Once Upon a Tower (7 page)

“Wasn’t he Italian? He sounds like a hot-blooded Italian to me.”

Kinross’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you know of hot-blooded Italians?”

“Nothing,” Edie said, surprised. “Why?”

“Italians are a jealous people.” He picked up his glass and took a drink of red wine.

“So I’ve heard,” Edie said, sipping from her own glass.

His eyes had a glint of ice. “Italians are nothing compared to Scotsmen.”

Edie glanced around them again. Conversations swirled around the table, and still no one had noticed that she and the duke were breaking the rules of polite dinner conversation by remaining absorbed in each other. Not to mention the fact he had just snatched her hand again and was caressing it with his thumb.

She managed to drag her mind away from the whispering touch of his fingers. “Let’s drop literature for a moment, and try for rational conversation. Are you informing me that you intend to be one of those husbands who routinely accuses his wife of unfaithfulness?”

“No.” He gave her a wry smile. “I’m talking bilge, aren’t I?”

“Perhaps a bit,” Edie acknowledged.

“We Scots are pigheaded fools,” he admitted, altogether too cheerfully to her mind.

She nodded toward Layla, who was bending toward her dinner companion, her bosom brushing his sleeve. “I am not amused by that sort of accusation. For obvious reasons.”

Kinross’s eyes followed hers. “In my estimation, your stepmother is unlikely to be unfaithful. I would guess that she is engaging in that flamboyant display in an ill-judged effort to gain her husband’s attention.”

Edie felt a surge of something like joy. He was not only rational, but intuitive. She found herself grinning at him. “Exactly.”

“Just because I may experience jealousy does not mean that I intend to act on it.”

“Ah.” She couldn’t stop smiling. But they had to be clear about this, because she refused to spend her life with a man who glowered at her every time she chatted with a neighbor. She dropped her voice again, even though no one was paying attention. “I shall never be unfaithful to my husband . . . to you.”

She had never realized that a man’s eyes could glow like a banked fire. “Nor shall I to you.”

“So if a hot-blooded Italian shows up at your castle—do you really have a castle, by the way?”

“Yes.”

“And if that Italian decides he would like to flutter his eyelashes at me throughout the meal—”

“I might boot him into the next county,” the duke said flatly.

Edie studied him closely. “Are you like this as a matter of course? Because I was under the impression that you ran a large estate. I can’t imagine how you could do so if you have a penchant for violence.”

“Five estates, as a matter of fact. I am justice of the peace in two counties. I would say that I am known for rational thought, prudence, and careful consideration of all sides of a question.”

Edie raised an eyebrow.

He leaned closer, and his hand gripped hers a bit tighter. “I expect it’s only because I don’t
have
you yet. Not to harp on Shakespeare, but Juliet does say that she has bought the mansion of a love, but not yet possessed it.” His voice dropped, too, and Edie had that peculiar feeling again, as if she were drowning in his eyes.

Then his words sank in. “Did you just imply that you
bought
me?” And: “Ow,” she said, shaking free of his hand. “Your grip is very strong.”

“I did not imply that I paid for you, but quite the opposite: Juliet says that she has purchased Romeo.”

“So
I
bought
you
?” Edie quite liked that notion.

“But you have not yet taken possession.” His voice was throaty and deep, the sound of a man who was taking pleasure in the reversal of their roles, who had utter confidence in his own masculinity. The erotic heat of his voice slipped into her blood like an intoxicating drink.

“I like Juliet. Do you know, I have always wanted to own a puppy, but I suppose a man will do just as well.” She laughed. “My room here at Fensmore even has a balcony.”

The look in his eyes when she said that made her color again. “I wasn’t saying it for that reason!”

“The question of being owned works both ways. Juliet also says that she is sold, but not yet enjoyed.”

“I had no idea Shakespeare plays were so . . .”

“So what?” The duke took another drink of wine. Somehow he managed to look calm, even serene, although he was caressing her wrist.

“Sensual,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Yes, well,” he said, his smile widening. “In the right circumstances, Lady Edith, anything is erotic.”

Edie started wondering how many lovers he’d had. He had probably whispered love verses into the ears of Scottish lasses from the time he was sixteen. She almost opened her mouth to ask, and then realized that there were some questions better left unanswered.

It gave her a bit of a qualm. No one had ever bothered to write her a verse. She was a naïve dunce when it came to this sort of thing.

“You’ve told me you prefer to be called Edie,” he said.

She nodded.

“I would be honored if you would address me as Gowan.”

Edie nodded again, and then caught a glimpse of the young lady seated across from her. She was staring at the two of them with stark envy, and when Edie met her eye, she whispered, “You’re so lucky.”

Edie smiled her thanks, and looked sideways at Gowan again. He had, finally, turned to talk to the lady on his right side.

His skin gleamed like honey in the candlelight. His hair tumbled behind his ear, the touch of red matching the dark cherry of his lips. He looked as if he came from a long line of warriors that had bred true.

Edie was starting to feel peculiar. Things like this didn’t happen to
her
. She spent her days playing an indecorous musical instrument and squabbling with her father. Yes, she was pretty, but not particularly sensual. She never thought a man like this, a man who simmered with erotic confidence, would look to her, because she wasn’t one of those girls who flirted and threw seductive glances. She didn’t even really know how.

Could it be that the duke greeted every woman—or at least, those he was determined to seduce—with this sort of intensely seductive poetry? How many women had found themselves compared to Juliet?

She waited until he finished his conversation; she herself was shamefully neglecting the man to her left. “I don’t look like this most of the time,” she told him.

Gowan broke into laughter.

“I feel as if you keep seeing me in masquerade. First, I was quiet and peaceful and all in white—”

“Like an angel,” he said, and his voice had that throb again that made her feel hot.

“But I am not an angel,” she forced herself to say. “I’m not even particularly quiet, though I do have a deep aversion to conflict. And now, tonight . . .” She indicated her gown. “This is not me, either.”

“Seductive?” he asked. “I am seduced.”

Edie now understood how Casanova got his reputation: he must have had this ability to look at a woman with melting desire in his eyes and, of course, she collapsed into his bed.

She pulled herself back together. “Queen of Babylon–ish. Truly, I am a great deal more ordinary than this.”

“I don’t wear a kilt often, either. I like to wear the colors of my clan, but the wind can be bloody cold on one’s legs.”

Edie smiled at that. “Your kilt becomes you.” No woman in her right mind would dislike it when worn by this particular man.

“And that red gown becomes you.”

There was a moment of charged silence between them.

He dropped his voice. “I would like to pull down the sleeves.”

Edie bit her lip, her breath caught in her chest.

“I would like to lick you from your mouth to—”

“You mustn’t speak like that!” Edie hissed. “What if someone hears you?”

“There would be a scandal. Perhaps we would be forced to marry immediately. Shall I create a scandal, my lady?”

His eyes were alight with something fiercer, hotter than glee. She froze, stunned by the ferocity of the emotion she saw in them. How had this happened . . . between the two of them? What
was
it?

Did people really fall in love like this, with no more than a few moments of conversation? Could
she
fall in love with a man merely because he was beautiful and looked well in a kilt? Of course, he was also intelligent, and then there was his voice, and that secret laughter, and he was funny . . . And he wanted her. He wanted her more than she could ever have imagined.

Yes.

Yes, she could.

Their hostess came to her feet; the meal was over. The gentlemen would take port in the library, while the ladies retired to the music room for tea.

She hadn’t answered his question. The duke stretched out his hand and brought her to her feet. “I don’t want to wait four more months to marry you,” he said, taking both her hands and looking as though he might throw responsibility to the winds and kiss her right there. That
would
be a scandal.

“My father has often said that he does not approve of short betrothals.” Edie was appalled to find that her voice was as breathless as that of any silly child of sixteen.

She drank in the expression on his face, feeling as if music reeled through her veins. “Perhaps I could convince him to change his mind.”

A great crescendo of musical notes flowed over her and danced between them. “All right,” she whispered. “All right.”

She wasn’t sure what she agreed to: but there was a flare of joy in his eyes, and that was enough.

Eleven

G
owan followed the other gentlemen into the library, quite aware that he was incapable of speech. He felt as if he’d been knocked unconscious and had reawakened in a different world.

As if he’d woken up in a play.

Maybe he
was
Romeo. Maybe this would end in both of their deaths.

The most shocking thing was that he could actually contemplate that without much turmoil. If Edie died . . .

What in the hell was he thinking? They weren’t even married yet. He hardly knew her. Edie’s father was standing by himself, staring down into the fireplace, so Gowan accepted a glass of port and joined him.

“Lord Gilchrist.”

“I’m no longer sure you’re the right man for my daughter,” the earl said abruptly.

“It grieves me to hear you say it, but I’m afraid it’s too late for second thoughts. I will marry Lady Edith.” The force of his ancient dukedom spoke through his tone.

But behind a flash of entitled aristocratic irritation—who was the earl to question his betrothal?—was something more primitive: Edie was
his
, and if he had to revert to the practices of the ancient Picts, steal her from England and carry her to Scotland on the back of his horse . . . he would.

The earl looked sharply at him, and then back at the fire. “That’s what I mean.”

“What?”

“You’re consumed by desire for her, aren’t you? She put on that red dress belonging to my wife, and now you’ve lost your head altogether.”

“Something like that,” Gowan agreed.

“It is a disaster,” Gilchrist said, his voice heavy. “A disaster.”

Gowan opened his mouth to contest his prediction, but Gilchrist continued. “I chose you precisely because I judged you unlikely to succumb to passion. I can tell you from my own experience that the passions of the flesh are no basis for marriage.”

“Ah.” Gowan was still trying to sort out how he could respond to that savage comment, when the earl launched into speech again.

“My daughter is a true musician. I wanted a marriage of the rational sort for her. One in which her husband would respect her talent—nay,
genius
.”

“Genius?” Gowan put his glass onto the mantelpiece.

“She plays the cello like no other woman in this country, and very few men.”

Gowan had never known any woman who played the cello—or indeed, any man, either—but he knew better than to point that out to a man whose face was alight with a combination of pride and rage.

“She plays better than I do, and I fancy that I could have had an excellent career had I been born outside the peerage. Were she not my daughter, she would be playing in the world’s greatest concert halls. Do you know who told me that?” His eyes were as ferocious as his tone.

Gowan shook his head. How in the devil could he know? He scarcely knew what a cello was.

“Robert Lindley!”

His expression must have betrayed his ignorance. “The greatest cellist in England,” Gilchrist said flatly. “Edith played for him—in private, of course—and he told me that were she not a woman, she would rival his own son. In my opinion, she would rival
him
, not just his son.”

“I know little about music,” Gowan said, clearing his throat, “but I am delighted to hear that my future duchess possesses such a gift.”

The earl opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. “There was nothing else I could do,” he said, his voice despairing. “She is the one child of my lineage. She had to marry.”

The man’s face was twisted with regret. What in the hell did he think Gowan would do? Throw Edie’s cello out the window?—not that he had figured out what it was. Some sort of stringed instrument, he assumed. The only one he knew of was the fiddle.

Gowan didn’t feel like drinking port, nor did he particularly want to spend more time with Gilchrist, who was growing distraught in a way that he did not admire.

There was an undercurrent here, he thought, that had to do with the unruly relationship between the earl and his countess, and nothing to do with Edie. In fact, based on Edie’s measured and intelligent letters, he was marrying just the right woman. She had undoubtedly come to value rational communication precisely owing to her intimate view of her father’s marriage.

He bowed. “If you would excuse me, Lord Gilchrist, I believe I shall take a walk in the gardens.”

The earl nodded, without taking his eyes from the fire.

Gowan exited the library through a side door and found his way outside, where he embarked on a slow, careful inspection of Fensmore. The seat of the Earls of Chatteris was a great pile of brick and stone, added to by ancestors who were intelligent and by those who were fools.

By an hour later, he had formed a good sense of its two courtyards, its great back lawn, its tennis court and hedge maze . . . and its balconies.

There were six of these. Two looked over the inner courtyard, and four over the great lawn. They were all accessible, though he wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to risk his life climbing the ivy. Those overlooking the courtyard, he reckoned, had probably been added in relatively recent years; the four in the back were far more ancient and likely belonged to the house in its first incarnation, or shortly thereafter. Truly, Juliet’s balconies.

But he had a shrewd idea that the old balconies corresponded to the bedchambers assigned to the master and mistress, as well as the two largest and grandest guest rooms. Edie would not have been assigned one of those, as she was neither family nor a particular friend of Lady Honoria.

He returned to the courtyard and once again surveyed the two inner balconies, which were formed by marble balustrades. They were, he determined, strong enough to support a rope.

Then he strolled back into the gardens, his mind busy. He would never dishonor his future duchess. But that didn’t mean he was content to sleep under the same roof and not kiss her good night. Chastely and tenderly, naturally.

It was bewildering, this thing that had happened between him and Edie. Like being caught in a whirlwind. Even the thought of her brought a stab of raw hunger that made his stomach clench. When her fingers had brushed his hand, a sensual fleeting touch that shied away like a frightened deer, it ignited a fire in him. He was ravenous. Out of control.

He made himself walk around the gardens for another half hour, using the chill evening air to force his body into quiescence. Then he rejoined the gentlemen. Chatteris called over to him, and they retired to his study for a game of billiards, another friend of theirs from childhood, Daniel Smythe-Smith, wandering after them.

They played silently, until, after successfully pocketing a ball, Chatteris straightened and said, rather abruptly, “I watched you speaking to your fiancée during supper.”

Gowan glanced at him. “I was seated beside Lady Edith. Naturally I spoke to her.”

“Congratulations,” Chatteris said. “Lady Edith is truly lovely.”

Chatteris lined up his cue and neatly sank another ball into the bag hanging on one of the far corners. “When do you plan to marry?”

“In four months,” Gowan replied. But that idea was no longer palatable. “Or perhaps somewhat sooner.”

“I was not the only one watching you. The lady’s father did not seem pleased.”

Gowan shrugged. “The papers are signed, though the earl would rather his daughter’s marriage remained a matter of cool practicality.”

Chatteris sank yet another ball. Then: “Your conversation did not appear to be, shall we say, emotionless.”

Gowan refused to pretend that his marriage was a matter of convenience; that would tarnish the growing feeling between himself and Edie. He contented himself by retorting, “Yours is merely practical as well, as I noticed earlier this evening.”

Chatteris’s smile revealed that he knew precisely what Gowan meant. “We are both lucky men.” His ball ricocheted and spun to a stop. “As are you,” he added, nodding at Smythe-Smith, whose own marriage would take place in a week or so.

Gowan lined up a ball. “My fiancée tells me that she has a room with a balcony.” He glanced up at Chatteris. “I am guessing her chamber faces your inner courtyard.”

The earl frowned. “I couldn’t say.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Smythe-Smith put in. “If Lady Edith has a balcony, it must be facing the inner courtyard, since my parents have rooms facing the back gardens. You do
not
want to make a mistake and climb to my mother’s balcony, Kinross.”

Chatteris leaned against the table, ignoring his soon-to-be brother-in-law. “I believe I’ve known you my whole life, Kinross.”

“We met at eight years old.” Gowan sank the ball. “A party in this very house, as I recall.”

“That makes it a particular pleasure to see you falling victim to an arrow shot by a blindfolded child.”

Did he mean Cupid? It wasn’t an unreasonable supposition. “Pot. Kettle,” he retorted. “So is Smythe-Smith correct about the balcony?”

“It’s just a thought,” Chatteris said, “but why not follow the path of least resistance—in short, the stairs?”

Gowan looked up, knowing that his eyes were alive with a wild mischief that his friend would never before have seen in them. “I would prefer to surprise her. We were discussing plays at dinner.”

“Oh, was
that
what you were discussing?” The earl broke into laughter. “I’ll warrant over half the company thought there was nothing literary about the conversation.”

“It was bookish, I assure you.
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“Ah. Dangerous things, balconies.”

Gowan pocketed another ball. “I’m fairly fit.”

“I’d guess the old ladder in the carriage house that we used to play with as kids is still there,” Smythe-Smith said, laughing.

“Surely a ladder would not reach that height,” Gowan said.

“It’s a rope ladder,” Smythe-Smith explained. “Woven from horsehair, as a matter of fact. Could have been made for that purpose.”

“I find that suggestion highly inadvisable,” Chatteris said.

“Nonsense!” Smythe-Smith retorted, poking his friend in the side. “You’ll be married by tomorrow, and I’ve only a week or so to wait, and poor Kinross is looking at months, if not longer.” He turned back to Gowan, his eyes alight with mischief. “I’ll send someone to fetch it. My man will attend to it without the lady’s maid knowing aught of the matter.”

Gowan took care of the last ball, straightened, met Smythe-Smith’s eyes, and burst out laughing. “You’ve used that ladder yourself!”

“I couldn’t possibly comment on such an assumption,” the man said, his eyes dancing. He turned. “The ladies won’t retire for an hour or so. Consider it my wedding gift.”

Gowan watched Smythe-Smith weave his way out of the room, followed by the earl. They were both damned handsome men.

He felt a sudden flash of gladness that Edie hadn’t debuted last year, or the year before. What if he’d only met her as Lady Chatteris?

Inconceivable.

Once they married, he could kiss her at the dining room table if he wished. At Craigievar, there was no one to say nay if he commanded the footmen to leave so he could tup his wife on the table itself.

With a silent groan, he realized that the calming effect of the gardens had been utterly lost.