“Oh, yes, indeed,” Gillian said, watching the people parade past on the veranda, enjoying the lovely evening.

“You have become very dear to me, which is why I will say to you that I could not help but notice that Lord Weston is not with you this evening. I do hope there are no difficulties?”

“Difficulties?”

“Difficulties—a little contretemps between you and the earl, perhaps? It is not uncommon, I believe, for a bride and groom to have little disagreements and unpleasantnesses as they settled in.”

“I thank you for your concern, Lady Fielding, but I can assure you—”

“My dear Gillian—” the older woman interrupted, leaning toward her. “My dear, allow me, one who is older and wiser, to counsel you in this matter. It is said that you and the earl have had a rather heated disagreement. You must not allow such differences to drive you apart. These things will pass, and if you treat them as they should be treated—that is to say, ignored—then your life will be a most happy one.”

Gillian stared at the baroness. “Someone is spreading rumors that Noble and I have had an argument?”

The feathers in the baroness’s elaborately arranged hair bobbed as she nodded. “It is quite the talk, although I beg you to pay no notice to it. It is quite evidently false, as your appearance here tonight has proven.”

Gillian’s hands tightened into fists. How dare anyone spread more rumors about poor Noble! Wasn’t it enough he had to contend with the false ones about his late wife? How on earth could someone know that they’d had an argument that day, and who was spreading the news? “Who is telling you these things, Lady Fielding?”

“Oh, I’ve heard it from here and there. Talk of the Black Earl and his treatment of you is all anyone speaks of now. No one truly expected that he would manage to marry and keep his wife, no matter how”—she eyed Gillian’s bare arms, blue hands, and palm-printed gown—“unorthodox that wife might be.”

“Well, this really takes the cake,” Gillian fumed a few minutes later, when she and Charlotte had escaped Lady Fielding’s presence. “Someone is spreading the most appalling rumors about Noble, trying to create trouble for him, and it’s working! Everyone is blaming Noble for a little argument we had.”

“What was it about?” Charlotte asked following her to the veranda railing.

“That’s the problem, I don’t know!” Gillian slapped her hand down on the stone railing. “One moment he was all warm and loving, and the next moment he was as cold as marble. And now this! Noble leaves me to attend our first ball on my own!”

“You’ve been in England long enough to know how these fashionable marriages work. Your husband goes his way and you are free to go yours. As long as you’re discreet, of course.”

“I’m always discreet,” Gillian muttered, turning around and peering through the crowd, then back across the lawn. “Noble hates crowds; perhaps he’s gone to see the garden. Blast the man, he said he’d be here tonight. Where is he?”