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.”