A Kiss at Midnight

by Eloisa James

  “Next thing I knew, Victor had wrangled it so that I and my first husband were your godparents.”

  Kate smiled weakly.

  “I wanted to kill him. Oh, we did the ceremony, of course. How could we not? But I was so angry at his blindness, thinking that godmothering his child with your mother would somehow make up for my own lost children. His child of all people!”

  “My father was not very perceptive,” Kate said, remembering how cheerfully he had told her that he was bringing home a stepmother, at a time when she was still grieving her mother’s death. “But surely he was well-meaning?”

  “Of course . . . but at the time I was so heartsick about losing another babe that I couldn’t see it. I’m afraid that I put you out of my mind after the ceremony. In fact, in a fit of pure spleen, I pretended you didn’t exist. But here you are!”

  Which reminded Kate. “I’m not actually here as myself,” she confessed.

  “Really?” Lady Wrothe glanced at her reflection and then powdered her nose reflectively. “I wish I weren’t, too. Sometimes I get so tired of Leo. I’d love to be someone else, although if it meant I had to wear a purple wig, I might rethink it.”

  “The purple wig is part of it,” Kate said. “I’m here as my half sister, Victoria, who . . .” and she blurted out the whole story, largely because Lady Wrothe didn’t look in the least sympathetic, but just kept nodding and saying things like “Victor, what a loose fish,” in a tone that didn’t seem judgmental, just definitive.

  She neatly summed up the situation. “So at the moment you’re playing Victoria, who’s betrothed to a fatheaded man named Algernon, who’s dragged you here because he needs the prince’s blessing for the wedding that has to happen because Victoria is as much of a light frigate as her mother.”

  “That makes her sound like a trollop,” Kate protested. “She’s not, she’s just in love.”

  “In love,” Lady Wrothe said moodily. “For God’s sake, don’t ever fall in love before you get married. It’s just too messy and leads to appalling consequences. The only time I ever fell in love out of wedlock was with your papa, and that’s because I couldn’t stop myself, though I fought it tooth and nail.”

  Kate smiled. “I’m not planning to fall in love, Lady Wrothe.”

  “Henry.”

  “I can’t call you Henry,” Kate protested.

  “Why not? Because I’m too old?”

  “No—well—”

  “I’m old enough to demand a name I prefer,” she said, waving a diamond-encrusted hand in the air. “Forget this talk of love; it’s all a pile of nonsense. I wish Leo and I had been in London for the season, rather than on the Continent. I would have met your trollopy relatives and demanded to know where my goddaughter was. At any rate, the real question is whom you should marry. After you finish this little charade, of course.”

  Kate felt a great easing in the area of her chest. There was something about Henry: She was all luxurious curves with a great expanse of white bosom, but her big blue eyes were steady. You could trust her.

  “You aren’t going to cry, are you?” Henry demanded, looking suspicious. “I can’t abide tears.”

  “No,” Kate said.

  “So whom do you want to marry, then? I trust you’re not planning to steal away your sister’s Algernon. He doesn’t sound like much of a bargain.”

  “I know just whom I’d like to marry,” Kate said promptly. “That is, I don’t know precisely who, but I know the sort of man. Someone like my father, but not, if you see what I mean. He wasn’t home much, and I’d prefer someone who likes the country. I loved our house in the country. It’s beautiful, and just the right size, big enough for lots of children.”

  “You want your father but without the wandering eye,” Henry said, going straight to the heart of it. “Victor had a snug estate, thanks to your mother’s dowry, but nothing—”

  “It’s just the right size for me,” Kate interrupted. “I don’t want to marry an earl or anyone like that. Just a squire would be lovely. Or even a merchant who’d moved to the country.”

  “No goddaughter of mine is marrying a merchant,” Henry stated. “For goodness’ sake, girl, you’re the granddaughter of an earl. And your mother was no country bumpkin, for all that she couldn’t get out of bed. She was a lady and so are you.”

  Kate hadn’t been a lady for years, not since her father died and Mariana moved her into the attic. She felt her throat tighten. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am going to cry.”

  “Ah well, happens to the best of us,” Henry said philosophically. She got up and went over to a little silver tray and poured out glasses of pale liqueur. “I cried buckets after your baptism. I was so convinced that you should have been my child, you see.”

  “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

  When 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 fe
ll 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.