A Kiss at Midnight

Kate would rather slay herself than marry Algie, but she could see why Victoria adored him. He had a coziness, a kind of sweetness around his mouth and eyes that was a soothing antidote to Mariana’s bitterness.

“I just wish we’d arrive at the castle,” he said tetchily. His collar was so high that it was chafing his ears, Kate noticed. She herself was lounging back on the padded carriage seat, so comfortable that she could hardly move. Normally by this time in the day she would have already been on a horse for hours.

“Are you worried about meeting your uncle?” she inquired.

“Why should I be? He comes from a little backwater, a principality they call it over there, but in England it wouldn’t be more than a small county. Hardly a kingdom. I can’t imagine why he has a title. It’s absurd.”

“I believe there are many small principalities on the Continent,” Kate said, with a touch of doubt. Mariana didn’t believe in taking a newspaper, and her schooling, such as it was, had come from filching books from her father’s library, not that her stepmother had ever noticed their absence.

“I would just introduce you, and then we could leave in the morning, but the prince insisted that you attend his ball. Most clear, his letter was. I expect he’s worried that he won’t be able to fill the ballroom.” He eyed her. “My mother suspects that he might be making a play for you.”

“Not for me,” Kate corrected him. “For my half sister.”

“And isn’t that a turn-up for the books,” Algie said gloomily. “I must say that I thought the colonel existed. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Daltry told me the truth of it last night. You’d never know it from looking at her, would you? If my mother ever finds out, she’ll explode.”

Kate thought that one would know it from looking at her stepmother, but she nodded, out of some vague sense of family loyalty. “There’s no reason your mother need ever discover the truth. I certainly won’t tell anyone.”

“At any rate, I love Victoria, and I must marry her, and my mother wants me to have the prince’s approval, and that’s that.”

Kate gave Algie an approving pat on the knee. It must have been difficult to get so many thoughts in logical order and she certainly didn’t want to ignore his accomplishment. It was interesting to see what a healthy fear he had of his mother; that might explain why Mariana’s demand that he marry Victoria had instantly borne fruit.

“We should be entering his lands now,” Algie said. “The man owns an awful amount of land in Lancashire, you know. My uncle thought it was an abomination, turning good English soil over to a foreigner. For all he went to Oxford and so on, the prince still has foreign blood.”

“As do you,” Kate pointed out. “You are related to him through your mother, no?”

“Well, my mother . . .” Algie said, letting his voice trail off. Apparently he didn’t consider her blood to carry the foreign taint. “You know what I mean.”

“Have you ever met the prince?”

“Once or twice, when I was small. It’s rubbish, his being my uncle. He’s not that much older than I am: perhaps ten years or a bit more. So why should I be forced to parade my bride in front of him? It’s not as if he’s a king. He’s just a spare prince.”

“It will be quickly over,” Kate said.

“He’s desperate for funds, of course,” Algie reported. “I heard that his betrothed is—”

But whatever bit of hearsay he was about to pass on was lost in a welter of noise. The coachman suddenly bellowed and pulled the carriage to the right; the wheels squealed as they careened across the road; the dogs lost their breath expressing their opinions. Mercifully the vehicle came to a stop without toppling over, and the second carriage (carrying trunks, Rosalie, and Algie’s valet), managed to avoid bowling them over.

Algie pulled down his waistcoat, which had got rucked up in the disturbance. “I’d better see what happened. This will take a man,” he said, looking not a day older than his eighteen years. “You stay here where it’s safe. I’ve no doubt but that we have a bit of trouble with the axle or some such.”

Kate gave him a moment to exit from the carriage and then straightened her traveling bonnet and followed him.

Outside, she found the groomsman soothing the horses, while Algie himself was bowing so deeply that she expected his ears to touch his knees.

A man who had to be the prince was seated on a great chestnut steed, and for a moment she could see only his dark silhouette against the sun. She had the confused impression of his motion and power, easily controlled: an aggressive body, with big shoulders and muscled thighs.

She raised her hand to her eyes to shade the sun just as he leaped from his horse. Dark hair swirled around his shoulders as if he were one of the actors who came through the village to play King Richard or Macbeth.

Her eyes adjusted and she changed that idea. He was no Macbeth . . . more the king of the fairies, Oberon himself, eyes at a slight, wicked tilt, with just a hint of the exotic. His “foreign blood,” as Algie had it.

He had an accent, a delicious smoky accent that matched his eyes and his thick hair, and there was something else about him, something more alive , more powerful and arrogant than the pallid Englishmen she met every day.

She realized her mouth had fallen open, and snapped it shut. Thank goodness, he hadn’t noticed her.

Groveling probably happened before the prince all the time. His Highness was nodding to Algie. His retinue had dismounted and were standing about him. The man to the left was precisely what Kate imagined courtiers should be, all curled and colorful like a peacock. There was even a boy in splendid red livery. Apparently they were out shooting, a royal shooting party.

Then he did notice her.

He surveyed her coolly, as if she were a milkmaid at the side of the road. There wasn’t a spark of interest in the man’s eyes, just a haughty calculation, as if she’d offered to sell him milk and he found it curdled. As if he were mentally stripping off her too-large traveling costume and staring at the stockings rolled up inside Kate’s corset.

She inclined her head a fraction of an inch. She’d be damned if she’d rush forward and curtsy, there in the dust and the road, to a prince whose self-importance mattered more than his manners.

He didn’t react. Didn’t nod, didn’t smile, just looked away and turned back to his horse, swung onto the saddle, and rode away. His back was even larger than she’d at first thought, larger than the smithy’s in the village, larger than . . .

She’d never met anyone so rude in her life, and that included the smithy, who was often drunk and so had an excuse.

Algie was snapping at the footman, telling him to open the carriage door and make it quick. “Of course it wasn’t the prince’s fault that our horses were startled by his party,” he said. “Now get us back on the road and be quick about it.”

“Caesar!” Kate called. The little dog was busy yapping at the heels of a horse who could brain him with one restless movement. “Come!”

Algie motioned to a footman, but Kate stopped him. “Caesar has to learn to obey,” she said, taking out her bag of cheese.

Freddie and Coco crowded against her skirts, acting like the ravenous little pigs they were. She gave them each a piece of cheese and a pat, and then all of a sudden Caesar realized what was going on. “Come!” she called again.