Once Upon a Tower

by Eloisa James

  Gowan muttered something that sounded like a thankful curse, took a deep breath, and began going even faster. After what felt like a century, she felt tremors hit his body. A groan erupted from his lips and then a tangle of incoherent words.

  She liked that part.

  It was wonderful to have such a self-controlled, powerful man shatter in her arms. His face contorted as he let go, every bit of civilization stripped from his face. She was the only woman in the world who had seen that.

  The others saw only the duke, whereas she got to see a primitive man who lost himself in her body. He was still there, actually, inside her. Thinking about his face made her inner parts clench around him suddenly. The pain burned away for the moment and she felt a delicious sense of fullness.

  Gowan was braced on his forearms. “God, that feels good, Edie. Just give me a moment,” he gasped, panting.

  As his words sank in, Edie panicked. Her inner parts had been pummeled enough. She pushed at him gently, and he rolled off and to the side. Sure enough, his tool was still ready to go.

  When she peered gingerly down at herself, she didn’t seem to have bled any more, which had to be a miracle.

  Gowan reached over and pulled her against his sweaty body. “I don’t have to ask if it was good for you. You’re so tight and hot . . .”

  “It still hurts a little,” she whispered.

  He bathed her so gently that she almost started crying again.

  She hated lying. And the petit mort that never happened was such a huge lie. But it was only a matter of time, she told herself. Tomorrow was another day. It would be better. Gowan was gently patting her with cool water, giving her that restless, twitchy feeling again.

  “That’s enough,” she said, sitting up in case he took the fact her hips were moving under his touch as encouragement.

  He gave her a kiss. “Would it be all right with you if I slept here?”

  She could feel a silly blush rising in her cheeks. “All right.”

  It was hard not to feel resentful the next morning. Gowan’s eyes glowed when he told her that the night had been better than his wildest imaginings. Edie hated the fact she’d lied to him. Hated it.

  She took a deep breath, about to confess, when there was a scratch on the door. Gowan called, “Come in,” and in bustled Mary, followed, to her horror, by Gowan’s valet. And on their heels were maids carrying breakfast trays.

  The chance was gone. She nibbled toast while Trundle laid out Gowan’s dressing gown, and Mary began preparing Edie’s toilet. When Gowan finished eating, he got out of bed and went to his room, where he could listen to some sort of report about paddock fencing while he dressed.

  Edie told herself that marriage involved compromises.

  If only she hadn’t lied . . . Her stomach clenched every time she thought of it. But if she confessed, he might think she was incapable. And there was that terrible word, frigid. It made a woman sound like an icehouse. What if she was? What if she could never achieve all that noise Layla described?

  She wasn’t a very loud person ordinarily.

  But if she told the truth now, would Gowan make her see a doctor about the pain? She couldn’t imagine telling anyone. Well, she could tell Layla, if only they were still in London.

  The whole thing was a mess.

  Twenty-two

  Another interminable morning passed in the carriage, more or less indistinguishable from the day before. Edie kept to her corner of the carriage all morning, ignoring the stultifying conversation Gowan was conducting with a bailiff. She certainly had nothing to contribute. Instead, she brooded over what had happened the night before. Or rather, what hadn’t happened.

  It wasn’t so much that she had failed at the petit mort yet again; she was beginning to believe that it wasn’t likely to happen for her. But she felt awful about the way she had handled it. Lying to her husband. Dissembling—

  She cut herself off. It was just plain wrong, and she knew it. And—she peeked at Gowan—she was starting to like him. That was a good thing for a wife to feel toward her husband. The aversion she felt about the marriage bed? That was not a good thing.

  She had to tell him the truth.

  After the carriage had stopped for luncheon (served and eaten at a galloping pace), she put her hand on Gowan’s arm. “I would like to speak to you.” She said this in front of Bardolph and a footman, because if she didn’t speak before servants, she would never speak at all.

  “Certainly.” Gowan had been about to escort her from the dining room, but he paused expectantly.

  “In the carriage,” she clarified.

  “Yes, that would be more efficient.” He turned to leave, nodding to his entourage to follow, thus displaying a deafness to nuance that was, to Edie’s mind, the distinguishing trait of his sex. She didn’t budge.

  “Alone, Gowan.” If her husband consulted with Bardolph before he agreed to this, she would . . .

  She wasn’t sure what she would do, but it would be violent.

  The duke glanced at her, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly, then at Bardolph, who offered a brisk little bow and walked away. Only then did she realize that she’d just won a skirmish in the war shaping up between herself and Bardolph.

  But the factor was nothing if not tenacious. She left Gowan to instruct his retinue as to the afternoon’s work, and made her way to the carriage. But when she climbed in, she discovered three ledgers had been placed on the seat for her husband to review. She poked her head back through the door and a footman leapt to attention.

  “These will travel in another carriage,” she said, dropping them into his arms.

  “His Grace said . . .” the boy bleated.

  So the war wasn’t just between herself and Bardolph; it had a wider scope. “Her Grace has just informed you otherwise,” she told him.

  Then she settled back inside the carriage to wait.

  Moments later, Gowan strode past a footman trotting away with the ledgers he had intended to review during the afternoon’s journey. By rights, he should feel irritated. He deplored time lost sitting in a carriage.

  But the truth was that he felt only anticipation.

  Of course, he’d known from the moment he’d first seen Edie that she posed a threat to his ordered life. One cannot succumb to such a primal lust for a woman that one marries her before a month has passed, and not understand that routines would be disrupted, at least initially. Time with Edie could not be counted toward his obligations to the estate. But, on the other hand, if he indulged himself now, perhaps he would stop wanting her every minute of the day. With time, he thought, he could relegate his body’s need for her to the evening. Or at least to once during the day.

  He didn’t believe it for a minute.

  Bloody hell.

  He had responsibilities. People depended on him. Whole estates. The banking system.

  He dimly remembered caring about all that. But right now he only had to think about Edie to feel a clench of desire flare in his body with mad ferocity. One look at her and he wanted to dismiss Bardolph and throw the ledgers into the fire.

  He cursed again. If he didn’t get control over himself, he’d discover that his days were spent in her bed, losing himself in her body. Falling for her. Worshipping her. Drinking himself to death if she played him false, the way his father . . .

  That thought steadied him. Lust was nothing more than a bodily urge. It had its place in life and needed to be kept to that realm. Instead of slamming the carriage door and pulling her beneath him—servants be damned—Gowan forced himself to settle onto the opposite seat and gave Edie a measured, gentlemanly smile, reaching up and giving the roof a considered tap so the coachman would know they were ready.

  Her smile, from under the brim of her bonnet, was demure and utterly adorable. Just like that, carnal desire surged in a wave that dragged him under to drown. Work could damn well wait. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, appalled that he had almost blurted out, Naked. I need you to b
e naked.

  One didn’t say that to a duchess in a carriage. He curbed the demand, but the emotion behind it slipped out: “Someday, I should like to love you in the morning.”

  An emotion flashed across her eyes that he couldn’t interpret. Without answering, she undid the ribbons under her chin. As he watched, she took off her bonnet and dropped it on the seat beside her. Could it be that she had read his mind, and meant to unclothe herself? The carriage was well onto the post road so no one could open the door.

  A cascade of lustful images filled his head—only to evaporate when she leaned forward and tapped him on his knee with a slender gloved finger.

  “Bardolph,” she said, lowering her voice to an absurdly masculine growl, “I intend to tup my wife tomorrow morning from seven fifteen to seven forty-five, so be good enough to delay our departure to take account of the event.” Then she gave him an impish grin.

  Gowan was so surprised he burst into laughter.

  “Well, thank God,” Edie said, pulling off her gloves and placing them beside her hat. “I was beginning to fear that you’d lost your sense of humor entirely.”

  He frowned.

  “I do know that you have one,” she said, with a wicked little grin. “It’s too late to pretend that your brain is devoted entirely to the admirable task of managing all those eel traps.”

  “I shall never live down the eels, shall I?” Gowan asked, stretching out his legs so that they fell on either side of her slippers. He’d made up his mind. He meant to have his saucy wife at some point during their journey. She had arranged the afternoon so that he had no work on which to concentrate.

  Very well: he would concentrate on her.

  “You brought it on yourself,” Edie said with a delightful chuckle. “I fully expect that at the age of eighty, I’ll still be pulling you away from fishy reports and teasing you into a display of humor.”

  “A sense of humor?” he repeated lazily. “Are you quite certain I have one?”

  She nodded. “I am sure. Although the wry, funny part of you disappears during talk of wheat and eels, and instead I find myself looking at a man who’s finding no pleasure in life.”

  He started to disagree, but she hadn’t finished. “That’s not quite right. You do enjoy your work, don’t you?”

  Work? He enjoyed the delicate curve of her cheek, the deep rose of her lips, the way her eyelashes curled. Even the way she was dissecting him.

  Edie leaned forward and gave his knee a little poke. “Gowan, are you listening to me?”

  “Why would I work if I didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Because you have responsibilities,” she said promptly. “My father would much prefer to play the cello, and yet he is unable to find more than a few minutes here and there in which to practice.”

  “There’s only one thing I’d prefer to be doing,” he said, shaping the words with the controlled urgency of a man whose body was hard and aching.

  “Gowan! That is not what I meant.”

  He dragged his mind back to the subject. “You meant that I’m a tedious bastard and unfit to be in a lady’s company. I think,” he said apologetically, “that might just be the way I am, Edie. I can assure you that Bardolph and I do not exchange witticisms.”

  “Bardolph is a stick,” she said, turning her little nose into the air. “And you, my dear duke, must be careful yourself in that respect, because you have displayed some stickish tendencies of your own.”

  “I am not a stick.” He gave a bite of laughter. “Though, hell, we’d be better off if I were less sturdy and more stickish.”

  Edie’s answering smile was just a bit wobbly. She took a deep breath. “It does still hurt some, Gowan.”

  All amusement drained out him. He leaned forward and took her hands. “I know. I’m so sorry—but it is getting better, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “It means everything to me that you are finding pleasure in the act.” He grinned at her. “My lack of experience was embarrassing enough, but if I’d failed you in that respect, I would have had to relinquish my claim to manhood altogether.”

  Edie frowned. “That’s absurd.”

  A ridiculous wave of relief washed over him. “I never felt more happy than when you came last night.” He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed their palms, first one, then the other. “I just wish that the first few minutes weren’t so painful.” His sweet bride was still so shy that she kept her eyes on their entwined fingers. “Look at me?” he coaxed. “We must talk about these things, Edie. A husband and wife shouldn’t have any secrets between them.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I . . .” But her voice trailed off.

  She looked so miserable that Gowan couldn’t bear it. He half rose, bending his head to avoid the padded ceiling, pushed aside her hat, and sat down beside her. “Shakespeare makes the very true point that a standing prick has no conscience.”

  At first she didn’t understand. “A standing what?” she asked. The words had scarcely left her mouth when he watched, fascinated, as her cheeks took on a faint color, like the blush of a peach. “Gowan!” She gave a little explosive laugh. “A standing prick?”

  “Much better than a falling one,” he pointed out. “But what I’m trying to say is that I have a conscience, even if other parts of me are ravenous for you. Edie, mo chrìdh, if it hurts too much to make love, you merely have to tell me. You do know that, don’t you?”

  The color in her cheeks stained darker, as beautiful as the first plum of the season. “Of course I do,” she said. “What does mo chrìdh mean?”

  “My heart.” He picked her up easily and put her on his lap, pulling her into the crook of his arm. “You’re exquisite,” he told her. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “I feel the same about you.” Her honesty always startled him, the way she so easily said things that others hid or doled out in meager doses.

  Her arms came up and around his neck and he had an odd lurching sense, as if the carriage—or the world—tilted. She gave him that secret smile, the one with the tucked-away kiss. “When I looked up and saw you coming toward me at Fensmore, I thought you were the best-looking man in the room. And now,” she said, giving him a mischievous little smile, “I even like red hair. If it’s yours.”

  Gowan had never given a damn how he looked—he was well aware that his title commanded admiration that had nothing to do with his physical attributes. But the look in Edie’s eyes gave him a shock of pride.

  She liked his looks. Edie wasn’t the type of woman who cared much for titles. Nor for money, either.

  She rested her head against his shoulder. “Still, I do worry about you, Gowan. My father has a tendency to be far too serious. I think life can be very difficult if a person hasn’t a sense of joy.”

  He felt a little chill. “You think I don’t?”

  “Of course you do! You can even make Shakespeare’s plays seem funny to someone like me, who’s never managed to read one all the way through. I’m just worried that your life may be smothered under a hundred daily reports.”

  “I doubt it. For one thing, I lose my self-possession around you,” he confessed, running a finger along her cheekbone. “I stop giving a damn about work. Bardolph suggested I bring the ledgers in the carriage because he knows I didn’t truly absorb them.”

  She sat up straight, her brows drawing together. “Mr. Bardolph is not endearing himself to me.”

  “Don’t bother about him. More to the point, am I endearing myself to you?” Gowan scarcely believed that bit of foolishness came from his own lips. Something about her was eroding his independence . . . his manhood.

  “I think you may well be,” Edie said.

  Still, a shadow of anxiety clung to her eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said, dropping a kiss on her lips. “We will work out this marriage business. It’s unfortunate that neither one of us has a very good example to go by. My parents would have been vastly better off had they never met.” />
  “I can’t say the same for my father and Layla. They genuinely love each other. It’s just that my father has forgotten how . . .” She trailed off and started again. “He has stopped appreciating Layla for all the things he fell in love with in the first place. It’s as if he wants her to become him. And he is quite stiff by nature, I’m afraid.”

  Gowan nodded.

  “It makes him behave in a rather ill-tempered fashion, when in reality he isn’t.”

  “I’ve seen him retain his temper in truly vexing circumstances, as when dealing with the idiots from the Bank of England.”

  “But he doesn’t laugh at her jokes.”

  “I promise to always laugh at your jokes,” Gowan whispered.

  “If only I knew some to tell,” Edie said with a sigh. “I have only a passing and distant acquaintance of the sort of puns you like, the ones about pricks and bawdy clocks.” She snuggled her head back against his shoulder.

  “I’m happy to provide definitions,” he said, his voice growing husky.

  But she wasn’t listening. “I’m not used to staying up late, and then drinking wine at luncheon,” she said, yawning in a ladylike way. “Could we not find some potable water, Gowan? Wine at midday makes me feel so drowsy.”

  “Certainly,” he answered. He paused, thinking about how he’d fallen into the habit of drinking wine at every meal but breakfast. He was always testing himself, checking to make certain that he didn’t turn into a sot, and follow in his parents’ footsteps.

  It wasn’t a fear that he had ever shared with another person, but in the spirit of not keeping secrets from each other, he decided he would tell Edie . . . and then he realized that she had fallen asleep.

  He stared down at her, all his plans to seduce her fading away. She was curled against him, looking utterly peaceful. His first reaction was a pulse of irritation. But that wasn’t fair; it was selfish. He was responsible for her lack of sleep, after all.

  If only he had his ledgers . . .

  But he didn’t have them. He had nothing to do.

  That wasn’t entirely true. He did have a small amount of paper and a pen. He could prop her against the side of the carriage and go to work.