“Does your head hurt, Noble?”

The words were softly spoken, but they seemed to hang in the evening air for a moment, before melting and blanketing Noble in a warm glow. His jaw worked, but he could not get the words of denial past his lips.

Gillian slid across from the opposite seat and gently drew him toward her puny woman’s shoulder. Noble thought briefly of pushing her away. He knew it was the sheerest folly to allow himself into a situation where a woman offered more than mere physical release, but her touch was as gentle as her words. With one small hand she pulled him down until he was lying back drunkenly across the seat, his head cradled against her breasts. God’s knees, but she smelled good, even wearing his boots’ clothes.

Gillian murmured tenderly to him as she stroked his head. Odd, but her touch seemed to make the pounding in his temples lessen. Noble knew he should be lecturing his unruly wife on the dangerous nature of London at night. He knew he should forbid her to ever leave his house again without several footmen in attendance. He knew he should interrogate her as to her reasons for following him to town when he had purposely left her at Nethercote. He knew all of this, but for the first time since he had been so brutally betrayed by Elizabeth, he told the righteous side of his conscience to get nobbled.

Gillian knew the moment Noble stopped fighting his inner demons. His head lay heavy on her bosom, but she reveled in its weight, in their closeness, and in his trust. Lightly she stroked her husband’s dark hair and marveled that such a man—such a domineering, overpowering, large man—should have hair that felt like silk slipping through her fingers. The finest rich brown silk, shot through with threads of walnut and occasional silver. Noble sighed as she delicately traced the contours of his brow and let her fingers trail down to the angular plane of his cheek. His skin was rough with stubble, a strangely pleasing texture that seemed to set her fingers afire. She stroked past the indentation in his chin that never failed to thrill her and followed his jawline up to the sensitive spot behind the back of his ear. The black crescents of eyelashes—surely there must be a law against a man possessing such long, thick eyelashes—fluttered briefly but remained resting on the tanned skin of his cheek. Her fingers followed the path of his cheekbone to a swelling near his temple. Prodding the area with a gentle touch, Gillian breathed a sigh of relief when it became apparent the wound was not a serious one.

Taking advantage of the Lord of Bliss’s unexpected acquiescence, Gillian explored her husband’s face to her satisfaction. She looked up once, when the hack bumped across a hole in the road, to find her stepson’s bright eyes watching her.

What had Nick thought when he saw his father powerless, his vulnerability—among other things—exposed? It had to be a felling blow to a boy who worshipped his father, but he didn’t express any emotion or misbehave in an attempt to garner attention, as Gillian’s brothers always had. He simply watched them with an uncanny silence and an expressionless face. Gillian suddenly felt a chilling sense of sadness for her two men—Noble was trying so hard to deny his need for affection, and his son was following his path to self-control and denial. If she didn’t step in and put an end to the intolerable situation, soon it would be too late and both would be lost to her. Gillian’s fingers tightened around a fistful of Noble’s hair. She had no intention of letting that happen.