Once Upon a Tower (5 page)

Seven

G
owan did not spend his time waiting for the post from London to arrive. That would be petty and beneath him. Besides, he had sent his letter by one of his most trusted grooms, instructing him to wait for a response. Since he knew the precise length of the journey from London to Brighton, there was no need to consider the matter further.

Except . . .

He had easily checked that ungainly emotion, lust, for the first twenty-two years of his life. He scorned the idea of paying coin for intimacy, and a mixture of fastidiousness and honor had kept him from accepting cheerful invitations from married women. What’s more, he had been betrothed at the time, although waiting for Rosaline to reach her majority. He had certainly felt desire, but it had never got the better of him.

That was before he saw Lady Edith.

Now he’d dropped the reins, his sensual appetite was proving to be ferocious. He could hardly sleep for dreaming of plump limbs tangled with his. His mind was constantly straying into imagery that would turn a priest pale.

He couldn’t stop himself, even during occasions that demanded rational thought, such as now. He and Bardolph were working in the private parlor at the New Steine Hotel, waiting for the conference of bankers to reconvene at Pomfrey’s Bank; he was reading letters and signing them while Bardolph read aloud the report of one of his bailiffs.

He signed whatever Bardolph put in front of him, and imagined that he’d taken his wife to his castle at Craigievar, where clan chiefs had slept for generations. To the bed where his ancestors had consummated their marriages.

Edith lay beneath him, her hair flung across the bed like rumpled, ancient Chinese silk. He leaned down to caress her, his hand running down her bare shoulder, over skin like cream, and then he kissed her like a man possessed, and her eyes opened, heavy-lidded with desire. Everything in him roared:
You’re mine
, and she—

He was brought back to the near side of sanity by the sound of Bardolph coughing.

Gowan froze, uncomfortably aware that his breeches were stretched to the utmost by one of the hardest erections he’d had in his life. Thank God for the desk between them.

Slowly he reached out and took the letter that was waiting for his signature.

“The Chatteris wedding,” he said, glancing down at the page, gratified to find that his voice was steady, if rather guttural.

Bardolph nodded. “Your gift of a rack of venison and twelve geese has already been dispatched from the estate. This note accepts the invitation the family extended to stay at Fensmore itself. I gather that the guest list is so long that many of them will be housed in nearby inns.”

Gowan dipped his pen into his inkwell. He held it a second too long, and a large drop rolled from the quill and splashed on the letter. His secretary made a noise that sounded like a dry twig snapping underfoot.

“I’ll travel with a small retinue: you, Sandleford, and Hendrich,” Gowan said, pushing the letter back so it could be rewritten. “I finished reading Hendrich’s research into the textile factory in West Riding last night, so we’ll discuss. When we reach Cambridge, the three of you can return to London. Sandleford can return to the Royal Exchange, but first I’d like to hear his opinion about acquiring shares in that glass lighting utility in Birmingham.”

“A full complement of grooms,” Bardolph said to himself, making a note. “Three carriages rather than four, I would think. The sheets and china must go with you for the journey, though not, obviously, for use in Fensmore.”

Gowan stood up. “I’m going for a ride.”

Bardolph summoned up one of his ready frowns. “We have yet fourteen letters to review, Your Grace.”

Gowan did not care for dissension; he strode from the room without answering. Perhaps the Scot in him had taken over. He felt stronger and more alive than ever before, and his mind raced with tender words and wild images. He wanted to take his wife into the woods and lay her on a white cloth in a field of violets. He wanted to hear her voice in the open air, the cry of a pleasured woman, like that of a bird. He wanted . . .

He didn’t want to be sane any longer, or to sit in that airless room reading fourteen more letters before he affirmed each with his long and tedious signature.

He told himself in vain that Edith was a humorless dormouse. Frankly, humor did not come into many of the plans he had regarding her. Images blossomed in his heart like roses, each one in feverish counterpoint to the solemn intelligence of her letter.

He wanted to shower her with gifts, yet nothing he could conjure up seemed good enough. If he had the heavens embroidered on a cloth, wrought with gold and silver light, he would lay it at her feet . . .

Nay, he would lay her on top of it, as tenderly as if she were Helen of Troy, and then he would make slow love to her.

He had lost his mind.

His imagination bloomed with metaphors describing a woman whom he’d seen for scarcely an hour. Later, that night, he woke from a dream in which Edith raised her arms to him, the liquid gold of her hair tumbling almost to her waist.

“Ah, darling,” he had been telling her, “I am looped in the loops of your hair.” Had he said that aloud? He would never do something so imbecilic.

He really had lost his mind.

He knew why, too. Obviously, he had kept himself away from women too long, and now he was deranged as a result. Abstinence wasn’t advisable for a man. It had enfeebled his brain. What’s more, although he’d never before thought twice about performance, he suddenly had an image of himself fumbling about in the act, not knowing what he was doing, being foolish.

Damn.

Then the letter arrived.

Your Grace,

I was happy to read your response to my query about extra-matrimonial cavorting. It is gratifying to know that although Nature pricked thee out for woman’s pleasure, you intend to reserve some sixty years’ worth of said activity for myself.

Gowan read that paragraph three times and then broke into a crack of laughter. She’d picked up his Shakespeare reference and tossed another back at him.

I write with the worry that you have formed a false impression of me. I smiled a great deal on the night of my debut ball . . . because I was so ill that night that I could not bring myself to speak.

I mentioned this concern to my stepmother, Lady Gilchrist, who is firmly of the belief that it is inadvisable for a couple to learn of each other’s character before marriage. But as she is not on speaking terms with my father, I consider her a less than reliable source of advice about marital happiness.

If Gilchrist hadn’t been able to ascertain his wife’s disposition by a quick glance at her, Gowan didn’t think that all the time in the world would have helped them to a greater understanding of each other’s characters. He was sorry to hear that Edith had been ill, though.

I also write to assure you that I am not mad, although my claim is of dubious value because I would likely insist upon my sanity regardless. We shall have to leave the question of my judgment or lack thereof to our next meeting, at the Chatteris wedding. You shall find me sane, but, alas, not as winsomely silent as I was during our dances.

The words were so lively that Gowan could hear a woman saying them, except he couldn’t remember what Edith’s voice sounded like. He was burning to meet her when she wasn’t ill.

For a moment the serene angel with whom he had danced wavered in his imagination, but he pushed her away. He had much rather be married to a woman who considered him pricked out for her pleasure. A thousand times better than being married to a placable dormouse, no matter how peaceful.

I should also confess to finding Edith a name without music. I prefer Edie to Edith.

With all best wishes from your future wife, who has good reason to pray for your continued health . . . given my expectations of sixty-five (seventy!) years of marital bliss,

Edie

Eight

Fensmore

Home of the Earl of Chatteris

Cambridgeshire

E
die was aware that she wasn’t acting in a normal fashion. She was accustomed to feeling strong emotion only in response to a musical score or a battle with her father. She prided herself on maintaining tight control over her sensibilities.

But now, with less than an hour remaining before she was due to join the Earl of Chatteris, his fiancée, and their guests in the drawing room before dinner, she was overwrought, for lack of a better word. She felt as if she were about to burst out of her skin, too edgy to settle down.

She found herself pacing the floor of her guest chamber, rejecting out of hand every gown Mary offered her. Edie was not the sort of woman who spent time worrying about her attire. But that did not mean she was ignorant the power of clothing to wreak havoc on the minds of men.

She hadn’t paid much attention yesterday when Mary had packed her trunk for a few days at Fensmore and the Earl of Chatteris’s wedding; her attention had been fixed on the Boccherini score. But now that she was here, and Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith (soon to be the Countess of Chatteris) had just informed her that the Duke of Kinross was already in residence, she felt vastly different about what she would wear.

The duke would be at the evening meal, and she would see him for the first time since his proposal. The very idea made her feel feverish all over again.

Any woman in her right mind would dislike the idea of meeting her fiancé garbed as a vestal virgin missing only a lamp—and obviously a white dress with a modest ruffle at the hem confirmed that particular illusion.

After their exchange of letters, she was fairly certain that Kinross wanted to marry someone boldly sensual. Someone who could bandy about words like
prick
, words that Edie barely understood. She wanted more than anything to look into his eyes and see desire. Lust, even. If he looked at her and his prick wasn’t on the dial of noon, to put it in a lyrical but earthy fashion, she would be humiliated.

She wanted to dazzle him.

The stupid thing was that she wasn’t even certain she would recognize him. She was betrothed to a tall man with a Scottish burr, but she couldn’t recall his face at all.

Still, his letter—
that
letter—had given her just enough that she had decided he had a pair of laughing eyes. Not dissolute eyes or a rakish expression. But desirous.

Only after Mary had offered every single gown she’d packed, and Edie had rejected each and every one as unbearably lackluster, did she give in to the inevitable and send her maid to find Layla.

“May I wear one of your gowns instead of mine?” Edie asked, when Layla appeared in the doorway. “I loathe my frocks. They make me look like an insipid fool.”

“You know perfectly well that a young unmarried lady should wear only pale fabrics.” Layla strolled across the room and pushed open the window.

“No smoking!” Edie ordered, pointing at a chair.

Layla sighed, and sat down.

“I am practically married. Kinross is here, and I simply cannot wear one of these dreary gowns.” She didn’t know how to put it differently, but if she didn’t see desire in his eyes, she might break off the betrothal out of pure embarrassment. She couldn’t stop feeling that perhaps he had offered his hand due to her silence.

“Darling, you’re a willow compared to me,” Layla objected. “It’s not that I don’t understand, because, truly, I do. Your coloring has never been flattered by soft tints. Still, we don’t have time to miraculously remake one of my dresses.”

“We are the same height. I may be a little slimmer in the hip area, but our bosoms are the same.”

“My bosom is as unfashionably large as my hips.”

“You can call your bosom unfashionable if you wish, but I like mine. And it is nearly the same size. Any gown will work,” Edie insisted. “Don’t you see, Layla? Kinross has never really seen me, though I appreciate the fact that he chose a wife on the basis of rational analysis. I truly do. I approve.”

Layla rolled her eyes. “Rational analysis is an absurd reason for marriage. Your father once told me that after your mother died he made a six-point list of attributes for his next countess, and I met five of them. Look how well that’s turned out.”

“What was the sixth one?”

Layla got up again and went over to the pile of dresses. “Fertility, of course,” she said, turning over the gowns. “The ability to turn out baby earls by the yard, if not by the dozen. What about this green one? It’s not as bland as the white ones.”

“You and Father love each other,” Edie said, ignoring the fact that Layla was trying to rearrange the neckline of her green gown into something sensual that it could never be. “You just don’t—”

“
Like
each other,” Layla said, completing the sentence. With a quick jerk, she ripped out the lace trim around the gown’s neck.

“I don’t believe that. I believe you do like each other. I just think you need to talk more. But never mind your lamentable marriage for the moment. I’m trying to ensure that mine works out happily. I don’t want Kinross to think that I’m some sort of insipid lily.”

“He’s unlikely to think that after reading your letter,” Layla observed. “Thank goodness your father had that book of Shakespeare quotes. Do you suppose Kinross imagines you a bluestocking who’s actually read all those plays?”

“He’ll soon find out differently,” Edie said. “You’re destroying that dress, Layla!”

Her stepmother held up the green dress, now relieved of its white lace. “If you pulled down the sleeves to bare your shoulders, this one could be very appealing.”

“I don’t want to be ‘appealing.’ I want to be the sort of woman who tosses about bawdy jokes.”

“That woman would definitely love this dress. Perhaps I shall run away from your father and open my own dress shop.”

Edie went over and picked up the gown. “I can’t wear this: look, you’ve torn the shoulder seam. I just don’t want to play the part of a virginal swan.”

“You
are
a virgin,” Layla said, sighing. “Think of it as an unavoidable stage of life, like getting old and toothless and having to drink soup. Unfortunately, men seem to think that women are like new wine, good only before being uncorked.”

Edie tried, and failed, to work that one out.

“Thus the fact that women well into their thirties—and married—still wear nothing but white. I view ladies mired in that delusion as nothing short of pitiable.” Anyone could guess at that scorn by measuring the distance between a white gown and Layla’s daring—and colorful—concoctions.

“I’m not denying my virginity,” Edie said, returning to the stool before her dressing table. “I just don’t want to play the demurely chaste Lady Edith, the way I did when I was ill—indeed, as I’ve done all my life.”

“Your father won’t like it.”

“My father divested his authority over me when he signed those betrothal papers. Now I need to make absolutely certain that my husband doesn’t think he’s been invited to play the role of father.”

“Good point,” Layla said. “Do you suppose that the age difference between myself and your father has led him to consider me a child?”

Edie rolled her eyes. “Has it never occurred to you?”

That seemed to penetrate. Layla tossed the green dress back onto the bed. “I have just the gown for you. Mary, please return to my chamber and ask Trotter to give you the claret silk. This is a sacrifice, darling,” she said, turning back to Edie. “I thought to wear it myself tomorrow evening, but I think you have the greater need.”

She walked over to the window.

“Don’t you dare take out a cheroot,” Edie ordered.

“That tone must have been a direct inheritance from your father. Just as well, since you’ll need to give an order now and then when you’re running a castle.”

“I’m practicing on you. No more smoking anywhere in my vicinity.”

“I’m trying to give them up,” Layla said, leaning against the frame and staring out the window. “Your father doesn’t like it, and we’re sharing a room while we’re here.”

Edie considered asking how that unaccustomed proximity was working out, but just then Mary reappeared with a pile of iridescent silk in her arms.

“Here it is!” Layla crowed, turning about as the door opened. “That color is called China rose. Isn’t it the most delicious thing you ever saw? Darker than cinnabar, more saturated than claret . . . well, close to claret.”

Within a moment, Mary had stripped Edie to her chemise.

“It’s designed for a chemise, but no corset,” Layla noted, wandering over.

Mary dropped a waterfall of claret-colored silk over Edie’s head. It felt marvelous against her skin.

Layla adjusted the bodice herself. “You look beautiful. Ravishing. Do you see all the ruching here, just under the bodice?”

Edie turned to look in the glass. The silk fell in just the right folds to reveal most of her cleavage. A narrow set of pleats came across each shoulder, gesturing toward a sleeve without bothering to form one.

She looked lusciously uncovered on top, and then the silk fell in pleats and ruching from the waist, and was tied with a bow in the back.

Mary knelt and guided Edie’s feet into Layla’s matching high-heeled slippers.

“It doesn’t seem fair that our feet are the same and our hips so different,” Layla remarked.

Edie turned to look at herself in side view. This gown had sent her entirely in another direction, from Classic Virgin to Classic Layla. It made her breasts large and her legs long. It wasn’t a bad combination. “Do you think he’ll like this?”

“Any man would like that,” Layla said, her tone brooking no argument. “You are ravishing. Now, lip color to match. Come back over here to your dressing table.”

The unaccustomed heels on Layla’s slippers did something to Edie’s balance. When she’d been ill, she had drifted across the floor. Tonight she wouldn’t drift; she would wiggle. She looked as if she were swaying from side to side, like a moored boat in a gale.

The effect was quite feminine, not an attribute that Edie often achieved. It certainly wasn’t feminine to cradle a big stringed instrument between one’s legs and coax music out of it. If a true lady insisted on doing something as outré as to play the cello, she turned her legs to the side, balanced on one hip, and played sidesaddle.

Edie could do that, but she never saw the point. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could have a career. As the daughter of an earl, Edie played solely for her own pleasure, which meant she might as well sit in the most natural position.

The fact that her father loved the cello, and that she had inherited his child-sized instrument, and then that he had bought her a Ruggieri for her sixteenth birthday . . . none of that overcame the fact that she was a lady.

There was something of an unspoken bargain between herself and her father. Edie had delayed her debut as long as possible, but they both knew that she would marry whomever he selected. It was a promise, and Edie always kept her promises, spoken or unspoken.

Now she wiggle-waggled her way back over to her dressing table and sat down. Earlier that afternoon Mary had curled her hair into the proper kind of ringlets, the ladylike kind that weren’t as untidy as hers naturally were.

Layla darted forward and began playing with her curls, tousling them into a studied disarrangement.

“You’re ruining all of Mary’s hard work,” Edie protested, as Layla adjusted another ringlet.

“No, I’m making you look a little less perfect. Men are terrified by perfection. Now a touch of lip pomade.”

Painted red, Edie’s mouth looked twice as large, especially her bottom lip. “Doesn’t this look a trifle vulgar? I’m fairly certain that Father won’t approve.” She looked disturbingly unlike herself. In fact, she felt as if she’d veered from feverish saint to feverish courtesan.

“That’s exactly right. Your father has never understood that a little vulgarity is a good thing.”

“Why is it?”

“It wouldn’t be if you were still looking for a husband,” Layla explained. “But now you need to impress upon Kinross the fact that while he may have married you—or rather, he will marry you—he will never own you.”

Edie turned, caught Mary’s eye, and nodded toward the door. As the door closed behind her, Edie said, “Layla, darling, isn’t that technique you just recommended rather a failure when it comes to you and Father?”

“What technique?” Layla had her hair up in an artful nest of curls threaded with emeralds. She stood before the glass, coaxing a lock to fall with disheveled grace over one shoulder.

“Making certain that a man feels he will never own you, or at least own your loyalty. I think it may have led to some of your marital difficulties.”

Layla frowned. “I would never be unfaithful to your father. He should know that because he knows
me
.”

“But if you are constantly telling him, albeit silently, that you will never belong to him . . . It just strikes me from watching the two of you that men are rather primitive, at least Father is. He looks at you with pain and possessiveness, all mixed up together.”

“But I’ve assured him that I didn’t sleep with Gryphus. He should believe me unconditionally. I am his wife.”

“Perhaps he needs you to assure him that you have no interest in sleeping with any other man.”

“That would be to give him too much power,” Layla said instantly. “He already thinks he owns me. Last night he demanded that I give up smoking cheroots!”

That didn’t surprise Edie. “What did you say?”

“I refused, of course. Although I haven’t smoked any today.” Layla’s mouth drooped. “Marriage is more difficult than you think, Edie. If you do nothing but try to keep your husband happy, you’ll drive yourself mad.”

Edie gave her a kiss. “Forgive me if I say that I’ll be in good company? You are far too kind to my grumpy parent.” She picked up her gloves and a wrap of gossamer taffeta. “Let’s go down to dinner. I’m quite curious to know what my fiancé looks like.”