Once Upon a Tower by James Eloisa

Author:James, Eloisa [James, Eloisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-05-27T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

Another interminable morning passed in the carriage, more or less indistinguishable from the day before. Edie kept to her corner of the carriage all morning, ignoring the stultifying conversation Gowan was conducting with a bailiff. She certainly had nothing to contribute. Instead, she brooded over what had happened the night before. Or rather, what hadn’t happened.

It wasn’t so much that she had failed at the petit mort yet again; she was beginning to believe that it wasn’t likely to happen for her. But she felt awful about the way she had handled it. Lying to her husband. Dissembling—

She cut herself off. It was just plain wrong, and she knew it. And—she peeked at Gowan—she was starting to like him. That was a good thing for a wife to feel toward her husband. The aversion she felt about the marriage bed? That was not a good thing.

She had to tell him the truth.

After the carriage had stopped for luncheon (served and eaten at a galloping pace), she put her hand on Gowan’s arm. “I would like to speak to you.” She said this in front of Bardolph and a footman, because if she didn’t speak before servants, she would never speak at all.

“Certainly.” Gowan had been about to escort her from the dining room, but he paused expectantly.

“In the carriage,” she clarified.

“Yes, that would be more efficient.” He turned to leave, nodding to his entourage to follow, thus displaying a deafness to nuance that was, to Edie’s mind, the distinguishing trait of his sex. She didn’t budge.

“Alone, Gowan.” If her husband consulted with Bardolph before he agreed to this, she would . . .

She wasn’t sure what she would do, but it would be violent.

The duke glanced at her, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly, then at Bardolph, who offered a brisk little bow and walked away. Only then did she realize that she’d just won a skirmish in the war shaping up between herself and Bardolph.

But the factor was nothing if not tenacious. She left Gowan to instruct his retinue as to the afternoon’s work, and made her way to the carriage. But when she climbed in, she discovered three ledgers had been placed on the seat for her husband to review. She poked her head back through the door and a footman leapt to attention.

“These will travel in another carriage,” she said, dropping them into his arms.

“His Grace said . . .” the boy bleated.

So the war wasn’t just between herself and Bardolph; it had a wider scope. “Her Grace has just informed you otherwise,” she told him.

Then she settled back inside the carriage to wait.

Moments later, Gowan strode past a footman trotting away with the ledgers he had intended to review during the afternoon’s journey. By rights, he should feel irritated. He deplored time lost sitting in a carriage.

But the truth was that he felt only anticipation.

Of course, he’d known from the moment he’d first seen Edie that she posed a threat to his ordered life. One cannot

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