who was standing just behind his shoulder, no doubt chewing on that delectable little lip, was his wife.
“Gillian?” he asked softly.
“Yes, Noble?” She hurried around to his side. He was gratified to see he was right, she was chewing on her lip.
“Would you care to tell me why you have seen fit to entertain four women of whom, by rights, you should not acknowledge the existence, let alone know well enough to have to tea?” Noble was quite proud of how level and calm his voice was. The voice that spoke out loud, that is. The voice in his head was shrieking like a banshee.
Gillian thought about that for a moment. “Right now?”
“If you please.”
“Perhaps it would be best if we were to leave,” Charlotte said, making a quick dip toward the Black Earl and scurrying past him in a motion reminiscent of a startled crab. He looked, in her estimation, every bit as dangerous as his sobriquet, and she had no desire to be present to witness his reaction to Gillian’s explanation. If she had the chance to make one; Charlotte sent a fervent prayer heavenward that Gillian would survive the explanation, and bolted.
“Perhaps we had better…” Madelyn rose and motioned to the other women. They all bobbed curtsies at the earl, who did not acknowledge them, his eyes at that moment being busy with the task of trying to bore holes into Gillian’s head.
Gillian tried to avoid the Lord of Glares’ eye but knew her goose was plucked, stuffed, and cooked. She opened her mouth to make an excuse.
“My lord?”
It was Dickon.
Noble snarled at him.
Dickon’s eyes opened wide at the snarl. He picked at the trim on his jacket with bloodless fingers. “Eh…my lord, there is a matter that needs your attention belowstairs.”
“What?” If Noble’s lips had snapped shut any faster, Gillian thought, he would have bit the word in two.
Dickon looked as if he was going to be ill all over the carpet. “Mr. Crouch didn’t say, my lord. He just said to tell you there is something that needs your attention belowstairs.”
“Go.”
The word shot out of his mouth with the velocity of a bullet. Dickon didn’t hesitate. He went.
Gillian gave up avoiding his eye and raised her chin. “Before you commence lecturing me, I would like the opportunity to say one thing in my defense.”
Noble almost didn’t hear her, he was so busy trying to decide what to yell at her about first. “The choices are so tempting,” he said softly to himself. “They are laid out before me in a vast panoply of Bad Ideas. No, I take that back; Bad Ideas isn’t a good description of this particular venture. Taking hold of a wet, painted lantern was a Bad Idea. Bringing together four of my mistresses to discuss…my mind balks at the thought of exactly what you were discussing…bringing together my mistresses was not a Bad Idea. It was a Grievous Error of the highest degree.”
Gillian licked her lips nervously.
“Lord Weston? Lord Weston…uh…there’s an important note for you that’s just come.” It was Charles this time, a curiously pale and sweating Charles who repeatedly peered over his shoulder at something behind him. Gillian took a few steps to the side and looked beyond him. She could see a number of the staff out in the hall, huddled in a large group, evidently discussing something.
“Later.”
“But my lord—”
“Later, I said!”
Charles almost stumbled over his feet, but he managed to make it out of the room without mishap. Gillian felt the odds were fairly good that she would not be so lucky.
“Lecture, madam? You believe I am about to lecture you?”
“Aren’t you?”
Noble’s eyes narrowed as he watched her lick her lips again.
“Oh, no you don’t, my good lady wife! You will cease distracting me in such a manner.”
“Yer lordship? I hate to interrupt ye there when yer about to rip a strip off Lady Weston, but there’s a matter of a small fire in the library, and we thought ye might—”
“You thought wrong, Crouch,” Noble said, his eyes never leaving Gillian’s face.
“But yer books and such—” Crouch waved his hook about in an expressive manner. Gillian gave him a tremulous smile of gratitude. It was a sweet thought, really it was, but surely Crouch must know that nothing could save her now.
“Let them burn. The whole bloody house can come down around our ears for all I care at this moment.”
Crouch opened his mouth to say more but thought better of it. He closed the door softly behind him.
Gillian repressed the urge to flinch at the look in her husband’s eyes and instead bit her lip nervously.
“None of that delectable lip biting, either,” he said, shaking a finger at her. “It won’t work this time. I am beyond such temptations. You, madam, have finally gone too far.”
Gillian threw back her shoulders and raised her chin again. She wouldn’t try to defend herself; she was, after all, technically in the wrong, despite the fact that she had done it to help him.
Noble stared at her out-thrust bosom, sending a wave of heat out from the deepest part of her. “You can bare those delicious strawberry-tipped breasts at me for all I care,” he said, trying to snap his fingers but failing miserably. Gillian’s color rose even more as his eyes wandered over her form as if he could see right through her gown. “It will have no effect on me whatsoever. I am impervious to your charms.”