A Royal Kiss & Tell

by Julia London

  The maid stopped and awkwardly curtsied. “Yes, milord?”

  “I should like some bread—”

  “I’ll fetch—”

  “No, no, you are clearly occupied,” he said, gesturing at her linens. “Just point me to the kitchen, will you?”

  “It’s directly below us, milord. Two floors down.”

  “Very good,” he said with a nod, and continued walking.

  He had not forgotten what he had to do, the stirring interlude with Caroline notwithstanding.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk are pleased to announce the duchess has been delivered of a healthy baby boy. The news was met with joy across Sussex and London, as it represents a new beginning. Perhaps the duke and duchess can put behind them the terrible row the night of the birth, the likes of which sent pets and servants scurrying for cover. Gentlemen would be well reminded that a lady’s nerves are at their most frayed the hours before a birth.

  Ladies, it is not practical to invest in belt buckles of various shades and colors. Silver and pearl complement all styles of dress. The investment of a buckle with a sturdy clasp is well worth the cost if it keeps one’s belt tightly fastened when a husband has fallen into his cups.

  —Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and

  Domesticity for Ladies

  CAROLINE WAS STARTLED out of a very restful sleep when Beck suddenly burst into her room. He strode in and stopped with his legs braced apart and very nearly shouted, “Why are you still abed?”

  “Why? What time is it?” Caroline asked groggily.

  “Time for you to be awake, madam.” He strode for the window, throwing the drapes open. “Lady Norfolk is giving birth.”

  She abruptly sat up and looked around her. “Now?”

  “Yes, now. All night, as it happens. Haven’t you heard them running back and forth? More towels, more water!” he said, gesturing for her to get up. “The midwife says anytime now. Get dressed, get dressed, Caro! You should be helping!” He moved determinedly out of her room.

  “I should be helping what?” she mumbled as the door closed behind him.

  Nevertheless, she threw off the covers. She was awake now, attuned to the day, even as the memory of last night flooded her thoughts. She shivered when she recalled the way his hand had felt against her skin, the way his mouth worked on her body. She shivered again when she recalled how dark his blue eyes had turned when she found her release, and time and thought and even air had been suspended.

  She smiled as she padded across to the bellpull. She’d never experienced anything like what Leopold had shown her last night. She’d heard of it—Priscilla’s older sister once told them that her husband put his mouth “down there.” Priscilla and Caroline, who were much younger at the time, hadn’t believed it. But then Eliza had confirmed that the sort of thing was true between man and woman and really quite enjoyable. Now Caroline could report—

  Wait. She couldn’t report any such thing. What was the matter with her? It would not do to talk about it. No, this was a delicious secret she would need to keep to herself. Lord, how would she look at Leopold again, now that this had transpired between them? She’d blush wildly, and everyone around her would suspect the truth, she was certain.

  She was still smiling when Janey entered her room to help her dress.

  “Good morning, milady!” she said brightly. “What a glorious day it is, isn’t it, with another child to be born? They’ve sent for the duke, so it must be nigh.”

  “When did the birthing start?”

  “Oh, just before midnight,” Janey said. She held up a dress from the trunk Caroline had brought. “If you ask me, it started in earnest this morning, just before the kitchen fires were started.”

  Caroline laughed. “What were you doing about at the hour?”

  “Didn’t you hear? It’s a wonder anyone slept a wink, what with all the shouting.”

  “What shouting?” Caroline asked as she stepped into her crinoline, and Janey tied it at her waist. She’d slept like a baby—a deep slumber, a contented slumber, she mused, as Janey prattled on. Caroline was slipping back into the memory when something Janey said caught her attention. “Pardon?”

  “The midwife,” Janey repeated.

  “No, before that.”

  “Oh, aye. My poor mistress, she saw the duke come up the stairs from the kitchen, and I suppose she thought he ought to have been close by, I don’t know, but she picked up a vase and threw it at him. The midwife, she said it didn’t go far, as it was heavy, and the duchess had very little strength.”

  “From the kitchen?” Caroline repeated. Her buoyant feeling began to dissipate. She looked at Janey’s reflection in the mirror. “Why would he go to the kitchen in the middle of the night?”

  Janey pursed her lips and pretended to be fussing with Caroline’s dress.

  Caroline glanced over her shoulder at her. “There must have been a reason, Janey.”

  Janey paused in the smoothing of the skirt of Caroline’s gown. “I don’t rightly know, milady. All I know is that this morning Cook said there was an awful row between the prince and the duke, and...” She quickly looked over her shoulder, as if she thought someone else was in the room. And then whispered, “The girl Jacleen has gone missing.”

  And just like that, Caroline’s heart dropped to the floor. She froze, staring at the wall before her, unable to move. Or breathe.

  “Milady?”

  “What do you mean, she’s gone missing?” Caroline asked.

  “Took her things and disappeared,” Janey said.

  “Did the duke send someone to find her?”

  “No, milady. He’s been pacing the floor outside his wife’s chamber. She won’t let him in. My mother was that way, too. Didn’t want anyone around when she was giving birth. She had fourteen children, can you imagine?”

  “No,” Caroline said weakly. Her mind was racing. She felt flush. She felt as if she might faint and put her hand down on the vanity to steady herself. Leopold had left this morning. The maid was Weslorian. Leopold had taken that girl and fled. But why? “What was the row about?” she asked. “Between the prince and the duke?”

  “I don’t know, exactly, but the duke, he struck the prince.”

  Caroline gasped.

  A loud and sudden knock on the door caused Janey and Caroline both to jump. “One minute!” Caroline called as Janey lifted the skirt over Caroline’s head and let it settle around her waist.

  “No minutes!” Beck shouted back. “The baby has come! It’s a boy!”

  Janey gasped with delight. “A boy! An heir to the duke!”

  “Go,” Caroline urged her. “I can finish dressing myself.”

  “I shouldn’t—”

  “Of course you should,” Caroline said. “It’s the heir,” she reminded Janey, knowing full well that in this world of dukes and duchesses, an heir took precedence over everything else.

  “Thank you, milady.” Janey dipped a quick curtsy and went out. When the door closed behind her, Caroline sank down onto a chair, staring at the floor. Why had he done it? Did he want that girl for the same reason as the duke? But...but it made no sense. If he wanted a paramour, he could bloody well have one. Why did he take up with maids?

  And if she doubted it for a moment, Beck confirmed her worst fear when they departed Arundel that afternoon. He fell back against the squabs with a very loud yawn. “A lot of bloody wailing when a child is born.”

  “Beck! It’s very painful to give birth.”

  “I don’t mean the effort Lady Norfolk has put to bringing the boy into the world. The rest of it.”

  “What rest of it?” Caroline asked.

  “For someone who hears every little thing that is said about every person, I’m surprised this has escaped you, Caro. I’m talking about the squabble before the
birth, while you were slumbering away like a princess.”

  “I was sleeping as people normally sleep, Beck. What squabble?”

  He snorted. “The maids aren’t whispering in your ear?”

  “Yes, Beck, that’s what the maids of grand houses do in the morning. They gossip with the duchess’s guests—”

  “Then apparently you don’t know your heart’s desire has left with a kitchen maid. Henry tried to stop him, but he wasn’t successful.”

  Caroline gaped at her brother. It was one thing to think it. It was quite another to actually hear it said out loud. “Why? How?” she stammered.

  “That rogue attempted to steal away with the maid in the early morning hours as Augusta was in the throes of childbirth.” Beck shook his head. “Leo is a friend of mine. But I don’t care for this side of him.” He glanced at her, looking at her appraisingly. “Keep your distance, Caro. He’s charming, but it’s entirely possible he is rotten at the core. You’ll have suitors enough to think about as it is.”

  Caroline felt sick. She couldn’t reconcile what had happened between them last night and Leopold taking a maid with him this morning. What had he said last night? What words had he spoken that she could cling to right now?

  “Have you nothing to say?” Beck asked curiously.

  Caroline swallowed. “It is...it is appalling,” she said. “On the day of their son’s birth.”

  “Yes,” Beck said, and shifted his gaze to the window. “Henry was distraught.”

  “Poor Henry,” she muttered. She turned her head to the window, too, and stared blindly at the passing countryside.

  It was impossible to fathom why he’d done it. It was impossible to accept that the man who had shown her such pleasure could, just hours later, escape with a maid. How could he do what he did to her, then turn around and take a maid for what she could only assume was his pleasure?

  She closed her eyes, thinking of the things she’d told him. That she yearned for him. He had flattered her and she had lifted her skirts, and she’d said things she would not say to another gentleman, and oh, she was such a damn fool.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Residents of Mayfair are hosting a flurry of summer gatherings before they depart for the cooler climes of the country.

  Warm days lead to long walks in the park and proper courting. We have on good authority that the daughter of an earl who many considered to be too plain to receive an offer has won the esteem of the very gentleman she has most admired.

  The sister of a popular baron is thought to be the Favorite of this summer season, as gentlemen are vying for her generous dowry. Bets placed at gentlemen’s clubs are running in favor of a young viscount from Leeds.

  Ladies, experts advise that the secret to a clear and smooth complexion, be you fair or brown, is to limit excess in all things, including food and drink, exercise and pleasure.

  —Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and

  Domesticity for Ladies

  WHAT A SPECTACULAR week it had been. And not in a good way. The good news was that Jacleen was safely tucked away with Isidora in Mr. Cressidian’s large house, but in the course of it all, Leo’s reputation had taken a sound beating.

  He’d bungled the rescue of Jacleen in Arundel, which didn’t surprise him in the least. How was he to have known the duchess was in labor? How was he to have known that Henry would pick that night, of all nights, to visit the poor Weslorian girl at four o’clock in the morning? Really, he would think that given the arguing he’d heard between the duke and duchess on the night of their arrival, and given the duchess’s precarious state, Henry might have managed to keep his cock in his pants. He’d sorely misjudged his former friend.

  Leo had made his way to the kitchen in what he thought would be the dead of night, a quarter to four in the morning. But as he’d neared the kitchen in the dark, he heard the banging of pots and pans. He was surprised to find the cook building a fire under a large hanging pot. She didn’t notice him at first, not until she stood and turned. And when she did, she cried out with alarm.

  Leo wasn’t certain what to say for himself, so the two of them engaged in something of a silent standoff until a footman came in the back door with two buckets. He looked at the cook, then at Leo, then at the cook again. And then the three of them stared at one another until Leo realized he was the only one who could end the stalemate. “Pardon me,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I think I’m a bit lost. I’ll just show myself—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, however, Jacleen appeared. She was tying an apron around her waist as she walked into the kitchen from the same hallway the footman had used. Her dark hair was piled carelessly on top of her head, as if she’d done it in a rush. She paused to take in the scene, and even in the dim light of the kitchen, Leo could see the dark circles under her eyes.

  He did the only thing he knew to do and seized the opportunity. “Jacleen,” he said, and continued in Weslorian, “I am here to help you.”

  She looked confused, uncertain. She looked to the cook as if she thought the older woman would explain it all to her.

  Leo repeated himself. She still said nothing. He wondered if he might have said something wrong. Alucian and Weslorian were closely related but not identical, and his Weslorian had never been very good. He’d stood there with the servants looking on, feeling alarmed that he’d botch things so utterly in their presence. He spoke again in Weslorian. “Gather your things and come with me. At once.”

  “Jacleen?”

  The sound of Henry’s voice was like a punch to Leo’s belly. He’d jerked around to see his old school friend standing there in shirtsleeves and trousers. Henry should have been upstairs waiting on the birth of his child, so Leo had needed a moment to understand what he was doing in the kitchen. A very short moment, however, because the blood drained from Jacleen’s face.

  “Is it time, Your Grace?” the cook asked eagerly.

  “What? No, not yet,” Henry had said dismissively. His gaze was locked on Jacleen, and Leo couldn’t help but notice how the cook and the footman averted their gazes. They had seen this play before, had learned to avert their eyes when the duke came downstairs. And that made Leo irrationally angry—Henry was using this girl like a piece of meat.

  So when Henry shifted his gaze to Leo and demanded to know what he was doing in the kitchen at that hour, Leo discarded all the excuses his brain instantly produced and opted for honesty. “I’m taking her, Henry.”

  Henry blinked. And then he laughed. The sort of laugh one makes when one finds something very incredible. And when he did, the cook and the footman turned into dervishes of efficiency in filling buckets with hot water, presumably for the birth of Henry’s child. “Are you mad? You can’t take her.”

  Leo remembered thinking in that moment that he sincerely hoped he’d not have to fight Henry, because he was certain Henry would thrash him but good if it came to that. He’d give it his best, of course—his father had insisted Leo and Bas learn to box at an early age—but he didn’t have the heart for fighting. So he’d braced himself for it, then said in English to Jacleen, “Get your things, lass.”

  She hesitated. She looked at the cook. The cook was making a tremendous effort not to look back.

  “Go,” Leo said, and then in Weslorian, “if you want to be free of him, you’ll do as I say. I give you my word you’ll be safe with me. I won’t touch you, Jacleen, but we obviously can’t dawdle here, given the situation.”

  She looked panicked and turned to the cook, her expression pleading. In a bid to buy her a bit of time, Leo said to Henry, “I must admit, I’m rather surprised. I should think a man of your stature need not lower himself to this.”

  Henry’s chest puffed and he glared at Leo. “Oh, I see,” he sneered. “You’ve never diddled a servant, then, Your Highness.”

  Leo was momentarily silenced because while he�
��d never forced himself on a woman—the regard had been entirely mutual...or at least that’s what he told himself—he had indeed diddled a servant. He would examine his bad behavior another time. “At least I didn’t buy a servant girl to have at my leisure.”

  Behind him, the cook dropped something.

  “You shouldn’t be so judgmental,” Henry said. “If you were married to a woman who is either pregnant or tired at every moment of every day, you might sing a different tune.”

  “I rather suspect Jacleen is tired, too.” Leo turned his head toward their audience, but this time, he made eye contact with the cook in a desperate bid for her help. But when he turned back to his old friend, Henry had advanced on him, and Leo could see the rage in his eyes. He mentally prepared as best he could to take a hit.

  “You’re high and mighty, Leo. Have you forgotten that I saw you with a serving wench in Cambridge? You held her up against the exterior wall of the public house, you may recall.”

  “That,” Leo said, holding up a finger, “was different.” And then he’d tried to think how, exactly, it was different.

  “At least Jacleen has a roof over her head and food in her belly.”

  “How magnanimous of you. What a veritable saint you are, Norfolk.”

  Henry’s eyes darkened. He clenched his jaw and said, “You’ll pay the price for this. Your father wants good relations with England, but I can see to it that never happens.”

  “I am prepared to pay the price,” Leo said. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and to his relief, Jacleen had disappeared. Maybe she wasn’t coming back. But then she suddenly reappeared on the periphery of his sight, clutching a small black bag and shaking as if she had the palsy.

  “Palda Deo,” he muttered. Thank God. He stepped away from Henry. “Thank you for your kind hospitality, Norfolk. I will see myself out.” And with that, he reached his hand for Jacleen. She was reluctant to take it, so he gestured with his fingers that was what she was to do, then gripped her small hand in his.