Once Upon a Tower

Never. She shuddered at the thought. In fact, there was a great deal about bedding that made her shudder. All that sweat, for one thing. The way fluids leaked out of her for hours. The whole event.

She would have to make it clear that he had no right to try to mend her chips and cracks. Her problems were her own. She wasn’t naïve enough to think they could be solved: there were some things that couldn’t be solved. Their marriage was a case in point.

After she told him she was leaving, Gowan would undoubtedly shout at her for a time, but the bailiffs and the solicitors and all those servants would be waiting for him. Eventually, he would turn back to the castle, and someday he would marry a sturdy Scotswoman who would bear him ten red-haired children.

The thought made her feel sick, but that was to be expected. One couldn’t get over a marriage, even such a short one, in a matter of a day or so. Gowan was so . . . full. So intense, so intelligent, so driven.

There was a magnetism about her husband that came from the way he faced everything head-on, sorting through a problem in a minute, searching for the answer, solving it. Gowan would apply all that energy to her, when he returned. In fact, she shouldn’t permit him in the tower or he would put in motion a plan to ensure his wife’s happiness in the marital bed. She shivered at the thought.

They could discuss whatever he wished through the window.

He was the most masculine man she had ever met, and she had inadvertently injured his masculinity. He would stop at nothing to succeed, to make sure his possession stayed where she belonged, thus proving himself a success between the sheets.

He could prove himself with some other woman. She went downstairs, took the key that Bardolph had given her, and stuck it into the keyhole from the inside. It took the strength of both of her hands to turn the key, but she managed it.

And then she went back upstairs, proud of her resolution. She wasn’t proud of dissolving into tears . . . but that was only to be expected when one’s heart felt torn in two. Finally she slept until morning, worn ragged by crying. Woken very early by the sound of birds in the trees, she hopped out of bed, went to the window, and pushed it wide open to greet the day.

Layla and Susannah were coming down from the castle, hand in hand, and Layla was already dressed, even though it couldn’t be long past six in the morning. She was wearing a gown that Edie had seen before: sprigged cotton, with a seductive, low bodice. But now there was a fichu tucked in that bodice, concealing Layla’s considerable assets.

She propped her chin on her hand and waited for them.

“You look better!” Layla called up to her. Her voice carried easily across the still morning air.

“I am fine.” It wasn’t true. Some part of her was still so raw and hurting that she could hardly bear it. But she was learning how to shut that voice into a dark box and lock it away.

Susannah was hopping from foot to foot. “What are you doing?” she shouted.

“Nothing much.”

“You look like the princess in a fairy tale,” Layla said.

Edie couldn’t quite manage a smile.

“Like Punzel,” Susannah put in.

“Who?”

“Punzel!”

“Oh, she means Rapunzel,” Layla exclaimed. “It’s your hair.”

Mary had braided her hair for bed, as she always had before Edie married and discovered that having a husband meant you had to let your hair tangle all night long. Another thing to be pleased about with regard to the demise of her marriage, she thought, adding it to a short list.

Edie picked up her fat braid and dropped it over the sill. It reached only a short way below.

“A prince can’t climb that,” Susannah said scornfully. “The lady in my book has hair so long that it trails right onto the ground.”

“Would you like to come in the door instead of climbing my inadequate braid?”

“Mary will be coming with a footman or two to bring us breakfast,” Layla said. Edie padded down the stairs, turned the key in the lock, and opened the door to them.

Gowan never came that day, which was a relief, of course. Nor the following day, nor the day after.

If Edie had learned how to lock away her grief during the day, she wasn’t so successful at night. The chasm in her heart seemed to open the moment she put her cello down. But the steely discipline of her childhood had snapped into place. If her father were to drop everything and head to Scotland—as she was quite certain he would do when he received her letter—he should be with them in another week or ten days.

She merely had to survive until then.

Thirty-six

It took two days for Gowan to find a decent man to appoint as justice of the peace. Everything in him longed to return to Edie. But he had come to the conclusion that he couldn’t, not quite yet.

He had come to her frozen, like snow, but he was learning to be the man she deserved. He was making time for her, for their marriage. In addition to the justice, he’d appointed a new bailiff to replace the one he’d dismissed. This one was young—just his own age, in fact. He would make mistakes, but he would learn from them.

There was only one more thing that Gowan had to master.

That night he bathed grimly, handling his body with the same exacting distaste that he had felt since leaving the castle. He called for a carriage, and a short time later he was ensconced in the warm darkness of the Devil’s Punchbowl.

No one in the pub had any idea who he was. He’d left his fine clothes at the castle; he was wearing sturdy Scottish woolens that beat back the rain and sleet, but rarely graced the shoulders of a London gentleman. And he’d come without servants, sending his driver to the stables to keep himself and his horses warm.

“What’ll you have, then?” the bartender asked, giving him an indifferent look.

“Whisky,” Gowan said, remembering the way Edie’s hair took on the burnished color of liquor in the candlelight. He pushed the memory away. This smoky place had nothing to do with Edie. He felt as if he were on one side of an enormous loch, and she was tucked away on the other.

After a second glass of whisky, he had started to feel warmer. It’s easier to bear loneliness when your vision is blurred.

“I know who you are,” the cottager next to him said suddenly. “Yer the duke!”

He grunted.

“The image of yer father.”

Gowan turned away. There were barmaids, of course. Pretty ones, too. Bonny girls with red cheeks and sweet giggles. Their bosoms glistened like butter in the lamplight.

He smiled, sharklike, at the prettiest one of all. She was perhaps twenty, with no wedding ring. Not that he cared if she was married. It occurred to him that he was punishing himself, and he pushed it aside.

He was done with blundering. He wouldn’t return to his wife until he knew his way around a woman’s body as surely as he did the loch.

The barmaid came to him as easily as a caught fish, threading her way through the crowd until she was standing between his sprawled legs, smelling like spilled beer and warm woman. Her smile had a cheerful lust to it.

She ran her hand up his thigh. He’d always told himself that no woman would be able to resist his rank, and therefore he couldn’t take advantage of an offer. He realized now that his thinking had been flawed. This woman knew nothing of his rank. What she wanted was the thick muscles she was caressing. She smiled more deeply. “My name’s Elsa,” she said, her fingers slipping inward.