Once Upon a Tower

by Eloisa James

  The next morning there was blood on her nightdress, and Edie panicked. She thought for a moment that something had been ripped open inside her.

  “Your courses have begun,” Mary said, coming up behind her. “The duke will be sorely disappointed,” she added with a laugh.

  Edie laughed a little, too. Weakly, but with relief, she laughed.

  At breakfast, she informed Gowan that a female complaint precluded any visits to her bedchamber for the time being. It felt good to say that. Fueled by the memory of her useless practice sessions, she launched straight into another pronouncement. “I should like a two-hour stop in the afternoon to practice.”

  Gowan looked at her as if she’d just announced her intention to immigrate to Philadelphia. “Our route is laid out and on a strict schedule, Edie, as you know.”

  “I must practice and I’m too tired to play after supper. We could remain here for another day,” she offered.

  “We are holding every room in the Partridge Inn tonight. And the early coaches left an hour ago.”

  “I kept my cello back. Gowan, I must practice. I can do it here, or we can pause at midday.”

  Gowan’s mouth tightened, but to her surprise, he didn’t argue. Instead, he decided that it would be better to lose a day on their journey, so she played until lunch and then again until suppertime. Throughout, servants kept coming and going in the parlor, attending to Lord knew what tasks, until she gathered them—all eighteen of them—and announced that anyone who interrupted her playing again would have his or her employment summarily terminated. She let her eyes linger on Bardolph for the pure pleasure of it.

  She’d seen enough to know that Bardolph was integral to Gowan’s retinue, but threatening him, no matter how impotently, made her feel as if she was developing the backbone Layla said she needed.

  “What shall we do about your practice tomorrow?” Gowan asked at dinner.

  “I would be so grateful if you could spare two daylight hours,” she told him. “The cello would be quite loud in the carriage and make it difficult for you to hear your reports.” That was an empty threat because, of course, she would never achieve the proper balance in a moving vehicle. But she was relying on the fact that he knew nothing of stringed instruments.

  “We’ll leave an hour earlier and arrive an hour later,” Gowan said. That was the way he approached obstacles, she was beginning to notice. He assessed them, dealt with them, and moved on. The daily estate reports would present a problem, and Gowan would build a road around the obstacle without growing irritated.

  Bardolph did not share Gowan’s matter-of-factness. His back teeth were obviously clenched, so she gave him a sunny smile, the better to rankle him. “It is almost midsummer. I shan’t mind if I practice in a field,” she told him.

  “We can do better than that,” Gowan said. “We will stop in Pickleberry,” he said to Bardolph. “I believe that Her Grace would enjoy playing in the Merchant Tailors’ Hall. Send someone ahead to ensure it is available, and donate the appropriate amount to their charitable endeavors.”

  That afternoon the coach pulled over in a tiny town square. Gowan escorted her into a good-sized hall and stationed a footman outside the door to make certain she wasn’t interrupted.

  Edie bent over her strings with a solid sense of purpose. If she put in two hours’ hard work on the Boccherini, she wouldn’t feel so restless in the coach. And she had decided to bring the score with her in order to go over it a few times, just as if it were a ledger.

  An hour or so later, Gowan slipped back into the hall. She raised her head and saw him, but her fingers were nimbly following a thundering cascade of notes, so she looked back at the score.

  He was still there a half hour later, his arms thrown to the back of the bench, staring at the ceiling. She drew the last note to a pause. Gowan brought his chin down slowly. “Are you finished?”

  Was it her imagination, or did he sound regretful?

  “No,” she said firmly. “I shall take every second of my allotted two hours.” But she was weary of the Boccherini. Instead, she raised her bow and began the opening notes to Dona Nobis Pacem.

  When the final note died, she began the piece again. She had crowded the third and fourth sections. She needed peace in her heart.

  But her bowing knew the truth, and she began speeding up again. She had no peace inside her at the moment. Gowan was still staring at the beams far above them, and all she could see was the powerful line of his jaw.

  She usually immersed herself in the music. But this time she let the music be an accompaniment as she feasted on him: the strong column of his neck, his broad shoulders, and the glint of red in his hair. The extraordinary brilliance of him. The incisiveness that was an integral part of him. The way he ruled an empire without raising his voice. The way he had bent his life around her passion for music.

  She was lucky. She was so lucky, barring that one thing.

  Her eyes drifted to his legs, spread wide as he sprawled on the bench. It felt wicked to ogle him when he was swept away by the music. When the piece ended, she went straight into a Telemann sonata, hoping not to stir him. His eyes were closed, so perhaps he was dozing.

  For the first time, she found herself wondering what it would be like to lick him. She could imagine her tongue tracing patterns over his flat stomach, even lower perhaps.

  When she was on the final measures, he opened his eyes and then stood, stretching. She felt as if spangles of fire were racing through her in time to the music. If only they could be like this all the time: alone, with no Bardolph and no reports.

  She slowly lifted her bow from the strings.

  Twenty-five

  By a week later, Gowan was fairly certain that he was losing his mind.

  Edie spent the days tucked in the corner of the carriage with a score. At one point, she actually declared in a surprised tone that she now understood his method of traveling.

  “Normally I would sit in a coach laughing with Layla while my father rode outside. But even without an instrument I have made astonishing strides on this score.” Then she bent her head over the score again, and he had to fight not to throw her pages out the window.

  She may be concentrating, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Over the hours and days and miles, he had studied everything from her delicate little nose to the tiny dent in very middle of her lower lip. When she reached a difficult part in the score, she would worry her lower lip with even white teeth.

  He wanted to bite that lip. He wanted to throw himself on his knees in front of her and push up her skirts. Push her onto the seat and . . .

  If things were different, Gowan would lay Edie on the carriage seat and kiss every inch of her.

  He would throw himself down on his back and lift her on top of him. He would . . . It wasn’t pleasant to spend the day ravaged by desire, knowing full well that his wife did not share the feeling.

  Poor Edie had had a terrible time accommodating him. He knew it, and yet it didn’t stop him from succumbing to lust. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her long, pale legs and the luxurious fullness of her breasts. She sat there in the corner of the carriage, chewing on a pencil, then making sudden marks on the score, oblivious to him, and he could scarcely breathe because of the intensity of his hunger.

  Knowing that making love hurt her made him feel like a brute. The second, third, the fourth times, her body had gone rigid when he entered, and a whimper had broken from her lips that made his blood run cold.

  But even so, he longed to thrust into her warmth. A mere glance at her bent neck, and lust seared his groin. Yet her orgasms were paltry, thin affairs compared to the way his body caught fire, shuddering as he gave her everything he had.

  She . . .

  Edie was a mystery to him, and it didn’t help that he knew damned well that most men thought all women were mysteries. Even before her monthly courses arrived, he was already putting away the fantasies he’d had that someday she might pull up
her skirts and seduce him, riding him to the jostle of the carriage wheels.

  Edie wouldn’t care for that. She remained primly in place under him when they made love. She froze at the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside; he couldn’t imagine that she would welcome caresses in the daylight, in a carriage.

  Except that reminded him of the way she had trembled when he touched her after the Chuttle ball. She seemed to think that he had lost his sense of humor, but he would say she had lost something as well.

  Perhaps that was the nature of marriage. You started out enchanted with each other’s sense of humor and responsiveness . . . and then real life intervened. But everything in him revolted against accepting that notion. The sensual Edie he had first met could not have disappeared, leaving a woman uninterested in making love.

  It wouldn’t bother him in the least to make love during her courses, but she was fastidious. He hated the way she dried him with a sheet, as if she were rubbing down a horse.

  It emphasized how much their intimacy was a failure.

  Failure.

  It felt better to acknowledge that, if only to himself. Something didn’t feel right. It wasn’t all he’d hoped . . . not what the poets described. Even in the depths of pleasure, he felt as if she were doing him a favor. He even suspected that she was thinking about music while he was shuddering over her.

  The worst of it was that he felt as if Edie wasn’t really his. She laughed and talked, and she wore his ring, but he had failed to imprint himself on her. When her courses were over, things would have to change.

  Still, it would only make things worse if he tried to persuade her into intimacies that she wasn’t ready for. He had no idea how long these female complaints lasted. Would it be another week? A few days?

  When they reached Berwick-upon-Tweed three days later, Lady Gilchrist joined their carriage, and he even felt jealous of her, of his own mother-in-law, because Edie was so blindingly happy to see her. She and her stepmother sat together, holding hands, throughout the afternoon, until they stopped for the night at the Bumble and Berry, a mere two-hour drive from Craigievar. He didn’t want to introduce Edie to the castle and its residents in the dark, so he sent Bardolph and most of his retinue ahead, but the three of them and their private servants stopped to rest.

  After supper, they bade each other a genial good night in the corridor of the inn and retired to separate chambers. But Gowan lay awake, thinking about his marriage.

  The next morning he entered his wife’s chamber and sat down on the bed. Edie was just waking up, her hair tousled and her eyes heavy-lidded and languorous. He choked back the lust that flooded his body, leaving him with an ever-present erection, and asked, “Are your courses over, Edie?”

  She stretched in a way that outlined her magnificent breasts and nodded. The words burst from him. “When were they finished?”

  Edie didn’t lie to him. She looked him straight in the eye and told him that they’d ended four days ago. Yet she hadn’t mentioned it to him. She hadn’t once touched him, or let him know in any way.

  He felt a wave of nausea that must have shown on his face, because Edie said, “Should I have informed you, Gowan? I thought if you wanted to come to my bed, you would have asked. Or just come.”

  She looked genuinely confused.

  He managed a smile and left for breakfast.

  Sometime later, Lady Gilchrist appeared downstairs, looking like a lush Frenchwoman, dropped by accident in the Scottish Lowlands. Her fetching bonnet dipped over one ear with just the right élan; her skirts were a tad short, exposing slippers whose ribbons crisscrossed up her ankles.

  When they were all in the inn’s courtyard, ready to leave, he announced that he would ride alongside the carriage. Relief flashed through Edie’s eyes, giving him another wave of nausea. He handed his wife and her stepmother into the carriage and leapt onto his horse as if the Furies were behind him. He needed the wind screaming in his ears so he couldn’t listen to the bitter, cynical voice in his head.

  He’d always condemned both his parents for their despicable morals, but now he fancied he understood them better: they’d probably found themselves alone in the middle of a marriage.

  There was nowhere colder, nor lonelier.

  Even angry as he was, he still yearned to touch Edie, to kiss her, to make love to her. Given the chance, he would follow her as a falcon does the falconer, as if there were a string about his leg. And yet she didn’t want him. That was manifestly clear.

  If she were a falconer, she’d toss him into the sky and tell him not to come back. The realization made Gowan’s heart thud heavily in his chest. He didn’t even notice that his horse’s flanks were white with foam. Finally, he slowed to a walk, but he couldn’t stop his mind reeling from point to point.

  Edie did care for him. During the last ten days, they had had conversations about everything from the castle sewers, to his aunts’ piglets, to the state of the empire, to the future of the pound note. Even when she was studying her musical scores, he found himself interrupting to ask her opinion, drawing her into the conversation, making Bardolph wait to see whether she had thoughts about the future of coal or the economical implications of the new blast furnaces.

  When they sat at meals, time flew, even when she talked about music, which he hardly understood. But he loved to see her excitement and the way her slender hands gestured in the air as she told him about the “blasted” Boccherini score, and then looked so guilty for cursing that he couldn’t stop laughing.

  Yet caring for him and wanting to make love to him appeared to be two distinct things. After his horse had cooled down, Gowan spurred him again, widening the distance between the carriage and him, creating a space between his mindless, sensual need and his wife. He felt like a wild animal, howling into some dark night.

  It wasn’t as if Edie had ever refused him her body. She hadn’t. She even enjoyed it . . . he thought—no, he knew—she enjoyed it. At least, parts of it. But he ended up feeling like a heartless bastard. No matter how many times he told himself that she found pleasure bedding him, he didn’t believe it. Some part of him felt like a rapist while taking his own wife. That was the raw truth of it.

  He was pushing his horse harder than he ought, but he couldn’t run from the truth. Every time he made love to Edie, he felt a kind of raw openness, as if her slightest touch turned him vulnerable. There was a touch of magic about it.

  Yet she did not feel the same.

  In fact, he had the shrewd feeling that Edie felt that kind of joy only when playing the cello. Whenever he could, he fobbed off Bardolph in order to listen to her. He’d even learned to recognize a few of the tunes she was working on. Though she wouldn’t approve of the word tunes. They weren’t “tunes” to her; they were arpeggios and barcarolle and the like. The words were like arcane formulas that only she knew.

  That was when he saw the passionate, brilliant woman he wanted in his bed and his arms. When Edie played, her eyes went soft and unfocused, her lips parted, and her body swayed. The sight ripped him open with longing. Seeing her drop into that ecstatic state woke a dark monster that drove him to try harder and harder in bed.

  He had kissed her in her most private places until she writhed in his arms. He had caressed her every curve; he had whispered endearments in her ears. He had kissed her like a man possessed, which he was. None of it seemed to matter.

  There was a wall between them, a separation. He only had to look into her eyes to know that whatever erotic excitement she felt in their bed was nothing to what she felt with that damned bow in her hand.

  Music was her true love.

  He had his horse back at a walk by the time he neared his estate. He heard a whistle in the woods, and whistled back; one of his sentries had spotted him.

  A moment later the man trotted out from under the shadow of an oak tree, doffing his hat.

  “Maclellan,” Gowan said. He wanted to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  The man fel
l alongside, giving a succinct report of events during Gowan’s absence. A wild boar had attacked near the granaries; a hunting party had shot it the next day. The carcass had been butchered and the meat was drying, ready to be made into boar stew next winter. One sentry had fallen from the battlements and broken his shoulder, but he was healing well.

  This was nothing that Gowan hadn’t already learned from his daily reports, but he had found that one often learned more from hearing a report again in person. He asked about the clumsy sentry.

  “The lad’s not handy with a gun,” Maclellan reported. “I’ve my worries about that. His father had perfect aim, but the lad doesn’t. I think he’s a sentry to please his da, but his heart isn’t in it. I’m worried he’ll point that gun in the wrong direction one day and shoot his own foot off, or worse. I’ve in mind to let him go, but his father will be right grieved to see him leave.”

  “Let’s try him in the stables,” Gowan said. “Perhaps he has a hand with animals. We can use him somewhere.”

  They rounded a bend and there before them lay Castle Craigievar, the centuries-old stronghold of the Clan MacAulay. The noon sun shone down gold over its ancient walls, battlements, and drum towers. Sentries caught sight of them. He heard the blare of a trumpet. As they made their way down the drive, the MacAulay banner—argent, a crimson dragon grasping a sword—was slowly raised above the keep.

  The Duke of Kinross was back in residence.

  Gowan pulled up his horse. His heart lifted as he watched the flag unfurl, the dragon’s lip curling with fury. This was his place, where he was master. All would be well here.

  He could woo his wife into loving his bed.

  Of course he could.

  He just had to try harder.

  Twenty-six

  The minute the groom closed the carriage door, Layla pounced. “What on earth is happening with that delicious husband of yours?” she cried. “Here I am, springing to the rescue like Sir Galahad himself. Tell me all.”