A Kiss at Midnight (5 page)

Eight

A
fter four hours in the carriage with Lord Dimsdale, Kate decided that the most interesting thing about Algernon was that he wore a corset. She’d never dreamed that men wore stays.

“They pinch me,” Algernon confided. “But one must suffer to be elegant; that’s what my valet says.”

Since Kate disliked suffering, she was very glad that the seamstresses had not had time to alter one of Victoria’s traveling costumes to the point of elegant pinching. The one she was wearing bunched comfortably around the waist.

“The padding doesn’t help,” Algernon said fretfully.

“What have you padded?” Kate asked, eyeing him. He swelled in the chest and shrank down at the waist so she had a good idea.

“Everyone’s costumes are padded these days,” he said, avoiding the particulars. “At any rate, I don’t want you to think that I’d ordinarily discuss such a thing with you, except that you are my family. Well, almost my family. Do you mind if I begin calling you Victoria immediately? I’m not very good with names and I don’t want to become confused in company.”

“Not at all,” Kate assured him. “How does my sister address you?”

“Oh, as Algie,” he said, cheering up. “You should as well. That’s one of the things that I love about Victoria. She never stands on ceremony . . . she started calling me Algernon directly after she met me, and then she shortened it to Algie. That’s how I knew,” he added, somewhat mysteriously.

“Knew what?”

“Knew that she was the one for me. It was fated, really. We felt a wonderful closeness and we both knew.”

It was fated due to the lack of a governess, to Kate’s mind. Victoria’s charming intimacies—verbal and otherwise—were the result of inadequate guidance. She would even guess that Mariana had encouraged various improprieties.

Kate would rather slay herself than marry Algie, but she could see why Victoria adored him. He had a coziness, a kind of sweetness around his mouth and eyes that was a soothing antidote to Mariana’s bitterness.

“I just wish we’d arrive at the castle,” he said tetchily. His collar was so high that it was chafing his ears, Kate noticed. She herself was lounging back on the padded carriage seat, so comfortable that she could hardly move. Normally by this time in the day she would have already been on a horse for hours.

“Are you worried about meeting your uncle?” she inquired.

“Why should I be? He comes from a little backwater, a principality they call it over there, but in England it wouldn’t be more than a small county. Hardly a kingdom. I can’t imagine why he has a title. It’s absurd.”

“I believe there are many small principalities on the Continent,” Kate said, with a touch of doubt. Mariana didn’t believe in taking a newspaper, and her schooling, such as it was, had come from filching books from her father’s library, not that her stepmother had ever noticed their absence.

“I would just introduce you, and then we could leave in the morning, but the prince insisted that you attend his ball. Most clear, his letter was. I expect he’s worried that he won’t be able to fill the ballroom.” He eyed her. “My mother suspects that he might be making a play for you.”

“Not for me,” Kate corrected him. “For my half sister.”

“And isn’t that a turn-up for the books,” Algie said gloomily. “I must say that I thought the colonel existed. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Daltry told me the truth of it last night. You’d never know it from looking at her, would you? If my mother ever finds out, she’ll explode.”

Kate thought that one
would
know it from looking at her stepmother, but she nodded, out of some vague sense of family loyalty. “There’s no reason your mother need ever discover the truth. I certainly won’t tell anyone.”

“At any rate, I love Victoria, and I must marry her, and my mother wants me to have the prince’s approval, and that’s that.”

Kate gave Algie an approving pat on the knee. It must have been difficult to get so many thoughts in logical order and she certainly didn’t want to ignore his accomplishment. It was interesting to see what a healthy fear he had of his mother; that might explain why Mariana’s demand that he marry Victoria had instantly borne fruit.

“We should be entering his lands now,” Algie said. “The man owns an awful amount of land in Lancashire, you know. My uncle thought it was an abomination, turning good English soil over to a foreigner. For all he went to Oxford and so on, the prince still has foreign blood.”

“As do you,” Kate pointed out. “You are related to him through your mother, no?”

“Well, my mother . . .” Algie said, letting his voice trail off. Apparently he didn’t consider her blood to carry the foreign taint. “You know what I mean.”

“Have you ever met the prince?”

“Once or twice, when I was small. It’s rubbish, his being my uncle. He’s not that much older than I am: perhaps ten years or a bit more. So why should I be forced to parade my bride in front of him? It’s not as if he’s a king. He’s just a spare prince.”

“It will be quickly over,” Kate said.

“He’s desperate for funds, of course,” Algie reported. “I heard that his betrothed is—”

But whatever bit of hearsay he was about to pass on was lost in a welter of noise. The coachman suddenly bellowed and pulled the carriage to the right; the wheels squealed as they careened across the road; the dogs lost their breath expressing their opinions. Mercifully the vehicle came to a stop without toppling over, and the second carriage (carrying trunks, Rosalie, and Algie’s valet), managed to avoid bowling them over.

Algie pulled down his waistcoat, which had got rucked up in the disturbance. “I’d better see what happened. This will take a man,” he said, looking not a day older than his eighteen years. “You stay here where it’s safe. I’ve no doubt but that we have a bit of trouble with the axle or some such.”

Kate gave him a moment to exit from the carriage and then straightened her traveling bonnet and followed him.

Outside, she found the groomsman soothing the horses, while Algie himself was bowing so deeply that she expected his ears to touch his knees.

A man who had to be the prince was seated on a great chestnut steed, and for a moment she could see only his dark silhouette against the sun. She had the confused impression of his motion and power, easily controlled: an aggressive body, with big shoulders and muscled thighs.

She raised her hand to her eyes to shade the sun just as he leaped from his horse. Dark hair swirled around his shoulders as if he were one of the actors who came through the village to play King Richard or Macbeth.

Her eyes adjusted and she changed that idea. He was no Macbeth . . . more the king of the fairies, Oberon himself, eyes at a slight, wicked tilt, with just a hint of the exotic. His “foreign blood,” as Algie had it.

He had an accent, a delicious smoky accent that matched his eyes and his thick hair, and there was something else about him, something more
alive
, more powerful and arrogant than the pallid Englishmen she met every day.

She realized her mouth had fallen open, and snapped it shut. Thank goodness, he hadn’t noticed her.

Groveling probably happened before the prince all the time. His Highness was nodding to Algie. His retinue had dismounted and were standing about him. The man to the left was precisely what Kate imagined courtiers should be, all curled and colorful like a peacock. There was even a boy in splendid red livery. Apparently they were out shooting, a royal shooting party.

Then he did notice her.

He surveyed her coolly, as if she were a milkmaid at the side of the road. There wasn’t a spark of interest in the man’s eyes, just a haughty calculation, as if she’d offered to sell him milk and he found it curdled. As if he were mentally stripping off her too-large traveling costume and staring at the stockings rolled up inside Kate’s corset.

She inclined her head a fraction of an inch. She’d be damned if she’d rush forward and curtsy, there in the dust and the road, to a prince whose self-importance mattered more than his manners.

He didn’t react. Didn’t nod, didn’t smile, just looked away and turned back to his horse, swung onto the saddle, and rode away. His back was even larger than she’d at first thought, larger than the smithy’s in the village, larger than . . .

She’d never met anyone so rude in her life, and that included the smithy, who was often drunk and so had an excuse.

Algie was snapping at the footman, telling him to open the carriage door and make it quick. “Of course it wasn’t the prince’s fault that our horses were startled by his party,” he said. “Now get us back on the road and be quick about it.”

“Caesar!” Kate called. The little dog was busy yapping at the heels of a horse who could brain him with one restless movement. “Come!”

Algie motioned to a footman, but Kate stopped him. “Caesar has to learn to obey,” she said, taking out her bag of cheese.

Freddie and Coco crowded against her skirts, acting like the ravenous little pigs they were. She gave them each a piece of cheese and a pat, and then all of a sudden Caesar realized what was going on. “Come!” she called again.

He came, and she gave him a piece of cheese.

“Tedious business,” Algie remarked.

“Yes,” Kate agreed with a sigh.

“But they do seem to be less noisy. I’m afraid Victoria has too soft a nature. Just look what happened to her poor lip.”

Once they were seated Algie said, rather unnecessarily, “That was my uncle. The prince.” His tone was reverent and hushed.

“He seemed princelike,” Kate agreed.

“Can you imagine what His Highness would make of Victoria’s background?” He sounded horrified at the thought.

“I wonder what his bride will be like,” Kate said, again picturing the prince silhouetted against the sun. He was the sort of man who would marry a glimmering princess from a foreign land, a woman wrapped in ropes of pearls and diamonds.

“Russia women are dark-haired,” Algie said, trying to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. “I might have introduced you, but I thought it was better that he not notice you until . . .” He waved a hand. “You know, until you change.”

As far as Kate could tell, he hadn’t minded a bit that Kate didn’t look as pretty as Victoria—until now.

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

He focused, blinking a little. “For what?”

“I’m not as much fun to have on your arm as Victoria. The prince would surely have noticed how beautiful she is.”

Algie was too young to dissemble. “I do wish she were here,” he said. “But it’s probably better this way, because what if she saw him and she decided . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Victoria adores you,” Kate told him, feeling very pleased with herself for suppressing an impulse to add “more the fool she.” They were perfectly matched, Victoria and Algie: both fuzzy and sweet and awed by anyone with two thoughts to knock together. “And remember, the prince would never in a million years marry someone like Victoria. I expect that he’s too high in the instep for even a duke’s daughter, let alone someone like my stepsister.”

Caesar growled out the window at a passing carriage. “On the floor,” she said sternly, and he hopped down. But Freddie put his front paws on the seat and whined gently, so she let him jump up and sit next to her. He leaned his trembling little body against her and then collapsed, chin in her lap.

“I say, that’s not fair,” Algie pointed out.

“Life isn’t fair,” Kate said. “Freddie is being rewarded for not barking.”

“He’s brilliant,” Algie said, rather unexpectedly.

Kate blinked down at Freddie, who was decidedly
not
brilliant.

“I mean the prince. My mother said that he actually took a degree at Oxford. I didn’t even bother going to university. But he took a top degree in ancient history. Or something like that.”

The prince had not only arrogance and royal blood and a truly beautiful riding coat, but
brains
?

Not so likely. Weren’t all those princes inbred? “Likely they give every prince a top degree just for gracing the door of the university,” she pointed out. “After all, what else could they say? ‘I do apologize, Your Highness, but you’re as stupid as a hedgehog, and so we can’t give you a degree’?”

As they trundled the last miles to the castle, she carefully nurtured that sprig of disrespect for a man whose hair curled wildly around his shoulders, who spent his time careening about accompanied by scented courtiers, and who didn’t bother to greet her.

He counted her beneath his notice, which was humiliating but not exactly unexpected. She
was
beneath his notice.

In fact, thinking about the way he looked at her was almost amusing, in retrospect. She just had to get through the next few days. Then she could take all her newly altered clothing and go to London and find just the sort of man she wanted.

She could see him in her mind’s eye. She didn’t want a man like that prince; what she wanted was someone more like Squire Mamluks, whose property ran close by Yarrow House. He was a sweet man who doted on his wife. They had nine children. That’s what she wanted. Someone straight and true, decent, and kind to the bone.