A Kiss at Midnight

None whatsoever.

His head rose in a smooth curve from a slim neck to a mustachioed mouth, and then up to a wide and rather graceful forehead. The unfortunate absence of a chin meant that his head resembled a squat bowling pin. He was around thirty; he smelled like a civet cat and had dyed his whiskers. One had to appreciate that the mustache was an attempt to widen the bottom half of his face, but the effect was unfortunate.

Really, Effie was generous when she called him a toad, Gabriel thought, lavishing a smile on him, the kind a mongoose gives a cobra.

“When will your betrothed arrive?” Beckham was asking.

“One hopes before the ball,” Toloose said, carefully wiping down his billiard cue. “Every flower in England is here, hoping to be plucked by His Highness, and they won’t give up until the bride actually arrives. No one even deigns to flirt with the rest of us.”

Beckham laughed. “You insult our host, Toloose, old fellow. The Continent is more formal than we are amongst ourselves. You must forgive the man,” he said, turning to Gabriel and lowering his voice. “Ribald but well-meaning.”

Gabriel met Toloose’s eyes over Beckham’s shoulder. “In this case, Toloose is correct,” he said. “I do not know the bride whom my brother has chosen for me. Yet we have—how do I say?—a few weeks, a period of time in which to reflect on each other.” He deliberately added a certain awkwardness to his speech. Englishmen invariably underestimated those who did not speak their language with fluency, a foolish habit that would get them in huge trouble someday.

“And in the meantime you can survey our English beauties,” Beckham said, giving him a jolly tap on the shoulder.

Gabriel stopped himself from swatting the man like a gnat. “The young English ladies are so exquisite in their . . . exquisiteness. A garden of delightful flowers, as Mr. Toloose has called them.”

Toloose snorted, over where he was chalking his stick, so Gabriel threw him a warning glance. “My dear Toloose introduced me to a charming girl this very morning,” he said. “Miss—what was her name?—Effie something. With lovely blue eyes. I am quite taken with her.”

Toloose’s eyebrow jerked up; of all the men in the room, he knew for certain that he had not taken Miss Effie Starck anywhere near Gabriel.

There was a little silence in the room, as the cluster of men presumably tried to figure out how to deliver the nasty bit of gossip Beckham had put about.

“Ephronsia Starck is a bit old,” Beckham himself said, with a tittering laugh. “Must be well into her twenties.”

“She hasn’t the best reputation,” Dewberry said, “but I’ve never cottoned to it myself. Think there was some misunderstanding.” He chomped on his cigar and looked straight at Beckham.

“Yes, because who could believe that little Effie would choose Beckham?” Lord Wrothe said softly, coming closer. By that point in the evening, he had to have drunk a few bottles of champagne, but miraculously he was steady on his feet. “ We love you, of course, Beckham, but  . . .”

Beckham’s color rose above his high collar and he tittered again. “I’ve had my admirers,” he said.

“What was the story?” Algie asked, in his usual bumbling fashion. “Did she kiss you or something, Beckham?”

“Dear me,” Gabriel said. “I trust she didn’t give you an unwanted kiss, Lord Beckham? Though one must ask whether there is such a thing as an unwanted kiss from such a delightful young lady.”

“More than a kiss,” Beckham said, a trifle sullenly. He seemed to have grasped that the atmosphere was not entirely charitable.

Gabriel turned around and gestured to the footman stationed at the door. “Champagne for everyone.”

Dewberry was the sort of man who wouldn’t tolerate unfairness; Gabriel could see that at a glance. Wrothe looked like the sort who might drink himself into a stupor, but even inebriated wouldn’t lose his sense of himself as a gentleman.

“From what I heard,” Toloose called from the billiard table, where he was setting up the balls again, “she was so overset by your indescribable charms, Beckham, that she attempted an intimate caress.”

Gabriel let his eyes drift from the top of Beckham’s head, pause in the area where a chin should have been, down to the padded shoulders, pinched-in waist, and buckled slippers. “Odd  . . . Not that I mean it as an insult, my dear Lord Beckham. But young ladies are generally so frivolous, are they not? So prone to look to the outside, rather than ascertain the inner worth of a man.”

“The odd thing, to my mind,” said Dewberry, “is that Miss Effie ain’t alone. One of my cousin’s gals, visiting from Scotland, had a similar type of story bruited about. Except that the little gal, Delia, supposedly dragged Lord Beckham into a closet.”

Beckham glanced toward the door, but Gabriel was standing squarely between him and escape.

“So adventuresome, these English lasses,” Gabriel commented. “Yet they look as if—how do you say?—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”

“That’s just it,” Dewberry said, coming to stand at Gabriel’s shoulder. “Delia weren’t an adventuresome sort of girl, and she had a different tale about what happened.”

“Really?” Gabriel said. “You were lucky that her father didn’t take up a disagreement with you, Lord Beckham. But of course on the Continent we are so much more prone to turn to a rapier to resolve our differences.” He rested his forefinger on the handle of his rapier, and Beckham’s eyes followed the movement.

“Delia was betrothed already and now she’s got two little ones of her own,” Dewberry said. “But she had no father to take after His Lordship. The same as Miss Starck, though I didn’t think of it until now.”

“I fail to see what any of this has to do with the prince’s original question,” Beckham said in his light, high voice. “Elegance will always awaken a woman’s ambitions, you know. If you gentlemen would like a few tips on how to heat up a woman’s appreciation, I’d be happy to pass some on.”

It was a masterly attempt. “You think that Effie Starck was overcome by lust for your costume?” Toloose said, drifting over to stand at Gabriel’s other shoulder. “Odd, because, if you’ll forgive me, Beckham, she’s never made the slightest approach to me .”

Toloose was without doubt the most elegant man in the room. He didn’t have a pinched waist or a waxed mustache, but Gabriel judged that even his brother Rupert would have lusted after Toloose’s swallowtail coat and French cuffs.

“Well,” Beckham said, “ladies generally prefer an air of refinement, Toloose. If you’ll forgive me,” he added.

There was something aggressively masculine about Toloose . . . perhaps it was the look in his eye. Or the way he was holding his billiard cue. It was amazing the way a man in an embroidered coat could take on the air of a dockworker.

“I’m not following,” Algie complained. “Either Effie dragged Beckham into a closet or she didn’t.”

“She didn’t,” Beckham stated.

“No, Delia did that,” Gabriel put in.

“Oh, so there were two of them,” Algie said. “I thought the one girl had done it all. Effie Starck is a bit small for dragging men about, don’t you know? Not up to the task, I would say.”