The Earl Claims His Wife by Cathy Maxwell Page B

Gillian. I’m going to knock the thing over.”

    “You’ll damage it,” she warned.
    “I’ll pay for damages later.” Right now, he wanted his wife to know who was in charge. Matters had gone out of hand long enough.
    But the wardrobe didn’t move. He made another attempt. It didn’t budge, not even an inch.
    “Gillian,” he said, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Move that wardrobe or I shall take it apart in splinters.”
    “You haven’t been too successful so far,” came her prim reply.
    Brian roared his frustration. He shoved at the door again and when that time wasn’t any more successful than his first attempt, he pounded the door with his fist, needing some sort of release before he exploded.
    The door opened across the hallway. Wearing his night cap, the father of the family peeked out into the hall. Targeting him as a focus for his anger, Brian all but growled before ordering, “Back in your room.”
    But when the wide-eyed man pulled back to obey, Brian had a new idea and stopped his neighbor’s door from closing with one hand. “Let me have a look in there.”
    “In here, my lord?”
    “Yes,” Brian answered absently as he took charge and shoved the door wider to take a look around the room. He knew he was being rude but this was war. A war between a man and a woman. Not even the French could be as formidable opponents. And he was not going to let Gillian best him.
    In the glowing light coming from the hearth he could see the family huddled in the room’s two beds and a few cots. Brian wasn’t interested in them. Instead, he noticed the two windows on the far wall.
    He’d wager his room was laid out much the same way.
    A chubby toddler came suddenly awake. The child stared at Brian as if he were a mad man, which right now he probably was, and then opened his mouth to cry. His mother scooped him up into her arms, trying to shush him—a scene that finally made Brian snap to his senses.
    “So sorry,” Brian said to the child’s mother. He backed out of the room, nodding to the father.
    “Again, beg pardon. But thank you for your indulgence.”
    The door was slammed behind him. That slam was echoed from his room across the hall. Gillian had repositioned the wardrobe so that he couldn’t push open the door at all.
    He narrowed his gaze, wishing he could see right through his door. She probably thought she had him beat. He wondered why she’d run so hot and then cold…and decided it was because the intensity between them had frightened her off. He’d upset her avowed dedication to her Spaniard. He’d made her question herself and Gillian didn’t like questions. He understood that about her now. She wasn’t one to flirt easily or to be jaded about morals. That was the reason she’d left his father’s house. He would have staked his career on it.
    She’d said she wanted a divorce. Brian almost laughed. There would be no divorce. Not in his marriage.
    Besides, he couldn’t lose her. She was all he had left.
    He went down the back stairs of the inn. Not bothering with the still-burning lamp, he walked toward the front door where he paused only long enough to remove his jacket and hang it on a peg in the wall before going outside.
    Four windows to the taproom lined the front of the inn. Besides the dying fire in the grate, two candles were still burning. Peter must still be up doing chores.

    Not wanting to be discovered slinking around outside, Brian hunched over so he couldn’t be seen and ran past the windows.
    At the corner of the inn, he stopped to study the side of the house. There were two windows on the first floor, exactly as there had been in the family’s room. However, he decided to try the window over the taproom. There was a tall oak at this corner whose branches came close to those windows.
    Brian could have danced a jig. He was going to enjoy the look on Gillian’s face when he climbed through one of them. And the irony was he’d shared the story of his