Once Upon a Tower

Page 39

“Tokay wine originates in Hungary,” Rillings was saying. “Its deep garnet color comes from the Tokaji grape that . . .”
When he finally had imparted the entire history of the Hungarian wine trade and left the room, Edie pushed her glass away. “Gowan, why must we know the origins of the wine we drink? I would rather not know that these grapes were infested with rot.”
“I don’t think infested is quite the right word,” Gowan said. “The mold that forms on the outside of these grapes is referred to as ‘noble rot.’ ”
“I don’t care if it’s noble or ignoble. I would prefer merely to drink the wine than listen to a lecture on the subject.”
“I understand,” Gowan said. “I will ask Rillings to deliver his report to me at another time.”
“Another report. How many reports do you already listen to daily? Why this one?”
“We paid thirty pounds for a dozen bottles of this wine. If I make an expenditure of that sort, I should like to know precisely what I am getting.”
It was disconcerting, this marriage business. She couldn’t seem to stop observing her own life. On the one side, she was sitting at the table with her new husband; on the other, she was watching Lady Edith Gilchrist—no, the Duchess of Kinross—dine with the Duke of Kinross while four footmen darted around the room tending to their unspoken wishes. Bindle moved to and fro, ushering in new courses. The duchess accepted a slice of almond cake and a bite or two of syllabub. Yet another wine and a delicate elderflower mousse followed that course.
“Please give my compliments to the innkeeper,” she said to Bindle. “This mousse is delicious.”
“I will inform His Grace’s chef of your pleasure,” Bindle said, bowing as he left the room yet again.
Edie raised an eyebrow.
“My chef travels with me,” Gowan explained.
“Isn’t that a bit . . . well . . . excessive?”
“I instituted the practice three years ago, after we were all sickened for five days—one groom to the point of death—by an improperly prepared meal. At that point I determined that it was worth the additional expense to add another person to the entourage.”
Edie nodded, looking down at her plate, which carried the ducal crest. “Is that why you travel with your own china?”
“Precisely. There is a lamentable lack of science when it comes to illnesses of this sort, but the condition of the kitchen and dishes surely figures into them.”
There was a logical and unassailable reason, it seemed, for every person in the retinue, for each practice and custom. The duke needed so many grooms because one man traveled daily to Scotland, only to be replaced by a man coming from the other direction. The estate managers came and went; his solicitor might be needed at any moment; Bardolph was needed at every moment, apparently . . .
“I am not accustomed to being surrounded by so many people,” she observed. She badly wanted to say what she meant—that she didn’t like it—but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
Gowan was like a force of nature. His body seemed to be formed of coiled energy; no wonder he kept six men in constant motion doing his work. His mind was exploding in many directions at once. All this made sense to him. It made sense to carry a chef in order to do away with the risk of losing five days, or any days at all, to illness.
The problem was that everything was scheduled—including intimacy. She knew perfectly well that his huge body was strung tight as a bow, wanting her. He’d been that way all day, through the talk of acreage and wheat and eel traps. Every time his eyes met hers, she saw a craving, a wildness. But privacy, it was beginning to seem, was limited to the bedchamber, after the evening meal.
“I’m afraid that I am rarely alone,” he said now, guessing her thoughts. “You may arrange your own schedule, of course, although running a large household may mean that you have less time to practice your cello.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. There was a tinge of apology on his face, as if he were beginning to grasp the importance of music in her life . . . but clearly, he didn’t yet understand.
Edie never bothered to fuss about things like servants and food; before Mary, she’d had a lady’s maid who was always falling in love with the footmen and bursting into sobs when they disappointed her. It would have been a bother to replace her. She got used to lending her handkerchiefs and brushing out her own hair while she listened to the latest romantic travail. Gowan guarded every moment; she guarded only those when she was practicing.
“I play the cello every morning for three hours,” she told him. “It is my habit to work through the noon hour. Sometimes I also work in the afternoon, but my bow arm grows tired and needs a rest. As you have seen, I often play before retiring as well.”
He put down his fork. “In that case, you will need help running the household.”
“Who does it for you now?”
“My housekeeper, Mrs. Grisle.”
“I’m sure she does an excellent job.” It was Edie’s general practice to let people do what they did well, and to praise them after they’d done it. She could already see that Gowan and she were profoundly dissimilar. He ruled—the word seems to fit—an enormous estate, apparently keeping even trifling details in his head. “Do you ever forget anything, Gowan?”
“It occurred to me the other day that I had forgotten my mother’s face.” He didn’t sound sorry about it.
“I meant a fact or a figure.”
“I’m lucky enough to have the sort of brain that catalogues detail, so very little slips by me.”
No wonder people kept wheeling around him as if they were a crowd of sparrows rising from a fencepost. “Why didn’t you go to university?”
“I could not because my father died when I was fourteen.” He shrugged. “Tumbling maids while throwing back whisky didn’t leave him a great deal of time, so his affairs were left in a tangle. The home farm took four years to recover, and some of the others have only turned a profit in the last two years.” Gowan’s face was so expressionless that Edie shivered.
He wore a dark gray coat, the color of fog in the early evening, trimmed in silver thread. Its buttons were marked by tasseled frogging with silver spangles. The candlelight gave a sheen to his hair and glinted on the ducal silver as Gowan cut his meat with customary economical grace.
He was the personification of civilization, culture honed to a high polish.
At the same time, he was utterly uncivilized in a fundamental, deep way.
And he was still young. If he was like this at twenty-two, by the time he was forty he would be ruling Scotland. Or the entire British Isles, if the hereditary monarchy didn’t stand in the way. He had that sort of enthralling but contained power about him. Men would follow him anywhere. Women, too, of course.
Edie sipped her wine, thinking about that. It was as if she had married a tiger. Just because a tiger keeps his claws sheathed doesn’t mean they’re out of reach. It was somewhat shaming to realize that she—a perfectly logical young lady who had been brought up to regard music as the epitome of civilization—thrilled all over at the touch of savagery that clung to her husband.