Noble stared at her with increasing bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

Gillian blushed. “I can see you are being kindhearted by pretending it didn’t happen, but I assure you, my darling husband, I am ready to hear your lecture.”

Noble frowned. “What exactly did you do for my own good that had to do with Lord Carlisle? You haven’t had time to see him.” He looked around the library in mock suspicion. “I don’t see him lurking in the corner, so you couldn’t have invited him here as you are wont to do with people I’d rather not see. What is it you’ve done, wife?”

Gillian watched his expression closely. God’s knuckles, he honestly didn’t seem to be upset. Would she ever understand his moods? “I wasn’t planning on telling you, but now I think perhaps it wouldn’t upset you, as I had previously thought. I had him…that is to say, I ordered that Crouch and three of the Runner footmen…it was for your own good, you know, and solely to help you save face, so I don’t think you should commence scowling in that manner, husband.”

Noble counted to ten. “What did you do?”

“I had Lord Carlisle kidnapped.”

Noble sank down into the nearest available chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Why?” Even thinking the word made his head hurt worse.

“So that you wouldn’t feel I was betraying you when I drugged you.”

He stopped rubbing his forehead. “You did what?”

Gillian frowned. “You needn’t act as if you didn’t notice, husband.”

“You drugged me? So I couldn’t attend the duel?” Gillian nodded. “You drugged me? Ah, the draught. You drugged me with my own brandy? And then you let me make love to you?”

Gillian took a step or two away from him. Her Lord of Outrage looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh and kiss her silly, or to yell the hair right off her head, and if he settled on the latter, she wanted a little bit of distance. “It wasn’t what I had planned, Noble, ’tis the truth I hadn’t planned that you would…that you and I were going to…that we would…I just wanted you a little sleepy so that you would not wake in time for the duel, and…well…I must have given you a bit too much because you slept like the dead.”

His indignation of earlier returned. “Do I remember correctly you engaging in a discussion of my personal attributes with Crouch?”

Gillian’s face brightened and she stepped forward again. Here was safe ground. Surely he couldn’t find fault with her wifely devotion in defending him. “Oh, yes, I did wonder if you were awake or not. Crouch said some rather rude things about your lovely behind, and I corrected him. It’s not a good thing to let one’s pirate have too much leniency where that sort of thing is concerned. With comments about one’s behind, that is. Don’t you agree?”

Noble opened his mouth to speak, realized he didn’t know what the hell he was going to say to that, and closed it again. Tiny pinpricks of pain in his temples were dulling into a steady throb. If he concentrated, he could ignore them enough to continue the enlightening discussion of a moment ago.