A Kiss at Midnight (9 page)

“You did?” Kate mopped up her tears and tried to concentrate.

“After that I turned my back on Victor and never spoke to him again.” She added, a little gruffly, “I didn’t stop thinking of him, though. Devil that he was.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “He really didn’t have a very good moral character, as it turns out. I’d rather my husband was quite different in that respect.”

“Here, drink your liqueur,” Henry said, tossing back her drink. “I carry it with me everywhere because it’s the only kind of drink that Leo doesn’t like, so there’s a chance I’ll still have some tomorrow.”

Kate sipped hers. It tasted like lemons, fierce and cruel to the nose.

“Limoncello,” Henry said with satisfaction. “Isn’t it brilliant? I learned of it from a man I knew in Sorrento once, Lord Manin. I left him behind, but I’ve brought limoncello with me ever since.

“So you want a gentleman with a snug estate and a righteous nature. It shouldn’t be much of a problem. I’ve tended that way myself, though I must admit that I choose men with rather more than a
snug
estate. Still, if there’s any wandering to be done, I always do it myself. That way I know no one will get hurt.”

Kate sipped her limoncello again, and found herself smiling at her godmother. She was so funny and frank. “I don’t have a dowry,” she said. “That is, I have a small nest egg left to me by my mother, but it’s nothing much.”

Henry put her empty glass down. “That doesn’t sound right, Katherine.
Are
you a Katherine? Somehow it doesn’t quite suit you, any more than Victoria did.”

“My father called me Kate.”

“Brilliant. Of course. So what’s this nonsense about your dowry, and while we’re at it, what’s happened to you? I’ve just worked out that you must be at least twenty-three, so why aren’t you already settled with two or three squalling brats on your knee? Your wishes are modest enough, and you’re beautiful.”

Kate finished her glass. “As I told you, my father married again, but he died shortly thereafter. And he left all his money to his new wife.”

“That’s just the kind of stupid thing that Victor would have done. Probably neglected to make a will. But his estate was beans . . . nothing compared to your mother’s.”

Kate’s mouth fell open. “What?”

Henry had a sleepy kind of smile, but her eyes shone. “He never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“Your mother was an heiress. Your grandfather wanted her married, so he bought your father, and he . . . well, I’m afraid that Victor wanted her guineas.”

“He must have spent it,” Kate said, deflating. “Because I have only a very small income from my mother. If he didn’t spend it, my stepmother would have.”

“I don’t know,” Henry said dubiously. “How would she get her hands on that money? I vaguely remember Victor complaining that he couldn’t touch it. I’ll have Leo look into it.”

“Even if Mariana took it illicitly,” Kate said, “I couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t like her, but—”

“Well,” Henry said, interrupting, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Your father gave you to me, Kate. And though I was ungrateful for the present at the time, I feel differently now.” Henry reached forward and put a hand on Kate’s cheek, for just a second. “I’d like to try being a proper godmother to you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Kate’s vision blurred again. “I would be most honored.”

“Good!” she said, standing up. “Now you must run off because I’ve learned that if I don’t have my beauty sleep I’m a total beast in the morning. There’s nothing wrong with that, but since Leo is downstairs drinking brandy, it would make two of us. And that’s two more than this castle can bear.”

Kate stood up too and then hesitated for a second.

“Come here,” Henry said gruffly, and held out her arms.

Kate’s mother had been rail-thin and smelled like lemons; Henry was curvy and smelled like French perfume.

But for the first time since her mother died, Kate felt safe.

Thirteen

W
hen Kate got back to her room she eyed the cord that would summon Rosalie to prepare her for bed, but she didn’t feel sleepy in the least.

Images were jumping through her mind, memories of her mother’s wistful face at the sight of her father, of her father’s polite courtesy toward his wife. Could it be that he was still in love with Henry? Or did he then fall in love with Mariana?

Her heart felt wrenched between her mother’s sadness and Henry’s, between the romance of young love and irritation at her father for allowing himself to be bought.

Finally she decided to take the dogs out for a walk. She calmed Caesar by fixing her eye on him, and then gave him a cheese bit once he stopped barking.

The great drawing room was still blazing with light as she entered the inner courtyard, the dogs pulling ahead. She walked the other direction, stumbling across the cobblestones.

The outer courtyard was only dimly lit, but there seemed to be a set of large cages lined up against the wall. The dogs were straining at their leashes, so she remembered Cherryderry’s advice and stopped walking until they calmed down. Then she gave them a round of cheese, and this time they stayed quite politely at her side.

“If you’re good,” she told them, “I’ll bring you into company tomorrow.” She had to do that in any case; Victoria had carried those dogs with her everywhere, and Mariana considered the dogs to be an essential part of her disguise.

They all looked up at her the moment she spoke. She was getting a bit fond of them, especially of Freddie. He was afraid of everything from a random fly to a dark shadow, but bravery is not a required virtue for dogs. Plus he was very nice to sleep with.

The cages were frightfully large. Light from the single lantern hanging on a hook on the wall didn’t reach past the bars. The dogs stopped short of the first cage, sniffing intently at the dark enclosure. Kate peered inside, but couldn’t see anything. There was a rather fierce smell, though.

“What on earth would a prince keep in a cage?” she said out loud. Caesar gave a little woof in reply, but kept his eyes focused on the cage. Freddie was huddled against her leg, showing no inclination to learn more. She reached up toward the lantern—when a big hand reached over hers and took it first.

“Who’s—oh!” She swallowed the word in a squeak. It was the prince himself, looking even more sulky and brooding in the wavering light from the lantern. His unruly hair was falling out of its ribbon and his mouth looked haughty. Thin-lipped, she told herself, raising her chin. Everyone knew royals were inbred.

“I keep a lion in this cage,” the prince said, matter-of-factly. “There’s an elephant over there, with her companion, a monkey. And there was an ostrich, but we moved her into the orchards along with some Himalayan goats.” He raised the lantern, and Kate saw a slumbering form in the back of the cage. As the light fell on it, one contemptuous eye opened, and the lion yawned, showing off rows of efficient-looking teeth.

“
Teeth
isn’t really the right word for those,” she observed.

“Fangs,” the prince said with satisfaction.

The lion closed his eyes again, as if his observers were too boring to contemplate. Kate realized that Freddie was trembling against her ankle, and even Caesar had moved behind her, showing the first sign of real intelligence he’d displayed since she met him.

“You’d better keep those dogs out of the cage,” the prince remarked. “The lion threw up all day yesterday after eating my uncle’s dog.”

“Not the pickle-eating dog?” Kate said. “What a shame. Your uncle told me that he is quite convinced his dog will return soon.”

“Would you, given that diet?”

“It wouldn’t make me leap into a lion’s cage,” she pointed out.

“I doubt anything would make you so reckless.”

That was the kind of comment she hated because it implied something about her personality—but what exactly? She certainly wasn’t going to ask Prince High-and-Mighty himself for elucidation, so she just walked off in the direction of the elephant’s cage.

He followed her with the lantern. “The elephant’s name is Lyssa. She’s too big for the cage, so we’re making her a pen in the orchard. But if we put her out there, her monkey might run away.”

The monkey was sleeping at the elephant’s feet, one long arm curved around her leg. “I doubt it. It looks like love to me.”

“If that’s love I want nothing to do with it,” the prince said, and his eyes laughed.

“I know just what you mean,” Kate said, a giggle escaping her. “You’ll never catch me sleeping at someone’s feet.”

“And here I thought you were desperately enamored with my nephew.”

“Of course I am,” Kate said, sounding insincere even to her own ears.

“Ha,” the prince said. “I wouldn’t want to stake out poor Dimsdale in the orchard and hope his presence would keep you in bounds.”

He was rather terrifyingly attractive, when he wasn’t smoldering in a princely way, but laughing instead. “Algie would never allow himself to be put out to pasture,” she said, trying to think of a magnificent set-down.

But he cut her off. “Toloose says you’ve been ill. What happened?”

For a moment Kate’s mind boggled, and then she remembered Victoria’s sweetly plump face and her own angular cheekbones. “Nothing much,” she said.

“Other than a brush with death?”

“I hardly look
that
bad,” she said sharply.

He tipped up her chin and studied it. “Shadowed eyes, thin face, something exhausted about you. You don’t look good.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re terribly impolite for royalty. I would have expected that you were trained to be diplomatic in every circumstance.”

He shrugged. “It must be your beauty. It brought out that rare moment of truth in me.”

“Just my luck,” she said crossly. “You bolt from diplomacy just in time to tell me how dreadful I look.”

He put a finger on her lips and she stilled. It was as if she suddenly saw him again for the first time: all that restless energy and gleaming sensuality bound up with huge shoulders and a sulky mouth. “You, Miss Daltry, are talking rot and you know it. I can only imagine what you looked like with a little more meat on your bones, but you’re exquisite.”

His finger dropped away and she felt her mouth curling into a smile, like a fussy child soothed with a boiled sweet. He was leaning against the cage now, looking pleased with himself, as if he’d taken care of yet another little problem.

“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she asked. “Don’t you want to return and be fawned over some more? Life is so short.”

There was a moment of silence after she issued this appallingly rude statement. Then he said, rather slowly, “I actually came out to see if the lion was still vomiting up bits of pickled dog. And the English do not fawn, in my experience.” He turned away to hang up the lantern, so his voice issued from a patch of darkness. “How did you meet my nephew, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“We met in a cathedral and fell in love immediately,” Kate said, after a second’s pause in which she wracked her brains to remember the story.

“In love,” the prince said. “With Dimsdale. Whom you affectionately refer to as Algie, I notice. Rather like some sort of pond life.”

“Yes,” Kate stated. “In love.”

“If you knew what love is, you certainly wouldn’t be marrying my nephew.”

“I love Algie,” she repeated.

“You’ll eat him alive by the time he’s twenty,” he said unemotionally. “You know he’s younger than you are, don’t you? Still wet behind the ears, the poor little viscount. Though perhaps you like it that way.”

“You are an odious man,” Kate said, shading her voice with just the right amount of cool disdain. “I am glad for your sake that your betrothal was a matter of imperial alliances, because I doubt you could catch a wife on your own.” Which was a rotten lie, because she couldn’t think of a woman who wouldn’t slaver to marry him. Except herself, of course.

She walked off, then turned and said acidly, “Your Highness.”

There was a flash of movement and an arm wrapped around her waist from behind. He was hot and incredibly large and she could feel his heart beating. He smelled wonderful, like a bonfire at night, smoky and wild and out of bounds.

“Say that again,” he said, his breath touching her neck.

“Let me go,” she said steadily, fighting the impulse of her body to relax back against him, turn her chin, invite—invite a kiss? She’d never been kissed, and she didn’t intend her first kiss to be given by an arrogant and unruly prince who was irritated because she didn’t fawn over him.

His voice was a smoldering, smoky demand. “I just want a taste of you, Miss Victoria Daltry.” His lips touched her neck, and the feeling of it shivered down her spine.

With one swift gesture she raised her pointed, jeweled heel and slammed it down in the spot where she guessed his foot had to be, twisting and wrenching away from him.

They had moved close enough to the walls that she could see him in the light from the windows. “You are an ass,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Did you have to be quite so violent? These are my favorite shoes,” he said. “And I don’t think I’m
always
an ass.”

She backed up a few more steps. “While I might pity you for your faulty thought processes, you have so many other attributes that command pity that I won’t bother.”

“If I am an ass,” he said, “what does that make you?”

“Uninterested,” she said flatly.

“A snappish little shrew,” he retorted.

His eyes were narrowed, and for the first time since she met him, he looked angry. Against all odds, the look of him made her laugh. “You look like a grocer whose daily allotment of potatoes didn’t arrive.”

“Potatoes,” he said. “You compare yourself to a potato?”

“Look, you just can’t go and kiss English ladies whenever you feel the urge,” she said. “Here, Caesar! Come back.” Caesar had apparently realized the lion was asleep and had started sniffing at the cage bars again. “I don’t want you turned into the lion’s supper.”

“Why can’t I?”

A mop of hair had fallen over his eyes and she had to admit that he looked like the sort of man who
could
kiss anyone he pleased. He looked explosive and utterly sensual and dangerous. Henry’s assessment of him came back into her mind at that very moment: He was just like her father, the sort of man who would never be faithful.

Her smile turned bittersweet. “Because you’re not for every woman,” she explained, trying to put it kindly. “For goodness’ sake, are all princes like this?”

He walked closer and she eyed him, but he didn’t look lustful as much as curious.

“You can’t tell me that a woman simply enters a royal court in Marburg or wherever it is you’re from and expects to be kissed by any prince who happens upon her.”

“Of course not!”

“Well, why on earth would you think I am available for kissing?”

“To be honest, because you’re here in the dark,” he said.

It was a fair point. “I’m here only because of my dogs,” she said defensively.

“You spoke to me for quite a while. You have no chaperone with you. Wick tells me that you arrived with a single maid to attend you.”

Damn Mariana for throwing their governess out of the house. “I would have brought my maid downstairs with me but she has indigestion,” Kate said.

“I think you forgot to summon her. I assure you that young ladies in the court never forget their maids, and they are never alone,” he stated. “They travel together, like flocks of starlings. Or packs of dogs,” he added, as Caesar growled at the lion.

She could hardly explain that her governess had been dismissed the day after her father died, and consequently she had never learned to travel in a flock. “I should have been accompanied by my maid,” she said, “but you mustn’t assume that every woman wishes to kiss you.”

He stared at her.

“This is a ridiculous conversation,” she muttered. “Caesar, come here! It’s time to go.” The dog stayed at the cage, growling.

“Absurd animal,” she said, scooping him up.

“I thought,” the prince said, “that I might seduce you.”

She turned around, mouth open. “You can’t go about trying to seduce young ladies!” she squeaked.

“If I weren’t betrothed already, I would consider marrying you.”

Kate snorted. “You might consider it the way you would consider a case of the measles. No, you wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t imply that you would.”

He took one step and looked down at her with his midnight eyes. Some dim part of her mind registered that his lips weren’t thin at all. Quite the opposite, really.

“I’m a shrew, remember?” she told him. “Look, what are you doing? You’re a prince. This is a remarkably improper conversation, and you shouldn’t try to do it with other young ladies or you
will
be forced to marry someone, likely at the end of a dueling pistol held by her father.”

“Your father?” he asked, still staring down at her.