A Kiss at Midnight

by Eloisa James

  “No,” she said flatly. “Your hair is just—hair.” She glanced at it. “Rather unkempt and slightly long, but one must make allowances for a man who clearly has no interest in fashion, and does not travel to London.”

  He laughed, and even his laugh had a slightly exotic sound, like his accent. “I had the impression on our first meeting that you disapproved of it. Having exhausted the subject of our respective hair, Miss Daltry, may I inquire how you are finding Lancashire?”

  “It seems quite lovely,” Kate said. And then, before she stopped herself, she asked, “How is it different from your home in Marburg?”

  Of course, he smiled. She’d done the expected and turned the conversation to himself. She let a shadow of contempt steal into her eyes, though she doubted he would even catch it. Men like that didn’t recognize scorn directed toward themselves.

  “It’s much greener here,” he said. “It occurred to me while I was out riding that the English countryside is the opposite of the English people, really.”

  “How so?” Someone had taken her fish while she wasn’t looking and replaced it with another plate, which made her suspect that this was one of those dinners she had only read about, with twenty-four removes, and fifteen sweet things to finish. A royal table indeed.

  “The English are so restrained in their fertility,” he said, smiling at her. “Whereas the plants are all bursting with reproductive fervor.”

  Kate’s mouth fell open. “You—you shouldn’t speak of such things with me.”

  “What an instructive conversation this is for me. Apparently nature falls into the same category as hair: not to be discussed at mealtimes in England.”

  “Do you discuss fertility with young ladies in Marburg?” she asked, keeping her voice rather low in case the sturdy dowager across from her caught the question.

  “Oh, all sorts of fertility,” he said. “A court simply bubbles with passion, you know. Most of it of a very short nature, but all the more intense for its brevity. Though not my brother’s court, at the moment.”

  Despite herself, Kate was fascinated. “Why on earth not? Has the Grand Duke suppressed his court somehow? You seem so—” She caught herself once again. It wasn’t for her to characterize men of his stripe.

  “How I’d love to know what I seem to be. But fearing you will cut me off, I’ll just say that last year my brother welcomed a desperately pious preacher to the court, and within a matter of a week or two, the man had convinced most of the court to give up any frolicking not approved by the church.”

  “I suppose you were the exception,” she said. And then realized she’d given him an opportunity to talk about himself again. It must be a gift given to princes: to draw all conversation into their own orbit.

  “I turned out to be impervious to Friar Prance’s rhetoric,” he said, grinning. “It was rather unfortunate, particularly when it became clear that my brother Augustus thought that the friar’s ideas were, shall we say, divinely inspired.”

  “What precisely did Friar Prance recommend in place of frolicking?”

  “He was particularly disturbed by what he called ‘smock treason,’ which was essentially anything that women and men might choose to do together. So he established a board in the drawing room with a sort of point system. The reward, naturally enough, was life everlasting.”

  Kate thought about that as she ate her venison. “I’ve heard rhetoric of that sort from the pulpit.”

  “Yes, but priests tend to be so vague . . . a reference here or there to Pearly Gates and perhaps clouds. Friar Prance had the courage of his convictions; his promises were quite explicit. Furthermore, his point system allowed one to earn little rewards for memorizing parts of the Bible.”

  “And those awards would be?”

  “The right to wear robes of spun silver rather than plain white was a particular favorite among the ladies. In fact, the question of fashion was an irresistible temptation for those who might otherwise be inclined to disbelief. It became quite a competition around the court, only exacerbated when he agreed to give extra points to those who recited their verses in public.”

  “I’m training my dogs with a system quite like that,” Kate said. “Of course I’m using cheese instead of heaven as the ultimate reward, but for them, it’s likely the same thing.”

  “Well, that’s probably why I was such a failure. I dislike cheese.”

  Back to himself, Kate thought. She ate another bite rather than return to his favorite subject.

  “Aren’t you curious about my particular failures?” he persisted.

  “I haven’t got all night,” she said, favoring him with a smile. “If you wouldn’t mind terribly, I’d rather hear more about your brother’s court. Did everyone eagerly submit to the system?”

  “They tried, after Augustus indicated a keen interest. That’s the nature of a court.”

  “It sounds tiresome.”

  “Augustus’s newly acquired piety was a blow, I’ll admit. But you see how well it turned out: He pitched everyone out of his court who couldn’t drum up the necessary enthusiasm for the scheme, and that’s how I ended up here.”

  “Does your court operate on the same principle?”

  “Mine? I don’t have a court.”

  She looked around. “Tall stone walls, and tapestries that must go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth herself. Lovely courtyard. Loads of servants. Why, I do believe I’m in a castle!” Considering her point made, she smiled at the footman standing to her right. “Yes, I am finished with this venison, thank you.”

  “A castle is not the same thing as a court,” the prince said.

  “Dear me, Your Highness,” she said sweetly. “Of course you’re right, Your Highness.” It was actually quite fun to see his jaw go a little rigid. The poor prince . . . obviously so used to people kissing his toes that he couldn’t even be playful.

  “A court serves a useful purpose,” he pointed out. “The king or grand duke, as in my brother’s case, rules his lands. I rule no one, Miss Daltry. Therefore, this is no court.”

  “Then you are doubly lucky. You needn’t worry at all about whether you are useful or not,” she replied.

  “I suppose you would say that I am not?”

  “You yourself said that you were a prince without subjects. Of course you are not useful, but that is hardly your failure. It’s a matter of birth, and your birth, Your Highness, means that you need never be useful. Or question the market value of anything, which I would consider an even better inheritance.”

  “You believe a prince is someone who knows the price of nothing?” There was something in his smile, something a little dark and sardonic that made Kate suddenly wonder if she was over her head, being too clever.

  “I expect,” she said more delicately, “that you know the value of a great many things, if not their prices.”

  He stared at her for a moment, and then leaned just a trifle closer. “I did hear somewhere that the price of a woman, my dear Miss Daltry, is above that of rubies. Or was that the price of a good woman? How unfortunate that Friar Prance is not here to settle the question.”

  “It was indeed a good woman,” she told him.

  The prince smiled at her, the calculated, tigerish smile that he probably used to seduce wayward ladies. “And are you a good woman?”

  She returned the favor, giving him the gentle smile one gives to a deluded infant. And in case he didn’t entirely understand, she patted his arm. “If you don’t mind a word of advice, one never asks a lady to set her own price. If you have to ask, the answer will always be more than you can afford.”

  The elderly man on her right turned his head at that moment. “Do tell me more about your war museum,” Kate said to him. “I’ve always thought that milk bottles were remarkably versatile. No, no, you’re not interrupting anything. His Highness and I are boring each other silly.”

  Gabriel felt like laughing aloud as he blinked at the back of Miss Daltry’s head. It served him right for j
umping to the conclusion that all women wanted to be princesses. Or that any Englishwoman would like him simply because he was a prince.

  This Englishwoman had decided within seconds that he was a self-important ass. He’d seen it in her eyes, in the way she looked down her straight little nose.

  Perhaps her nose was a little too long. Wasn’t Dimsdale’s fiancée supposed to be a raving beauty? He didn’t think she was. There were dark blue shadows under her eyes, for one thing. Beauties were supposed to have glowing skin the color of peach blossoms.

  A lady of the court would have plucked her eyebrows to high, airy peaks . . . hers slashed over her eyes, giving them punctuation. Rather extraordinary eyes, he had to say. They suited that foolish purple wig of hers.

  Another question: What color was her hair under that wig? Her eyebrows suggested a warm brown, perhaps a chestnut brown. Perhaps she had one of those short cuts that he hated, but could quite imagine on her. It would highlight her cheekbones and—

  He realized his aunt was clearing her throat ominously. What on earth was he doing? Likely Wick was right, and he was obsessing over his nephew’s betrothed simply out of dread of his own.

  Tatiana probably had a perfect short nose. And sweet eyes that would look at him with approval.

  The thought came into his head, willy-nilly: Miss Daltry was the epitome of beddable.

  But biddable?

  He turned to his aunt with a lavish smile.

  Never.

  Twelve

  Do you truly plan to go to bed?” Algie inquired, when the party had finally moved to a drawing room. “I know that you haven’t been out much, but it’s outrageously early.”

  Not been out much was a nice way of summing up Kate’s life in Mariana’s house. “You stay here,” she told him. “The less I’m in company, the better. Apparently Mr. Toloose met Victoria last spring. We were lucky that he wasn’t offended when I accidentally snubbed him a minute ago.”

  Algie shrugged. “You should smile at everyone, just to be sure. The important thing is that the prince seems reasonably pleased with you. Who would have thought that so many people would be here? Lord Hinkle just told me that the ton is dying of curiosity about my uncle.”

  The way he said my uncle was entirely different now that he’d met the man in question. Kate had the definite impression that Algie would be dining out for years to come on his relationship to royalty.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she told him, turning toward the door of the drawing room. The room was thronged now, and the air filled with the clamor of fifteen simultaneous conversations. Kate was almost at the door when an extraordinary woman blocked her path.

  She was probably forty years old, and stunning in an opulent, deluxe sort of way. Unlike most of the women in the room, she hadn’t shorn her hair; instead, she’d piled it on top of her head and then powdered it strawberry color. It clashed madly with her dark blue eyes, but, somehow, the effect was marvelous.

  “You!” she said.

  Kate was trying to slide sideways, but at this command she stopped.

  “I know you.”

  She could hardly say, “You must know my sister,” so she plastered on a rather mad smile and said, “Oh! Of course, how are you?”

  “Not know you that way,” the woman said impatiently, waving a jeweled fan in the air. “Now who are you? Who are you?”

  Kate curtsied. “I’m Miss—”

  “Of course! You’re the spitting image of Victor. Devil’s spawn that he was.” But she said it affectionately. “You’ve his nose and his eyes.”

  “You knew my father,” Kate said, stammering a bit.

  “Quite well,” the woman said, grinning. It was the sort of grin one didn’t expect from a lady so obviously well-born. “And your name is Katherine. How do I know that, you might ask?”

  Kate suddenly realized with a pulse of alarm that anyone might overhear the conversation. “Actually—” she began, but was interrupted.

  “Because I’m your godmother, that’s why! My goodness, it’s been forever. Appalling how the years go by. You were just a wee thing last I saw you, all plump cheeks and big ears.” She peered closer. “Look at you now. Just like your father, though that wig does nothing for you, darling, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’re lucky enough to have his eyes; for God’s sake don’t pair them with a purple wig.”

  Kate felt a little flush rising up her neck, but her godmother—her godmother?—wasn’t done surveying her. “And that padding in front isn’t doing you any favors either. There’s too much of it. It looks like you’ve got two pudding bags suspended from your neck.”

  The flush was up to her ears. “I’m just retiring for the night,” Kate said, dropping another curtsy. “If you’ll forgive me.”

  “Offended you, have I? You’re looking a bit feverish. Now that was one thing that Victor had control of: his temper. Didn’t control anything else, but I never saw him blow his dickey, even when he was three sheets to the wind.”

  Kate blinked. Blow his—

  “Offended you again,” her godmother said with satisfaction. “Come along, then. We’ll go to my chambers. The butler put me in one of the towers, and it’s utterly heavenly, like being stuck in the clouds except for the pigeons crapping on the windows.”

  “But—I don’t—what is your name?” Kate finally asked.

  She raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Didn’t your father ever tell you about me?”

  “I’m afraid that he died before he had a chance.”

  “The old sod,” she said. “He swore that he’d tell you all about me. I’ll give you the story, but not here. This castle is crammed with people longing for gossip and making it up as fast as they can. No need to feed the blaze.”

  Kate held her ground. “And you are?”

  “Lady Wrothe, though you might as well call me Henry, which is short for Henrietta. Leominster, my husband, is over there getting drunk with the Prince of Württemberg. Poor Leo simply can’t bear to let a glass of brandy pass him by.” She reached out and took hold of Kate’s wrist. “That’s enough of an introduction; let’s go.”

  She towed Kate up stairs, through corridors, up more stairs, and finally into her chamber, pushed her onto the bed, and plucked off her wig. “You’ve got Victor’s hair. You’re a beauty, then, aren’t you?”

  Kate felt as if a whirlwind had come out of nowhere, picked her up, and deposited her in the tower room. “Did you know my father well?”

  “I almost married him,” Lady Wrothe said promptly. “Except that he never asked me. I still remember meeting your father for the first time. It was at the Fortune Theater, during an interval of Othello. I knew instantly that I’d love to play Desdemona to his Moor.”

  “Was my mother there?” Kate asked, feeling a surge of loyalty for her poor mother, who appeared to have been overlooked not only by Mariana, but by Lady Wrothe as well.

  “No, no, he hadn’t met her yet.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, feeling better.

  “We had the most delicious flirtation,” Lady Wrothe said, looking a bit dreamy. “But your mother already had her eye on him, and within a few months her father—your grandfather—had reeled Victor in like a half-dead trout. Victor was fantastically poor,” she explained.

  “Oh,” Kate said again.

  “Luckily for him, he was a handsome beast of a man, all that dark buttery hair and your eyes, and then the cheekbones . . . if things had been different, I would have married him in a moment.”

  Kate nodded.

  “Of course, he would have been unfaithful to me and then I’d have shot him in a private area,” Lady Wrothe said thoughtfully, “so it’s just as well.”

  A giggle escaped Kate’s mouth. It was wrong to laugh, just wrong, when she was listening to tales of her father’s rampant infidelity.

  “He just couldn’t help it. Some men are like that. I suppose you’ve met the prince? He’s one of them. No woman will be able to keep that man
at home, and though they’re delightful to play with, it’s best to avoid them. I’ve been married three times, darling, so I know.”

  “So my godfather must be dead,” Kate said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Lady Wrothe said. Then she gave Kate a lopsided, secret smile. “Your father and I—he—”

  “You had an affaire,” Kate said, resigned.

  “Oh no. Perhaps it would have been better for both of us if we had. We were young and foolish when we met, which meant that it was all talk of love and roses, rather than beds. And Victor couldn’t marry me because my dowry wasn’t large enough.”

  The more she learned of her father, the less she liked what she heard.

  “Classic Romeo and Juliet,” Lady Wrothe said, “but without all the stabbing and poison, thank you very much. Instead your father simply married your mother, and that was the end of it.”

  “Did you know her as well?”

  Lady Wrothe sat down at the stool before her dressing table, so Kate couldn’t see her eyes. “Your mother hadn’t been strong enough to have a proper season, so I didn’t meet her until your baptism.”

  “I have wondered how my mother and father managed to meet, since my mother was so frequently abed,” Kate admitted.

  “Oh, they didn’t. She saw him passing in Hyde Park, and inquired about his name. From there, her father took over.”

  Kate felt even more depressed at that revelation.

  “And of course I married as well,” Lady Wrothe said, swinging around to face Kate again. “You mustn’t think it was all sackcloth and ashes. I fell in love with my husband and I daresay Victor did the same with your mother. Over the years we saw each other occasionally. Not, I hasten to add, in any sort of clandestine fashion.”

  Kate nodded.

  “A few years later, I found myself dancing with him at Vauxhall. I had just lost another child; I was never able to carry a babe. I wept all over his shoulder.”

  Kate would have patted her hand, but somehow Lady Wrothe was not the sort of woman one consoled in that fashion.