A Kiss at Midnight

Page 39

The eye reappeared. “As long as you promise on the shambles of your princely honor that you won’t kiss me. I find your kisses distracting.”
That was a facer. “ You could kiss me,” he suggested.
“I won’t. I need to find a husband, and your fiancée—is she arriving today?”
“She has landed in England,” Gabriel said reluctantly. “Probably she’ll arrive tomorrow.”
“No kisses,” Kate stated.
He nodded and realized she couldn’t see him.
“The truth is that I am going mad in this room. Effie brought me some dismal tripe to read. I don’t care much for novels. And Henry won’t let me go out because she says if I appear too healthy people will start questioning the illness that made me thinner.”
“I brought a veil, so no one will recognize you.”
“A veil?”
“My aunt wears them all the time. A mourning veil. I’ll meet you at your bedchamber door in five minutes.”
“Can I bring Freddie? I could hide him under the veil.”
“Absolutely not. My aunt never yaps.”
Twenty-two
T he woman who emerged from Kate’s bedchamber was swathed in black from her head to her toes.
Gabriel offered her his arm, feeling a ridiculous pleasure run through him. “Be careful not to trip,” he said as they walked down the corridor.
The veil trembled as Kate shook her head. “I’m having trouble walking; I can’t see where I’m going. How does she manage this?”
“She’s been in mourning a long time,” Gabriel said.
“How long?”
“Forty years, give or take ten.”
Silence.
“You’re thinking she’s overly mournful.”
“I would never characterize a princess in a negative light,” Kate said primly, though he knew damn well that was a lie.
“It was actually very clever,” he told her. “My father would have found her another husband, but she fell into such a cataclysmic fit of grief that no one would have her.”
“I gather her grief wasn’t all it could have been?”
“My brothers and I loved to go to her chambers. We would play speculation and bet each other with cherry stones. She gave me my first taste of cognac, and lots of very good advice.”
“Such as?”
“She loved to think of improbable scenarios. For example, what if Noah’s flood happened again? How would we survive?”
“Good question,” Kate said. “Did she have the answer?”
“We decided a good boat with a hold full of nuts would save us. When I was small I used to steal filbert nuts from the table so that she could build up a store. I suppose she ate them privately; she never disillusioned me. Every time it rained I would happily think about the vast reserves of nuts stowed under her bed.”
“Very kind of her,” Kate said. “What would she have to say about swineherds’ daughters?”
“Stay away from them,” he said promptly.
“My father would undoubtedly say the same of nearly married princes,” she said.
They were coming down the grand stairs now. “A last cluster of footmen and we’re free,” he whispered.
“Should I hobble?”
“No need. Wick isn’t here, and he’s the only one who might notice. I’m going to put you in the dog cart and take the reins myself. I’ll tell you when we’re out of sight of the front door. We’ll leave the road immediately.”
The moment he gave the word, Kate pulled up the veil and wrestled it off her head. “That is hot ,” she cried. She had a high flush and—
“Another wig?” he asked, disappointed. The night before, she’d been so drenched that he hadn’t been able to tell exactly what color her hair was, but he thought it was yellow, like mustard or old wine.
“I always wear a wig,” she said primly. But then she looked at him and laughed, and he felt a bolt of desire so fierce that he almost dropped the reins. “My hair is my only glory, so I’m saving it for when I can truly be myself: Kate rather than Victoria.”
“You’re Kate today,” he said.
“No, I’m not. The only reason I’m out driving with you is that Victoria is a bit of a trollop,” she said with a wicked little smile. “I myself would never do anything like this.”
“What do you do instead of trolloping?” he asked with not a little curiosity.
“This and that,” she said lightly.
There was a bit of silence as he negotiated the dog cart off the road and onto a little track that wound around the castle, just under the walls. “What sort of things?” he asked. “Taking care of pigs?”
“Actually, no pigs,” she said. “That’s a cheering thought, isn’t it? If I get to feeling downtrodden I can just contemplate what might have been, in short, the pigs.”
“Do you feel downtrodden?”
“Now and then,” she said airily. “I have such a ferocious temper that people tread on me at their peril. Besides, my godmother is taking me in hand, and next time you see me, I’ll be respectably living in London with Henry at my side.”
Lady Wrothe must be giving her a dowry, Gabriel thought, which was decent of her. Though he hated the idea of Kate flirting with cretinous Londoners; in fact, it made him want to snatch her and—
Act like the bad prince in a fairy tale.
Christ.
“You look a bit hot,” Kate said. “Where is this nunnery, anyway?”
“We’re not actually going to a nunnery. We’re going around the side of the castle, and we’ll enter one of the gardens, a secret one.”
“A secret garden . . . how on earth did you find it? Don’t tell me that a fairy led the way.”
“I was given a key. It’s a secret merely because the gate opens out to the castle grounds, rather than the courtyard, so no one bothers to go there. Even Wick hasn’t investigated it.”
They drove in a circle around the castle for a few more minutes. Then Gabriel pulled up the pony and jumped out, throwing the reins over a small bush. He grabbed a basket from the cart and turned to give Kate a hand, but she was already out of the cart.
He wanted—what he wanted was ridiculous. He wanted to be blatantly possessive, to pluck her from the carriage, carry her to the gate. He wanted to throw down a blanket and pull up her skirts right there in the open air where anyone could see them.
He wanted to—
He’d lost his mind.
That was the explanation, he thought, walking after Kate, who was hopping about and picking flowers like a five-year-old. Wick was right. The whole question of marriage, of Princess Tatiana’s imminent arrival, had rattled his mental state.
He was about to marry. Marry. Which made it all the more unfortunate that—he stopped and rearranged his breeches—there was no one he wanted to be with but one illegitimate daughter of a swineherd, gathering daisies a few feet away.
It was just like a fairy tale, except that life wasn’t like fairy tales, and princes didn’t get to be with swineherds’ daughters, not unless they broke every social convention they had learned in their life.