by Eloisa James
She played the counterpoint, her notes dancing around his, picking up the severe bass line, blending it with the melody, weaving a strand of sunlight into midnight. Her father sat facing her, his expression a mix of joy and fierce concentration.
Halfway through, the wind stirred again and she glanced up. Her bow nearly faltered even as the arrangement sent her notes soaring above her father’s strong bowing. His utter absorption was fortunate, because to her complete astonishment, Gowan was standing just outside the open French door behind her father, on the balcony.
Her left hand flew up and down the fingerboard automatically as she stared at the Duke of Kinross. Then her father lifted his bow and the music stopped abruptly, leaving her notes to fall into the air like thin versions of what they should be. Had he heard something? She lifted her bow as well, scarcely breathing.
“Da capo?” he said. To her relief, there was no suspicion in her father’s voice, merely an acknowledgment that she was no longer in the music. Little wonder: it was impossible to maintain the intense concentration needed for a piece like this when one’s fiancé materializes like a Scottish specter on a tiny balcony, twenty feet above the ground, outside one’s bedroom. How on earth had he got there?
If her father were to turn around . . .
The vain part of her wanted Gowan to believe she was a sensuous woman whose crimson lip color advertised her inner self. She twitched her nightdress and it fell open, exposing her left leg. Her father would never notice; no musician looked at another while playing. Indeed, he often closed his eyes while he played.
“Yes,” she replied. “Or rather, no; instead, let’s play the Largo from Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Major. I was working on Melchett’s cello arrangement earlier.”
“Do you need the score?”
“No. I worked on it quite a lot in the month before I became ill. I’ve been playing the second cello, if you would take the first.”
Her father nodded. “Remember the lyricism in the music, Edie. Last time, you were concentrating too much on the fingering and not listening to what the music meant.” The weariness had fallen from his voice.
Reassured that her father was oblivious to Gowan’s presence on her balcony, Edie relaxed a bit and let herself glance at the duke again. He was still leaning there, silent, outlined against the sky. The feeling she had for him was so odd.
Meeting his eyes, seeing a glint in them that was surely lent by the devil . . . she felt as great a pull inside her heart and body as she had upon hearing the cello for the first time.
Her father bent his head and repositioned his bow. Edie drew her bow long and slow in the first section, and fell into the music.
She wanted Gowan to understand this passion of hers, to see that it wasn’t a mere pastime. So she pushed him out of her mind, and moved back into the music with the weight of years of experience behind her, her bow now playing an elegant flurry of notes above her father’s melody, now providing a stately counterpoint.
Slowly the music swelled around them, taking the air and distilling it into sounds so sweet that they were emotions become audible. Her body swayed in unison with her bowing. They neared the most difficult part of the piece. Edie bent her head, making absolutely certain that her fingers leapt flawlessly from note to note.
She did not stumble. Her bowing had never been better. Her father didn’t look at her, but with a musician’s perception she knew there was the deep joy spreading through his body. His taut despair was gone now as he breathed music, created music. The last measures were slow breaths, music and air winding together.
As the final note floated across the evening air, her father at last raised his head. Edie twitched her gown so it fell back over her leg, while keeping her eyes from straying to the balcony behind him.
“You were right,” he said, rising. “You have indeed learned the piece.” That was high praise.
Edie smiled at him. They were often at odds, but she loved him deeply. And under all his stiff demeanor she knew he loved her. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Good night, Father.”
He inclined his head, one musician paying respect to another. “Daughter. Good night.”
He collected his instrument, crossed the room, and left without another word.
Edie closed the door behind him and turned. Gowan had melted into the darkness. She could just see him, silhouetted against the starry sky. Rather than move toward him, she leaned back against the door and, like a wanton, let her leg slip through her nightdress. “Your Grace,” she said. “I am surprised to have a visitor at this hour of night.”
Gowan moved into the room. “I, too, am surprised.”
“What surprises you?” She remained where she was, willing him to come to her. Music exhilarated Edie; she had always known that. But she had never realized that it could drive a deeper intoxication, singing in her veins. This new, deeper one made her want to play the man before her like an instrument. Or let him play her . . . she wasn’t certain. It was an unfamiliar kind of madness, but just as all-encompassing.
Like the blood in her body, like the music in her soul.
Madness.
“Your father says that you rival the greatest player in all England.”
“He’s my father. He exaggerates.”
“I gather from what I heard tonight that he himself is one of the great players as well.” He had cut in half the distance between them.
“That’s true.” A thrilling sense of power was flowing through Edie’s veins. It was the feeling of a woman’s power, something she had never bothered to learn about. No wonder Layla flirted with other men . . .
Gowan frowned. “There is no one who plays the cello in all Scotland, I should think.”
“Hmmm.” Edie didn’t care. She enjoyed playing with her father, but she also loved playing solo, and happily did so for hours at a time. “How on earth did you reach my balcony?”
“I climbed. I thought to play Romeo to your Juliet and call you outside, but when I heard you playing I was drawn up, as if by music from a fairy mound.”
“A fairy mound? What is that?”
“In Scotland music leaks on occasion from the land of the fairies, which is located under a grassy hillock.” He came a few steps closer.
Edie smiled at him. She did not move. “So I lured you, as if ’twas magic from my strings?”
“Yes.”
“We were playing a Vivaldi concerto.”
He was silent a moment. “There is a great deal I do not know of music, my lady.”
“So I gather, if you had never heard of a cello.”
“In truth, I have never heard of a woman musician. Singers, yes. And certainly ladies play the pianoforte.”
Edie nodded, at peace with that. Public performance had never been a dream of hers. “I do not wish to play for an audience. Though I rather liked having one this night.”
“Will you play for me again?”
“Of course.”
He came closer still, close enough that his breath stirred the tiny curls on her forehead. “I arrived before your father entered the room.”
That look in his eyes . . . Hot color flooded Edie’s cheeks.
“You, playing a cello, is the most erotic thing I ever saw in my life,” he whispered. Then his mouth closed over hers.
Her first kiss.
His lips were sweet on hers, tender somehow, even though they hardly knew each other. Yet it was possible he knew her better than anyone else.
His first kiss.
Her lips were like the sweetness at the heart of a honeysuckle blossom. For a second Gowan couldn’t believe that he was actually kissing her. Their lips brushed together once, twice . . . his tongue dipped inside her mouth.
She opened her lips to his with a surprised little sound. He leaned closer, bracing his forearms on the door. Their tongues tangled for a moment, then Gowan kissed her eyes and her cheeks and then, powerless to resist, returned to her mouth. They kissed until Gowan’s head was filled with images of E
die’s pale legs twisted with his, her body arched on the bed, a cry bursting from her throat . . .
No.
He would not dishonor his bride-to-be, no matter the fact that she had her arms wound around his neck and was kissing him feverishly, her tongue as bold and sensual as his.
No matter the fact that her slender fingers were playing in his hair, leaving little tingling reminders of her touch.
No matter that his heart was pounding as hard as hers. He could feel it through the insubstantial fabric of her nightdress, just as he could feel her breasts, soft and tremulous against his chest.
He turned his head away, hearing his own breath coming harsh from his chest. She murmured something and her lips skated across his jaw. He felt her lips touch his ear; a groan escaped his mouth.
“We cannot do this,” he whispered, putting his forehead against the cool wood of the door. “We must not.”
“Gowan,” she breathed, and Lord help him, her hands slid from his neck and down his chest.
“Edie. I will not dishonor you. My bride. My duchess.”
Her eyes were slightly glazed, her mouth pouty with his kisses. But she cocked her head, that formidable intelligence of hers snapping into place almost audibly. “How honorable of you.”
They stared at each other. She was a sonnet sprung to full life, but none of that mattered.
The little lopsided smile she had, with the kiss that she had never given to anyone, that was what caught his heart and put the groan in his throat.
“I must go back down the ladder,” he said hoarsely.
Her smile strengthened. “I find myself very glad to be marrying you, Duke.”
“I’m very happy to hear it, lass. In the circumstances.” He couldn’t help touching her, curving his hand around her neck and bringing her mouth to his again.
“I don’t believe that this is customary among—among the nobility,” she said with a little gasp, a while later.
Gowan shook his head. He couldn’t bring to mind a pairing that had erupted like theirs, in a burst of flame. He cupped her face in his hands. “We must be certain,” he said, the words growling out like a vow, “that we are not quick bright things that come to naught.”
Edie’s hands came over his. “I feel as if I should engage a governess and bring her along with me to Scotland. Was that Shakespeare again?”
He nodded.
“I never did like poetry all that much,” she said, turning her face so that she kissed his palm. “Although you might be able to change my mind.”
“I am fond of verse.”
“Any woman could tell that you’re fairly swelling with your seductive prowess.”
He fell back a step and broke into a crack of laughter at that. “Swelling? Swelling?”
Edie’s already flushed cheeks turned rosier still. “You know what I mean!” she said. “You’re—you know everything and I don’t.”
Should he be honest?
She put her hands on her hips—and she had luscious hips, perfect hips. The action pulled her nightdress taut across her equally perfect breasts. Her gaze was so sincere and direct that he confessed the truth. “I don’t know about it, either, Edie.”
“I’m not talking about marriage,” she said instantly, her cheeks turning even brighter red.
“What, then?” he asked. He was really enjoying himself.
“The bedding part!” she cried. “That part. You know it, and I don’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “Though if you laugh at me again, perhaps I’ll see if I can gain a bit of experience in the next few months before we marry.”
He backed her against the door in a flash, caught her hands over her head in one of his, felt her body hot against his. “Absolutely not.”
Laughter shone in her eyes and she batted her eyelashes at him deliberately. “I’m sure you’d be grateful to find that you didn’t have an ignorant chit like myself in your bed on your wedding night.”
“No.” He bent his head and drank her in, deep and fierce.
When he drew his lips away from her again, she said in a ragged voice, “You have all those love poems and lines of Shakespeare and the rest. I have none of that, Gowan. I can’t read a play to save my life. I tried, and I couldn’t make head or tail of it.”
“I don’t care. Let me teach you to love poetry.” He traced the curve of her bottom lip with his finger. “You’re mine, Edie.”
“That is hardly the point,” she said, her voice darkening. “I’m . . . And you’re . . .”
“As untouched as you are,” he said, fascinated by the way thick lashes framed her eyes.
Her brow furrowed.
“A virgin,” he said, growling it because, after all, a man isn’t supposed to be a virgin. Ever.
He released her hands and swung her into his arms. She was a snug weight, a soft female weight that sent a flame right down his limbs. But he made himself walk to a chair rather than topple her onto the bed.
“You?” She was stunned.
“Aye.” He sat down, relishing the way her bottom settled onto his lap. “I was betrothed from the time I was quite young, so I could not sleep with a woman who might have expectations—or dreams—of becoming a duchess. Paying coin for the act would be distasteful; I would have dishonored my fiancée at the same time as myself.”
Edie sat still as a mouse; he drew his arm tighter around her back. Her eyes searched his, wide and surprised.
“So I am quite certain that I do not have ‘a disease of an intimate nature,’ ” he told her.
“Ah, my letter.” She recognized her own words. “No, I suppose you do not.”
He gave her another fierce, lingering kiss. They broke off with a new wildness between them, all but visible in the air. And they met each other’s eyes now with that between them like a glimmering possibility.
“Together,” she whispered, awed. “It’s nothing I would have expected. I always thought that a woman brought such a thing to her marriage, but a man . . .”
“Is supposed to have slept first with a chambermaid or a barmaid,” Gowan said. “That would be to abase myself as well as a woman in my employ.”
A choked laugh escaped from Edie’s mouth. “You’re a man of principle, Your Grace.”
“Is that not a good thing?”
Thirteen
Laughter was fighting with an aching, twisting need in Edie’s heart. She couldn’t look at Gowan any longer without leaning in to kiss him. She closed her eyes and put her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s a very good thing to have principles,” she said, the words coming soft and low. “You must have laughed when I wrote you about mistresses, let alone diseases.”
“I didn’t laugh. It was a fair question. There’s many a man has a mistress in addition to his wife. But I always hoped that I’d find a wife who would want to carry my children, and how could I dishonor that wife by pouring gold into the lap of a woman whom I had no intention of marrying?”
Edie turned and kissed Gowan’s neck. It was a strong column, that neck. “You are a complicated man.”
“These are not complicated things. There’s an old Scottish saying that ‘your present is your future.’ I choose not to tarnish what may come. Besides, my father . . .” He trailed off.
“Had mistresses?” Edie asked.
“Many.”
She dropped another kiss under his jaw, where his pulse was beating. “I thought my father had a mistress, but now I’m not so sure. Layla fears that’s why he doesn’t come home at night.”
“I doubt it,” Gowan said. “ ’Twould shame him to do so, and your father is not a man who would bring shame upon himself.”
Edie smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it. Her father was a bit stiff, but at heart, he and Gowan were both the sort of man whom a woman is lucky to find at her side. “Did your mother know of your father’s affairs?”
“Aye, she did.” The burr of his Scottish ancestry grew more pronounced. “But her behavior matched his. She would have had no right to ma
ke complaints.”
“I’m sorry,” Edie murmured, and leaned back against his arm in order to see his face. “That must be a difficult thing to find out about one’s parents.”
“My mother was notorious for her dalliances, so I learned it as a young boy.” There was a bleak acceptance in his voice. “Did your father tell you that I have a half sister, called Susannah?”
“Really? No, he didn’t mention it. Does she live in Scotland?”
“She lives with me, and she is five years old, or so we think.”
“What?” Edie sat up straight. “You have a half sister who lives with you and is five, ‘you think’?”
“My mother left us when I was eight, and she died a few months ago, leaving a child. Presumably, she remarried after my father died, though I had no knowledge of it. We have not yet found a baptismal record for my sister.”
“Oh my goodness.” Edie sprang from his lap and walked across the room before turning to face him. “Do I collect that you are marrying partly in order to provide a mother for your sister? I must tell you that I have no experience of children whatsoever.”
He had stood, of course. “Neither have I. But I engaged three nursemaids and a nanny.”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you rise.” She came back and sat down opposite him. “I don’t even know how big a five-year-old child is. Has she adult teeth yet? Can she speak? What am I saying? Of course she speaks!”
“Oh, Susannah speaks,” Gowan said, with feeling. “All the time. And she has teeth, too; she bit me the first day she came to Craigievar. So I would advise you to be careful when approaching her.” He sat again and reached out to take her hand.
“Oh my,” Edie breathed. Without really noticing, she watched as he traced a pattern on her palm with one finger. Her mind was reeling. She was not only marrying and moving to Scotland; she was evidently taking on an orphaned child. Really, her father could have mentioned that detail.
“I do remember that you expressed the wish to have children only after a few years. I was not prevaricating by neglecting to mention Susannah in my letter; I must confess that, because I wasn’t in Scotland, I actually forgot about her.”