Layla raised her head. There was a touch of the mischievous about her eyes, the way there used to be in the early days of her marriage. “You’ll be disappointed to hear this, Jonas, but women quite regularly discuss that particular organ. Depending on the size of the organ under discussion, you might call it a dart, or a needle. Then there’s a pin: used only in truly unfortunate circumstances, of course. But one might discuss a lance.” She swept her hair out of her eyes, the better to see whether she was getting a rise out of her husband.
And she was.
“This conversation is unforgivably vulgar,” the earl said, his voice grating.
“Sword, tool, poleax,” Layla added, looking even more cheerful. “Edie is to be a married woman now, Jonas. We can’t treat her like a child.”
Edie groaned silently. They were spiraling right back to the same emotional morass. Her father should have married a Puritan.
Luckily, there were signs of life in her fiancé. If she ventured into a spate of jokes about lances, she had the idea that he would laugh. Unfortunately, she might not understand his jokes, especially if he borrowed them from Shakespeare. She didn’t know much literature. She hadn’t had time for it.
“What play is that quote from?” she asked.
“Romeo and Juliet,” her father said.
Perhaps she could take a quick look at the play before replying to Kinross. She wasn’t much of a reader, if the truth be told.
“Let’s change the subject. I feel truly ill. Do you suppose I’ve caught a wasting illness?” Layla asked. “Perhaps just a small one, something that would make me faint at the sight of a crumpet?”
“You—” The earl caught himself.
Edie nimbly took up the conversation before her father said something he should regret, even though he likely wouldn’t. “I’m quite looking forward to meeting Kinross again.” She could have sworn she saw stark longing in her father’s eyes when he looked at Layla. But how could that be? He was always criticizing his wife, picking at her for the kind of unguarded and impulsive comments Layla couldn’t help making.
“Naturally, I hope that you and the duke will be happy together,” her father said.
“And I hope you have babies!” Layla said. “Lots of babies.”
The silence that followed that sentence was so desperately tense that Edie found herself leaping to her feet and fleeing the room with little more than a mumbled apology.
Layla and her father had certainly loved each other when they married, but then he had begun to criticize the very qualities he once adored. The worst of it was the sense of disappointment that hung in the air around them.
Above all, she and Kinross had to avoid that sort of situation. A modicum—perhaps even an excess—of rational conversation was necessary.
Seven
Gowan did not spend his time waiting for the post from London to arrive. That would be petty and beneath him. Besides, he had sent his letter by one of his most trusted grooms, instructing him to wait for a response. Since he knew the precise length of the journey from London to Brighton, there was no need to consider the matter further.
Except . . .
He had easily checked that ungainly emotion, lust, for the first twenty-two years of his life. He scorned the idea of paying coin for intimacy, and a mixture of fastidiousness and honor had kept him from accepting cheerful invitations from married women. What’s more, he had been betrothed at the time, although waiting for Rosaline to reach her majority. He had certainly felt desire, but it had never got the better of him.
That was before he saw Lady Edith.
Now he’d dropped the reins, his sensual appetite was proving to be ferocious. He could hardly sleep for dreaming of plump limbs tangled with his. His mind was constantly straying into imagery that would turn a priest pale.
He couldn’t stop himself, even during occasions that demanded rational thought, such as now. He and Bardolph were working in the private parlor at the New Steine Hotel, waiting for the conference of bankers to reconvene at Pomfrey’s Bank; he was reading letters and signing them while Bardolph read aloud the report of one of his bailiffs.
He signed whatever Bardolph put in front of him, and imagined that he’d taken his wife to his castle at Craigievar, where clan chiefs had slept for generations. To the bed where his ancestors had consummated their marriages.
Edith lay beneath him, her hair flung across the bed like rumpled, ancient Chinese silk. He leaned down to caress her, his hand running down her bare shoulder, over skin like cream, and then he kissed her like a man possessed, and her eyes opened, heavy-lidded with desire. Everything in him roared: You’re mine, and she—
He was brought back to the near side of sanity by the sound of Bardolph coughing.
Gowan froze, uncomfortably aware that his breeches were stretched to the utmost by one of the hardest erections he’d had in his life. Thank God for the desk between them.
Slowly he reached out and took the letter that was waiting for his signature.
“The Chatteris wedding,” he said, glancing down at the page, gratified to find that his voice was steady, if rather guttural.
Bardolph nodded. “Your gift of a rack of venison and twelve geese has already been dispatched from the estate. This note accepts the invitation the family extended to stay at Fensmore itself. I gather that the guest list is so long that many of them will be housed in nearby inns.”
Gowan dipped his pen into his inkwell. He held it a second too long, and a large drop rolled from the quill and splashed on the letter. His secretary made a noise that sounded like a dry twig snapping underfoot.
“I’ll travel with a small retinue: you, Sandleford, and Hendrich,” Gowan said, pushing the letter back so it could be rewritten. “I finished reading Hendrich’s research into the textile factory in West Riding last night, so we’ll discuss. When we reach Cambridge, the three of you can return to London. Sandleford can return to the Royal Exchange, but first I’d like to hear his opinion about acquiring shares in that glass lighting utility in Birmingham.”
“A full complement of grooms,” Bardolph said to himself, making a note. “Three carriages rather than four, I would think. The sheets and china must go with you for the journey, though not, obviously, for use in Fensmore.”
Gowan stood up. “I’m going for a ride.”
Bardolph summoned up one of his ready frowns. “We have yet fourteen letters to review, Your Grace.”
Gowan did not care for dissension; he strode from the room without answering. Perhaps the Scot in him had taken over. He felt stronger and more alive than ever before, and his mind raced with tender words and wild images. He wanted to take his wife into the woods and lay her on a white cloth in a field of violets. He wanted to hear her voice in the open air, the cry of a pleasured woman, like that of a bird. He wanted . . .
He didn’t want to be sane any longer, or to sit in that airless room reading fourteen more letters before he affirmed each with his long and tedious signature.
He told himself in vain that Edith was a humorless dormouse. Frankly, humor did not come into many of the plans he had regarding her. Images blossomed in his heart like roses, each one in feverish counterpoint to the solemn intelligence of her letter.
He wanted to shower her with gifts, yet nothing he could conjure up seemed good enough. If he had the heavens embroidered on a cloth, wrought with gold and silver light, he would lay it at her feet . . .
Nay, he would lay her on top of it, as tenderly as if she were Helen of Troy, and then he would make slow love to her.
He had lost his mind.
His imagination bloomed with metaphors describing a woman whom he’d seen for scarcely an hour. Later, that night, he woke from a dream in which Edith raised her arms to him, the liquid gold of her hair tumbling almost to her waist.
“Ah, darling,” he had been telling her, “I am looped in the loops of your hair.” Had he said that aloud? He would never do something so imbecilic.
He
really had lost his mind.
He knew why, too. Obviously, he had kept himself away from women too long, and now he was deranged as a result. Abstinence wasn’t advisable for a man. It had enfeebled his brain. What’s more, although he’d never before thought twice about performance, he suddenly had an image of himself fumbling about in the act, not knowing what he was doing, being foolish.
Damn.
Then the letter arrived.
Your Grace,
I was happy to read your response to my query about extra-matrimonial cavorting. It is gratifying to know that although Nature pricked thee out for woman’s pleasure, you intend to reserve some sixty years’ worth of said activity for myself.
Gowan read that paragraph three times and then broke into a crack of laughter. She’d picked up his Shakespeare reference and tossed another back at him.
I write with the worry that you have formed a false impression of me. I smiled a great deal on the night of my debut ball . . . because I was so ill that night that I could not bring myself to speak.
I mentioned this concern to my stepmother, Lady Gilchrist, who is firmly of the belief that it is inadvisable for a couple to learn of each other’s character before marriage. But as she is not on speaking terms with my father, I consider her a less than reliable source of advice about marital happiness.
If Gilchrist hadn’t been able to ascertain his wife’s disposition by a quick glance at her, Gowan didn’t think that all the time in the world would have helped them to a greater understanding of each other’s characters. He was sorry to hear that Edith had been ill, though.
I also write to assure you that I am not mad, although my claim is of dubious value because I would likely insist upon my sanity regardless. We shall have to leave the question of my judgment or lack thereof to our next meeting, at the Chatteris wedding. You shall find me sane, but, alas, not as winsomely silent as I was during our dances.
The words were so lively that Gowan could hear a woman saying them, except he couldn’t remember what Edith’s voice sounded like. He was burning to meet her when she wasn’t ill.
For a moment the serene angel with whom he had danced wavered in his imagination, but he pushed her away. He had much rather be married to a woman who considered him pricked out for her pleasure. A thousand times better than being married to a placable dormouse, no matter how peaceful.
I should also confess to finding Edith a name without music. I prefer Edie to Edith.
With all best wishes from your future wife, who has good reason to pray for your continued health . . . given my expectations of sixty-five (seventy!) years of marital bliss,
Edie
Eight
Fensmore
Home of the Earl of Chatteris
Cambridgeshire
Edie was aware that she wasn’t acting in a normal fashion. She was accustomed to feeling strong emotion only in response to a musical score or a battle with her father. She prided herself on maintaining tight control over her sensibilities.
But now, with less than an hour remaining before she was due to join the Earl of Chatteris, his fiancée, and their guests in the drawing room before dinner, she was overwrought, for lack of a better word. She felt as if she were about to burst out of her skin, too edgy to settle down.
She found herself pacing the floor of her guest chamber, rejecting out of hand every gown Mary offered her. Edie was not the sort of woman who spent time worrying about her attire. But that did not mean she was ignorant the power of clothing to wreak havoc on the minds of men.
She hadn’t paid much attention yesterday when Mary had packed her trunk for a few days at Fensmore and the Earl of Chatteris’s wedding; her attention had been fixed on the Boccherini score. But now that she was here, and Lady Honoria Smythe-Smith (soon to be the Countess of Chatteris) had just informed her that the Duke of Kinross was already in residence, she felt vastly different about what she would wear.
The duke would be at the evening meal, and she would see him for the first time since his proposal. The very idea made her feel feverish all over again.
Any woman in her right mind would dislike the idea of meeting her fiancé garbed as a vestal virgin missing only a lamp—and obviously a white dress with a modest ruffle at the hem confirmed that particular illusion.
After their exchange of letters, she was fairly certain that Kinross wanted to marry someone boldly sensual. Someone who could bandy about words like prick, words that Edie barely understood. She wanted more than anything to look into his eyes and see desire. Lust, even. If he looked at her and his prick wasn’t on the dial of noon, to put it in a lyrical but earthy fashion, she would be humiliated.
She wanted to dazzle him.
The stupid thing was that she wasn’t even certain she would recognize him. She was betrothed to a tall man with a Scottish burr, but she couldn’t recall his face at all.
Still, his letter—that letter—had given her just enough that she had decided he had a pair of laughing eyes. Not dissolute eyes or a rakish expression. But desirous.
Only after Mary had offered every single gown she’d packed, and Edie had rejected each and every one as unbearably lackluster, did she give in to the inevitable and send her maid to find Layla.
“May I wear one of your gowns instead of mine?” Edie asked, when Layla appeared in the doorway. “I loathe my frocks. They make me look like an insipid fool.”
“You know perfectly well that a young unmarried lady should wear only pale fabrics.” Layla strolled across the room and pushed open the window.
“No smoking!” Edie ordered, pointing at a chair.
Layla sighed, and sat down.
“I am practically married. Kinross is here, and I simply cannot wear one of these dreary gowns.” She didn’t know how to put it differently, but if she didn’t see desire in his eyes, she might break off the betrothal out of pure embarrassment. She couldn’t stop feeling that perhaps he had offered his hand due to her silence.
“Darling, you’re a willow compared to me,” Layla objected. “It’s not that I don’t understand, because, truly, I do. Your coloring has never been flattered by soft tints. Still, we don’t have time to miraculously remake one of my dresses.”
“We are the same height. I may be a little slimmer in the hip area, but our bosoms are the same.”
“My bosom is as unfashionably large as my hips.”
“You can call your bosom unfashionable if you wish, but I like mine. And it is nearly the same size. Any gown will work,” Edie insisted. “Don’t you see, Layla? Kinross has never really seen me, though I appreciate the fact that he chose a wife on the basis of rational analysis. I truly do. I approve.”
Layla rolled her eyes. “Rational analysis is an absurd reason for marriage. Your father once told me that after your mother died he made a six-point list of attributes for his next countess, and I met five of them. Look how well that’s turned out.”
“What was the sixth one?”
Layla got up again and went over to the pile of dresses. “Fertility, of course,” she said, turning over the gowns. “The ability to turn out baby earls by the yard, if not by the dozen. What about this green one? It’s not as bland as the white ones.”
“You and Father love each other,” Edie said, ignoring the fact that Layla was trying to rearrange the neckline of her green gown into something sensual that it could never be. “You just don’t—”
“Like each other,” Layla said, completing the sentence. With a quick jerk, she ripped out the lace trim around the gown’s neck.
“I don’t believe that. I believe you do like each other. I just think you need to talk more. But never mind your lamentable marriage for the moment. I’m trying to ensure that mine works out happily. I don’t want Kinross to think that I’m some sort of insipid lily.”
“He’s unlikely to think that after reading your letter,” Layla observed. “Thank goodness your father had that book of Shakespeare quotes. Do you suppose Kinross imagines you
a bluestocking who’s actually read all those plays?”
“He’ll soon find out differently,” Edie said. “You’re destroying that dress, Layla!”
Her stepmother held up the green dress, now relieved of its white lace. “If you pulled down the sleeves to bare your shoulders, this one could be very appealing.”
“I don’t want to be ‘appealing.’ I want to be the sort of woman who tosses about bawdy jokes.”
“That woman would definitely love this dress. Perhaps I shall run away from your father and open my own dress shop.”
Edie went over and picked up the gown. “I can’t wear this: look, you’ve torn the shoulder seam. I just don’t want to play the part of a virginal swan.”
“You are a virgin,” Layla said, sighing. “Think of it as an unavoidable stage of life, like getting old and toothless and having to drink soup. Unfortunately, men seem to think that women are like new wine, good only before being uncorked.”
Edie tried, and failed, to work that one out.
“Thus the fact that women well into their thirties—and married—still wear nothing but white. I view ladies mired in that delusion as nothing short of pitiable.” Anyone could guess at that scorn by measuring the distance between a white gown and Layla’s daring—and colorful—concoctions.
“I’m not denying my virginity,” Edie said, returning to the stool before her dressing table. “I just don’t want to play the demurely chaste Lady Edith, the way I did when I was ill—indeed, as I’ve done all my life.”
“Your father won’t like it.”
“My father divested his authority over me when he signed those betrothal papers. Now I need to make absolutely certain that my husband doesn’t think he’s been invited to play the role of father.”
“Good point,” Layla said. “Do you suppose that the age difference between myself and your father has led him to consider me a child?”
Edie rolled her eyes. “Has it never occurred to you?”
That seemed to penetrate. Layla tossed the green dress back onto the bed. “I have just the gown for you. Mary, please return to my chamber and ask Trotter to give you the claret silk. This is a sacrifice, darling,” she said, turning back to Edie. “I thought to wear it myself tomorrow evening, but I think you have the greater need.”