Absolutely not. She would wake. He felt a startling sense of protectiveness. Edie was exhausted, with faint blue circles under her eyes, at least partly because he had made love to her in the middle of the night.
Holding her as carefully as a glass vase, he shifted to the corner of the carriage and then leaned back, holding his sweet, fragrant bundle of wife in his arms and examining her eyelashes and her lips all over again, just as he had at the ball where they first met.
Everything was different now, because she was his wife. He’d been the first to make love to her, and he would be the last to make love to her. He would wake every day of his life to those passionate, intelligent eyes and the stern honesty that led her to warn him that he was in danger of becoming stickish.
The smile easing the corners of his lips was neither sardonic nor rueful. He knew what Edie would call it: a joyful smile. His arms tightened around her in gratitude.
He thought about marriage as the carriage rocked on, down the road.
He never took naps.
Naps were a waste of time.
Twenty-three
As evening began to draw in and the carriage jolted from the post road to a cobblestone street, Edie woke to find herself in a sleeping Gowan’s arms. The carriage rocked around a corner, heading into an inn yard. His arms tightened around her, but he didn’t wake until she kissed him.
He woke up, scowling, and before she could say a word, announced that he never napped.
Edie held her tongue. Her father had similar convictions: he was certain that he never lost his temper.
The Queen’s Arms, in Palden, was accustomed to accommodating nobility who arrived in a swirl of servants. The innkeeper led them to a private parlor, where Gowan kissed Edie absentmindedly and then sat down to listen to the groom who had arrived that morning from Scotland with the latest reports.
Reports!
Edie was starting to detest the sound of the word.
And she was tired from the long hours cooped up in the carriage, and frustrated by the fact she hadn’t played her instrument in two days. To her chagrin, she discovered that she was on the edge of tears. She made an excuse, returned to her room, and ordered a hot bath. Mary bustled about the room tsk-tsking over this and that—Bardolph was not a favorite below stairs—until Edie wanted to leap out of the bath and scream.
Unfortunately, even soaking in hot water was not entirely comfortable, so it was difficult to imagine enduring another bout of lovemaking, let alone enjoying it. A flare of panic swept over her. She hadn’t managed to confess everything; she had lost her courage after he told her how happy it made him that she found pleasure. Now she was facing another night in which she would fail. Another night in which she would have to lie.
“Mary,” she said, her voice exploding into the room louder than she expected. “I’d like a piece of writing paper and a pen, please.”
“Mr. Bardolph provided a traveling secretaire for your use, Your Grace,” Mary said, her tone shaded with ice as she pronounced the factor’s name. When Edie was out of the bath, Mary opened up a charming leather box on the corner desk, equipped with anything a letter writer might wish.
Dearest Layla, Edie wrote, then paused. Of course, she had no idea whether Layla was still with her parents in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Perhaps her father had fetched his wife? With a sigh, she remembered his face and decided it was more likely that a groom would locate Layla at her parents’ house with very little difficulty.
She wanted to invite her stepmother to visit the castle; Berwick-upon-Tweed was on the border with Scotland, so it couldn’t be a terribly long trip. But how urgent should she make her plea? She couldn’t detail what had happened.
In the end she kept it concise: Please pay me a visit, she wrote. Please, Layla. Do you remember the secret you taught me? I need you. Love, Edie.
Sometime later, when she and Gowan were seated in the inn’s private dining room, attended by Bindle, Rillings, and four footmen, Edie produced the letter. “My stepmother is staying with her parents in Berwick-upon-Tweed, so I have written to invite her to pay us a visit in Scotland.”
Gowan showed not a flicker of irritation at the notion that her stepmother would join them. Why should he? He spent every waking hour with Bardolph, Jelves, and the rest of his entourage. Unless she demanded that they have privacy in the carriage, marital interaction was limited to mealtimes and visits to her bedchamber at night.
“We will send a groom ahead to Berwick-upon-Tweed,” Gowan said now. “If he leaves immediately, it’s possible that your stepmother may decide to join our carriage.”
“We can’t send someone now, Gowan; it’s nighttime!”
“We must give your stepmother all possible time to consider your invitation,” Gowan stated. He raised a finger and a footman ran from the room and returned with Bardolph, who managed to imply without words that it was extraordinarily thoughtless of her to dispatch a letter at this hour.
Edie eyed his whiskers and bit back her impulse to overrule Gowan. Her husband had been given his way far too often; that was clear. But she could say the same for Bardolph, and she refused to give the factor even the slightest satisfaction.
She watched as he left the room, letter in hand, with a renewed sense of hope. If she couldn’t divine the secret to the petit mort, Layla would help. There must be a trick to it.
Gowan sent his valet off to bed and then put on his robe to cross the corridor to Edie’s room. But he paused, hand on the door. He was already so aroused that he felt as if heat was rising from his very skin.
He couldn’t go to her like this, like an animal. Crazed with lust, intoxicated at the mere thought of her. He retreated into the bathroom and closed his hand around himself. A few moments later he pulled his robe back on. His breath was still caught in his chest; he was still hungry, but in greater control.
When he closed the door behind him, he found Edie sleeping, face buried in her arms, rumpled hair spilling over the pillows. The room was dark except for a slender ray of moonlight that stole through the heavy drapes and played over his wife’s tresses, turning them pale gold, as if all her vibrancy had been washed away. He shrugged off his robe, slipped under the covers, and wrapped an arm around her.
“Gowan?” she asked a second later, in a husky little protest.
“You slept all afternoon,” he whispered, brushing a kiss against her cheek. “Wake up now and play.”
She yawned and rolled onto her back, pulling her gown tight against lush breasts. A groan involuntarily broke from his lips.
“You’re so beautiful, Edie.” He bent his head to kiss her, but she wriggled away.
“Not through my nightdress,” she said, sounding much more alert. “Last night it was quite unpleasant sleeping with damp patches over my breasts.”
That was fair, if a bit cold.
Edie pulled the gown over her head. A ray of moonlight flickered over one breast, down to the curve of her waist.
Desire punched through his body, and made his breathing rough. With a struggle, he made sure his voice was even. “May I kiss you now?” he whispered, tenderly guiding her onto her back.
“On my breasts?”
She sounded altogether too rational. It was a bit demoralizing. “Yes, here,” he said, curving his hand around a luscious breast.
“Yes, you may,” she stated.
He felt as if he’d lost his senses, as if the world had shrunk to one creamy breast, the fire in his loins, the catch in Edie’s breath when he suckled her.
“You like that,” he murmured, moving from one breast to the other. He could tell she did. He was learning her body. It softened under his caresses. He couldn’t stop kissing her, his hands roaming over her body. Every touch was intoxicating.
The only thing he wished . . .
“Edie,” he said, and then cleared his throat. His voice sounded embarrassingly guttural.
“Yes?”
He would have preferred that her voice sounded more like h
is, which was stupid. “Would you—” He stopped. He couldn’t demand that a gently bred lady touch him. Perhaps when they knew each other more. Last night she had stroked his chest and back, and he longed for her hands to roam over the rest of his body. But he felt hesitant to ask . . . What if she thought he was too muscular? Too burly? Too much like a laborer?
Sweat beaded across his forehead, but he kept kissing her breasts, determined not to overwhelm her. “Does this feel good?” he whispered, closing his teeth in the gentlest of bites.
Edie shivered, and a little gasp broke from her lips. He almost couldn’t hear her answer: her yes was a thread of sound.
His desire burned so hotly that he felt unmoored, as if every moment he wasn’t inside her was a sacrifice. It didn’t matter that he’d just pleasured himself. He wanted to push open her legs and lick her there until her body squirmed away from his and she got that enchanting hitch in her throat, and then he would bury himself in her so hard and fast that he could feel his balls against her.
He had to pause, collect himself, remind himself that he was a thinking, rational man whose young bride was still new—
Hell, he was still new to it.
Slowly, slowly, he kissed his way down her body until he pushed her legs apart. He may be drowning in lust . . . but all the same, the logical part of his brain was still operating, and it was offering observations. They weren’t all encouraging.
When they had first kissed, in the carriage outside her parents’ house following the Chuttle ball, Edie had been as feverish as he, her hands flying around his body. Now, she wasn’t. One moment she would gasp and a little tremor would go through her body, but then, all of a sudden, she would go still. She didn’t touch him, not really. She stroked his arms, or his chest, or twined her fingers in his hair.
For a while he lost himself kissing her, but then he knew she was ready. She was swollen and soft, and every time he licked her, she would make a little moaning sound, and her hands would tighten on his hair.
Her beautiful eyes were squeezed shut but as he came up, over her, she opened them. For a moment they looked hazy with pleasure and then something else came into them.
“Edie!” he said, startled. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said with a little gasp.
He looked at her a second longer, but she arched her back and rubbed against him. “We should . . . we should make love now, Gowan. We have to be up early tomorrow.”
Her touch sent his mind reeling into a smoldering place where rational thought wasn’t possible.
“Tell me if it hurts too much,” he told her, and she nodded.
Coming into her, his Edie, was the most exquisite feeling he could have imagined. Why didn’t people do only this—make love—day and night? He went as slowly as he could, hoping that it wouldn’t hurt too much. When he finally seated himself, she wound her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.
“How does it feel, Edie?” he asked. He dropped kisses on her ear, coaxing her. “Does it feel good?”
“It’s fine,” she whispered.
He froze.
“No, it’s—it’s better,” she said, almost sounding surprised. “It is not so painful.”
Relief swept through him. Now he just had to maintain control. It had taken thirty, forty minutes, but if he stayed the course, she would catch up to him and take her pleasure. A swell of emotion, a determination that he would give his wife the same ecstasy he felt, came from deep within him, and he braced himself above her and began moving.
Edie lay back with her eyes closed tightly, and for a time he just concentrated on keeping his hungry flesh under control. Finally, he said, “Edie, how does it feel?”
Her eyes snapped open, startling him. They weren’t hazy with desire but grave and focused. Gowan felt a sudden pang, a ridiculous wish that she would be playful. That wasn’t fair. His Edie was serious by nature. Even having that thought was disloyal.
“It’s all right,” she said. She shifted under him and the small movement rippled through his loins like fire. “You feel so . . . well, you make me feel full.”
Full? Full couldn’t be good. Full sounded like a belly after a Sunday meal. “Is that a pleasurable sensation?” he asked.
She bent her knees, and he shuddered at the feeling that washed through his body.
“You should come,” she whispered.
“Not without you,” he said. “What would make this feel better for you?”
Edie met his eyes with a feeling of utter panic. Her interior parts were burning—not as badly as they had the day before, but it wasn’t pleasant. And worse, she felt horribly inadequate.
Desperate.
Was she the only woman in the world who found it deeply unsettling to have a large man on top of her, with part of him inside her? Once or twice she felt a flicker of pleasure. But then Gowan would shift his position, or say something that would make her start thinking again.
She ended up lying beneath him hating herself, longing for it to be over.
Gowan watched as Edie closed her eyes tight again, wishing he knew what she was thinking. He channeled his desire into long, slow strokes that would eventually get them both where they needed to go. Looking down at her, he was struck by a surprising wave of protectiveness so ferocious that he nearly stopped altogether.
He wanted her to be happy more than anything he’d ever wished for in his life. Fantasies were nothing like the reality of her: physical beauty was one thing, but the seriousness of her, her thoughtful kindness, her wry sense of humor, were another.
“Edie,” he said, speaking his heart. “Come for me,” he ordered, kissing her. “Come for me, mo chrìdh.”
And she came, thank God. He heard the piping sound of her voice with a thankfulness that was as deep as his pleasure. And then he was lost to it, shocked by the joy, the piercing heat, the way bone-deep delight filled his body.
To Edie’s mind, the evening’s end had always been inevitable.
The only difference from the other nights was that she thought Gowan might have begun to understand that she wasn’t feeling the same pleasure he was. There was a concentration on his face that didn’t resemble the savage joy he’d taken in her body the other times.
That thought made her heart sink.
The third day of their journey came and went. When they were installed at that night’s inn, Mary told Edie with a giggle that His Grace had informed the servants that the duke and duchess would dine in his chamber.
By then, Edie was limp with exhaustion. That morning Gowan had told her, apologetically, that he couldn’t sleep away another afternoon. So he and Bardolph spent the day reading about companies that Gowan might acquire, while the carriage jolted over roadways on the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed. She had practiced for barely an hour when Mary appeared to put her in nighttime attire so that she could have an intimate supper with her husband.
She went next door and found Gowan with his hair still damp from his bath. It was stupid, given all the tangled problems they had, but the moment they were alone, something eased in her. That contained wildness that was Gowan’s very essence sang to her like a chord, resonating deep in her bones. He had only to wrap his arms around her and she felt safe. As if she were in the right place.
It made no sense, given that they may well have irresolvable problems. Layla hadn’t mentioned any potion for a woman’s difficulties in bed, only for a man’s.
A half hour later they were lying side by side on the bed. Gowan’s dressing gown was pushed back from his shoulders and Edie’s fingers were roaming over the planes of his chest and even, daringly, down to his muscled stomach. Though she’d heard nothing at all, Gowan suddenly lifted his head and barked, “Come.”
The door opened and two footmen walked through.
Edie pulled the covers over herself, even though her nightdress still covered her legs. The head footman began to arrange ducal china on a side table, his eyes never straying to the
bed. He made several trips to the hall, returning with covered silver platters. When he finished at last, he poured their wine, bowed, and backed toward the door, his eyes still lowered, as if they were royalty.
“Peters, isn’t it?” she asked.
He swung his head up, startled. “Peterkin, Your Grace.”
“You may leave the bottle here, Peterkin. Thank you for bringing our meal.”
He ducked his chin. “I’ll be pleased to wait in the corridor and refill your glasses when you have a need, Your Grace.”
Edie couldn’t imagine anything more appalling. “We will serve ourselves,” she told him.
But later, when they’d eaten, Gowan summoned Peterkin and another footman to remove the plates, even though by then her nightdress was bunched around her upper thighs, albeit still under the covers. They had been kissing, and Gowan ran his hand up her leg. The sensation made her want to squirm away and come closer, both at the same moment.
But once the plates were gone, she knew that it wouldn’t be long until they made love, and after that thought, she couldn’t relax. Even so, it was definitely getting easier. When he entered, she didn’t gasp aloud; she merely flinched. But she could not relax.
It made it worse that Gowan seemed capable of going on all night. “How much does it hurt?” he asked her after a while, propping himself on stiffened arms and staring down at her.
“Not at all,” she said, wiping his shoulder so she could pat him. “The pain goes away after a while.”
It was unnerving to feel so happy when he smiled at her. But she did, even though he was smiling because he thought . . .
Well, what he thought was happening wasn’t happening, that’s all.
When she swung her legs from the bed to return to her own chamber, Gowan had a tense, nearly angry look on his face, but she just kept her head down. She couldn’t explain.
There was nothing to explain.
Twenty-four