Once Upon a Tower

Page 16

Every inch of her skin instantly awoke. Improper though it was, Edie loved it. She’d never felt this sort of racing desire—or, if she were truthful, any desire, other than for a cello made by Stradivarius. She reached for her wineglass, discovering that her fingers were trembling. She could feel heat rising in her cheeks.
Finally, he moved his leg, turned back to her, and said, “Have you ever read Romeo and Juliet?”
Edie shook her head. She had given it a try after receiving his letter, but she had been unable to make head or tail of the play. It was her own fault, because she’d always disobeyed her governess and avoided her lessons. She hadn’t had time for reading. All she had ever wanted to do was play the cello. It had made her a bit of a dunce.
Something hungry in his eyes made her shift in her chair. “I’m not very well read,” she confessed. “I gather that you are my opposite in that respect.”
“My grandmother, who raised me, disparaged reading for pleasure, but considered Shakespeare to be an exception. Generally speaking, my tutors were busy teaching me double-sided accounting and animal husbandry, and I was unable to go to university. So, believe me, I am far less learned than you might think.”
She laughed. “That’s impossible. I know almost everything about the cello, and almost nothing about anything else.”
“I know quite a lot about being a duke and a landowner, and next to nothing about music or literature. But I do remember this: when Romeo first saw Juliet at the ball, he described her as so beautiful that she taught the torches to burn bright.”
“You can’t have thought that of me. I was dreadfully ill.”
“You were something of a torch, from what I remember. I thought your touch was burning me.” She couldn’t imagine him allowing many people to hear that thread of sharp wit.
Edie was starting to feel slightly unbalanced. His eyelashes were so beautiful: thick and straight. And his eyes fascinated her. One moment they were all ducal arrogance, the next a brazen rake was looking at her with such lust and desire that it sent flames down her legs. And then there was that elusive touch of humor, a private wit that made her want to laugh with startled pleasure.
“What does Juliet think of Romeo on first seeing him?” she asked, pulling herself together. “Does she think he’s burning like a torch as well?”
“Oh, she likes him well enough,” Kinross said. “She probably didn’t find the moment as shocking as he did.”
“Why not?” Edie asked. “What did Romeo feel?”
“The man is utterly changed forever,” Kinross said. “He arrives at the ball in love with another lady—”
Edie’s brows drew together. “He is?”
“He was, but I was not,” the duke said bluntly.
Edie couldn’t stop herself from smiling, even as she realized that she had never smiled in quite this way before. It was a Layla smile.
“Romeo believes himself in love, but then he sees Juliet.”
“She burns with a torchlike fever, so he forgets about his previous love?” Edie asked, laughing.
“Something like that.” A twist of husky laughter sounded in his voice, too. She already knew that he didn’t laugh much. Life was serious for the duke; she knew it instinctively. He was as driven as she was, though she wasn’t entirely sure in what direction.
“He falls prey to lust. He risks kissing her, behind a pillar, when that kiss might mean his death.”
“That seems extreme,” Edie remarked. She couldn’t stop looking at him, at his eyes, his cheekbones, his nose, his jaw. She was quite aware that if anyone had fallen prey to lust, it was she. But somehow she wasn’t even embarrassed.
“He throws everything away for the chance to kiss her hand.”
“He would have been killed merely for kissing Juliet’s hand?”
“Their families were enemies. But he doesn’t stop with her hand.” A glow in the duke’s eyes lit an answering fire in Edie’s belly.
“He whisks her behind a pillar and kisses her on her lips.”
Edie swallowed.
“And then kisses her again.”
“Very . . .” Edie couldn’t think of a word.
“He would keep kissing her all evening, but she is called away. He doesn’t even know who she is. But he knows that she is his.” The duke’s eyes were hot and possessive. “So later that night, Romeo leaps the walls of the orchard around her house and risks death again to find her balcony window.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about the balcony,” Edie said, making herself break the spell of his voice. At this rate, she’d find herself begging him to kiss her in front of the whole table. “Juliet asks him to marry her.”
The duke shook his head. Under the table, his fingers curled around hers.
She jumped, and another wave of hot blood rose in her cheeks.
“No,” Kinross said, as if he weren’t doing anything so boldly scandalous, “that’s putting the emphasis in the wrong place. Everyone assumes that Juliet was a brazen minx because she asked if he planned to marry her. But the two of them knew the truth.”
His thumb was rubbing over her palm. Edie discovered she was trembling a little. “She knew, and he knew,” the duke said, his voice low and sure. “Romeo leapt that wall because he wanted to kiss Juliet more than he wanted to live. He climbed her balcony; he offered his vows. Marriage is nothing more than a formality in that situation.”
Edie could hear Layla’s laughter and the click of tableware. She should have read the damned play. She should have spent hours reading Shakespeare. The duke was making literature sound a good deal more interesting than her governess had ever done.
“Without Juliet, life was not worth living,” the duke continued. “So when he believed she was dead, he killed himself.”
“His reaction was rather extreme,” she managed. Surely someone would notice that her fiancé was holding her hand. Down the table, Layla was flirting madly with a man who wasn’t Edie’s father.
“Indeed, I used to think Romeo might have been a bit mad.”
A shiver went straight down Edie’s spine. The duke looked . . . He looked as if he had decided that Romeo was entirely sane. Mind you, he didn’t look entirely sane. He looked ravenous.
“Stop that,” she whispered. “You mustn’t act like this.” She pulled her hand away.
He smiled at her, a kind of happily mad look. “I’m a Scot.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“There are those who say that Romeo had Scottish blood.”
“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.