Once Upon a Tower (12 page)

“Perhaps six glasses? But she hasn’t eaten much today.”

“Nearly an entire bottle,” Gowan pointed out. “She’s soused.”

As the earl neared the front step, Layla suddenly reached up and pulled her husband’s head down to her mouth. She was, definitively, awake. Edie dropped the curtain and sat back. “Goodness,” she said. “I’d rather not have seen that. Nevertheless, we now know that Layla is not insensible.”

“She can certainly hold her drink.”

“You needn’t say it like that,” Edie said, frowning at him. “Layla is not an inebriate.”

“In my experience, inebriates aren’t nearly as unfamiliar with the bottle as they would wish their family members to believe.”

“That certainly may have been true of your parents,” Edie stated. “Though I am loath to insist on an unflattering distinction between our families, I see Layla almost hourly, since I have been unable to convince her not to interrupt my practice. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen her befuddled.”

Gowan’s eyes had turned sympathetic. “The most ferocious of rebuffs would not have stopped my father from interrupting my studies.”

“
Gowan.
That was not my point.”

After a few second, he said, “Oh?” It seemed that the duke was not accustomed to opposition. Well, one had to assume he could learn.

“While your cynical attitude arouses my sympathy,” Edie continued, “I would like you to acknowledge my point. My stepmother does not drink to excess. We don’t even take wine at dinner as a matter of course: only if my father is coming home, which is rare, these days.”

“I understand,” Gowan said, nodding. He glanced back out the window. “They’re still kissing. Your father is quite passionate for a man of his years.”

“He’s not so very old,” Edie said, switching from defending her tipsy stepmother to her irascible father. “He’s only just over forty. You yourself boasted that Scotsmen are active for many years past forty.”

“I thought the man had a touch of the Scots about him.”

It was absurd that even a glimpse of Gowan’s smile made her feel unsettlingly soft and melting, but that was the truth of it. “I thought perhaps you had mislaid your sense of humor,” she observed.

“I apologize. I’m afraid that my parents left me with a distinctly unsympathetic attitude toward over-indulgence in alcohol.”

“That is quite understandable,” Edie said. “Do tell me when my parents are finally inside, because I should follow. There will be hysterics if Layla looks in my chamber to say good night, and I’m not there.”

Gowan glanced out again. “They’ve entered the house.”

“In that case, I must retire. We should not be sitting in a stationary carriage without a chaperone, betrothed or not.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Gowan said, a wicked light rousing in his eyes. “I could take you driving alone in Hyde Park.”

“Not in the dark. I really must go in.” But the sentence came out in a rather husky tone.

“Not until I kiss you good night,” he whispered, taking her hands and drawing her to his side of the carriage. “My nearly wife.”

Edie tipped her head so she could see his eyes. They had gone sleepy and possessive.

His head came closer, and she held her breath for a moment, wondering if the kiss would be as intoxicating as their first . . . and then she didn’t wonder any longer. His tongue slid into her mouth, and she stopped thinking altogether.

She was learning that there were some things that you shouldn’t try to think about while you were experiencing them; you should simply feel them. So she let herself feel how thick and soft his hair was, and then, when her hands drifted down from his neck to his shoulders and below, the way his back was corded with muscle.

By then the kiss was growing more insistent, and she found herself clinging to him, hardly breathing, her body thrilling to a rhythm she didn’t know but instinctively felt in her veins.

“Edie,” Gowan said hoarsely, breaking off their kiss with a muffled groan. “We have to stop before—”

“Don’t stop,” Edie said, pulling his mouth back to hers. “No one knows where we are.”

And so he didn’t stop, and the next time either of them spoke was when Gowan cupped Edie’s breast, which felt so wonderful that she uttered something incoherent. He laughed low in reply, and rubbed his thumb across her nipple.

The sensation made Edie cry out and press forward into his hand. Her cloak had disappeared somehow, and even through layers of cloth she could feel the heat and power in his hands as he touched her. Each touch brought a wild surge of feeling.

He seemed fascinated, watching intently as her breasts overflowed his hands.

“They’re rather large,” Edie whispered, thinking of how Layla had characterized her bosom as unfashionably ample.

He glanced at her, a fleeting gleam of his eyes that made her want to curl against him and beg him for more caresses. Harder ones.

“They are perfect,” he said. The sound of his voice rubbed against her skin like her cello’s deepest notes. “I have dreamed of holding you, Edie.”

“You have?”

“Since the night I met you. But no dream is like reality.”

He did something so pleasurable with his hands that Edie could do nothing but sink back onto the seat. He followed, and then he was kissing her neck, and all the time he caressed her breasts while Edie thought about what it felt like to have the weight of a male body on her. And how nice it would be if he were touching her without the barrier of her gown and chemise.

She would have thought he’d be too heavy, even propped up on one elbow. But he wasn’t. Her body loved the feeling of all that muscle and heat; it made her want to form a cradle with her legs. Which was such an outrageous idea that she shocked herself.

He’d reached the base of her neck, but instead of a kiss he gave her a little lick, which felt so good that, quite involuntarily, she whimpered and arched her back a little. It made his body settle more firmly on her.

Now he was kissing the slope of her breasts and then he dropped his thigh between her legs and pressed. She clutched his shoulders so hard that she was certain her fingernails would leave little marks.

Gowan murmured something so low she couldn’t hear it, and then he pulled sharply on her gown; her bodice slipped down, and his lips closed over her nipple. Edie had literally never imagined such a feeling. She arched again with a little shriek.

Gowan was nibbling and licking and kissing in a sensual assault so overwhelming that Edie stopped thinking altogether and just let herself feel. She felt like one of the tin pots that boys blew up on Guy Fawkes Day. She was ready to explode into something bright and frightening and gorgeous, if only . . . She pushed up against his leg, feeling a fiery burn spreading through her body that left her breathless.

But just then, when she felt kindling catch fire—Gowan stopped. An unwelcome coolness replaced the warmth of his mouth. She looked down. In the dim light her breasts were pale but her nipples had turned dark pink and stood out, begging for more attention.

His gaze followed hers, but he had that look on his face again, or perhaps it was no look at all.

This was a problem, Edie thought groggily.
She
fell into melting darkness when he kissed her, and if she was truly honest, she didn’t care whether they were married or not. She wanted to make love on this carriage seat. Or the ground. Or anywhere else he cared to put her.

On the other hand,
he
seemed to have retained a disconcerting amount of clarity.

“How can you be so composed?” she said, a moment later, when he had deposited her on the opposite seat, located her cloak, and begun tying it as if she were a little girl.

“I’m not composed,” he said shortly. His voice made her feel better, because there was a raw sound to it.

“I feel hot all over,” she whispered, kissing his brow. It was the only part of him she could reach while he concentrated on tying a perfect bow. “I feel as if I won’t be able to sleep. I feel . . .”

“I know I won’t be able to sleep.” His fingers paused and he met her eyes. “I never dreamed that I would share my life with such a sensual woman.”

“I’m not sensual,” Edie whispered. “I’m quite ordinary, really.”

“You are anything but ordinary,” he said, cupping her face and giving her a hard, swift kiss. He had the door open and handed her down to the pavement, almost before she knew what was happening.

“Gowan!” she protested. She lowered her voice, realizing that grooms had hopped from the carriage and were standing to attention, two on either side of the door. “Don’t you think that I have a significant point, given that special license you acquired? If our reputation is to be ruined under the suspicion that we have anticipated our vows, we might as well do so!”

Gowan tucked her hand in his arm, and began walking up the path toward Willikins, who stood in the light of the open door. “I indeed take your point, but you must understand: I value my honor above my reputation.” He had assumed his ducal voice again—in response, she had to suppose, to all the men standing about in livery.

Edie stopped when they were halfway up the walk and, she hoped, out of earshot of both the grooms and Willikins. “Gowan,” she hissed.

He looked at her with a kind of placid tolerance, though it was hard to discern in the flickering light from the doorway. She found it so annoying that she gave his arm a shake. “You are behaving in a rather stickish manner, Duke.”

“Stickish?” A flash of wry humor returned to his eyes. “Addressing me by my title is stickish as well.”

She felt all hot and melting and urgent, and it was extremely vexing to see Gowan looking as calm as a vicar after his Sunday’s sermon. So she came up on her toes and licked his bottom lip.

“What are you doing to me, Edie?” The sentence growled out of some deep part of his chest and flooded her with satisfaction. Perhaps he was simply better at covering up things than she was.

“I’m making certain that you will have as much trouble sleeping as I shall.” Then she reached up, pulled down his head, and kissed him. It wasn’t their fourth, or even their fourteenth kiss, but it was the first kiss that
she
gave
him
.

There was something about that realization that made her feel even more melting. But even though he showed satisfactory signs of enthusiasm, Gowan did not sweep her into his arms and stride back to the carriage, shouting to the coachman to take them to a bedchamber somewhere.

In fact, after a bit, he pulled his mouth away, peeled her arms from around his neck, and growled, “I’m taking you to the door now,
Edith
.”

Edie had managed to get her breath back by the time they reached the long-suffering Willikins. His countenance was expressionless, and for some reason, that made her feel even crosser. Was she to spend her life being watched by living statues?

So she curtsied good-bye to Gowan, but refused to meet his eyes. She had just turned to climb the stairs when she heard an exasperated sound and he spun her around and said, low and fierce, “Dukes don’t deflower their wives-to-be in carriages, Edie.”

She glanced to the side, but Willikins had shown his intuitive grasp of a butler’s more sensitive duties and disappeared into the recesses of the house.

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s the way you lose all expression. One minute I’m kissing you, and the next I find myself being put aside by a man exhibiting all the emotion of a block of wood. One moment you make me laugh, and the next you assume the expression of a schoolmaster speaking to a naughty boy. I find it annoying. In the
extreme
,” she added, in case he thought to discount her feelings.

“A man is what he does,” Gowan said. “If I deflower my fiancée, I am not myself, but some other being, some person so overcome by lust that he forgets the rules that govern civilization.”

Edie suddenly felt too weary to argue. “Yes, well, you’re probably right,” she said. She thought of dropping another curtsy, but it would likely be taken the wrong way. So she patted his cheek because, after all, he was a dear man, if a misguided one. And then she made her way to her room.

Sixteen

G
owan returned to his carriage, climbed in, and sat there with his arms folded during the short drive to his own town house.

Once home, he nodded to his butler, tossed off his coat, and went up to his bedchamber. All the while a kind of desperate sensuality tore at him, buffeting him with images of Edie’s luscious breasts, of the way her breath had caught in her throat when he’d kissed her.

His man entered the room and asked whether, while His Grace unclothed, he would be interested in reviewing the butler’s report regarding household expenditures, as was customary. Gowan ordered a bath and then threw the fellow out; he had no wish to display an erection that showed little signs of softening.

Hell, it probably never would. He’d have this arousal at the altar. And what would follow that? What would he do then?

Throw his duchess into a carriage and take her like some sort of wild animal, right on the seat? His mind duly noted that Edie wouldn’t argue with it. In fact, he thought it was possible that somehow he’d been lucky enough to find a woman who would relish anything he could come up with.

And he could come up with a lot. It wasn’t just his imagination; his Kinross forebears had been possessed of bawdy imaginations and had stocked the library to suit. Oddly enough, all those books’ images seemed vulgar now that he’d kissed Edie and heard her little shriek. Seen the delicious curve of her neck when she gasped for air.

He wished that he could take her to Craigievar and marry there, so that he could take her directly from his own chapel to his own bedchamber. But no—Edie said that it would cause an indelible scandal if they ran off to Scotland. Frankly, he could see no real difference between marrying in haste in London and marrying in haste in Gretna Green. Any man with a few pounds could get his hands on a special license, after all, whereas a trip to Scotland was expensive, given the changes of post horses, the inns, the inevitable broken axle.

Why should that cause the greater scandal?

He looked around his bedroom in some distaste. Given that he refused the carriage seat as a substitute for the marital bed, he had to find a lodging in London that was worthy of their wedding night; this wouldn’t do. The house was in the very best section of London, only three or four streets from the earl’s town house. But he’d never bothered to change the furnishings after he bought it, and the previous owner had a veritable mania for outré Egyptian flourishes.

He went to sleep every night under a frieze of jackal heads. Not that he disliked jackals, precisely. From what he’d seen in the British Museum, Egyptian jackals had long muzzles and a regal expression. These jackals looked more like beagles, a breed he enjoyed. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to bring his bride to a bed surrounded by panting dogs.

It would have to be Nerot’s Hotel. He rang the bell and his man, Trundle, reappeared with satisfactory haste.

“Inform Bardolph that I wish him to visit Nerot’s and rent the best suite.”

Trundle bowed. “For how long, Your Grace?” He ushered footmen with hot water into the bathing chamber while Gowan thought about it.

The Earl of Gilchrist would resemble a beetroot if Gowan suggested a wedding on the morrow. But on the other hand, he would not—
could
not—wait much longer.

“From tomorrow until further notice,” he said, when Trundle reappeared. “If the best suite is currently occupied, pay the hotel double to get them out.”

One would never know that he was the most fiscally prudent duke the duchy had seen in decades.

“Would you care to undress now, Your Grace?”

“No.”

“So that you could take a bath while the water is hot?” Trundle sounded a bit desperate.

“No. You may leave. Deliver the message to Bardolph. I shall undress myself.”

Trundle frowned and opened his mouth.

Gowan raised an eyebrow and the man whisked himself out the door.

He went into the bathroom and stared at the steaming tub for a bit before he pulled his wits together. It was distracting to picture Edie’s mouth. More than distracting. There lay madness.

He stripped naked, turned, and caught sight of himself in the glass. Would he be pleasing to Edie?

At twenty years of age, he’d stopped growing any taller. Instead, in the last two years, he had just been growing broader. His legs were huge, probably the result of hard physical labor. When he was in residence at Craigievar, he would rise at five and go to his study, then head into the fields in the afternoon to work alongside his crofters.

An English nobleman couldn’t do that, but his clansmen expected him to lend a hand when he was able. They’d hand him a scythe and point to a row with considerably less amazement than if he bought them a round at the tavern. Whether they were hauling logs or making barley sheaves, he worked alongside them.

The physical work, together with years of swimming, had broadened his chest, too, making it quite unlike the lithe bodies of most English gentlemen. He didn’t fool himself that they were soft and defenseless, because he knew they weren’t. He’d been to Gentleman Jackson’s Saloon in London and seen them boxing each other with calculated ferocity. But English physiques tended toward the sinewy.

Scottish ones just bulged.

Below his broad torso . . .

He was bigger than average; he knew it empirically, from unavoidable observation. After a hard day in the fields, his men would strip naked and plunge into the bitterly cold loch, he among them. Even at eighteen, he could see his ancestors had bequeathed him more than a castle. What if Edie didn’t like that part of his body?

He reached down and palmed his balls. They were drawn up close to his body, and had been from the moment he’d caught sight of Edie that evening. It wasn’t particularly pleasant to feel like a powder keg, overly tight and explosive.

Watching in the glass as he wrapped a hand around his tool, he saw it in double vision, as if Edie were beside him, and it was her delicate, long fingers that caressed him.

She looked a perfect lady, but the fingertips of her left hand were callused from endless hours of playing. He was still trying to get his head around the idea that he was marrying a musician. Watching her play a duet with her father had been a revelation. Her body bent with the music like a willow in a high wind, her face utterly alive with joy.

He wanted her to feel that with him as well. And he wanted her to stroke him with her musical hands.

The thought led to an image of Edie kneeling at his feet, that wash of golden hair over one shoulder, her lips opening as she . . .

A hoarse noise broke from his throat and his hand tightened.

A few minutes later, he lowered himself into the tub. The water felt like a caress, causing his body to stiffen again. Still, the swiftness with which he had lost control was percolating into his brain, and not in a happy way. It was unacceptable.

He couldn’t blaze up like brandy put to flame: he had a responsibility to Edie. It was more than a responsibility with regard to consummation of their marriage. He had a distinct sense that a couple’s first night together determined the pattern of their marital relations for years to come.

Having inherited his dukedom at an early age, he had long ago learned to plan out, and rehearse, any new action. A young boy tasked with leading a household can practice what needs to be said in the privacy of his bathing chamber, if that happens to be one of the few places where he’s ever alone.

On another day, he can rehearse the speech he will make while taking back control of the local bench. And when joining the bank’s board of governors. Over time, he can become so good at thinking through the various possible outcomes of any action that he rarely makes a mistake—because he had thought through all conceivable weaknesses beforehand.

Marriage and intimacy were just another challenge. There was a danger that, having never done the act before, he would lose control and act like a raw boy of fourteen. That would be unacceptable, but he wasn’t overly worried. He had not enjoyed pulling away from Edie, even less so when he tucked those luscious breasts back into her bodice, but he’d never been in danger of losing control.

The key was to make a mental list of what needed to be done in order to ensure that Edie enjoyed her first experience, particularly given the pain that women apparently felt. That was the one eventuality for which he couldn’t plan, since by all accounts the amount of pain varied from woman to woman. Some felt a sharp pang and others something more distressing. Many women, he’d been given to understand, felt no pain at all.

He had hopes that Edie would be one of those, but either way, he was responsible for her pleasure, if not rapture, during the rest of the evening. She was demonstrably responsive, so he didn’t have to worry about frigidity. It didn’t take long to come up with a step-by-step plan for their wedding night. Images popped straight into his head, thanks to the illustrated volumes found in the ducal library.

His mind went hazy at the memory of how Edie’s breath grew choppy, and how she gave a little cry every time he suckled her. The mere thought of sinking into her hot depths, seeing her eyes widen with ecstasy, feeling her, slick and tight around him . . .

Gowan ended up with his head thrown onto the back of the tub. Damn, but he was sick of this. Once he was married, he didn’t want to touch himself ever again. Ever.

He would be touched only by Edie. Her hands . . .

Her body.