A Kiss at Midnight (12 page)

“About what?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

He leaned forward. “About the rest of a woman’s body. The curve of an ankle talks of the curve of a waist, the curve of a woman’s thigh, the slope of her back . . . other places as well.” His eyes lingered on her bosom.

Before she could stop herself, a giggle escaped from Kate’s mouth. She clapped a hand over her lips.

“You are laughing at my compliment?” His face was utterly unreadable.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, but she couldn’t help herself. “I suppose I am.”

“Why?”

Kate straightened her back, which made the wax that was propping up her real bosom jut forward.

He looked puzzled.

“Did you know that Algie pads his chest? Do
you
?” She eyed his coat and realized that he didn’t. His chest was twice as large as Algie’s, but it was pure muscle.

“No.”

“Algie also has little pads sewn into the thighs of his breeches,” she said patiently.

“He used to have a very fat bottom; he must have lost all that flesh somehow,” the prince said. “What does that—oh!”

His eyes fastened directly on her bosom.

She grinned at him. “A word to the wary, Your Highness: I would not consider the curve of an ankle to be an altogether reliable forecast of a woman’s curves.”

He looked up from her bosom and, to her surprise, smiled with that fierce spark of desire in his eyes, the one that made her feel instantly hot.

“Don’t do that,” she snapped. “You look like an old goat.”

“You practically instructed me to look at your breasts.”

“What you are looking at only nominally fits the label,” she pointed out.

He snorted. “There may be some sort of padding underneath, Kate, but what I see is utterly desirable, luscious, creamy . . .”

Kate couldn’t help smiling. “You know, just because I’m not Victoria doesn’t mean that I’m available for seducing.”

“I know that,” he said, sitting back. “I’m not seducing you, either.”

“I’m glad to know it,” Kate said. “Otherwise I might be quite confused. Your being a prince and all, and likely expecting women to fall into your arms. You might decide I was a dairymaid, given my lovely
parfum de fromage
.”

He laughed. “I did consider trying to steal you from Dimsdale, but that was when you were Victoria, with all the money to lavish on her dogs.”

“Why do you need an heiress?” she asked. “Berwick—”

“Wick,” he put in.

“Wick implied the castle might be able to support itself.”

“In a nip-cheese fashion that would make my aunts unhappy. One can never have too much money.”

Kate looked at him. It was four o’clock now, and the sun’s rays were slanting golden across the lake. Gabriel’s hair was falling from its tie, and a strand or two curled against his cheek. He was arrogant, and regal, and utterly triumphant to have found out her secret.

He didn’t look greedy.

Just arrogant.

Her silence seemed to prick him and he said, “Money can buy you freedom.”

“Freedom,” she echoed. “Freedom from what? You’re not the lion—”

“Oh for God’s sake, shut up about the lion,” he snapped.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I never speak to anyone that way,” he said, with the sweet ruefulness of a boy.

“Obviously I bring out your worst side.”

“Yes, let’s blame it on you. At any rate, I would like to have so much money that I could leave my wife in charge here, with all the aunts and uncles and the lion and all, and go off.”

“Go? Go where? Back to Marburg?”

“No!”

“Then?”

“Have you ever heard of Dido and Aeneas?”

She shook her head. “Are they historical or literary? I have to admit that I’m shockingly ill-educated. I can speak some French, and I did read most of Shakespeare, but otherwise I’m an ignoramus.”

“Who happens to know the size of a pigsty,” he said, his eyes thoughtful.

“Yes, I’m full of charming knowledge of that sort,” she said. “What about Dido, then? She has a very unattractive name, I must say.”

“She was the Queen of Carthage. She fell in love with Aeneas, but he was bound by the gods to continue his journey and found the city of Rome . . . so he did. And she threw herself on a funeral pyre in grief when he left.”

He stopped.

“She burned herself for love?”

He nodded.

“Fiction,” Kate declared. “No woman would ever be so foolish. Do you think the footman would consider it improper if you buttoned up my glove? I’m afraid that I can’t do all these buttons myself.”

“It’s not the footman who’s the problem; it’s the other boaters. You’d better sit next to me so I can do it without anyone’s being able to see.” He moved to the right side of his bench.

So Kate stood up and then quickly turned and sat down next to him. He was very large, and his leg pressed directly against hers. She could feel color rising in her cheeks.

That spark was back in the prince’s eyes. “Well?” he said. “Let’s have the glove, then.”

Reluctantly Kate turned over her right hand. The tiny pearl buttons on the glove went past her elbow. The prince bent over her arm. His hair wasn’t as dark as she had thought. It was chestnut streaked with lighter strands, the color of earth that’s been turned over for tilling.

A not very romantic comparison, now she thought of it.

“You do know,” he said, fastening the last pearl, “ladies never sit next to gentlemen.”

“Even princes?”

“Only if they’re hoping to become princesses.”

“I’m not,” she said quickly. She was glad to hear the ring of truth in her voice.

“I know that,” the prince said. “Kate?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Gabriel. Don’t you want to know more about Dido?”

“Not particularly. She sounds like an extraordinarily foolish woman.”

“Dido
was
literary,” he said, ignoring her reply. “But she may well also have been historical. And at this very moment a former professor of mine, Biggitstiff, is excavating an ancient city that might have been her city of Carthage.”

If there had been a ring of truth in her voice when she talked of marriage, there was a ring of true longing in his when it came to Carthage. “Well, go then,” she said, startled.

“I can’t. I have this castle.”

“So?”

“You don’t understand. When my brother Augustus cleaned his stables, metaphorically, he threw out everyone and anyone whom he considered to be less than godly.”

“Including the lion and the elephant?” Kate asked. “I could see if he were talking about Coco, since she clearly has no gods before herself, but the elephant? And the monkey?”

“I think that was just because his wife was tired of the smell. But everyone else . . . out they went, bag and baggage, into my care.”

“Are you saying that you are marrying a Russian princess in order to support all of them?”

“Yes,” he said bluntly. “Not only is her dowry essential, but I can leave her here to run the castle.”

Kate stood up with one quick movement and sat back down opposite him. “I think we should head for shore,” she said. And then: “I just want to make sure that I understand you. You’re planning to marry so that you can support your motley family, and then you will promptly leave your wife in charge of the lot of them and go to Carthage, wherever that is? I assume it’s not in Lancashire, because Englishwomen
never
, even in literature, burn themselves for love.”

“You make it sound rather self-serving,” he said, cheerfully enough, “but that’s marriage, isn’t it?” He waved at the footman and gestured toward shore. “After all, she will gain my title. And with my inestimable gift for ascertaining value, I can tell you that the value of being a princess is high. For all that you show no interest.”

“I can’t believe that you ever considered seducing Victoria out from the very arms of her betrothed,” Kate said. “She’s terribly in love with Algie, you know. And he’s your
nephew
.”

“Yes, but it’s so hard to feel loyalty to him,” the prince said ruefully. “Though I suppose now that I’ve met you, I should.”

“I’m no relation to Algie.”

“But if my guess about your parentage is right, you’re his sister-in-law, or you will be,” he pointed out.

“So you’ll approve the marriage, then?” she asked, deciding not to comment on the question of her parentage. “Algie will be very happy. If it’s all right with you, we’ll leave this afternoon, because what with all the ladies who’ve noticed my less-than-delectable figure, this is a quite nerve-wracking visit.”

“No.”

She blinked at him. They were gliding into shore now, the punt knocking against the marble ledge circling the lake, and she thought perhaps she misheard him. “Did you say no?”

“You’ll stay for my ball.” He folded his arms and looked mulish.

“Don’t be absurd. Someone might realize that I’m not Victoria, and now that you know the truth, there’s no reason to stay.”

“You’ll stay because I wish you to.”

“
You
can say whatever you please,” she snapped, “but—”

He leaped onto shore and held out his hand. She stepped from the boat, fuming, and he said in her ear, “Dimsdale will never cross me, Kate.”

Of course he was right, blast him. She turned and thanked the footman, who was handing out her dogs. “Well,” she said. “Do run along and be a prince now, Your Highness.”

“Come and dance,” he said, holding out his hand.

“You must be mad. Caesar, behave yourself!” One of the swans was swimming perilously close to the shore, at least from Caesar’s point of view. Thank goodness none of them had swum up to the boat to greet them.

“Do come,” he said.

“Your Highness—”

“Call me Gabriel!” He said it between clenched teeth.

Kate took one look at his fierce eyes and rolled hers. “Gabriel,” she said in a near-whisper. “I’m the dairymaid, remember? I had a governess for only three or four years, and I’m not sure I remember how to dance. I certainly don’t want to stumble around in front of Victoria’s acquaintances.”

“What are you planning to do at the ball?”

“I’ll wrap a scarf around my ankle and pretend Caesar tripped me.” That scapegoat was pulling at the leash like the little monster he was. “Caesar!” He turned and looked at her, so she made him sit, then rewarded him with a piece of cheese from her reticule.

“Your Highness,” Wick said, appearing before them. “Miss Daltry.” It wasn’t her imagination that he gave her name just the slightest, mischievous emphasis. “I do hate to interrupt Your Highness, but the Countess Dagobert has arrived and she wishes to greet you.”

“Wait here,” Gabriel said to Kate, moving away without looking back.

“Sod that,” Kate muttered. “Come on, dogs.” She took off in the opposite direction, Coco prancing ahead. The sapphires glued to the dog’s coat caught the setting sun and made it look as if she had a gleaming halo around her neck.

There’s the money that should have gone into refurbishing the cottagers’ roofs, Kate thought. And her dowry. She didn’t believe for a moment that Mariana hadn’t got her hands on it.

She had taken it—and glued it to a dog.

Sixteen

K
ate heard someone squawking her name—her actual name, not Victoria’s—and turned around to find Lady Wrothe waving from the edge of the maze. Henry was wearing a madly fashionable violet and green striped day dress with a little ruff edging the bodice. As Kate came closer, she saw that it was a good thing that ruff existed, or Henry’s breasts would be entirely open to the air.

“Darling!” Henry called. “Come here this minute . . . what on earth are you doing cavorting out on the lake with that prince? Your little turnip of a betrothed is wandering around looking like a dog who’s lost his bone and that, as much as anything, has convinced them all that you’re really your tart of a sister. Of course, they think the prince is trying to steal your virtue.”

“Hush,” Kate said. “Someone will hear you!”

“You can’t hear a thing out here,” Henry said. “Haven’t you noticed? I think it’s all the water. I was desperately trying to eavesdrop on Lady Bantam warring with her husband, but I couldn’t hear more than a few insults about her beard and his floppy poppy, as if we didn’t know all that already.”

“Does she really have a beard?” Kate said. “Come along, Caesar. We’re going to walk this direction.”

“
Dogs
,” Henry said, noticing them for the first time. “Do tell me they’re part of the costume, darling, because I just can’t abide the beasts. I refuse to have them in London when you come to live with me.”

“They belong to Victoria,” Kate said.

“No!” Henry shrieked. “I forgot the animals that tried to gnaw your sister’s nose off!” She stared down with horror. “I have a jeweled dagger, you know. I can give it to you so that you can ward off a sudden attack. I generally stick it in my bosom to draw attention, but the end is quite sharp.”

Freddie was looking up at Kate with his usual expression of complete adoration.

“This is Freddie,” Kate said, “and that one with the jewels is Coco. And Caesar is that tough little customer there.” Caesar was growling at a sparrow, presumably keeping himself in practice.

“Well,” Henry said after a moment of peering at them, “they don’t look like ferocious beasts. I rather like that one.” She pointed to Coco. “She has a way about her. She looks as if she knows her own worth, and believe me, darling, that’s a woman’s most important asset.”

“Coco is utterly vain,” Kate said, laughing.

“Vanity is just another word for confidence,” Henry said, waving her fan in the air. “There’s nothing more enticing to a man. Is she prinked out in jewels or glass?”

“Jewels,” Kate said.

“And she belongs to the feather mattress herself, Mariana? Oddly enough, we seem to have more in common than just your father. I like the idea of a bejeweled dog. Perhaps I’ll get one of those great Russian dogs, the ones that the nobility have over there, and paste him all over with emeralds. Wouldn’t that be pretty?”

“Let’s try the maze,” Kate said, wanting to be out of earshot of the party. She moved toward the entrance.

“There’s no need to be quite so energetic,” Henry said. “I was only standing here to keep out of the sun. My heels are extraordinarily high, and not designed for prancing through shrubbery.”

“They sound very uncomfortable.”

“But they show off my ankles. It’s absolutely horrible getting older, so one simply has to make the best of what doesn’t change.”

“Ankles?”

“And breasts,” Henry said, nodding. “I expect they would have turned into sagging oranges if I’d been lucky enough to have a child. No baby, so I still have a fabulous bosom, while my friends are wrinkled like old prunes.”

“I don’t have one at all,” Kate said. “Just in case you’re wondering, these are wax.”

“As I pointed out last night, they are far too large for your figure. Mine are mostly wax too, of course. I call them my bosom friends.” She had an enchantingly naughty giggle. “Anyway, as far as men are concerned, it’s all about what shows on top. Now, I’ve found the perfect man for you.”

Kate stopped. “You have?”

“Yes, wasn’t that brilliant of me? He’s a second cousin once removed on the side of my second husband, Bartholomew, but then he’s connected as well somehow through Leo—who is already three sheets to the wind, by the way. I stowed him in one of those boats and told the footman not to bring him back to dry land until suppertime. That way he should be steady enough to take me in for the meal.”

“Do you mind?” Kate asked.

“Not particularly,” Henry said. “I knew he wasn’t perfect when I married him, but he’s perfect enough. He drinks a bit too much, but so far”—she cast a saucy look at Kate—“he manages to perform when required.”

Kate snorted.

“Well, thank God, you get a joke. One never knows with virgins.”

“I haven’t been very sheltered in the last few years,” Kate confessed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Henry said. “As long as you’re not as much of a fool as your sister, there’s no need to fuss about a bit of liberty before marriage. Just squeak loudly on your wedding night and your husband will never know.”

“Oh! I didn’t mean
that
,” Kate protested.

Henry shrugged. “It’s fashionable to be a maid when you’re a bride, but if you actually bet the wedding cake on most of our
ton
nuptials, there’d be a lot of champagne and no cake.”

Kate thought that one through. Her mother used to tell her gently that a woman’s virtue was her only true possession. Henry certainly had a different point of view. “I wouldn’t want to end up like my sister.”

“Victoria is notable only for the fact that her mother was such a fool that she taught her nothing about babies,” Henry said. “Otherwise, she did quite well for herself, all things told. That gaudy young man of hers has a sweet estate. And he certainly is infatuated with her.”

“Algie didn’t offer marriage until my stepmother cornered him and told him of the baby.”

“Your sister was a fool to have given him what he wanted without getting a proposal first, but as it happened, she managed to tie him down anyway.”

“With my luck, I’d find myself in Mariana’s situation, raising a child in the country, pretending to have a dead colonel for a husband,” Kate pointed out.

“You have wonderful luck,” Henry said bracingly. “You have
me
. I informed Dimsdale a few minutes ago that I had recognized you, and he gave me an earful about how wonderful his Victoria is. I’m afraid you’re not living up to his fiancée, darling. He’s all fretful because you were out there on the lake blackening his future wife’s reputation. You should sleep with the pretty prince just to fret the man.”

“That’s going a bit far merely to annoy my brother-in-law.”

“Well, you can’t pretend that it would be indentured labor,” Henry said. “The man glitters like a hot day in Paris.”

“Too much,” Kate said. “He keeps saying he’s not seducing me, but—”

“Of course he is,” Henry said. “And why shouldn’t he? He’s a prince, after all.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to bed whoever crosses his path,” Kate said. “Caesar, get away from there!”

They had somehow come through to the other side of the maze without finding the center, and found the rest of the menagerie instead. There was a pen full of hairy, malodorous goats, and another that housed an ostrich.

“Just look at that bird,” Henry said. “It looks like a short man craning his neck to look down someone’s bodice. We really ought to get back to the lake and find the husband I picked out for you.”

“What’s his name?” Kate asked, pulling sharply on Caesar’s leash. “Come here, you miserable little beast.”

“Your future husband? Dante. Why don’t you let that dog go? The ostrich has an eye on him, see? It’s probably like those snakes, the ones that swallow rabbits. Caesar could feed it for days.”

“Caesar may not be lovable, but I’ve grown rather fond of him,” Kate said, hoping that saying it aloud made it true.

“Well, in
that
case,” Henry drawled, making it quite clear that she saw through the lie. “Why don’t you let me take the bejeweled one for a bit, and you drag along Freddie and Caesar the Lion. I loathe dogs, of course, but perhaps that one is acceptable.”

So Kate handed over Coco. They met a few people on their way back through the maze, but Henry introduced Kate—as Victoria—with such a crushing air of familiarity that no one dared say a word about her miraculous weight loss.

“How can you introduce me to your cousin?” Kate asked. “You’ll have to call me Victoria, and that won’t do.”

“Oh, we’ll tell him the truth,” Henry said. “And make it seem as if we need his help. He’s the sort who couldn’t resist the chance to jump to your rescue. He won’t approve, not entirely—because, darling, you
did
say that you wanted someone who won’t ever stray. Dante didn’t even cheat at conkers when he was a boy. And don’t think he’s Italian because of his exotic name; he should have been called John or something, because he’s not flamboyant.”

An image of the restless, glittering prince flashed into Kate’s mind and she shook it off. “He sounds perfect,” she said firmly. “I don’t want anyone flamboyant.”

“He doesn’t need money either, so you needn’t worry about his being a fortune hunter.”

“I’m not worried, because I’m quite sure you’re wrong about my dowry,” Kate said, giving her godmother an apologetic glance. “I thought about it last night. If my mother had left me all that money, she would have said something to me. All those afternoons when my father was in London, while she and I sat together. She taught me how to do embroidery, and how to curtsy to a queen, and how to hold my fork and knife.”

“She was sick such a long time, poor thing,” Henry said. “She didn’t have time.”

“She just got weaker and weaker,” Kate said, around a lump in her throat. “Still, I didn’t think . . . I just came in one morning and she was lying there, but she was gone.”

“You’re going to make
me
cry,” Henry said bracingly.

“I just—” Kate took a deep breath. “She would have told me.”

“She thought she had time,” Henry said. “We all think we have time, you know. It’s this miracle substance and there seems to be so much of it, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone.” Her voice had an edge that made Kate bite her lip.

“My first husband was older than I was, and I gallivanted around town and generally carried on the way a young wife shouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I did. When he died, I howled for days. Absolutely howled. I hated myself for every moment I’d spent with anyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said, touching her arm.

“But that’s it,” Henry said, turning her head. Her eyes were bright and quite dry. “We never know how much time we have with each other. Even your supposed fiancé, who’s all bursting with self-importance in his lovely purple waistcoat, could be gone tomorrow.”

“Victoria would be—”

“Of course she would,” Henry interrupted. “But my point is that we can’t—we don’t—live like that, remembering that the end is coming. Your mother didn’t count her time because she loved being with you. She let herself forget that death was coming, and what a gift that was. So she never told you about the money; she knew it was there. More interesting is why your father never said anything to you.”

“He actually told me after she died that my mother had left me a dowry, but I was wretched and didn’t want to talk about it. And then he went off and brought home Mariana. The next thing I knew, he was dead as well.”

“Typical of a man,” Henry said. “They always die inconveniently.”

They broke out of the seclusion of the maze to find that the gardens were thronged with elegant gentlepersons. “Now, Dante is very like Bartholomew,” Henry said. “That would be my second husband, the one before Leo. He was decent through and through. We just have to find Dante, and I’ll drag the two of you into a hedge or something and tell him the story.”

“Wait!” Kate said, grabbing her arm. “I don’t want to meet him like this.”

“Well, then, how do you want to meet him?”

“Not in this wig,” Kate hissed at her.

“It’s better than yesterday’s,” Henry said. “I’ve never seen that cherry color, and at least it makes you look fashionable.”

“Can’t we wait and meet him at a later date, when I’m myself?”

“No,” Henry said, “we can’t. He’s on the verge of declaring himself for Effie Starck. She’s practically an octogenarian, at least twenty-two.”

“I’m twenty-three!” Kate said.

“I forgot that. Look, she’s so desperate that she went for Lord Beckham under the table, and he stuck her with a fork. Or no, she stuck him. Later he told everyone that he thought there was a mongrel under the table gnawing at his trousers. I don’t want her anywhere near poor Dante.”

“I would still rather not meet him until I’m in London.”

Henry turned and looked at her.

“I just want to look better than this when I meet your—when I meet Mr. Dante,” Kate confessed.

“He’s not Mr. Dante,” Henry said in an offended kind of way. “I would never pair off my goddaughter with an Italian merchant. He’s Dante Edward Astley, Lord Hathaway.”