“I’m sure that is the case, my lord, but I must investigate the situation fully. Are you certain there are no other individuals who would wish to see you come to harm?”

“Any number, I’m certain,” Noble replied with a wry twist to his mouth. “Half the ton believes I murdered my wife, the other half believes I’m a notorious rake. None of them, however, are privy to the information that is contained within the threatening letters.”

“You will, of course, refuse to pay the blackmail sum demanded?”

“That goes without saying.”

Stafford nodded his head and glanced down at the most recent letter Noble had received. “I can give you three men, my lord.”

Noble stretched out his arm and retrieved his letter. “I had hoped for more.”

“I’m afraid three is the best I can do at the moment. They will be round your house in the morning.”

Noble wrote a few lines on the back of a calling card. “Have them present this to my butler, Crouch. Or Tremayne. Either of them; they’re both my butlers.”

Stafford raised his brows. “You have two butlers in one house, my lord?”

“Yes,” he replied, pocketing the letter and standing. “It was my wife’s idea.”

His words echoed in his head a short time later as his carriage rolled toward a certain address near Russell Square. Was it really Gillian’s idea to have the second Tremayne brother follow her up to his town house? She had said something about him helping Crouch learn to be less a pirate, which made no sense at all. Despite his hook, Crouch was not a pirate. Lord knew, the man got seasick just walking on a bridge over a river.

“Gillian,” he said softly, gazing out the window, blind to all but the image of the tall, redheaded Amazon who had moved into his heart. How had she done it? He’d never expected to feel anything beyond mild affection for a woman again, and yet she was consuming his every thought.

Gillian. Just the sound of her name sent tendrils of heat through him; many of them, it was true, pooling in his groin, but he was also conscious of a gentle, soothing glow radiating out from the bright light she cast, warming him and making him believe he was human again.

Gillian. His wife, the woman who bore his name and would bear his children. He thought of her plump and round with his babe, and a spurt of base masculine pleasure added to the warmth already heating him.

Gillian. The woman who was walking down the front steps of his most hated enemy’s house, her arm linked through his, laughing up at that bastard murderer McGregor with a smile that should be reserved solely for him.

Gillian!

“What the bloody hell is this?” he roared, jumping out of the carriage before his coachman could bring the horses to a stop. “By God’s ten toes, woman, what the hell do you think you are doing with that man?”