“Oh, my lord, my lady, you must come quick!” One of the parlormaids burst into the room, her eyes wild and filled with horror. She wrung her hands and tossed terrified looks back over her shoulder. “There’s a terrible fight in the hall, my lord. The Tremaynes are at it again, and one of them has a hatchet!”
Noble didn’t even flick a glance her way.
“Be gone!” he said, fluttering a hand at her.
“They’re sure to kill each other, my lord! You must come now and stop them from murderin’ each other!”
“One less person to interrupt me,” he muttered and narrowed his eyes at Gillian as she took a precautionary step backward. She wiped her damp hands down her sides. His eyes followed her movements greedily.
“Oh,” she said breathlessly, little fires starting wherever Noble looked.
“You must come now!” the maid wailed.
“Out!” Noble said, turning to point at the open door. The maid glared at him for a minute, tossed her head, and spun around to face the hallway, her hands on her hips. “I hope you’re happy! He didn’t even look at me!”
An arm suddenly emerged through the opening, grabbed her by the elbow, and jerked her out of the room. The door closed quietly behind her.
Noble considered the closed portal for a moment. “…nine, ten,” he said. The door flung open, and a rumpled Tremayne Two rushed in. “Highwaymen, my lord! Masked highwaymen at the door! Quick, you must come and…”
Tremayne Two quite accurately read in his employer’s eyes his fate if he continued with that sentence. He turned on his heel and walked with stately dignity back through the door.
Noble tipped his head as he considered Gillian. “Do you have the feeling they are concerned for your well-being, my lady?”
“Should they not be, my lord?” she asked, hating the worry evident in her voice.
Noble pretended to think about her question. “Yes,” he said at last with a decisive nod. “Yes, they should be very, very concerned.”
He took two steps toward her and grasped her firmly by the shoulders. “Now, madam, now you will tell me exactly—” He froze as the door slowly opened behind him.
Over his shoulder Gillian could see a thin trickle of smoke gust into the room. The smoke seemed to possess a power all its own as it waved and eddied in an intricate smoke dance. It was almost as if someone were fanning it in through the door.
“My lord!”
Gillian was surprised to see Cook at the door. He cast a glance to his left, in the direction of the smoke’s origin, and cleared his throat loudly. Someone beyond him began to cough. He raised his voice to speak over the noise. “My lord, the fire has reached the first floor. Mr. Crouch has been overcome by smoke and the rest of the staff is dropping like flies. You must come now!”
Gillian fought hard to keep the smile from her face. Noble’s shoulders slumped briefly as he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Gillian’s. She took the opportunity to wrap her arms around his waist. He sighed noisily at the fresh spate of coughing from beyond the door.
“Cook, tell Crouch if I ever catch him at my cigars again, I’ll have his other hand.”
Crouch suddenly appeared behind the cook. He opened his mouth to speak, was taken by a paroxysm of coughing, and ended up clinging to the door frame for support. Gillian couldn’t help but notice there was a cigar stuck on the end of his hook. A long arm emerged from beyond Crouch, grabbed the cook, and slammed the door closed on both the cigar and Crouch’s hook. Gillian watched with fascinated eyes as the hook wiggled back and forth to the accompaniment of muttered oaths and odd thumpings on the door.
“Are they gone?” Noble asked without opening his eyes.
“All but Crouch’s hook and half of a cigar.”
Noble’s shoulders shook.
“There goes the hook now,” Gillian said happily over a loud, wood-splintering noise. “Would you like me to lock the door?”
“No, they’d just break it down. I will put their minds at ease with respect to your safety, my dear, but if you are not in my library in five minutes with a suitable explanation, I will feel fully justified in reneging on my word to them.”
“Five minutes? Would you consider, perhaps, an hour or two?” Gillian’s mind spun madly around, formulating and instantly discarding a number of explanations. It would take her just five minutes to work off the expletives she wanted to say in private. Any half-believable explanation would surely take at least an hour to form.
“Five minutes.”
“Half an hour?”
“Five…minutes.”
He tipped up her chin and kissed her very gently on her lips. Gillian felt it was a warning—he could be gentle, or he could be a raging volcano of anger. The choice of how he would hear her explanation was hers.
“Five minutes.” She sighed and began to think furiously.
In the end, she decided that the truth would have to suffice. She explained to Noble her plan to help him uncover the person behind the evil plots to harm him, and how the mistresses were to help. She pointed out that her sole motivation was to ensure his health and happiness. She mentioned that all the women were quite nice, really, and all had offered to help, although she did not mention the mistresses guild. Gillian was aware of her many faults but did not count stupidity among them. She expounded on Charlotte’s idea of locating Mariah in an attempt to ascertain what she knew about the appalling incident. She brought his attention to the fact that women were often more successful in endeavors of a covert nature, since they kept their heads better in stressful situations, though one look at Noble’s expression quickly ended that particular line of reasoning. She finished her arguments with a quick summation of the key points, made sure she stressed one last time that she was trying to help him because she loved him, and sat with her hands folded demurely and awaited judgment.
Noble had sat listening to her from behind his big mahogany desk, his fingers steepled and supporting his chin. Once or twice he had nodded as she made a point, but most of the time he watched her with an intensity that she found unnerving. His eyes glowed with a light from within their silvery depths, giving Gillian the almost overwhelming desire to shiver.
At first she listened carefully to what he was saying, as he was offering appreciation for her concern and her desire to help, but when it became clear that the rest of the lecture—and it was a lecture, despite the fact that he had assured he would refrain from lecturing—was headed for a detailed analysis of her conduct of the past few days, with particular emphasis on the outrageous nature of her plan with the mistresses, she let her mind wander. By the time he was through, however, she was unable to plan the dinners for the rest of the week, settle on what color wallpaper to use in the drawing room, or what shade of green to paint her bedchamber, as such useful lecture-passing musings were impossible to dwell upon when the Black Earl was storming around in front of her in one of his tempers.
At one point she thought he was finished and stood up to excuse herself. Noble, pacing by the window, spun around and pinned her with one silver-eyed glare. She felt her knees buckle beneath her and sank back down in her chair.
“Do not think I am through with you yet, madam,” he said, breathing heavily and perspiring slightly about the forehead.
“Oh, aren’t you? I thought perhaps you might be. It’s getting late, Noble, and Cook is waiting to speak with me about the dinners.”
“Damn the dinners!” Noble rubbed a hand over his eyes, and instantly Gillian’s heart went out to him. The poor man; she was such a trial to him.
“Trial?” he snapped, his eyes wild. “Trial? Madam, you are a plague! You are a tribulation! You are an ordeal by fire!”
“Well, really, Noble,” Gillian said crossly, her patience running thin, “I might be a trial, but I certainly am not an ordeal by fire.”
“You’ve set two
fires that I know of in less than a fortnight. That, my dear wife, qualifies you as an ordeal by fire.”
Gillian compressed her lips into a thin line that said more than words ever could. Noble narrowed his eyes at her. “Do not don that obstinate look with me, my lady.”
He stormed around to the front of his desk and leaned over her. “Hear me and hear me well, Gillian. I forbid you to meet with the four women you brought to my house today. I forbid you to investigate the unfortunate incidents. I forbid you to leave the house unless you are in my company. And I forbid you to have anything further to do with my son!”
Gillian gasped, horrified by his mandates. She could live with the first two and tolerate the third, but not to have contact with Nick? Her son? A fury unlike any other she’d known welled up deep inside her and threatened to spill over. She pushed Noble back until she could stand up, and faced him with her hands fisted on her hips and her eyes blazing.
“Why?”
Noble stared at her neck, his hands twitching as if with the effort to keep from throttling her. “Why? Have you not been listening to me for the last forty minutes?”
“Why may I not see Nick?”
“Because you are an unsuitable influence. He is a lad of tender years, and I will not have him exposed to the seedier side of life before he is ready to see it.”
“The mistresses? He was not present, Noble!”
“It matters not. You took him with you when you had the harebrained idea to rescue me. You took him with you when you visited the man who was responsible for his stepmother’s death. You ran the risk of exposing him this afternoon to women of a lower class. Clearly you cannot be trusted with the responsibility of seeing to his upbringing, so I shall remove him from your sphere of influence.”
Gillian felt as if he’d struck her. He could rail at her all he liked, but to accuse her of being negligent where Nick was concerned—that was the outside of enough!
“I will not let you do this to me,” she shouted and punched him in the chest in an attempt to drive home the point. “You can lock me away, you can forbid me to see my friends, but you cannot take my son from me.”
“He is not your son,” Noble roared at her.
“He became my son the minute you married me,” she yelled back, furious that despite all their intimacies, despite the fact that they loved one another, he still did not see them as a family. “You cannot take him away from me. I won’t let you.”
“You have no choice in the matter,” he snapped. “The decision is made. I will send Nick back to Nethercote in the morning. As you made a particular point about staying in town to be at my side, you will remain with me.”
“You will not destroy this family!” She pounded on his chest again until he held her hands still; then, with a wordless cry of protest, she ripped them from his grasp and stalked toward the door.
“Gillian, I did not give you permission to leave. I have not yet finished with you.”
“Oh, no, my lord,” she said as she threw open the door, ignoring the startled faces of the staff gathered immediately outside. “You very nearly are finished, but you have not yet destroyed us completely. If you do not want to annihilate what was beginning to be a family, I strongly urge you to take back your words. I shall wait in my sitting room for your apology.”
“Then you will wait for hell to freeze over,” Noble thundered. “Gillian, come back here!”
Gillian turned and pushed her way blindly past the servants and ran up the stairs. At the top of the flight she paused when she saw Nick hiding in the shadows and clutched him to her with a sob.
“I won’t let him take you away from me,” she whispered, hugging him as tightly as she could. “You won’t be alone again, I promise.”
Nick looked up into his stepmother’s eyes, and what he saw there warmed him down to the tips of his toes. He reached up to touch a tear streaking down her cheek and frowned at the wetness on his finger.
“My mother used to tell me a saying,” Gillian said, bending down and kissing him on the forehead. “She said nothing worthwhile is easy. You, my darling son, are very worthwhile. I will do whatever it takes to make us a family, whatever it takes to make your father realize that he can’t separate us. He’s hurt and angry right now, Nick, and when people are hurt and angry they very often lash out at those people near to them. Do you understand?”
An urge bubbled up deep in Nick. He tried to ignore it, but it pressed up and up, higher and more insistent, until he almost gave in to the urge. Instead he nodded his head.
“Good.” She pulled him into a hug again, and he let her warmth seep into him, comforting him. “I love you, my son,” she whispered in his ear, and with a final kiss she was off, running up the next flight of stairs.
The urge inside Nick pushed higher until he thought it would burst right out of his mouth. He watched the hem of her gown flap briefly as she turned the corner on the stairs, and then he gave in to the urge. “I won’t let Papa take you away,” he whispered.
Eleven
Nick sat at the top of the stairs, a small huddled form hidden in the shadow cast by the wall. He picked at a scab on his knee from an injury he’d received when he tried to ride his pony up the steps to the veranda at Nethercote. The trouble with adults, he decided, was that they didn’t come right out and say what was wrong, and how it could be fixed. He knew from the raised voices of his father and Gillian, audible even to him on the first floor, that they were arguing about something, and he had seen for himself that Gillian was crying again. But she didn’t tell him what was the matter; she just talked about his father being hurt and angry.
Before he had much time to dwell on the subject, he saw his father storm out of the library, snatch up his hat and walking stick, and, with a growl, stomp out to his waiting carriage. The servants were standing in a group in the hall. He wondered if they knew what the problem was between Gillian and his father, and how it could be fixed. He was about to ask when Rogerson, his tutor, separated himself from the others and, spying Nick, came to herd him back upstairs to the room used for his studies.
Rogerson put an arm around his shoulders. “It’ll be all right, lad.” Nick thought of Gillian and how nice she made him feel, and he fervently hoped his tutor was right.
***
“Lord Weston! I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”
“I’m in the mood for a little exercise, Jackson. Can you accommodate me?”
Gentleman Jackson grinned. “There’s an arrogant young blood in there just looking for someone to take him down a peg or two. Shall I tell him you’ll oblige?”
Noble allowed the attendant to peel off his coat and reached for the buttons on his waistcoat. “By all means. I’d be very happy to beat the arrogance out of him,” he said grimly.
***
“Well this is baffling!”
Crouch, Gillian noticed, had been hovering outside the not-quite-closed door of her sitting room. She smiled a little smile to herself. His interest and concern was really quite endearing, if a little stifling. She knew he was consumed with curiosity about the missive he’d just delivered to her.
“Did yer say somethin’, m’lady?” he asked as he popped through the door.
“Why, Crouch, how opportune that you should be just there as I was speaking aloud to myself. As you have asked, yes, I did say something. This letter you brought me—it’s quite baffling.”
Crouch adopted a pose that indicated unadulterated interest. “Bafflin’, m’lady? ’Twas sent to ye at Nethercote, but since yer ’ere, the steward ’ad it sent up by ’and.”
“Yes, I understand how it came to be forwarded to me, but what I’m baffled about is the letter’s contents. It tells me that if I should ride to London and call at a specific address in Kensington, I shall learn something of interest regarding my husband.”
Crouch frowned. “Someon
e wanted ye to ride from Nethercote to town? Why would someone be wantin’ that?”
Gillian tapped the edge of the note to her lips as she thought. “This letter must have been sent to me in order to draw me into finding Noble shackled to his mistress’s bed.”
Crouch frowned. “Well if that ain’t dicked in the nob.”
“Um…yes, possibly, depending, of course, on whose nob it is that has been dicked. The question is, who sent this? The person who waylaid his lordship, or someone else?”
Crouch blew out his cheeks and scratched his belly with his hook as he considered the question. “Don’t see ’ow anyone else could be knowin’ what ’appened to ’is lordship unless they was the cull what smushed ’im.”
Gillian blinked. “Ah, yes. I see your point. Only the smushing cull would have known where Noble could be found. But how would this cull know I was at Nethercote and not in town? Our removal to Nethercote wasn’t in the papers.”
Crouch sucked his lip. “That be a right good question, m’lady. A right good ’un.”
Gilliam beamed at him for a moment. “Well, we shall put our minds to the problem. In the mean time, I have a task for you, but you mustn’t tell Lord Weston about it.”
“Crikey, m’lady, ’is lordship’ll be ’avin’ my ’ead if I was to do somethin’ against ’is wishes.”
Gillian smiled. “It’s not against his wishes. That is, it would be if he knew about it, but he doesn’t, so that makes it all right. Do you see?”
Crouch groaned and rubbed his eyes with his good hand. “I’m afraid I do, m’lady. What is it yer wantin’ me to do, then?”
Gillian removed a slip of paper from beneath a letter she had been writing and handed it to him. “I want you to go to Bow Street and hire some of those Runner persons. A half dozen should do, I’d think. They should be armed, and if they aren’t, you should see that they are equipped with pistols. Or muskets—whichever you think best. Then you are to take the men to be fitted for livery, and bring them home. We’ll disguise them as footmen.”