Once Upon a Tower Read Free Page A

that hair of yours was quite fetching. And you just smiled instead of talking. That’s very attractive. To men, anyway.”
    “Don’t you think that he’s a little impulsive?” Edie mumbled.
    Layla pulled back the curtains and pushed the window open. Edie loved her bedchamber, which was large and airy, with a windowsill that overlooked the back garden. But she loathed the fact that Layla perched on that windowsill to smoke cheroots.
    “You can’t smoke one of those foul things in here,” she said quickly. “I hate the smell and I’m sick !”
    Even face down in the bed, she knew perfectly well that Layla was paying no attention to her. Edie could hear her settling in her favorite perch and lighting her cheroot at the candle so that she could blow the smoke into the garden. Which she thought kept it out of the room, but it didn’t.
    “I might throw up,” Edie pointed out, moving her cheek to a cooler patch of pillowcase.
    “No, you won’t. You have a fever, not a stomach upset.”
    Edie gave up. “My future husband is either impulsive or stupid. I only met him last night, and I can hardly remember what he looks like.”
    “Not impulsive, manly,” Layla said. “Decisive.”
    “Idiotic.”
    “You are beautiful, Edie. You know that. For heaven’s sake, the whole ton knows that. He probably heard about you long before yesterday night. Everyone has been talking about Exquisite Edith, who is finally making her bow before society.”
    “Don’t forget my Delightful Dowry,” Edie said sourly. “It’s more important than the shape of my nose.”
    “He doesn’t need your dowry. You clearly have no idea how many young ladies have tried to snag the duke. He used to be betrothed to a girl from a Scottish family—the Capons? the Partridges?—some sort of fowl. She died a year ago and no one has succeeded in catching his eye since. Of course, he was in mourning for some months.”
    “That’s so sad. Perhaps he’s been nursing a broken heart.”
    “From what I’ve heard, they were betrothed in the cradle or some such and no one, including the duke, knew her very well.”
    “I still think it’s sad.”
    “Don’t be so tenderhearted, Edie. The duke has obviously put it behind him, since he walked into the ballroom, waltzed with you, and lost his heart.” Layla paused, almost certainly to blow a smoke ring out the window. “That’s rather romantic, don’t you think?”
    “Did the duke actually say that he lost his heart? Because he didn’t seem heartsick to me, though my eyesight was so blurry that I wouldn’t know.”
    “His face spoke volumes.”
    “It had better, since we were completely silent while dancing last night.” Edie wiggled a fraction of an inch in order to cool her burning cheek against yet another section of sheet. “Don’t wave that cheroot around. Smoke is coming into the room.”
    “Sorry.”
    There was a second of silence while Edie contemplated whether it would be worse to die of influenza, or to marry a man whose face she’d never seen clearly.
    “What does he look like?” she asked. “And could you please ring for Mary? My head is pounding.”
    “I’ll make you a cold compress.”
    “No, you can’t move from the window until you’ve finished that vile thing.”
    “Then how on earth can I ring for Mary?”
    Even face down, Edie could tell that Layla was staying right where she was on the window seat. “You don’t have proper maternal instincts,” she complained.
    “That’s true,” Layla replied dryly. “Just as well, under the circumstances.”
    After the death of Edie’s mother, Lord Gilchrist had remained unwed for years—until he’d lost his head at age thirty-six and fallen in love with Layla. Edie hadn’t much liked her new stepmother, who had a seductive air that Edie did not appreciate at thirteen years old. In fact, Edie had been rather revolted by the fact that her father had married a mere twenty-year-old, let alone one whose crimson lips and