Noble Intentions

  Noble’s admirable body stiffened. The pulse beating wildly in the side of his neck was clearly visible from across his bedchamber. It was shameful, Gillian chastised herself. The poor man had been through a terrible evening, and she was clearly not doing her duty by offering solace and comfort. It was, after all, her job to help him relax so he could forget his troubles and enjoy his tranquil and serene home. Gillian blinked back a tender tear at the thought of his travails, and proceeded to buoy his foul mood.

  “When I say good spirits, my dear, I do not mean they were laughing at you,” she reassured him. If possible, his silence and accompanying scowl grew even stonier. “Although I must admit they were laughing, but I’m sure it was not at you, but rather with you, if you see what I mean.”

  It was obvious he didn’t share her perceptions. It was also evident that at that moment he was hard put to keep from strangling her. Since she wanted to have more than just one night of wedded bliss, Gillian decided not to press the point further. She would ask him in the morning, once he possessed a less belligerent attitude, who wished him ill. He would no doubt be happy she was so interested in his well-being and would, despite his earlier statement, be forthcoming with the whos and whys that so consumed her with curiosity. She smiled sweetly at the choked, guttural noises Noble was making in response to her buoying attempt. He was obviously overcome with gratitude for her tender solicitation.

  “Madam.” Noble finally got his jaw unclenched long enough to speak. “You will have the decency to never mention the blasted bedsheet within my hearing! For that matter, you will not, under any provocation, refer to this evening again. You will forget about the entire day. Cast it from your thoughts. Wipe it from your memory. I do not wish to ever again be reminded of the humiliating events that have made up one of the most miserable days of my blighted existence.”

  Visions of the well-muscled, masculine, shackled form of her very naked husband danced before her eyes. She had serious doubts as to her ability to obliterate such a fascinating image. She had doubts as to whether she ever wanted to. Weighing his command to forget the image against a lifetime without that particular entry in her mental picture library offered little difficulty. The infuriated male before her in battle stance, however, his legs braced apart, his hands fisted on his hips, clearly indicated that outright refusal of obedience was not an option.

  “Well, my lady? I’m waiting for your agreement.” He looked mad enough to kill, but she wasn’t going to start her marriage by courting distrust with falsehoods.

  Unable to agree to his demand, Gillian shrugged. The edge of her faded blue dressing gown slipped off her shoulder. Noble’s gaze pounced on the exposed flesh, the pulse in his throat suddenly accelerating as his silver-eyed gaze caressed her skin in a manner that raised goose bumps of excitement on her arms.

  A warm kernel of womanly knowledge blossomed and spread inside her. Could it be this easy? Noble was an intelligent man; surely he wouldn’t be susceptible to something so mundane as a bit of exposed flesh. Slowly, with deliberate movements, she shrugged her other shoulder and let the dressing gown slide down her arms. She was wearing nothing underneath.

  Noble stopped breathing.

  She felt her skin prickle even though he had yet to touch her. With great purpose, Gillian rose to her knees, allowing her dressing gown to fall to her hips.

  Noble made an inarticulate, choking sort of sound.

  It couldn’t be so easy, but it evidently was. Her Lord of Eyes, who moments ago had looked as if he’d like nothing better than to wrap his hands around her throat, had stopped speaking and was staring at her, his gaze devouring her torso. A flush of a hitherto unknown emotion washed over her—this must be the power of seduction. God’s nightgown, it was a heady thing indeed! Gillian was light-headed with this newly discovered knowledge, and filled with great design, she slid out of bed, leaving the dressing gown behind as she stood before her husband.

  She curled one hand around the back of his neck and combed her fingers into his silky hair. “Breathe, Noble,” she murmured as she traced the corner of his mouth with the very tip of her tongue.

  His eyes crossed.

  She trailed kisses over to his ear and sucked on his earlobe before whispering, “Are you breathing, my love?”

  “I doubt it.” His voice sounded like cracked rocks, but she smiled as she felt his ragged breath on her neck. He stood rigid, his hands clenched into fists at his side as she mumbled against his ear.

  “It must be all these clothes you have on. Too constricting.” She licked a path down his stubbled cheek to his jaw, nipped his chin, then continued down to lave his Adam’s apple. Although he hadn’t donned his normal evening wear upon returning home, he had clad himself in trousers, shirt, and waistcoat. Gillian was thankful he didn’t have a cravat to interfere with her exploration. With one hand still curled in his hair, she unbuttoned the buttons on his waistcoat, pushing it off his shoulders as she kissed the hollow of his throat.

  He moaned.

  A little disturbed to find that her own breathing was on the rough side, Gillian welcomed the warmth that seemed to flow out of Noble, warmth that sparked a slow burn that started somewhere in her stomach and spread out to her limbs. She was consumed by fire, but she craved his heat to make the fire burn even hotter. One by one she unbuttoned the mother-of-pearl buttons on his shirt, following each with scattered kisses on the exposed area of chest. His soft curls tickled her nose, but she was fascinated by the ripple of muscles that tightened beneath her trail of kisses. She moved lower, pulling his shirt off as she sank to her knees before him.

  Noble’s mind stopped working at the sight of his wife kneeling before him, her hand on his waistband.

  Gillian sucked her bottom lip nervously. She wasn’t sure if he was pleased with her boldness, but the fire his nearness had ignited was burning too strongly to let her back off. Eyes darkened with passion, she looked up at him for direction. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Twice. She took that as permission to proceed.

  With both hands she unbuttoned the twin row of buttons on his trousers, then pushed them down over the sleek, muscled line of his hips, down his steely thighs, and after removing his slippers, over his long, narrow feet.

  She lifted her head to find herself staring at his genitals. Joy filled her at the sight.

  “You were right, Noble. You are not broken. You look just fine now. More than fine.” She reached out a hand to hold his silky hardness and delighted at his gasp of pleasure. “Look, you bounce when I do this.”

  A shudder ran through him.

  She held him with both hands, one tugging gently on the softness lower down, the other curled around the length of his arousal. “So hot. You’re as hot as the fire you have started inside me.”

  With great delicacy she leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on the tip of him.

  Noble was convinced he had died and gone to heaven. He just hoped St. Peter wouldn’t notice the long list of his transgressions until his wonderfully uninhibited wife had finished her exploration. Idly he wondered how long it would be before his control snapped. He took into account his history with women, his vaunted control, the fact that he was a sophisticated man and not a base animal driven by primitive urges, as well as the earlier anger he’d held toward his wife, and reckoned he had less than ten minutes.

  “I hope you will not be offended…I hope you will not mind if I…that is, if I…” She rasped her tongue on the sensitive underside of the head and felt his body shake in response.

  Noble quickly recalculated. He would be lucky if he lasted four seconds.

  The look of ecstasy on his face astonished her—she had hoped she would give him pleasure, but evidently her touch was more powerful than she had presumed. She didn’t have a chance to dwell on this thought, however. Three seconds after she took him into her mouth, he yanked her up, and with a move too swift for her to foll
ow, tossed her on the bed, covering her immediately with his own hard body.

  “Now it’s my turn,” he said hoarsely just before his mouth took possession of hers. She reveled in the heat of his mouth, wondering if she’d ever get enough of him. It was her last cognizant thought for a very long time.

  ***

  Noble rolled off his wife and lay on his back, exhausted. He would have expressed the immense, overwhelming pleasure she had given him, but he didn’t have the energy to move his lips, let alone prod his brain into stringing together more than two words that made sense. That thought scurried around his mind, nibbling at the edge of his awareness until it attracted his full attention. Why was making love to Gillian so soul-deep satisfying? Why did her warmth seem to penetrate even the iciest corner of his being? It wasn’t right that a man should be so consumed with thoughts of his wife, his control so easily cast over. If she could do that to him now, just a scant two days after they had been wed, what sort of power would she wield after a week of marriage? A month? A year?

  Gillian nudged his arm. He knew what she wanted but was too shaken by the turn his thoughts had taken. For it had come—although he had tried to tamp down on it, he had known that it would eventually emerge. That horrible knowledge, that black truth, that darkness slithering around inside him with insidious slowness, gathering before it a familiar feeling of coldness and dread. He closed his eyes and reluctantly acknowledged it.

  If he gave her power over his heart, she would betray him.

  Gillian nudged him again, then rose up on one elbow when she noticed his frown. “You did not enjoy yourself? That part of you is not bounceable anymore. I assumed that meant you enjoyed yourself. Have I got it wrong?”

  He couldn’t give in to this attraction. He couldn’t give her the chance to tear his heart out as Elizabeth had. He couldn’t go through that pain again—as bad as it was with his first wife, he knew instinctively that it would be unbearable with Gillian. Elizabeth’s betrayal had crushed his heart; Gillian’s betrayal would destroy him completely.

  “Noble?” She placed a hand on his chest where his heart still beat wildly. “Have I done something to displease you?”

  She sounded hurt and confused at the same time. Noble gritted his teeth against the urge to pull her to him and murmur words of reassurance, to bury his head in her sweetly scented neck, to hold her until the cold, dark thing that roiled inside him was banished by her light, but he held back. He could not give her what she wanted. He could not allow himself to be vulnerable again.

  A burning pain pierced his chest, searing through ice and tissue and bone with unerring accuracy straight to his heart. He reached up to rub the spot and felt the wetness of a single tear. Guilt washed over him, making his breath catch as he roughly pulled her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin, knowing he was damned but aware there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “Hush, sweetheart. Go to sleep. You haven’t done anything to displease me.”

  She murmured something against his throat, but he couldn’t hear it over the blood pounding loudly in his ears.

  Gillian felt his body tense, then slowly relax as she lay in his arms, her lips pressed against a pulse point on his neck. His inner demons had returned with a vengeance, driving him away from her again. It was the intimacy of their lovemaking that brought them out, she knew—such overwhelming oneness, such an expression of love no doubt forced to the surface all the pain he still felt over the death of his first wife. Gillian listened to his pounding heart slow and settle into a strong, steady beat as she considered a future that suddenly seemed bleak and endless. How was she to combat a ghost that Noble would not admit existed? How could she make him love her when it was obvious he still mourned his beloved first wife? She wondered for the thousandth time what had happened the night Elizabeth died, and why Noble was blamed for her death. How could any man who still grieved so be thought a cold, heartless murderer?

  The only way to rid their marriage bed of the specter of Elizabeth was to lay her spirit to rest. Noble snored softly above her, then grunted and rolled to his side, taking her with him. He pulled her back against his chest, spooned his legs up behind hers, and draped a heavy arm over her waist. Gillian smiled drowsily to herself as she let his warmth wrap around her. She would see to it that Elizabeth’s ghost no longer haunted their marriage. The faint outline of a plan formed in the hazy, sleep-muddled corners of her mind. She would take a leaf from Charlotte’s beloved novels and investigate both Elizabeth’s untimely death and the mystery of who wanted harm to befall Noble. Once she knew the truth, she could help Noble overcome his fears and teach him to open his heart again. She snuggled back against his warm chest and gave herself up to sleep. Tomorrow she would begin her investigations. Tomorrow she would see that their life was one of order and serenity.

  ***

  “I won’t have my orders defied, wife. You would have us live in the most disordered, disorganized, turbulent lifestyle, and I won’t have it! We will have order and structure in our lives. You will obey my dictates.”

  “I’m not defying them, husband, I’m asking you to reconsider.”

  Noble pointed the knife he had been using to spread marmalade on a piece of toast at the two dogs sitting at his side, their dark eyes hopeful as cascades of saliva issued from their flews.

  “You ask too much, Gillian. Charles! Make yourself useful and escort these dogs outside to the stable. Piddle is puddling on the carpet.”

  “That’s Erp who is drooling so. Piddle is the one tending to his personal equipment. Truly Noble, if you would just see that my presence here—”

  “At least they are no longer offensive by other means,” he sniffed, giving the hounds a black look as they followed after the footman before turning back to his wife. Gillian felt her stomach wrap into knots around her breakfast. It was for his own good. Someday he would go down on his knees before her and thank her for her intervention. She just had to be strong until that time. She straightened her shoulders and looked him firmly in his lovely silver eyes.

  “If you send me back, I shall simply return.”

  His eyes darkened as a muscle twitched in his jaw. It was odd she had never noticed twitching muscles on him before. “Do you threaten me, madam?”

  Her words had to be considered carefully, lest he feel she was challenging him. Men, she had found, hated to be challenged. “No, I do not threaten you. I am asking you, Noble, to reconsider. We have been married but three days, and I simply do not wish to be separated from you.”

  His frown deepened. She ignored the presence of the remaining footman standing at attention behind her and placed her hand over his. “If you send me back, I will miss you.”

  Noble recoiled as if she had struck him. He waved the footman out before, eyes narrowed, he confronted her. “Again you threaten me! What steps would you take to end your loneliness? Would you seek comfort in the arms of another?”

  Gillian felt as if she were the one who had been struck. “Threaten you? Noble, I’m not threatening you, ’tis the truth I’m not. I can’t believe you would think I am so faithless that I would seek the attentions of another man.”

  Noble’s jaw tightened at her words.

  “Do you believe it is possible for me to engage in those…in the wonderful and thrilling things we did last night with someone else? How can you imagine that I would want to? Do you not value my lo—” She caught herself before she let the word slip out. He wasn’t ready to hear about that yet, that was quite evident.

  “Do I not value what, madam?” Really, if those brows arched any higher, they’d fly off his face.

  “Do you not value my…my…longings for your touch?” Yes, that was good. Longings. It would make him feel that she was pining for him. That she was, was neither here nor there.

  “Er…yes, of course, but that is not what I—”

  “Indeed, I was not threatening yo
u, my lord. As for the other—’tis the truth I would be lonely, but I would never seek the arms of another man. I wish only to be with my husband.”

  She hoped he hadn’t heard the tremble in her voice as she spoke. The urge to throw herself on him and smother him with kisses until she eased the pain evident in his eyes was almost overwhelming. Although admittedly such an inclination was tempered with a healthy dose of self-pity. She hurt too. The fact that he loved Elizabeth so deeply that he could not welcome her into his life pierced her deeply, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that he needed a bit of time before he would realize just what a lucky man he was to have married her. She’d be patient. A week or two ought to be enough to bring him around.

  “I doubt that a week or two will be sufficient for anything concerning you, my dear, but I am not an unreasonable man. You may stay for a fortnight,” he said grudgingly, reclaiming his hand and turning his attention to his breakfast. “The Season will be over by then, and at that time you will return to Nethercote.”

  She blushed over her Unfortunate Habit but had other things to worry about than her tendency to speak every thought. It was on her lips to ask about his plans in a fortnight, but she bit the words back and muttered a soft statement of appreciation instead.

  “About last night, Noble…”

  A dull red flush washed over her husband’s face at her words.

  “I wish to discuss what happened last night, if I might. I am not sure I understand…”

  “Dickon, you may leave that,” Noble ordered, a frown playing across his manly brow. Gillian watched as the footman placed a fresh platter of sirloin before the earl, then left them alone again.