Once Upon a Tower

Page 59

Though, of course, Edie would never stray. Still, he had a terrible feeling that he couldn’t pin her down, couldn’t keep her by his side. She would lock herself in a room with her cello and be gone.
Not that he would ever think—or want—to take her music away.
But he couldn’t help the gnawing sense of jealousy. He wished she weren’t a musician. If she were an ordinary woman like Lady Edith, the young lady whom he thought he met at the Gilchrist ball: that chaste, wistful girl who scarcely said a word . . .
She wouldn’t be Edie, he realized with a sigh.
He was sitting at the head of the table, where his father had sat a million times, watching silently as Edie and Layla jested with Védrines, the violinist whom Bardolph had produced like a rabbit from a magician’s hat.
This particular fellow was supposedly related to the Comte de Genlis, who was rumored to have met his fate at the guillotine, though one wouldn’t want to ask. Presumably, Genlis was his grandfather, and since Védrines had dressed in black velvet for the evening meal, there must have been a jewel or two smuggled out of France.
Layla caught Gowan’s attention with an emphatic wave of her hand. “That liverish fellow with the mustaches, Bardolph, doesn’t approve of me.”
“I find that impossible to believe,” Védrines said gallantly.
He was a handsome man, the Frenchman, lean and tall. “You play the cello?” Védrines was saying to Edie. He leaned toward her, and Gowan had to suppress an instinctive urge to shove him back into his chair.
“I do.” Edie smiled at him, her lips so plump and inviting that Gowan’s head swam for a moment. Why the hell didn’t he sleep with a hundred women before getting married? At least then he might have some control.
Then he realized that Védrines was giving Edie a condescending smile and was crooning about how he felt certain he could help her improve her craft, although the cello wasn’t his own instrument. “The viola de gamba has a better tone,” the Frenchman said.
Edie briskly disabused the man of his prejudices, which was amusing. But then the two of them began talking of things that he didn’t understand.
“This will happen to you as often as you allow musicians at your table,” Layla said, from his left side.
He turned to find her smiling at him, with a twinkle in her eye that he found far more appealing than her seductive ways.
“Edie and her father are capable of talking like this for hours at a stretch.”
“Have you ever tried to learn the language?”
“It’s too late. They’ve both been studying for years.” She paused, just long enough so that Gowan heard Védrines say, “Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe,” and Edie reply, nodding, “added the seventh string to the bass viol . . .”
“You see?” Layla continued. “They’ll come back to the realm of us mortals at some point. It’s like a secret society.”
Gowan didn’t like it. He didn’t want Edie in a secret society, especially not with a handsome young Frenchman with an enticing air of tragedy hanging about him like a tattered cloak.
“I prefer to play out of doors,” Védrines was saying now. “It is my deepest pleasure to take my violin into the gardens.”
“I have never thought of such a thing.” Edie turned to Gowan and touched his hand. “Shall the two of us give you, Layla, and Susannah a recital tomorrow? We could perform in the orchards at the base of the tower in the afternoon.”
“I shall be busy,” Gowan said, the words coming automatically to his lips. Why would Edie think that he would be free for an afternoon recital? Every hour of his day was scheduled. “Perhaps after dinner?”
“I doubt we could see well enough to play outdoors after supper. Though we may be able to manage it with time. We’d have to learn each other’s rhythms enough to play without a score or very good vision.”
He’d be damned if Edie would learn another man’s rhythms. And no other man was going to see her with that instrument between her legs. That was unacceptable. He could tell her later, when they were alone.
“Layla, you can be our audience,” Edie continued, giving her stepmother a smile. “I promise we’ll play Dona Nobis Pacem.”
That made the rage rise higher in Gowan’s throat. What had Edie said in that letter that made her stepmother follow them into a different country?
Edie’s hair turned to dark honey in the candlelight, gold with glints of sunlight trapped inside. Pearls in her hair gleamed pale silver among the gold, turning Edie into a jewel.
His jewel.
He hungered to take her to bed, to thread his fingers through her lavish strands. But then some part of him shied away. It didn’t seem right that his orgasms were so overwhelming, sliding over him like a tidal wave, not when he would open his eyes to see that she was watching him, a faint haze of relief in her eyes.
They had to talk first, in private. Tomorrow.
He felt lonely.
Feeling lonely was hell.
After supper, Edie played for a couple of hours and then lay awake, waiting for Gowan to come to her chamber, but he didn’t. She heard, very remotely, the bustle of his valet . . . then silence. She lay awake a long time.
The next morning she dressed and then went up to the nursery to see if Layla had truly slept in the governess’s narrow bed. She found her sitting on the floor, her hair a tousled mess around her shoulders, apparently marshaling a battalion of soldiers.
“Hello,” Susannah said, getting up and going to stand at Layla’s shoulder, as if Edie meant to steal her away. Obviously, Layla and Susannah had fallen in love with each other. It had nothing to do with her mothering of Susannah, or lack thereof.
“Hello yourself,” she said to Susannah. “You may call me Edie, if you wish.” Since Mama wasn’t an option.
Then she crouched down and examined the way the soldiers were arranged. There were a great many of them; it seemed that Layla was in charge of the redcoats and Susannah of the blue. “Who is winning?” she asked.
“It’s the third battle of the English against the Scots,” Layla said, stifling a yawn. “By some miracle, the Scots always win.” She had wound an arm around Susannah’s waist as naturally as if she’d known her from the moment she was born.
“Three battles,” Edie exclaimed. “And you lost every time. Dear me, Layla. We Englishwomen have to do better than that.”
“This Englishwoman has been up since the crack of dawn,” Layla said, with some dignity. “Naturally, His Majesty’s forces would win any battle conducted at night.”
Layla never rose early. “How are you doing without the cheroots?”
“I seem to be hungry all the time,” she answered, a frown pleating her brow. “At this rate, I shall become as round as a turnip.”
Susannah hooted with laughter. “A turnip, a turnip!” she shrieked. She apparently decided that Edie didn’t pose an imminent risk, because she twirled across the room to where Alice sat sewing by the fireplace.
“Were you really up at dawn?” Edie asked. She’d never seen Layla like this. Tired, but with a glow of deep contentment.
“I gather children are early risers, at least Susannah is. She woke me up by climbing onto my stomach. My turnip-sized stomach.”