Once Upon a Tower

Page 40

Even after the misery of the previous night, she had only to look at him to feel a melting softness between her legs. All the same, she thought it was very strange that two people who scarcely knew each other should be expected to sleep in the same bed, let alone engage in all those other things they were probably going to do. Again.
“Don’t you think it’s odd to marry a near-stranger and find oneself eating meals with her?” she asked him.
It had been a tiring day, so she put one elbow on the table—manners be damned!—and propped up her head so she could stare at Gowan without being too obvious about it. He was a gorgeous man, this husband of hers.
“I see nothing odd about it,” he said. “I feel that I know everything of importance about you.”
She didn’t like to think that he had summed up everything about her in a matter of minutes, but to be fair . . . “You told me about your parents,” she said slowly. “And you’ve seen me play my cello, so perhaps we do know the most important thing about each other.”
Gowan had a truly ferocious frown. Nearing the ferocity of her father’s, in truth. “My parents do not define me,” he stated.
Maybe he thought she’d feel rebuked by his cool tone, but she’d grown up in the boxing ring. Just because she didn’t throw her weight around like Layla didn’t mean that she was intimidated. “What does define you then? Is it your title, do you think?”
“No.”
“Well, then?”
“No person is defined by a single quality.” To be fair, he controlled his temper a good deal better than her father did. “You may be a musician, but that is not the sum of you.”
Edie rather thought it was, but he could discover her shallowness in due time. “So what qualities define you, other than your parents and your title?” she asked, straightening up.
“This is not a proper conversation to hold in front of the servants,” he said, having a stickish moment.
She raised an eyebrow. “Gowan, you eat every meal surrounded by servants. Will we never have an interesting conversation over food?”
He looked truly angry now, which was interesting. Edie smiled at him, because it was quite fun to bait a tiger. She truly liked her husband. In fact, she was embarrassingly aware that if she didn’t pay close attention, she might end up in a morass of emotion that would make Layla’s misery resemble marital harmony.
He hadn’t answered her question, so perhaps he thought she’d simply accept a reprimand. Not so. “When are we to talk?” she repeated. “When you are not working, we’re at the table. Or we are in bed.”
His lips were pressed tightly together. Over years of living with her irascible father, she’d noticed that he often needed a day or two to arrive at acceptance of a point she’d made; likely it was the same with Gowan. She gave him a brilliant smile. “In the meantime, perhaps you could tell me more about eels.”
The corner of Gowan’s mouth quirked. “Am I to understand that I have a choice of dispensing with footmen or discussing eels?”
“I could discourse at length on Domenico Gabrielli’s charming preludes written to highlight the melodic possibilities of the cello.”
His wry smile deepened and Edie thought she had probably made her point. “We can save the Gabrielli for tomorrow.” She glanced at a footman, who stepped forward to pull out her chair.
Gowan came to his feet and walked around the table to her. “You must be exhausted.”
In fact, she was exhausted, but she hadn’t played yesterday or today, and her fingers were beginning to twitch. “I must practice,” she explained. He put a hand under her arm and heat shot down her body. She actually felt a little dizzy with the power of it.
“You will practice for an hour?” he asked, as they walked from the room. There was no echo on his face of the sensual warmth that was weakening her limbs.
“Two hours,” she told him, deciding that she had to make certain that she didn’t neglect her instrument simply because she enjoyed her husband’s kisses so much.
He nodded to Bardolph, who was hovering in the hallway. “It seems we will have time to review the plans to buy the mining concern. I will join you in the sitting room; Jelves should be there as well.”
As they walked up the stairs, Edie realized that Bardolph had disappeared into their sitting room, and that they actually had a moment of privacy. “Will you come to my room tonight?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
The pleasurable heat in her legs spiked at his expression. She could see the tiger behind his dark eyes. Even though she still felt a bit fearful, hope surged.
He read her mind. “You are no longer a virgin,” Gowan said, taking her hands and bringing them to his lips. “It will all be different tonight.”
There was a promise in his voice and she thrilled to it. He must be right, of course. She felt as if every time she met his eyes the odd, empty feeling inside her grew more acute.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled. “Damn it, you want to play your cello, Edie.”
She pouted, taking a kind of blissful female pleasure in the way his eyes clung to her bottom lip. “I do want to practice, but . . .” She came a step closer, and he dropped her hands and pulled her against his body. Edie buried her nose in his coat. “I love the way you smell.” Perhaps she would get up at dawn to practice. Her cello could wait.
Gowan tipped up her chin and brushed his lips across hers, leaving a trail of fire, like stardust. “You smell like wildflowers.”
But he stepped back, and she didn’t have quite enough courage to take his hand and pull him into her room. Instead, she slipped through the door, picked up her cello, and sat down, pulling her skirts all the way up her thighs.
Once she began playing, her emotion slipped into the music and she understood Vivaldi’s seasons in a different way. There was “Spring” . . . the burgeoning of emotion. But “Summer”? All those joyous notes turned to wild fertility under her bow. She halted only when she realized that more than two hours had passed and she was utterly exhausted.
Mary came to help her out of her clothing after she rang the bell, good-humoredly accepting her apologies. “This schedule is daft,” the maid told her. “Utterly daft! Mr. Bardolph is like a general in the army, to my mind. Thank goodness I’m your lady’s maid and will be needed to dress you, my lady. Otherwise, I’d be up at three in the morning and in the carriages at four.”
“That’s terrible!” Edie exclaimed. “No sleep at all?”
“Oh no, that’s not the trouble. His Grace is quite fair, by all accounts. You’re paid more for travel, and most people have the afternoon to sleep before the duke’s carriages get to the inn.”
“Still, I would hate to be rising that early.”
“It reminds me of when I was a chambermaid,” Mary said, pulling a nightdress over Edie’s head and handing her a toothbrush. “We used to have to rise at the crack of dawn and begin cleaning the grates. I was that grateful when I was promoted to downstairs maid; you can’t imagine.”
“Well, I’m very sorry you’re up so late tonight,” Edie said, hopping into bed. “Tomorrow evening I shall put on my nightdress before I begin practicing, so that you can go to bed.”