Once Upon a Tower (33 page)

Edie sobbed without words, pulling at him. Gowan nudged her legs apart, braced himself, and slid in.

It didn’t hurt. Not even the tiniest amount. There was just an intoxicating feeling of fullness . . . and it was
Gowan
inside her.

But he didn’t move, waiting. “Is it painful?” he asked. In that moment Edie knew that if she felt the merest twinge, he would back away. The thought—his concern, his control—made flames lick at her.

She shook her head, clutched his arms, and opened her mouth, but just then he withdrew and pulsed into her again. He kissed her so hard that her scream was silenced. Then all of a sudden those feelings—that wild explosion of heat and emotion—ripped through her body again.

Gowan tore his mouth away and looked down at his wife in amazement. Edie was arched against him, her body shaking, eyes squeezed shut. Her hair was darkened with sweat, like corn silk in the rain.

He felt a joy through his body that would never go away. So he drew back and began thrusting into her over and over and over. Her eyes flew open and she gasped, “Can you feel it if I do this?”

“Hell,” he rasped, because he could feel exactly what she was doing. “If you do that, Edie—don’t do that! I’m going to lose control.”

She laughed and didn’t obey. With every pump of his hips, she rose to meet him, her thighs clamped around his body. She was clutching him inside, over and over. He couldn’t stop going harder, pounding, hurtling closer toward something that was almost frightening in its intensity.

Then Edie opened her eyes again, her lovely green eyes, and gasped, “Gowan.”

Her voice was desperate, and hunger blazed down his backbone.

“Will you—”

He braced his arms, leaning down to brush a kiss on her lips. “Tell me,” he managed.

Her hands slid down his back to his arse and pulled him even closer. He threw his head back. He dimly heard her gasp his name, and then she was clenching on him again, but it was tighter and sweeter than he could have imagined. Her whole body shook under him and she cried out . . .

Something in Gowan broke free. His whole body flamed up as he thrust into her.

She’s all states, and all princes, I. Nothing else is.

Edie sobbed beneath him. Gowan threw back his head, roared, and spent himself, giving her everything he had.

She gave it back, and gave it back again.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere.

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Forty-one

E
die woke, confused, to the sound of rushing water. And then she realized that she wasn’t alone. She was lying on her side, facing away from the man whose arm was curved around her waist. And she knew instinctively that if she moved, she would wake him.

“Don’t even think about it,” Gowan’s sleepy voice growled, and sure enough his arm shifted and a hand slipped around one of her breasts. “Mmmm. I believe this is my favorite part of your body.”

She laughed.

His hand slid downward. “Of course, I like this, too.” He cupped her between the legs, his hand warm and affectionate. “This is my favorite way to wake up.”

“Lords and ladies in polite society do not sleep together,” she pointed out, a gurgle of laughter in her voice. “That is for peasants, who must keep each other warm.”

His hand was back at her breast. “I love your body heat.” Then, uncannily, as if he had read her thoughts, he said, “I don’t think I’ll ever want to sleep without you, Edie. Those endless hours when I was riding from the Highlands in the rain, when I landed in the ditch, when I found another horse—”

“When you climbed the tower in the dark and the rain!” she said, rolling over to face him. She felt a pang of fear at the memory. “I almost lost you.” She dropped another kiss on his biggest bruise, the one that spread right across his shoulder.

“I thought I had lost you,” he said, pulling her closer. “I was so terrified. As frightened as if the moon fell from the sky, or the sun never rose.”

She slipped a leg between his, loving the way his breathing roughened at her slightest touch. “No more climbing towers.”

He grinned, and her heart thrilled to the flash of wild humor in his eyes, the laughing Gowan whom almost no one glimpsed but her. “Do you know the Clan MacAulay motto? It’s
dulce periculum
; danger is sweet. Go ahead and lock yourself in another tower, Edie. Danger is sweet, but you are sweeter.” He leaned forward and kissed her.

She drew away sometime later, her fingers trembling. “I love you,” she whispered.

He kissed her again.

“You will have to get used to sleeping alone,” she said a while later, teasing him, but a little serious as well. “I can’t constantly travel with you from estate to estate, Gowan.”

He shrugged. “So I won’t travel anymore.”

“But I thought you had to move from one to the other!”

“I thought through all that while I was away. There are a few decisions that only I can make. But the world is full of intelligent men. I have Bardolph to manage them. I have you to manage me.”

Edie began to smile, slowly. “Your Grace, are you, by any chance, saying that you intend to work less? That you might make a place on your schedule for a wife, aside from dinnertime?”

“I want to be with you,” he said, dropping a tender kiss on the end of her nose. “I want to watch you play your cello. I want you to perform for me naked.”

She laughed aloud. “I couldn’t!”

He disagreed, and she ended up on her back, kissing him fiercely. After a while, Gowan rolled over, bringing her to a sitting position on top of him, because it was time to try all the things he’d dreamed of, and since he had a wife who was as confident in her sensuality as she was in her love for him . . .

Later, Edie wandered over to the window, followed by Gowan. He pushed her hair to the side and licked her neck. “Essence of Edie,” he murmured. “And sweat.”

She made a face at that—and then, “
Gowan!
”

“Mmmm?”

“The river,” she gasped.

Overnight, the Glaschorrie had swollen to a torrent, burst its banks, and now surrounded them. The river was split in two by the tower, flowing around it and coming together on the other side, continuing its dash to the ocean.

But the rain had stopped, for the moment at least. “Imagine,” Gowan said, pushing the window open wider. The sun had broken through the clouds, and the water below glinted as if thousands of gold sovereigns were hidden just below the surface. “We won’t be able to leave the tower for at least a day.”

Edie’s eyes had grown wide. “We’re trapped!”

Gowan leaned back against the sill, happier than he had ever been. “Thank goodness Bardolph left a ham and a plate of dumplings and a chicken pie.”

He was more interested in the vision before him. Edie’s skin was covered with a pattern of little love bites—the road map. He didn’t need any maps, though he didn’t bother to tell her. He was learning by sound and touch: the catch in her breath, the sob in her throat, the way her fingers tightened on his shoulders, and the way her body shook in his arms . . .

Edie leaned out the window again, transfixed by the floodwaters, which were lapping at the tower’s lowest windows. “Don’t,” he said. “That sill is entirely too low; you might topple out.”

“You’re a fine one to say that,” Edie retorted, laughing.

Gowan didn’t argue, but wound his arms around her waist from behind, and pulled her away from the window.

“You’re going to have to stop that,” she said, giving him a naughty glance over her shoulder.

“What?”

“Oh, trying to get your own way.”

His hands were on her breasts again. “I have an idea,” he said, brushing her hair over one shoulder so he could kiss it.

“Is it about becoming a man who listens to his wife and always takes her advice and never thwarts her in any way?”

The Duke of Kinross knew better than to make promises he wouldn’t keep. “A better idea,” he said silkily, tucking her gorgeous bottom under the curve of his stomach.

“Gowan!”

It was amazing how a woman could sound scandalized, intrigued, aroused . . . all in the same moment.

Forty-two

Six years later

No. 37 Charles Street, London

The Duke of Kinross’s town house

A
t eleven years old, Miss Susannah was a quite accomplished violinist. In fact, she was something of a prodigy and she knew it, even though her mama always hushed her father when he said anything about that. Her mother thought it was much more important to be a
nice
person than to be a genius.

Personally, Susannah thought you could be both. Her tutor, Monsieur Védrines, nodded at her from his seat at the piano, and she raised her bow.

She knew the piece to the middle of her bones. And she knew everyone in the room as well. There was her dear mama and papa, and Lady Arnaut, who also played the cello, although she complained that these days she couldn’t play because her stomach was too great with child.

That was a paltry excuse, as Susannah could have told her, because Edie had played all the way through both of her confinements.

The first notes spilled from the piano and Susannah felt her heartbeat quicken. There was no reason that she should be so nervous, though perhaps it was because Jamie Arnaut was in the room, sitting by his father and mother. He was thirteen and seemed tremendously grown-up.

It was her turn, and her bow came down on just the right spot . . .

Afterward, she was flushed and smiling and terribly pleased. But there was still one piece left to play, a surprise for Edie. They’d all been keeping the secret for ages and ages, to the point where Susannah wondered whether Edie actually knew the truth and was merely pretending not to know. Grown-ups did that sort of thing.

Jamie came up with his father, Lord Arnaut, so she told herself not to blush, and dropped into a curtsy. And then she blushed anyway, because Jamie gave her a smile and said that he thought she was a wonderful violinist. He didn’t say,
for a girl
, and he didn’t even look as if he was thinking it.

Edie watched the color rise in Susannah’s cheeks as she accepted young Jamie’s compliments and smiled to herself. They had never been able to determine whether Gowan and Susannah’s mother had remarried, so a fearful person might worry about Susannah’s future acceptance in society. But it was obvious, even at eleven years old, when she was still all knees and elbows, that she would be a tremendous beauty some day. And her brother was one of the most powerful men in England
and
Scotland. Edie wasn’t worried.

Layla popped up at her side and drew her to a chair in the very front row. “The recital is not over yet!” she said, giggling madly. “There’s still a birthday surprise for you.” There was a great deal of laughter from her assembled friends and family, though Edie had no idea why.

Monsieur Védrines sat himself back down at the piano. A footman placed a straight-backed chair next to the instrument.

“Is someone going to play a duet for my birthday?” Edie asked Layla. Layla’s eyes were shining and she couldn’t stop giggling, even though she was risking waking up one of her twins, draped over her shoulder fast asleep. Edie wasn’t sure which one, since they were identical. All she could see was a cloud of golden hair against Layla’s shoulder.

“You’ll see,” Layla said now.

“I can guess,” Edie said, smiling. “I don’t see Father. He’s going to perform a new piece, isn’t he?”

“Something like that,” Layla replied.

Edie sighed happily. “What a lovely birthday present. Where has Gowan got to? I don’t want him to miss it.”

Layla looked about vaguely. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

At that moment Edie’s father strode out onto the floor, carrying his precious cello. He settled himself in the chair and nodded at Védrines. The family counted it as one of their luckiest days when the young Frenchman agreed to be their castle musician.

“We shall play Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor, in honor of my daughter’s birthday,” Lord Gilchrist announced, giving Edie a smile before turning to place his music on the stand.

“He must have made a special arrangement,” Edie told Layla. “That piece was written for two violins, a cello, and strings.”

“I expect the piano is playing the strings,” Layla said.

Before Edie could point out that, even so, two violins were still missing, Susannah had walked to the front of the room, next to the earl, and was again picking up her violin.

And then there was a murmur as the Duke of Kinross entered. Gowan had grown only more devastatingly handsome as the years passed, his sense of command polished to a fine point, but tempered by a deep love of his wife and children that made every woman sigh.

But Edie wasn’t looking at his face. Rather, she was transfixed by the violin tucked casually under his left arm, as if he’d often carried an instrument that way.

He joined the ensemble, smiled at her, raised the violin, and began to play. Edie sat frozen in her chair. If the roof had flown off the town house to reveal a sky crowded with winged pigs, she would not have been as astonished as she was by the sight of her husband playing Vivaldi.

He wasn’t merely following the notation, either. Gowan played with as much reckless brilliance as he did everything else in his life. It was utterly clear that, had he cared to, he could have rivaled the world’s finest players.

And she understood, in the same moment, that he did not care to.

He had learned this most difficult of arts
for her
.

“It took three years of work,” Layla whispered, bending close. “Poor Védrines has been driven mad by the project.”

As the last notes faded, the assembled guests burst into rapturous applause. Lord Gilchrist—father to Edie, beloved husband to Layla, papa to Susannah, and father-in-law and friend to Gowan—turned to the audience and bowed. “It is with true regret that I announce that the Duke of Kinross has played, he assures me, his first and last public recital.”

More applause.

Gowan stepped forward. “The last three years have been truly happy. Learning the art of the violin from the inestimable Monsieur Védrines, with the help of my father-in-law, Lord Gilchrist, has been a pleasure.”

More applause.

Gowan bowed. Being Gowan, there was no flourish of his violin or twirl of his bow.

“Will you really
never
play again?” came a voice from the back of the room.

He smiled, and his eyes returned to Edie. “Oh, I shall play,” he said. “But I shall limit myself to private duets.”

The Duchess of Kinross had not stirred. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Her husband gave his violin to his little sister and picked his wife up in his arms. “Please accept our apologies,” he said, inclining his head and smiling at the room. “My duchess is indisposed.”

And then he strode out the door.

Susannah shrugged. Since her brother had entrusted it to her, she put her bow to his Stradivarius and played a few notes. It made a sublimely beautiful sound.

“Don’t you think it was a bit odd of the duke to walk out of his own party?” Jamie asked, appearing at her elbow. A lock of hair fell over his eyes in a quite fetching way.

“My brother is like that,” Susannah explained. “He’s mad about my sister-in-law and he doesn’t care about much else. Well, besides my niece and nephew, of course. Would you like to hear me play something?” She was longing to try out the Stradivarius.

He shoved the hair off his brow. “We could play something together if you lend me your violin. I’m not as good as you, but I’m decent. Do you know Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
? I’m learning the part of the first violin.”

Susannah beamed. “That’s what I’ve been working on! I can play first or second.”

They stood facing each other, those young people, with no sense of what the future would bring. But as Susannah’s melody wove under Jamie’s, and then his soared above and stole back to hers, something deep inside each of them whispered the truth. Someday, a madcap girl with bright red hair would walk down an aisle toward a young man whose hair kept falling over his brow.

It was that duet, they would tell each other, years later. Even at ages eleven and thirteen, they could hear the distant echo of the music they would create in years to come.

Upstairs in the ducal bedchamber, Edie couldn’t stop crying. “You make me so happy,” she said finally. “You have given me everything that I ever wanted.”

Gowan kissed her tears away. “You are all I’ve ever wanted,” he whispered.

Their duet that night was a silent one . . . but thereafter, their children grew used to the sounds of a cello and violin playing together. All four of these children had perfect pitch; one of them grew to be Europe’s finest violist; and only one professed that she hated music.

She was fourteen at the time, which speaks for itself.