A Kiss at Midnight (33 page)
Sometime later they slumped beside each other, boneless and happy.
Silence.
“Did you say what I thought you said?” Gabriel suddenly demanded.
She pretended to be asleep but he managed to wake her.
And his celebration woke up Henry and Leo.
Four years later
I
t was the fifth year of the excavation of Carthage. Despite the fact that Professor Biggitstiff claimed to find evidence of Dido’s city at least three times a month, to this point no solid proof had been found.
Biggitstiff had not given up. He was determined to find that evidence, and failure only solidified his resolve. “It’s as if he expects to find a big sign some day,” Gabriel groaned, lying back and putting his arms behind his head. “A plaque:
Dido Slept Here
.”
His wife gave a consoling little murmur. She was drifting into an afternoon nap.
Much more important than Biggitstiff’s failures, from Gabriel’s point of view, was that the dig had painstakingly brought to light fascinating facts about the inhabitants of ancient Carthage, about everything from their toiletries to their burial practices, from their betrothal gifts to their birthday celebrations.
Even though he and Kate attended the dig in person for only four or five months each year, during the winter, his methods had prevailed. Though Biggitstiff had fought him at first, the overwhelming success of his book, with both a scholarly and popular audience, had made Gabriel’s techniques for approaching an archaeological site the rule. Thus the Carthage dig was proceeding with painstaking carefulness and full attention to every scholarly question.
Though nothing was happening at the moment. It was the hot and lazy part of the afternoon, when every sane man was lounging under a canvas, sipping a cool drink, and fanning himself.
Not everyone in Carthage was sane, as evidenced by the rapid pattering of feet around the pile of shards waiting in the sun to be catalogued.
“Oh Christ,” Gabriel moaned. “He’s at it again. Nanny must have let him loose.”
“Do something,” Kate murmured. “I can’t move.”
“Don’t move,” he said, pressing a kiss onto the nape of her neck. “You lie there and let that baby girl grow fat and happy.”
“Little Merry is baking,” she said, rubbing her rounded tummy. It wasn’t a complaining groan, since Kate had discovered that she much preferred the sunny warmth of Tunis to the chill of an English winter.
“We’ll be back in England in a couple of months and you’ll be telling me how cold the castle is.” He gave her another kiss. “I’m sure you could use a massage . . .” He gave her a little nip, right at the smooth part at the back of her neck, then soothed it with a kiss.
Whatever Kate might have replied was lost when a small form burst into the tent, waving a shard. “I found something wonderful, Papa! Look what I found!”
A very small princeling named Jonas ran over, followed by a small yapping dog, and put the broken pottery piece in Gabriel’s hand. He was named for his favorite uncle, Mr. Jonas Berwick. “See, Papa,” he cried. “It’s a bird. I found a bird!” His stubby finger traced an arch that might well have been a wing, a dent that might have been an eye, a crack that looked something like a beak.
“That’s amazing,” Gabriel said slowly.
Something in his voice made Kate raise her head.
Without speaking, but with a very solemn face, he handed her the bird. But, like Gabriel, her eyes didn’t fasten on the beak, but on the ancient Greek letters.
She puzzled over it for a moment. She had spent the last few years devouring the languages and books that she never had access to when younger, but her knowledge of the Greek alphabet was still shaky. “Oh my God,” Kate whispered. “It says DIDO!”
Gabriel burst out laughing.
“What is it, Papa?” Jonas called, jumping about on one leg. “Why are you laughing? Have you seen how good I am on one leg?”
“You’re just like Biggitstiff!” Gabriel chortled.
“It says
Dido
,” Kate protested, lying back down and holding the shard up in the light so she could see it better. “It does have a wing, darling.”
“That’s not the wing,” Jonas said disapprovingly. “That’s the bird’s bottom. See, it’s been dropping poop right there.” He pointed to a tiny mark at the bottom of the
o
for Dido.
“And
that
,” Gabriel said, “is an alpha, rather than an omega, as you assumed, m’dear. Jonas’s poop is the wiggle that turns an alpha to an omega.”
“So what does the word mean, then?” Kate asked sleepily.
“My guess is the shard spells half of
didascalos
,” Gabriel said, “meaning pupil or disciple. Which is interesting in itself, given that we were speculating over whether there might have been an organized school on the grounds.”
“It’s a
bird
,” Jonas said disapprovingly, taking it back.
“Fly the bird outside and find Nanny,” Gabriel said, giving him a little push. “Mama needs a nap. Take Freddie with you.”
Barring the fact that he couldn’t seem to stay out of a shard pile when he saw it, Jonas was a fairly well-behaved boy, so he trotted away, leaving a dusky tent, an amorous prince, and a drowsy princess.
Who found herself tempted . . . and woke up.
I
n the wondrously various world of
Cinderella
s, the prince always manages to find his cinders girl, and carries her off to his castle. Sometimes the evil stepsisters are banished, sometimes they become housemaids in the castle, and once in a blue moon, they transform into house fairies. The wicked stepmother is never seen again, the pumpkin rots in the garden, and the rats are set free to wander whither they wish.
This particular
Cinderella
ends a bit differently. Of course, the prince did manage to find his cinders girl and carry her off to his castle, except for those months when they happily migrated to warmer, less rainy climes. The evil stepsister, who wasn’t really evil at all, moved to a country estate with her inestimable husband, where they raised eight children. None of Lord Dimsdale’s offspring was very bright, but they were cheerful and extraordinarily beautiful. Even more important, they were very kind, taking after their papa and, indeed, their mama as well.
They did not take after their maternal grandmother, the wicked stepmother, perhaps because they rarely saw her. Mariana sold her estate to Gabriel, who bequeathed it to his brother Wick. She promptly moved to the city and married a prosperous banker. In a short time she acquired three times as many gowns as she had owned before. She died abruptly, of a lung ailment, leaving her banker impoverished and rather less bereft than he would have thought.
Kate and Gabriel settled down together in the messy, charming castle full of relatives, assorted children (they had three), and animals. Freddie lived to a ripe old age, traveling back and forth from archaeological sites with aplomb. The elephant lived even longer, though the lion unfortunately ate two shoes one day and expired the next.
And now I shall borrow from an author of some of the world’s best tales, Rudyard Kipling, to say, O Best Beloved, that every story must come to an end. I leave you with the final, crucial point of fact: They all lived happily ever after.
Even the pickle-eating dog.
A
fairy tale exists in a kind of timeless hour, caught between today and yesterday. For that reason, I allowed myself more freedom with language than I have in previous historical novels.
A Kiss at Midnight
, I cannot emphasize too firmly, is a fairy tale, not an historical novel. There are many ways that princes found wives, but it is doubtful than any of them ended up with a castle and an English bride in just this way. If I had to suggest a date, it would probably be somewhere around 1813, during the Regency.
My biggest literary debt lies, obviously, in Perrault’s version of
Cinderella.
Scholars generally think that Perrault mistook the word
vair
(fur) for
verre
(glass); I reimagined his slippers as translucent, due to being created from stiffened taffeta. A similar literary mistake is that
The School of Venus
was wrongly attributed to Aretino for years, and published in England under his name; it was actually written by a student of his, Lorenzo Veniero. Besides those gentlemen, I owe a debt to E. Nesbit’s
The Enchanted Castle
. While I had no magic ring to transform my characters into living marble, I tried to give Pomeroy Castle some of the delicious joy of Nesbit’s castle.
My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my personal village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and last, but not least, my personal team: Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. I am so grateful to each of you!
ELOISA JAMES
is the author of eighteen award-winning romances. She’s also a professor of English literature, teaching in New York City, where she lives with her family. With two jobs, two cats, two children, and only one husband, she spends most of her time making lists of things to do—letters from readers are a great escape! Connect with Eloisa on her Facebook page (
www.facebook.com/EloisaJamesFans
), through her website (
www.eloisajames.com
), or through e-mail at
[email protected]
.
“Eloisa James’s writing
is absolutely exquisite.
She is one of the brightest lights. . . .
Her writing is truly scrumptious.”
Teresa Medeiros
A Kiss at Midnight
A Duke of Her Own
This Duchess of Mine
When the Duke Returns
Duchess By Night
An Affair Before Christmas
Desperate Duchesses
Pleasure for Pleasure
The Taming of the Duke
Kiss Me, Annabel
Much Ado About You
Your Wicked Ways
A Wild Pursuit
Fool for Love
Duchess in Love
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
. Copyright © 2010 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition August 2010 ISBN: 9780062005366
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