“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.