A Kiss at Midnight

“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 fell 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.

“Did you have to be quite so violent? These are my favorite shoes,” he said. “And I don’t think I’m always an ass.”

She backed up a few more steps. “While I might pity you for your faulty thought processes, you have so many other attributes that command pity that I won’t bother.”

“If I am an ass,” he said, “what does that make you?”

“Uninterested,” she said flatly.

“A snappish little shrew,” he retorted.

His eyes were narrowed, and for the first time since she met him, he looked angry. Against all odds, the look of him made her laugh. “You look like a grocer whose daily allotment of potatoes didn’t arrive.”

“Potatoes,” he said. “You compare yourself to a potato?”

“Look, you just can’t go and kiss English ladies whenever you feel the urge,” she said. “Here, Caesar! Come back.” Caesar had apparently realized the lion was asleep and had started sniffing at the cage bars again. “I don’t want you turned into the lion’s supper.”

“Why can’t I?”

A mop of hair had fallen over his eyes and she had to admit that he looked like the sort of man who could kiss anyone he pleased. He looked explosive and utterly sensual and dangerous. Henry’s assessment of him came back into her mind at that very moment: He was just like her father, the sort of man who would never be faithful.

Her smile turned bittersweet. “Because you’re not for every woman,” she explained, trying to put it kindly. “For goodness’ sake, are all princes like this?”

He walked closer and she eyed him, but he didn’t look lustful as much as curious.

“You can’t tell me that a woman simply enters a royal court in Marburg or wherever it is you’re from and expects to be kissed by any prince who happens upon her.”

“Of course not!”

“Well, why on earth would you think I am available for kissing?”

“To be honest, because you’re here in the dark,” he said.

It was a fair point. “I’m here only because of my dogs,” she said defensively.

“You spoke to me for quite a while. You have no chaperone with you. Wick tells me that you arrived with a single maid to attend you.”