Once Upon a Tower

by Eloisa James

  Edie stayed in the doorway, feeling that her position signaled that she would not welcome a return to the bed, in case he contemplated something of that nature. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her so sweetly that she felt ravished. “If only . . .” she said, looking up at him when he drew away.

  He ran a finger down her cheek. “If only what?”

  But she couldn’t voice, If only one got children from kissing, so she went up on tiptoes and gave him a little buss by way of answer, and then retreated back into the bathing chamber.

  A mere hour later, they were on their way. Edie was rather surprised when Gowan’s factor, Mr. Bardolph, joined them in the magnificently appointed ducal coach and briskly wished her a good day. Given her druthers, she would have uninvited him, but the moment passed when she might have done that without seeming rude.

  It certainly wasn’t a matter of space. Though four service carriages had left already, the carriage that would follow theirs contained a solicitor, two estate managers, and her maid. After a bit of explanation she understood that the men would take turns consulting with Gowan. A third carriage brought her cello, under the care of Gowan’s personal servant, Trundle.

  She had been hoping that perhaps she and Gowan could talk in the carriage. She even thought that perhaps she would describe what it had really felt like last night. After a night’s fitful sleep, she felt less frightened, but even so, she would like to talk about it.

  Obviously, she could not bring up the subject in front of Bardolph. “It’s like a Star Chamber,” she told Gowan as he, too, entered the carriage, pushing away her hopes for the day. “As if you are the sovereign of a smallish principality.”

  Bardolph cleared his throat, and then, practically before the carriage had rocked its way around the first corner, he had three or four ledgers open and was droning on about a particular kind of wheat that only sprouted in winter.

  What’s more, Gowan acted as if this was entirely normal, this conducting of business the morning after one’s wedding, and sat in his corner listening as Bardolph enumerated the acres of wheat that were sown versus those that were harvested.

  “Must you really itemize these things?” Edie asked, after about an hour. London lay behind them now, and Gowan and Bardolph had moved on to baskets of butter and milk. Or lard. Something like that.

  Bardolph paused. She couldn’t help but notice that his nose looked like a flying buttress on a cathedral.

  “Yes, we do,” Gowan replied. “There was a great deal of waste on the various estates before we established a system by which to see the balance between what is put into the land and what is taken out.”

  “Are you trying to control theft?”

  “That is one goal. But more importantly, by ascertaining whether a certain technique was successful in one field, we can make an informed decision about whether to carry it over to different locations.”

  Edie nodded and lapsed back into silence. Numbers flew past her ear, and Bardolph turned page after page with his whispery fingers. She started to loathe the factor’s voice. It was curt and dry, and emerged from a mouth so tight that she never saw his teeth.

  When he began enumerating the eel traps at one estate and contrasting them with the eel traps at another estate, she broke in again.

  “Gowan, will we stop for the midday meal?”

  He had been listening to Bardolph, occasionally putting in a directive or command, even though he was perusing a different ledger at the same time. “Of course. We should be in Stevenage, our first stop, in precisely an hour and a half. We will take three-quarters of an hour for luncheon.”

  “His Grace makes the trip from London so frequently,” Bardolph elaborated, “that we have devised a precisely timed itinerary for the entire journey.”

  “A timed itinerary?” Edie repeated.

  Bardolph nodded like a nutcracker. “We take the Great North Road, rather than the Old North Road, as it is in better condition and fewer carriages have accidents there. His Grace dislikes being detained for any reason. The inns we regularly frequent stable our horses, so we will switch to fresh livestock.”

  “I am sorry for the tedium,” Gowan said, with a paternal solicitousness in his voice that grated on her nerves. “Are you dreadfully bored?”

  “Bored by the recitation of eel traps? Not I,” she said. “Do go on. So one estate set their eel traps by night. Did timing have any effect on the eel harvest, if one might use the word?”

  Bardolph recommenced from where he had left off, without seeming to notice the sarcasm in her voice. Edie stared out the window at the passing fields, because if she faced her fellow travelers she could not help watching Bardolph’s lips shape words without seeming to open.

  When they reached the Swan in Stevenage, they were escorted into a private parlor where a hot meal awaited them. Some forty minutes later, just when Edie was contemplating whether she would shock Gowan by dismissing the footmen attending them, Bardolph stepped back into the room. A moment later, the plates were whisked from the table.

  “I wasn’t quite finished with that trout,” Edie said, but it was too late; the plates had been lifted in a beautifully synchronized motion and were gone. A tea service was being brought in.

  Gowan looked concerned. “Bardolph, it seems your order was precipitous.”

  “Never mind,” Edie said, selecting a piece of fruit.

  “In future, Her Grace is to be consulted before anything is removed,” Gowan pronounced.

  Edie would have thought that went without saying, but it seemed she was being introduced to life in a monarchy. Where there was only a king and no consort. Bardolph’s bow made that clear enough, as did his remark, some three minutes later, that in order to keep to schedule, they should return to the carriages.

  She considered volunteering to ride with Gowan’s solicitor, Jelves, who seemed like a nice man, but it emerged that he was joining them in their carriage.

  So Edie kept to her corner while the three men talked among themselves for the remainder of the afternoon’s journey. By the time they reached the designated stop in Eaton Socon where they would be laying over for the night, she felt as if she’d been pummeled, her private parts both numb and sore, which was quite a feat.

  Gowan took her arm to lead her into the George and Dragon, but she stopped him. “Just look at that,” she breathed, pointing to the roof.

  The sun was setting, and its rays spread like copper wires from the horizon, painting the shingles a dark mulberry.

  “No sign of rain,” Gowan remarked.

  She tried again. “See how the sun is turning the roof that beautiful color and the swallows are swooping through the light as if . . .”

  “As if what?” he asked.

  “Well, as if they were listening to Mozart. As if the rays were staves of music. It would have to be Mozart because of the way they swoop up and down—” She tightened her grip on his arm. “There! Did you see that one? He’s dancing.”

  She looked up. Gowan was smiling down at her rather than looking at the swallows. His eyes were dark and hungry. “You’re right,” he said, clearly not meaning it. “The swallows are dancing.” He put a finger on her lower lip, and Edie felt that odd quiver in her middle that she felt whenever he looked at her like that, as if she were delectable. As if he wanted to lick her from head to foot, the way he had promised to do, back at the wedding.

  Standing there in the fading, coppery sunshine, Edie thought it would be a fine thing to be licked by a man who looked like her husband.

  She was about to say it aloud when Bardolph stepped forward, making a scratching noise in his throat. At home, Layla had always handled the servants, and Edie had had little role other than to listen to her stepmother complain about the staff. Even given years of listening, she had no idea what Layla would do in this circumstance.

  If she objected to Bardolph’s presence in the carriage—and in their life—it seemed likely that Gowan would simply overrule her. She didn’t ha
ve a sense that the servants were hers, as much as she had somehow just joined the ranks of Gowan’s retainers. In fact, she had an uneasy feeling that Bardolph outranked her.

  So she stood there in the courtyard of the George and Dragon, staring blindly at the sunset, while Gowan listened to Bardolph’s recitation of how the best rooms were already made up with ducal linen (because it seemed the duke traveled with his own linen as well as his own china).

  By the time Gowan turned back and offered his arm to escort her into the inn, the swallows had swooped below the roof and flown off straight as arrows into the fields, heading into the setting sun.

  In contrast to the Royal Suite at Nerot’s Hotel, here they had separate rooms; presumably there was no suite grand enough for the both of them. Feeling human again after a hot bath, Edie descended to the private dining room. She could not help but feel a creeping anxiety. What if it was still painful tonight? Perhaps she should tell Gowan her fears before he even came to her bed.

  As soon as she was seated, Gowan’s butler launched into an interminable disquisition of something that looked to Edie exactly like a ham pie, although Mr. Bindle had a far fancier name for it. When Bindle was done, Rillings took over, describing the first wine that would be served during the meal.

  The footmen standing against the wall behind her seemed to have little to do but to fill her glass, so one of them would lunge forward after she’d had two sips. It was so disconcerting that when the second course was served and Rillings solemnly opened a bottle of Tokay wine, Edie declined.

  “I would prefer some water,” she said.

  Rillings frowned. “Water in an establishment such as this is likely to be unhealthful, Your Grace.”

  Edie sighed and accepted a glass of wine. It was sweeter than she liked.

  “Tokay wine originates in Hungary,” Rillings was saying. “Its deep garnet color comes from the Tokaji grape that . . .”

  When he finally had imparted the entire history of the Hungarian wine trade and left the room, Edie pushed her glass away. “Gowan, why must we know the origins of the wine we drink? I would rather not know that these grapes were infested with rot.”

  “I don’t think infested is quite the right word,” Gowan said. “The mold that forms on the outside of these grapes is referred to as ‘noble rot.’ ”

  “I don’t care if it’s noble or ignoble. I would prefer merely to drink the wine than listen to a lecture on the subject.”

  “I understand,” Gowan said. “I will ask Rillings to deliver his report to me at another time.”

  “Another report. How many reports do you already listen to daily? Why this one?”

  “We paid thirty pounds for a dozen bottles of this wine. If I make an expenditure of that sort, I should like to know precisely what I am getting.”

  It was disconcerting, this marriage business. She couldn’t seem to stop observing her own life. On the one side, she was sitting at the table with her new husband; on the other, she was watching Lady Edith Gilchrist—no, the Duchess of Kinross—dine with the Duke of Kinross while four footmen darted around the room tending to their unspoken wishes. Bindle moved to and fro, ushering in new courses. The duchess accepted a slice of almond cake and a bite or two of syllabub. Yet another wine and a delicate elderflower mousse followed that course.

  “Please give my compliments to the innkeeper,” she said to Bindle. “This mousse is delicious.”

  “I will inform His Grace’s chef of your pleasure,” Bindle said, bowing as he left the room yet again.

  Edie raised an eyebrow.

  “My chef travels with me,” Gowan explained.

  “Isn’t that a bit . . . well . . . excessive?”

  “I instituted the practice three years ago, after we were all sickened for five days—one groom to the point of death—by an improperly prepared meal. At that point I determined that it was worth the additional expense to add another person to the entourage.”

  Edie nodded, looking down at her plate, which carried the ducal crest. “Is that why you travel with your own china?”

  “Precisely. There is a lamentable lack of science when it comes to illnesses of this sort, but the condition of the kitchen and dishes surely figures into them.”

  There was a logical and unassailable reason, it seemed, for every person in the retinue, for each practice and custom. The duke needed so many grooms because one man traveled daily to Scotland, only to be replaced by a man coming from the other direction. The estate managers came and went; his solicitor might be needed at any moment; Bardolph was needed at every moment, apparently . . .

  “I am not accustomed to being surrounded by so many people,” she observed. She badly wanted to say what she meant—that she didn’t like it—but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

  Gowan was like a force of nature. His body seemed to be formed of coiled energy; no wonder he kept six men in constant motion doing his work. His mind was exploding in many directions at once. All this made sense to him. It made sense to carry a chef in order to do away with the risk of losing five days, or any days at all, to illness.

  The problem was that everything was scheduled—including intimacy. She knew perfectly well that his huge body was strung tight as a bow, wanting her. He’d been that way all day, through the talk of acreage and wheat and eel traps. Every time his eyes met hers, she saw a craving, a wildness. But privacy, it was beginning to seem, was limited to the bedchamber, after the evening meal.

  “I’m afraid that I am rarely alone,” he said now, guessing her thoughts. “You may arrange your own schedule, of course, although running a large household may mean that you have less time to practice your cello.”

  She looked at him sharply to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. There was a tinge of apology on his face, as if he were beginning to grasp the importance of music in her life . . . but clearly, he didn’t yet understand.

  Edie never bothered to fuss about things like servants and food; before Mary, she’d had a lady’s maid who was always falling in love with the footmen and bursting into sobs when they disappointed her. It would have been a bother to replace her. She got used to lending her handkerchiefs and brushing out her own hair while she listened to the latest romantic travail. Gowan guarded every moment; she guarded only those when she was practicing.

  “I play the cello every morning for three hours,” she told him. “It is my habit to work through the noon hour. Sometimes I also work in the afternoon, but my bow arm grows tired and needs a rest. As you have seen, I often play before retiring as well.”

  He put down his fork. “In that case, you will need help running the household.”

  “Who does it for you now?”

  “My housekeeper, Mrs. Grisle.”

  “I’m sure she does an excellent job.” It was Edie’s general practice to let people do what they did well, and to praise them after they’d done it. She could already see that Gowan and she were profoundly dissimilar. He ruled—the word seems to fit—an enormous estate, apparently keeping even trifling details in his head. “Do you ever forget anything, Gowan?”

  “It occurred to me the other day that I had forgotten my mother’s face.” He didn’t sound sorry about it.

  “I meant a fact or a figure.”

  “I’m lucky enough to have the sort of brain that catalogues detail, so very little slips by me.”

  No wonder people kept wheeling around him as if they were a crowd of sparrows rising from a fencepost. “Why didn’t you go to university?”

  “I could not because my father died when I was fourteen.” He shrugged. “Tumbling maids while throwing back whisky didn’t leave him a great deal of time, so his affairs were left in a tangle. The home farm took four years to recover, and some of the others have only turned a profit in the last two years.” Gowan’s face was so expressionless that Edie shivered.

  He wore a dark gray coat, the color of fog in the early evening, trimmed in silver thread. Its buttons were marked by tasse
led frogging with silver spangles. The candlelight gave a sheen to his hair and glinted on the ducal silver as Gowan cut his meat with customary economical grace.

  He was the personification of civilization, culture honed to a high polish.

  At the same time, he was utterly uncivilized in a fundamental, deep way.

  And he was still young. If he was like this at twenty-two, by the time he was forty he would be ruling Scotland. Or the entire British Isles, if the hereditary monarchy didn’t stand in the way. He had that sort of enthralling but contained power about him. Men would follow him anywhere. Women, too, of course.

  Edie sipped her wine, thinking about that. It was as if she had married a tiger. Just because a tiger keeps his claws sheathed doesn’t mean they’re out of reach. It was somewhat shaming to realize that she—a perfectly logical young lady who had been brought up to regard music as the epitome of civilization—thrilled all over at the touch of savagery that clung to her husband.

  Even after the misery of the previous night, she had only to look at him to feel a melting softness between her legs. All the same, she thought it was very strange that two people who scarcely knew each other should be expected to sleep in the same bed, let alone engage in all those other things they were probably going to do. Again.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd to marry a near-stranger and find oneself eating meals with her?” she asked him.

  It had been a tiring day, so she put one elbow on the table—manners be damned!—and propped up her head so she could stare at Gowan without being too obvious about it. He was a gorgeous man, this husband of hers.

  “I see nothing odd about it,” he said. “I feel that I know everything of importance about you.”

  She didn’t like to think that he had summed up everything about her in a matter of minutes, but to be fair . . . “You told me about your parents,” she said slowly. “And you’ve seen me play my cello, so perhaps we do know the most important thing about each other.”

  Gowan had a truly ferocious frown. Nearing the ferocity of her father’s, in truth. “My parents do not define me,” he stated.