Once Upon a Tower

Page 35

And indeed, he saw nothing like awe in her eyes; rather he saw a mix of mischief and lust. It made his mind blur, and he nearly lit upon her like a ravening wolf, but he forced himself to remember his plan.
Instead, he bent his head and kissed her gently. The way a gentleman kisses his wife, with reverence.
Edie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She seemed not to care for the reverence, because her lips were greedy and she demanded a kiss of an entirely different kind. The slightly awkward way she pushed her tongue between his lips lit a slow burn in Gowan’s groin.
Then they were kissing so deeply that he came back to himself only with the realization that she was tugging at his neck cloth. He brought his hand up and stilled hers. “Our supper will arrive presently.” In fact, he was surprised it wasn’t there already. Bindle had said five minutes, and Gowan could usually set his clocks to Bindle’s reckonings.
“Who cares?” Edie whispered. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss on his neck. He felt a pulse of desire so powerful that it nearly unmanned him.
So he did the only thing he could, and stepped back. As her hands fell away, his neck cloth dropped to the floor.
“Oh dear,” she said, shaking her head. “This is not the moment to become stickish, Gowan.”
The door once again swung open, and Bindle bustled in with his usual silent efficiency, followed by his wine steward, Mr. Rillings, and four footmen bearing a loaded table. The footmen set the table down in the middle of the room, placing chairs at the head and foot.
Gowan introduced his wife to those servants whom she hadn’t already met. Edie’s demeanor was exquisite, as befitted a young lady of her pedigree. She was respectful and courteous to all, with slightly more warmth extended to Mr. Bindle.
They took their seats at the table, which was laden with silver platters, cutlery, and chinaware painted with the ducal seal. Edie stared down at her plate in silence as Mr. Rillings explained his wine choices for the meal.
Then Bindle took over, and began to explain the delicacies that lay under the silver domes. Gowan noted absentmindedly that his servants were doing an excellent job of reproducing dinner at Craigievar, even in the unfamiliar surroundings of a hotel.
His butler was a bit long-winded; this was not news. But as with Bardolph, he had inherited Bindle, and had never thought it worth the fuss to train him to be more succinct.
But now, sometime into the recitation—just as Bindle had begun to describe the boeuf en daube—Edie raised her hand. He stopped.
“Mr. Bindle,” she said gently, “I think I should prefer the delights of discovery this evening.”
The butler gaped at her. He was not a man accustomed to interruption. The duke’s household moved in a steady rhythm, as regular as the tides: everything at its expected moment, for precisely the right period of time.
Edie smiled at him, and finally the man understood that it was time to go. He rounded up his footmen and Rillings, and they left the room.
“That was masterful,” Gowan said, raising his glass and grinning at her. It felt good to recognize that he would no longer be the only power in his particular world. She would be there, too. Alongside him.
“I am less interested in the preparation and ingredients of food than you must be. This looks and smells like a good beef stew, which is all I need to know.”
“I never listen very closely when Bindle explains the menu.”
“Then why on earth does he give you such a lengthy description?”
“It’s the way it’s always been.”
Her brows drew together. “That does not seem a reasonable explanation, Gowan.”
“I think it makes him happy,” he observed.
She stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. Her green eyes surveyed him in a manner that sent a new flush of heat to his groin.
Then she brought the fork to her lips, and he desperately longed to throw the table to the side and be damned if the crash of crockery disturbed all of London. He would carry her to the bed and—
He took a deep breath.
One did not lose control and ravage one’s wife. It was beneath one’s dignity.
“It’s very thoughtful of you to consider your butler’s pleasure, Gowan,” Edie observed, swallowing. Her lips glistened, and he wanted to throw back his head and howl. He didn’t want this damn food.
Instead he sipped his wine and tried to turn his attention to its complexion, made from grapes that grew only in the mountains, of a ripe sweetness, whose color was gold . . . as recounted by Rillings.
And failed.
Edie ate two more bites while he watched her lips from beneath his lashes and reviewed his list.
“I am sorry that your aunts missed our wedding. Will they be distressed, do you think?”
“I doubt that very much. They will be happy to meet you, but they would consider it a betrayal of the scientific temperament to grow excited about a wedding. They have not yet traveled to Craigievar to meet Susannah, for example. That would interrupt the training program of the moment.”
“How much must I eat?” she asked, swallowing another bite.
“What do you mean?”
“I gather that you have decided that I need to fortify myself for the strenuous exercise that lies ahead? It must be I who is in need of food, insofar as you haven’t touched yours.”
“You are my wife,” he said, a little apologetically. “I’m responsible for making sure that you are clothed and well-fed.” Even as he said it, he wondered if it sounded as stupid to her as it did to him.
But if it did, Edie had the tact to ignore it. She rose with the grace that was inherent to her every move, from the slide of her bowing to her walk. Perhaps she did everything to a rhythm only she could hear. He came to his feet, and watched hungrily as she walked from the table toward the bedchamber door.
He stood there, frozen, drinking in the generous swell of her hips.
She looked back at him and smiled. “Gowan.”
He was at her side in a moment. She was a witch, this bride of his. She had but to smile and he knew he’d follow. He probably always would if she looked at him with that hunger in her eyes.
Then he pulled her into his arms, and he was drinking her down, deep and fierce, knowing that she was his, finally his. His wife. His lover. His Edie.
He ran his hands down her back and pulled her against his body. They could do that now, fit their bodies together like puzzle pieces. They fit together perfectly, his hardness cradled by her softness.
“Now, Gowan,” she whispered.
So he picked her up and carried her into the bedchamber. Nerot—whoever he was—had installed a bed the size of a small granary. It was as long as it was wide, and hung with pale pink silk embroidered with silver thread and pearls.
It was a bed made for a duchess.
He jerked back the coverlet and then laid Edie on the sheets. She smiled up at him, all her glorious hair swirled at one side. “My wife,” Gowan whispered, dropping a kiss on her brow, another on her nose, another on her lips. “You’re exquisite. May I remove your gown?”
Edie twisted to the side, showing him a line of seemingly infinite tiny buttons running down her back.
So he concentrated on the buttons, trying to ignore the fact that they ended just above a lusciously rounded bottom.
The final button surrendered only to reveal a corset underneath. Edie watched him unlace it without saying anything. Under the corset was a chemise, made of a fabric so diaphanous that he could see the shadow of her nipples beneath it.