Once Upon a Tower

Page 76

Gowan’s body hurt so much from slamming into yet another hard surface—though the floor was slightly better than the ditch—that he only dimly registered as Gilchrist ushered his wife from the room.
It wasn’t merely the pain. It was the knowledge that he had stripped Edie of dignity, of self-respect. He’d hurt the one person he loved in the world. He’d ruined her. He’d taken . . .
The bleak truth of it pulsed along with the physical pain that was searing his left arm as if a hot poker stretched from his knuckles to his elbow. The binding around his ribs hadn’t protected them from being jarred in such a way that he couldn’t breathe.
He had just managed to get to a sitting position when Bardolph walked into the room. Gowan took a deep breath, and his cracked ribs blazed with sudden fire. “Help me up,” he said, shortly.
Footsteps came toward him and he glanced up. He didn’t usually think of Bardolph as being a mere decade older than he was; his customary frown made him appear thirty years older.
But now he realized that he’d never seen Bardolph when he was truly disapproving. “I’m leaving,” his factor stated, staring down at Gowan without lifting a finger to help him up. “You may consider this my notice.”
Gowan had braced himself on his right hand so he could get up without using his left. Bardolph stepped forward and kicked his hand out from under him. Gowan crashed down again, a stifled groan escaping from his lips.
Bardolph couldn’t hate him with more virulence than he did himself.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Gowan said, staring fixedly at the legs of the chair before him. “I love her.”
Silence.
He wasn’t even sure Bardolph was still there. Maybe he was waiting for the right moment to kick him in the kidneys.
“I love her so much.” Gowan’s voice broke, and for the first time since the day after Molly had disappeared beneath the floodwaters, he lost control. With the raw cry of a soul in pain, he said, “I love her more than—”
A rough hand grabbed his left arm and hauled him to his feet. The agony was so acute that he shouted involuntarily.
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, your shoulder is dislocated!” Bardolph exclaimed.
“Ribs. I was thrown from my horse.”
“That’s not a good enough excuse for staying away for two weeks,” his factor said, stepping back and folding his arms over his chest.
Gowan turned away. “The truth is that she’s better off without me. I’m turning into my father.”
“Your mother was an inebriate long before she married your father. The household knew it within a week. It’s a miracle that you weren’t born with your brains as addled as an egg.”
Gowan absorbed that.
“You still have a chance.” Bardolph’s voice dropped to a growl. “She hasn’t left. I did my best for you, you ignorant, ungrateful sod. I bought you time to come home by kitting out that tower. Every man in this bloody castle would have walked on their knees to Palestine for a touch of her lips, and you left her here alone, crying for you.”
Why hadn’t he turned around ten paces from his own front door? Why had he ever left the person he loved most in the world sobbing as he turned his back? Regret was a poker to his heart, sharper and fiercer than the pain in his arm.
Gowan went back out the front door, not even noticing the footman who pulled it open.
When he reached the tower, he leaned against it, taking refuge from the rain and trying to put it all together. He’d hurt Edie so badly that she lost confidence in her ability to love a child—a curse rose from deep in his heart—and he’d somehow convinced her that she had behaved distastefully in the grip of pleasure.
So she was leaving him. Of course she was leaving him. He straightened, but staggered as his cracked rib shrieked a warning.
Edie was the only person in the world who mattered to him. His mother and father were gone; they had been too troubled to love him, and what love he had for them had burned away. Molly was gone. His aunts were cordial, at best, and Layla had adopted Susannah.
But Edie loved him. She had said so, and he had to believe that: believe the three words that she said just before he left her. If she loved him, she might forgive him. There was a heart of darkness lurking behind his ordered life, but he was banishing it.
He had to tell her. He had to put that heart at her feet.
Intimacy was something they should have explored together, but his determination to follow a flawed plan had destroyed it. He was so desperate to please her that he ruined everything between them.
If he had just admitted his ignorance, she would have trusted him. They could have found a way together. But he had been afraid: afraid to fail, afraid that she would despise him, the way his father had. That was the truth of it.
He fell back a step and looked up at the tower. It loomed tall and gray in the dark, its silent bulk attesting to the men who had died climbing it in a vain attempt to impress their beloveds, if the tales were true. The only one who made it past the second level was the black knight, who, according to legend, still walked the battlements.
Edie hadn’t gone back to sleep. A soft glow came from her casement. She’d unlatched the window after he left, and it stood ajar.
If he called her name, she would close the window against him and keep him out.
He tilted his head back so the rain struck his face. Romeo climbed to Juliet’s window, didn’t he? Of course, he probably had use of both hands and intact ribs. Gowan managed to close his left hand into a fist with no more than a grunt of pain. So his wrist hurt: it still did as commanded.
He started climbing quickly, but slowed almost immediately. The stones were slick with rain, and the ascent was considerably harder than he had anticipated. Halfway up it occurred to him that he might not make it to Edie’s window. But there was no way down except by falling. Whether he would survive another fall was an open question.
Even as the thought came to him, his right hand slipped and all his weight swung from his left for a moment before he caught on again. A deep grunt broke from his lips; he’d never felt pain like this before. A second later, Edie looked out the window.
Her figure was blurred by the rain on his eyelashes. But he could see her cheek, illuminated by the glow of the fire behind and to her left. She peered down and out.
Then she shrieked. “Gowan!”
He couldn’t spare breath for a word, not even for her name.
“No! Go back down, Gowan. I demand that you go back down!”
He clung to the wall, cheek against the cool wet stone, and listened to his wife. When he caught his breath, he lifted his head and said, “I love you.”
There was a second of silence, and then she implored, “Please, Gowan, please go back. I’ll let you in. I’ll do anything. Please don’t keep climbing up. I’m so afraid.”
“Can’t do that. I love you, Edie. More than anyone. More than—more than—” He reached up with his left hand again. Cold, fierce determination filled him. She was there, above him. He could not allow her to leave him.
Edie leaned out the window, her face glowing against the dark stone. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, his breath catching between words. “The most beautiful woman I ever met. Like a fairy. Goddess.”
“Drunk,” she said to herself.