A Kiss at Midnight

She almost dropped her fan.

“Kneeling at my feet,” he said, “coaxing my breeches to fall to the floor so that you could touch me . . . taste me . . . as you will.”

Kate swallowed.

It wasn’t Aretino’s pictures that came to mind, but the image of herself, kneeling before him, pulling his breeches down just as he was doing now. Leaning forward and—

His shirt was tented in the front. She frowned, trying to remember the smallest details of those engravings. That was just it: They were small.

“It seems you see something that keeps your attention, my lady,” he said.

“Ump,” she said ungracefully. “You may continue.” She waved her fan.

The white shirt rose, covered his face, fluttered in the air, fell to the side.

Kate’s mouth fell open, but it was behind the fan, so he couldn’t see it. Gabriel had to be three times the size of the men Aretino portrayed. “You are a bit larger than the pictures would suggest,” she whispered.

“Italians,” Gabriel said, standing with his hands on his hips and obviously enjoying her fascinated gaze. “Wait until you see the statues in Florence. Some of those statues have all the endowment of a small boy.”

“Well,” Kate said, forcing herself to look up, but that only gave her the chance to see what the rest of him looked like, the taut stomach, the muscled chest, the arrow of hair leading down to . . . to there .

“And now I must dress myself,” Gabriel said, casually turning. “I asked my man to set out evening clothing. We’re dancing tonight, did I mention that?”

Kate bit her lip at the look of him from behind, the powerful swell of his shoulders narrowing to his waist. Even his arse was muscled and powerful, as unlike Algie’s plump round bottom as imaginable. “Yes,” she said faintly.

He bent over to pick up a costume left for him on the side table.

“I don’t always bother with smalls,” he said chattily. “But when a man is wearing silk breeches, it stands to reason. Especially if there’s the faintest possibility that his rod might make an appearance.”

She nodded like a silly doll as he pulled on his smalls, followed by stockings embroidered with clocks in gold thread.

“Those are very nice,” she managed to say, and cleared her throat again.

“I can’t say I generally pay much attention to my dress.” Gabriel hauled on a pair of silk breeches so tight that they showed every bulge. Every bulge.

“You can’t wear that,” she gasped, before she thought.

“Don’t you approve?” He grinned at her.

“I can see—anyone can see—” She gestured toward his front.

He gave himself a careless pat. “That’s not going anywhere until I’m out of this room. I’ll have to walk slowly down the stairs and think about something dreadfully boring.”

A billowing shirt went over his head, but this one was considerably more elegant than the one he had worn, with a gorgeous little frill at the neck.

“I must beg a favor, my lady,” he said, as grave as any courtier.

“Yes?”

“My cuffs.”

Her fingers slipped and trembled, pushing the rubies through the buttonholes on his shirtsleeves. If the truth be told, she felt ravenous. And that was no proper emotion for a young lady to feel.

“There you are,” she said. Her voice came out a husky rumble.

Gabriel moved to the glass and tied his cravat in a moment, his hands moving so swiftly, pleating, folding, and tying, that she could hardly follow.

“How are you tying your cravat?” she inquired, striving desperately to have a conversation. Any sort of conversation. Anything to stop herself from lusting after him like a veritable trollop.

“The Gordian knot,” he said. “It’s not too high or fussy and allows me to breathe.”

“Algie told me that he often ruins four to five cravats at a time,” Kate said. “He tries to create a Trône d’Amour, but he calls it a trumpeter.”

The corner of his mouth turned down. “He looks like a long-necked goose.”

Next was a silk waistcoat, a dark sea green with black embroidery. And finally he shrugged into a coat made of the same material, as tight as it was resplendent.

He pulled on a pair of buckled shoes. “I suppose I might wear slippers,” he said, “but they’re bloody cold on these stone steps.”

Without pausing he moved back to the glass, pulled back his thick hair and pulled it tightly into a queue. “Powder?” he asked himself, and then turned to her. “Must I powder? It is my own castle, after all.”

“Surely most gentlemen will be in wigs,” she managed. From being a naked, virile man he had transformed to a fairy-tale prince. “Your—Princess Tatiana will expect you to wear a wig.”

“Loathe them. On me and you. This will have to do. My sword,” he said, looking about. He picked up his rapier and buckled it around his hips, under his coat. “Gloves.” He snatched up a pair from the table.

Then he walked to just before her and put a leg forward, slid into a graceful court bow. “My lady, I fear I must leave you.”

Kate took a deep breath. The man in front of her was the epitome of elegance, as gorgeous a piece of manhood as ever graced a castle. She rose to her feet, held out her hand.

He raised it to his lips, and she felt the touch of his tongue like a brand. Her fingers trembled and he rewarded her with a smile that would have made a saint swoon.

“I shall return as soon as I am able.” He turned, the wide skirts of his coat flaring behind him.

Kate stood in place, watching, feeling as if she’d been bewitched. He almost left, turned at the last minute. “I forgot,” he said. “Something to keep my guest occupied during my absence.”

He reached out, picked up a small velvet-covered book, and tossed it to her. Reflexively she reached out and snatched it from the air.

“There’s my Kate,” he said, a wry smile quirking his lips. “Do you know how many women would have squealed and allowed the book to drop to the ground?”

The door closed quietly behind him.

Kate stood for a moment longer, and then looked down at the book. Her fingers rubbed across the velvet and she slowly opened the front cover, read the title page.

The School of Venus .

Thirty-one

G abriel stopped after the first turn of the steps descending from the tower and attempted to calm his pulse. His rod was threatening to rip through silk, and the only thing he could think about was the way Kate’s lips parted in a gasp when she saw him in the flesh.

It hadn’t frightened her. She was the kind of woman whom men dreamed about, the sort who wouldn’t cower under the coverlet waiting to do her marital duty, but a woman with whom one could grow old, always discovering, never tiring, never less than enamored, bewitched, in lust.

He leaned his head back against the stone wall. His heart was thumping in his chest, tempting him to turn around, slam through that door, cover her mouth with his.

But she wasn’t his. She couldn’t be his. The chill truth of it slowly filtered through his blood, like the icy rain that Dante described in hell.

She couldn’t be his because he had this bloody castle to support. And that meant he had to take his pretty arse downstairs and meet Tatiana, the woman gilded in Russian rubles.