“Thank you, Sir Hugh,” she said politely, wishing he would leave her so she could tidy herself up. “I’m sure this will be most…oh, my. What…er…what exactly is that?”

“What?” Sir Hugh asked politely as he slid the bolt home in the door and began to light candles.

Gillian pointed at the raised circular platform. “That. That large thing, just there, taking up most of the room.”

She began to feel something was very, very wrong.

“Ah, that.” Sir Hugh came up behind her and put a hand to her back. “That is a little something I devised myself. A modified Catherine wheel. Notice that it spins.”

Gillian noticed that, just as she also noticed the four leather straps and what looked suspiciously like dried bloodstains. She tried not to sound scared to death when she spoke. “Ah. It’s…most ingenious, Sir Hugh.”

He smiled. Gillian’s stomach dropped into her boots. She was looking at a madman; she knew that just as well as she knew her own self.

Sir Hugh laughed. “Mad? I don’t believe so, my dear, although I should by rights be after suffering what your husband has done to me.”

Gillian took a step backwards. “Noble is your friend, Sir Hugh. He’s been your friend for many years.”

“Friend,” he snarled, stepping toward her. “Enemy, my dear, my bitterest enemy. Did you know he stole the fair Elizabeth from me? She had been promised to me, you see, by my papa. But then Noble came along, and suddenly he had to have her and no one else.”

Gillian stepped back again, but the madman followed. “If she was in love with him…”

He snorted. “She didn’t know how to love anyone but herself, the coldhearted bitch. No, first he took my Elizabeth, then he took my land.”

“Your land?”

A tic started beneath the baronet’s left eye. He rubbed at it absently as he spoke. “The solicitor blamed the gaming debts, but I know the truth. Weston bought him out, forced him to sell my land, my inheritance, forced me from my birthright!”

Gillian gasped as Sir Hugh screamed the last word. He was staring past her, his fists working, his face livid and twisted with hate. “He had everything. He had it all, handed to him by his dear papa, but still he had to take what was mine. Everything, he took everything.”

Suddenly his hand lashed out and he grabbed her by her arm, tugging her forward until she could feel his heated breath on her face. She tried to turn away from the horrible sight of his face tortured and knotted with madness, but he pulled her even closer.

“I showed him, though, didn’t I? Poor Hugh, nothing but a wastrel’s son, they all said, but I proved them wrong, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

He shook her with the last words.

“I—”

“I did, I did and you know it! I even did away with that grasping, greedy bitch Mariah when he came close to tracking her down.”