A Kiss at Midnight

“I think that there might be some infection inside the wound,” Kate said, frowning. “Your lip mended quickly, but . . .” She pushed gently, and Victoria cried out. “It’s going to have to be lanced.”

“Never!” Mariana roared.

“I couldn’t allow my face to be cut,” Victoria said, trembling all over.

“But you don’t want to have a disfigurement,” Kate said, schooling her tone to patience.

Victoria blinked while she thought about that.

“Nothing will happen until the London doctors arrive,” Mariana announced, sitting back down. She had a wild enthusiasm for anyone, and anything, from London. Kate suspected it was the result of a childhood spent in the country, but since Mariana never let slip even a hint about her past, it was hard to know.

“Well, let’s hope they arrive soon,” Kate said, wondering whether an infected lip created any risk of blood infection. Presumably not . . . “Why do you want me to join you for dinner, Mariana?”

“Because of my lip, of course,” Victoria said, snuffling like a small pig.

“Your lip,” Kate repeated.

“I can’t go on the visit, can I?” Victoria added, with a characteristic, if maddening, lack of clarity.

“Your sister was to pay a very important visit to a member of Lord Dimsdale’s family in just a few days,” Mariana put in. “If you weren’t so busy traipsing around the estate listening to the sob stories of feckless women, you’d remember that. He’s a prince . A prince!”

Kate dropped onto her stool again and looked at her two relatives. Mariana was as hard and bright as a new ha’penny. In contrast, Victoria’s features were blurred and indistinct. Her hair was a delightful pale rose color, somewhere between blonde and red, and curled winsomely around her face. Mariana’s hair had the sharp-edged perfection of someone whose maid spent three hours with a curling iron achieving precisely the look she wanted.

“I fail to see what the postponed visit has to do with me,” Kate said, “though I am very sympathetic about your disappointment, Victoria.” And she was, too. Though she loathed her stepmother, she had never felt the same hatred for her stepsister. For one thing, Victoria was too soft-natured for anyone to dislike. And for another, Kate couldn’t help being fond of her. If Kate had taken a great deal of abuse from Mariana, the kind of affection that her stepmother lavished on her daughter was, to Kate’s mind, almost worse.

“Well,” Victoria said heavily, sitting down on a pile of gowns about the approximate height of a stool, “you have to be me. It took me a while to understand it, but Mother has it all cleverly planned out. And I’m sure my darling Algie will agree.”

“I couldn’t possibly be you, whatever that means,” Kate said flatly.

“Yes, you can,” Mariana said. She had finished her cigarillo and was lighting a second from the first. “And you will,” she added.

“No, I won’t. Not that I have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Be Victoria in what context? And with whom?”

“With Lord Dimsdale’s prince, of course,” Mariana said, regarding her through a faint haze of smoke. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“You want me to pretend to be Victoria? In front of a prince? Which prince?”

“I didn’t understand at first either,” Victoria said, running her finger over her injured lip. “You see, before Algie can marry me, we need the approval of some relative of his.”

“The prince,” Mariana put in.

“He’s a prince from some little country in the back of beyond, that’s what Algie says. But he’s the only representative of Algie’s mother’s family who lives in England, and she won’t release his inheritance without the prince’s approval. His father’s will,” Victoria confided, “is most dreadfully unfair. If Algie marries before thirty years of age, without his mother’s approval, he loses part of his inheritance—and he’s not even twenty yet!”

Very smart of Papa Dimsdale, to Kate’s mind. From what she’d seen, Dimsdale Junior was about as ready to manage an estate as the rats were to learn choral music. Not that it was her business. “The doctors will take a look at you tomorrow morning,” she told Victoria, “and then you’ll be off to see the prince. Rather like the cat looking at the queen.”

“She can’t go like that !” Mariana snapped. It was the first time that Kate had ever heard that edge of disgust applied to her daughter.

Victoria turned her head and looked at her mother, but said nothing.

“Of course she can,” Kate stated. “This sounds like a fool’s game to me. No one will believe for a moment that I’m Victoria. And even if they did, don’t you think they’d remember later? What happens when this prince stands up in the church and stops the ceremony, on the grounds that the bride isn’t the bride he met?”

“That won’t happen, if only because Victoria will be married directly afterwards, by parish license,” Mariana said. “This is the first time Dimsdale has been invited to the castle, and we can’t miss it. His Highness is throwing a ball to celebrate his betrothal, and you’re going as Victoria.”

“Why not just postpone your visit and go after the ball is over?”

“Because I have to get married,” Victoria piped up.

Kate’s heart sank. “You have to get married?”

Victoria nodded. Kate looked at her stepmother, who shrugged. “She’s compromised. Three months’ worth.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Kate exclaimed. “You hardly know Dimsdale, Victoria!”

“I love Algie,” Victoria said, her big eyes earnest. “I didn’t even want to debut, not after I saw him at Westminster Abbey that Sunday back in March, but Mother made me.”

“March,” Kate said. “You met him in March and now it’s June. Tell me that darling Algie proposed, oh, say three months ago, just after you fell in love, and you’ve kept it a secret?”

Victoria giggled at that. “You know exactly when he proposed, Kate! I told you first, after Mother. It was just two weeks ago.”

The lines between Mariana’s nose and mouth couldn’t be plumped by a miracle cream made of crushed pearls. “Dimsdale was slightly tardy in his attentions.”

“Not tardy in his attentions ,” Kate said. “He’s seems to have been remarkably forward in that department.”

Mariana threw her a look of dislike. “Lord Dimsdale very properly proposed marriage once he understood the situation.”

“I would kill the man, were I you,” Kate told her.

“Would you?” She gave an odd smile. “You always were a fool. The viscount has a title and a snug fortune, once he gets his hands on it. He’s utterly infatuated with your sister, and he’s set on marrying her.”

“Fortunate,” Kate commented. She looked back at Victoria. She was delicately patting her lip over and over again. “I told you to hire a chaperone, Mariana. She could have had anyone.”

Mariana turned back to her glass without a comment. In truth, Victoria probably wasn’t for just any man. She was too soft, too much like a soggy pudding. She cried too much.