Gillian blinked at her. “You what?”
“I’m sorry, Gilly, truly I am, but Mama says we won’t be able to recognize you if things do not begin to improve for Lord Weston.”
“I see,” Gillian said coldly and shook off her cousin’s hands. “Thank you for alerting me to the situation, Charlotte. I wouldn’t wish to blight your chances with either my or Noble’s unwelcome presence.”
“Oh, Gilly, I just knew you were going to go all haughty on me and take it like that. Gilly—Gilly! Let me explain—”
Gillian suffered her cousin to pull her back to the alcove. She pretended to examine the bust, tracing a finger around a marble ear, not wishing to admit she was wounded to the bone by her cousin’s words.
“I promise, cousin, no matter what the ton says about your husband, I’ll always stand by you.”
Gillian gave her cousin a grateful smile and a quick hands-free embrace. “Thank you, Char. I didn’t think for a moment you’d abandon us.”
“Well, it won’t be easy, but we’ll worry about that when it happens. Dear heavens, look what you’ve done to the countess’s bust! Come, let us go over there where you can do no harm.”
Gillian followed her cousin meekly, scanning the room for signs of a familiar form.
“Will you stop peering around like a long-necked giraffe and tell me what it is you’re looking for?”
“Noble, although why I should want to see him after the atrocious way he treated me, I couldn’t say.”
Charlotte looked over the crowd with her cousin, then motioned toward the door leading to the veranda. “Why are you so angry with your husband? What atrocious thing has he done?”
Gillian explained about the cold way Noble had mentioned he would escort her home if she desired.
“This is my first ball as his wife, Charlotte. You can imagine what people must be saying about us when he can’t be bothered to attend with me!”
“Well, about that.” Charlotte paused for a moment, wondering how to break the news to her cousin. She opted for the easy way. “Look, there’s Aunt Fielding. Do let us go and greet her. She always has the latest gossip.”
Gillian agreed reluctantly. “Just for a moment, though. I want to look for Noble.”
Charlotte tsked at her and herded her outside onto the veranda to where her aunt sat surrounded by a group of chattering women. Upon seeing Gillian, the women exchanged raised eyebrows and knowing nods and moved off.
“What was that about?” Gillian hissed to her cousin.
“Nothing. Behave yourself. Good evening, Aunt.”
Gillian exchanged pleasantries with her cousin’s aunt, a woman of indeterminate age and French background, and sat in a small chair when so ordered.
“I wish to speak with you, Gillian. I know that our relationship is not one of blood, but I think of you as I would my own flesh-and-blood niece, and hope I’ve treated you with as much care and attention as I have dear little Charlotte.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Gillian said, watching the people parade past on the veranda, enjoying the lovely evening.
“You have become very dear to me, which is why I will say to you that I could not help but notice that Lord Weston is not with you this evening. I do hope there are no difficulties?”
“Difficulties?”
“Difficulties—a little contretemps between you and the earl, perhaps? It is not uncommon, I believe, for a bride and groom to have little disagreements and unpleasantnesses as they settled in.”
“I thank you for your concern, Lady Fielding, but I can assure you—”
“My dear Gillian—” the older woman interrupted, leaning toward her. “My dear, allow me, one who is older and wiser, to counsel you in this matter. It is said that you and the earl have had a rather heated disagreement. You must not allow such differences to drive you apart. These things will pass, and if you treat them as they should be treated—that is to say, ignored—then your life will be a most happy one.”
Gillian stared at the baroness. “Someone is spreading rumors that Noble and I have had an argument?”
The feathers in the baroness’s elaborately arranged hair bobbed as she nodded. “It is quite the talk, although I beg you to pay no notice to it. It is quite evidently false, as your appearance here tonight has proven.”
Gillian’s hands tightened into fists. How dare anyone spread more rumors about poor Noble! Wasn’t it enough he had to contend with the false ones about his late wife? How on earth could someone know that they’d had an argument that day, and who was spreading the news? “Who is telling you these things, Lady Fielding?”
“Oh, I’ve heard it from here and there. Talk of the Black Earl and his treatment of you is all anyone speaks of now. No one truly expected that he would manage to marry and keep his wife, no matter how”—she eyed Gillian’s bare arms, blue hands, and palm-printed gown—“unorthodox that wife might be.”
“Well, this really takes the cake,” Gillian fumed a few minutes later, when she and Charlotte had escaped Lady Fielding’s presence. “Someone is spreading the most appalling rumors about Noble, trying to create trouble for him, and it’s working! Everyone is blaming Noble for a little argument we had.”
“What was it about?” Charlotte asked following her to the veranda railing.
“That’s the problem, I don’t know!” Gillian slapped her hand down on the stone railing. “One moment he was all warm and loving, and the next moment he was as cold as marble. And now this! Noble leaves me to attend our first ball on my own!”
“You’ve been in England long enough to know how these fashionable marriages work. Your husband goes his way and you are free to go yours. As long as you’re discreet, of course.”
“I’m always discreet,” Gillian muttered, turning around and peering through the crowd, then back across the lawn. “Noble hates crowds; perhaps he’s gone to see the garden. Blast the man, he said he’d be here tonight. Where is he?”
“Don’t be in such a dither, Gilly.” Charlotte took a deep breath, looked toward the doors to the ballroom and, with a muttered prayer that her mother wouldn’t discover her antics, followed her cousin out into the garden. “Oh, look at the lovely cascade! Did you ever see such a sight?”
“Never,” Gillian muttered, giving short shrift to the countess’s fantastic display of colored lights set up to illuminate the water flowing along the mossy paths. She craned her head to catch sight of any tall, handsome earls who might be hiding out in the scented shrubs, trying to avoid their wives’ eyes.
“Look, a waterfall! Isn’t that lovely?”
“Lovely. Oh, blast! He doesn’t seem to be out here.”
“You know how men are—they have so many other important things to do. They visit their friends at their clubs, or they gamble, or they visit their mis—”
Gillian turned to face her cousin. “Visit their what?”
Charlotte peered around her in the softly lit darkness. There was a group of people at the foot of the stairs, near the waterfall, but no one close by. “Mistresses. Gillian, it’s time you face facts. I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you are, dear cousin, but you really must face the truth. Men like Weston simply are not the type to give up their freedom just because they are married. I know you believe Weston no longer has a mistress, but you are not being terribly realistic.”
“I agree,” Gillian said pleasantly after a moment’s thought and started to move toward the stairs. Perhaps he had gone into the cardroom.
“You do? You agree? Just like that? No argument?”
“No argument.”
“But Gilly—wait, Gilly.” Charlotte hurried to catch up to her cousin’s long stride. “Did you not say you were certain Weston had disported of his mistress’s services?”
“Dispensed, and yes, I did, but I was wrong. He does have one.”
�
��Oh, Gilly, I am sorry. I had hoped for your sake that Weston was different—”
“I am his mistress.”
Charlotte stopped dead. “You? You think you’re his mistress?”
Gillian stopped and looked back at her. “I know I am.”
“You can’t be his mistress!”
“Whyever can’t I?”
Charlotte waved her hand around. “Because…because you’re his wife.”
“So?”
“You can’t be both.”
“Why not?”
“Well…just because! Wives and mistresses—Gillian, they’re just two separate people. Wives are…wives, and mistresses—well, you know what they are.”
Gillian tipped her head to one side. “Perhaps I don’t, Charlotte. What exactly is the difference between a wife and a mistress? Oh, don’t stare at me like I’m an idiot. Other than the obvious, what is the difference?”
Charlotte looked around helplessly, hoping for inspiration. “Well, for one thing, mistresses show affection in public. Did you hear about La Bella Dona and the Duke of Ainstey two nights past?”
Gillian shook her head.
“They were in the King’s Theater, you know, and it’s said that she sat right on his lap. In front of everyone. And kissed him!”
“That certainly is in poor taste, but hardly—”
“While the duchess was in her box directly across from La Bella Dona’s!”
“Oh. Well, yes, then I will agree that your example certainly does show a shocking lack of manners, but that hardly has anything to do with my situation.”
“Yes, it does. The point is that you can hardly behave in such a manner, even with your own husband.”
Gillian thought back to the morning’s activities in the library. “I’m not so sure of that—”
“Oh, look!” Charlotte squealed, and grabbed her cousin’s arm. “There he is.”
“Noble? Where?”
“No, not Weston. His friend. The handsome one. By the shrubs to your left.”
“Lord Rosse? I don’t see him either. All I see is that little man Sir Hugh—”
“Gillian! How can you be so cruel just because the gentleman isn’t a giant like you.”
Gillian stared at her cousin with a slight smile playing around her lips. “My apologies, Char. I had no idea you had a tendresse for him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I have nothing of the sort. Papa would never countenance a marriage between a poor baronet and me. I merely pointed out one of your husband’s friends.”
“Mmm, yes, thank you.” Gillian made a mental note to ask Noble about his friend, and continued to scan the crowd.
“There’s Weston.”
“Where?” Gillian spun around.
“Over there, just at the foot of the stairs. He’s being given the cut by Lord Monteith. Oh, my, Gillian, that isn’t good. I believe Lord Worcester just cut him as well. What are you going to do?”
Gillian looked across the mossy paths, meandering streams of water, manicured lawn, and Arcadian groups of shrubs lit from within by colored lamps to where a group of people had collected to watch her husband be ignored by the crème of the ton. Dressed entirely in black, with a brilliant snowy white shirtfront and cravat, Noble’s austere beauty took Gillian’s breath away. Instantly her anger refocused itself onto a new, and much more deserving, target.
“I’ll show you what I’m going to do,” she said grimly, her hands fisted as she walked quickly toward the group of people.
A hush settled over them as they watched her approach. Noble, standing alongside Lord Rosse, raised one glossy black brow as she walked swiftly toward him. Gillian suddenly hoisted up a handful of her gown, speeded up her approach, and launched herself into her husband’s arms, pressing her eager lips against his.
She kissed him with all the fire and passion that had been smoldering in her ever since she had first seen him. She kissed him with every last ounce of love and devotion she possessed. She kissed him with an intensity that was readily apparent to those who stood by in astounded silence, watching them. She kissed him with abandon and joy and the warmth that only Noble could generate in her. It wasn’t technically a perfect kiss as far as kisses went, but it was a monumental one in the eyes of the ton. It was a kiss that turned the tide of public opinion about the Black Earl.
And then she fell into the waterfall.
Two gentlemen strolled by as Noble tried to help her wring the worst of the water out of her gown. They both paused for a moment, watching the scene while drawing on their cigars, then proceeded on their promenade.
“Silly chits and their dampened muslins.”
Seven
“Mmmm.”
The Black Earl gritted his teeth and refused to lift his eyes from the latest threatening letter that had arrived in the morning’s post. He had no need to gaze at his wife. He knew just how fetching she looked in a hunter green and cream dress, her fiery hair twisted into a simple chignon that he knew would immediately begin to disassemble itself into tendrils that would soften the planes of her face. He knew about the sweet swell of her bosom that led upward to the soft, rounded line of her shoulders, which in turn swept into the graceful curves of her arms, leading down to…blue hands.
He knew also what she would be doing. She was enjoying strawberries. In a manner guaranteed to make a saint fall. He grew hard just thinking about it.
He stared at the paper in his hand, not seeing the threats or the vile words, seeing instead the image of his wife as she had appeared the past night, curled up in his bed. He had been surprised to find her there after the scene at Countess Lieven’s, and especially after he had lectured her the entire way home about his expectations for his countess’s behavior. She had said not a word, sitting quietly as she listened to his reprimands until he began to feel he was an ogre, full of nothing but scolds and remonstrations. And yet she had sought his bed rather than her own. He had puzzled over this as he stood, candle in hand, gazing down on her for a moment that seemed to stretch into a thousand. Her hair had been loose, flowing over the white linen, flickering away from her as if she were a phoenix rising from the flames. His eyes traced a path down her satiny freckled cheek as it rested against her blue palm. She was asleep, and the sight of her so peaceful, so lovely, so very right did something deep inside him.
A tiny ray of light pierced the blackness of his soul and began to glow. He had wronged her, misjudged her. She was no Elizabeth, using his physical desire for her own gain; she was simply his Gillian, his wife, the woman who muddled her way through life with an impish smile and devilish twinkle in her eye. He sighed as he slipped into bed and curled up behind her, sharing her warmth, feeling suddenly as if a burden had shifted, lightening a little.
Why had she agreed to marry him? he wondered suddenly. Marriage to him offered security and a title, but he knew instinctively that neither mattered to her. He stroked the arm curled around her ribs and breathed in the seductive scent of sleepy woman. Why had she married him? The thought tortured him most of the night and into an indescribably lovely English summer morning.
“Mmmmmm.”
Her voice caressed him in a manner that was almost physical, and yet his reaction to it was far more profound than any mere physical reaction could be. The light inside him strengthened, casting the far edges of his soul into dark, forbidding shadows. He stared with unseeing eyes at the letter as he looked deep into the heart of the light. The light was Gillian. She had somehow managed to work her way into the deepest recesses of his being, and there she burned like a beacon. Noble waited with a sick feeling for the black thing that slithered around in his soul to find the brightness, to extinguish it, but the black thing was miraculously banished to a far corner. Noble basked in the glow of the light, feeling for the first time as if life did hold some promise, as if there was some reason for his existence.
“Mmmmm. So good.”
He sighed, unable to bear the torment any longer. He had to look. “Did you wish something, my dear?”
Gillian looked up from the pamphlet in which she was engrossed. “No, nothing, Noble. Thank you.”
He watched her reach for another strawberry and hold it before her mouth, her mind engaged in reading the literature before her. He felt his breathing stop as he watched, waiting. Slowly Gillian parted her lips, the strawberry a hairsbreadth away from that luscious mouth, the very tip of her tongue emerging to lightly stroke the fruit’s heavy round fullness.
Noble felt himself grow hard as steel at the sight. He swallowed back the tightness that threatened to choke him and tried to drag his attention from the erotic sight of his wife eating strawberries to the more important issue of who was threatening to do her bodily harm. The words swam before his eyes and he couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing. Would she have finished licking the essence from the strawberry by this time? Would her small white teeth be pulling at the succulent fruit, tugging its globular, delicate flesh with little nips until it surrendered to the lure of her sweet, hot mouth? Would her tongue make a reappearance as she licked the juices from her soft, warm lips?
He couldn’t help himself. He looked up. She was chewing, a green stem dangling between her long, delicate, albeit blue-tinted, fingers.
“More strawberries, my dear?” he asked, his voice strangely hoarse. She looked into the bowl he was offering. “Well, I shouldn’t, but I do love strawberries so. Perhaps just one or two more.”
He deftly turned the bowl so she would have to take the largest one, a veritable giant among strawberries, one that had two distinct hemispheres. He felt himself harden to a degree he would have thought impossible outside the realm of marble as Gillian’s little pink tongue snaked out and caressed one side of the giant strawberry.
“Mmmm,” she murmured happily, her eyes closed in bliss as she gave herself over to the pleasure of tasting the mammoth berry. Noble thought he would either shame himself or swoon when she took one half of the strawberry into the hot, moist, silky cave of her mouth and sucked the juices from its flesh. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, aware only of his overwhelmingly intense desire to throw her down on the table and plunge himself deep into her womanly depths. Repeatedly. For a lengthy period of time, say a week or two. Maybe longer.
Noble Intentions Page 15
