Noble, keeping his eyes carefully averted as she reached for another strawberry, asked if she were feeling ill.

“No, but you are.”

He looked up at her statement.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you were most restless last night, husband. And this morning, when I asked you why you were looking so peculiar and disgruntled, you said you had a pain in your head. All signs, according to Dr. Graham’s helpful pamphlet, that your organs need attention.”

Noble thought back to the night of torment he had endured, a self-imposed night of torment borne of his desire to show his wife that he was more than just a lustful beast who valued his own urges more than his wife’s need to rest.

“I am quite well, I assure you, madam,” he said, lying through his teeth. He was a lustful beast. He wanted her, needed her, had to have her. That very moment. “My organs have no need of stimulation, celestial or otherwise. I do, however, believe that we did not finish our discussion about the proper way of organizing and structuring your life.”

Gillian looked surprised. “Would that be the lecture you delivered last evening?”

“It would. You looked tired, so I postponed the balance of the discussion until today.”

Gillian sighed. Dabbing at her mouth, she sat back in her chair with her hands folded demurely on her lap. “Very well, Noble, if it will make you happy, you may lecture me now.”

“Thank you. Now, as to—”

“It comes as news to me, of course, to find out my life is unorganized and unstructured.”

“You may be assured it is, my dear. As for last evening’s events—”

“Active, perhaps, or full of those marvelous little surprises that life always seems to offer, yes, I can see that, but unorganized and unstructured?”

“It is. How else do you explain that?” He waved toward her blue hands.

She considered her hands. “Curiosity?”

“Curiosity, lady wife, when held unchecked by common sense and rational thought, is nothing more than chaos. And as we have discussed at length, a chaotic lifestyle is not one that is conducive to a happy home.”

“But, Noble—”

He ignored her protests and spent fifteen minutes explaining again the importance of control and order in one’s life. He paced back and forth before the sideboard, his stride lengthening as he gesticulated when making particular points. He waxed eloquent as he presented both arguments and examples for her edification. He was pleased to see he had her full attention. Her eyes never left him as he offered her rational and valid reasons why she would learn to suit her life to his, and how happy their lives together would be once that seemingly monumental task had been accomplished.

“Now, my dear,” he finished, pulling out his pocket watch and consulting it, “I must keep an appointment, but before I go I will hear your plans for the day.”

“Hmm?” she asked dreamily, her gaze still intent on him.