Once Upon a Tower

“He said that?” Layla surged back up to her feet, her fists clenched, the very picture of a vengeful Greek goddess. “How dare he say such a condescending, horrible thing? He’s not even English! He should be slaveringly grateful that someone as beautiful and talented as you accepted his hand! Let’s not even address your dowry or your title. Your father will kill him.”

“There’s no need for that. But I—I cannot spend my life feeling like a piece of chipped threepenny china, Layla. Let alone a pancake. I just can’t.”

“Your father will take care of it. Bardolph is a pain in the arse, but he’s a master organizer. He’ll have us in carriages in no time.”

“What are you saying? You needn’t come with me! You have Susannah to consider now.”

“We were leaving for England in a few weeks anyway. We’ll simply go a bit earlier.”

“What if Gowan comes after us?”

“Given that he left for the Highlands, he won’t be back for at least a week. I suppose there’s a faint chance that the man will come to his senses twenty miles from here and realize that he’s a craven, hell-born pig.”

“That’s too harsh.”

“No, it’s accurate. Your father has lost his temper with me many a time, but he’s never tried to strip me of all self-esteem.” Layla rang the bell. “We’ll be out of this godforsaken country in no time.”

Edie looked at her wildflowers, still holding up in their weedy, tangled way. “I like Scotland.”

“Wait until you see the South of France. My mother took me there when I was a young girl, and I’ve never forgotten it. I can’t wait to see it again.”

But Edie shook her head. “No, I refuse to steal away behind my husband’s back, like a housemaid stealing the silver. I have to speak to Gowan face to face. I’ll send word to Father, and then wait until he comes for me. I’m sure Gowan will return before then.”

“Your father may ignore you, because I’ve already written to tell him I am here,” Layla said dolefully.

“Darling,” Edie said, using her newfound determination to say just what she was thinking, “you need to stop flirting with other men, because you are breaking your husband’s heart.”

“But I never—”

“That is not the right way to behave, even though we both know that you would never be unfaithful to Father.”

There was a moment of silence. “I’m not sure I like this new Edie,” Layla observed. “First you make me throw my cheroots out the window, and now you’re doling out marital advice.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Edie said flatly. “The blind leading the blind.”

“Someday,” Layla said, her voice musical in its sincerity, “you’ll meet a man who will love you so deeply that he would forgive you instantly for a silly fib. That man will change your mind about bedding. When it’s good . . . it’s as if the two of you become one person. There’s no way, and no need, to call someone a pancake, because you’re speaking to each other without saying a word.”

Edie bit her lip. “If it’s like that for you and Father . . .”

“We forgot,” Layla said. “And I mean to do everything I can to bring us back together. You’re right, Edie. I damaged what we had between us.”

“He’s responsible, too. He needs to learn to be less judgmental.”

“But we will talk, really talk, I promise you. We have Susannah now. We’re parents.”

Suddenly, Edie didn’t care anymore that Susannah hadn’t liked her. “She’s so lucky to have you as her mama,” she said, smiling.

“And she has you as her aunt,” Layla said. “A famous, exotic aunt, who will marry a gorgeous, tender Italian man—a prince—and live in a tower on a hill.”

Thirty-four

On the way to the Highlands, Gowan rode alongside the carriage carrying the bailiff and solicitor with whom he was supposed to be consulting. Fury drove him for hours, partnered with a pounding, leaden sense of betrayal.

But somewhere between one league and the next, his anger slipped away and was replaced by a much crueler truth: he had failed. He was shite in bed, as his father would have put it.

He’d never really failed at anything before. Oh, there’d been the occasional problem with leaf rust on the wheat or sheep infected with murrain. He’d made mistakes. But failure was another thing. Failure . . .

It took him two days, all the way to the Highlands estate, to grasp something important. Edie had never before failed at anything, either. That’s why she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth—because she believed what had happened to be her failure.

But it was manifestly his. Bloody hell. All that posturing about his honor, when what he should have been doing was tupping the barmaid, just as his father had told him to do. If he had, he would know what in the bloody hell he had done wrong.

He walked through the door of the ancient lodge and went straight to his bedchamber, ignoring the butler, the assembled staff, and the men who had accompanied him from Craigievar, and now trailed behind him. His valet followed him up the stairs, only to be met by a slammed door.

Two hours later he was still sitting, head in his hands. But something like sanity was beginning to filter into his mind. He could solve this. He had to solve this. What the hell had he been thinking all those years? He should have—could have!—spent every minute since he turned sixteen learning about women, the way other men did. Instead he acted like a hidebound stuck-up prick, looking upon others with condescending coolness. He’d never felt such bitter contempt for anyone in the world—except for one person.

His father.

Right.

At length he straightened painfully and returned downstairs, where he gathered his angle-rod and tackle, waved away the offer of a groom, and waded into the loch a short distance from the house.

There is something about a Scottish loch and a fishing line that doesn’t allow a man to live with self-hatred. Peace crept into his heart a couple of hours later with the splash of a fish jumping from the surface of the water.

When he came back to the castle, he was cold and wet and his clothes were covered with fish scales. It took another’s day casting his line to think out the rest of it.

In the end, he concluded that he was a creation of his depraved father. Avoiding whisky, avoiding women, avoiding three-legged stools . . . all the posturing of a child telling the world that he would never be like the only exemplar he’d known. In other words, it was never about virtue—it was all about a dead man.

The third day, he found himself noticing that the water was shining dark green, but the edges were dark silver. Trout slipped below the surface avoiding his line with the ease of wise men. Pink-legged buntings greeted him at the heathered edge.

That afternoon, he realized that he never wanted to hear another lecture about a bottle of wine ever again. And he was sick of eels as well. And wheat.

An osprey plunged straight down into the water not so far from him, rising with a trout in its claws; Gowan swore at it in Gaelic for taking his fish. A thread of happiness snuck up on him. But he wasn’t completely happy by any means. The thought of Edie was like a hole in his heart.