A Kiss at Midnight

“You’ll be at the castle for three or four days,” Victoria said.

She got to her feet, and for the first time, Kate recognized that her sister was indeed going to have a child. There was something slightly clumsy about the way she moved.

“I’m sorry,” Victoria said, walking over to stand before Kate.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for!” Mariana interjected.

“Yes, there is,” she insisted. “I’m sorry that our father was the sort of man he was. I’m not sorry that he married my mother, but I’m—I’m just sorry about all of it. About what you must think of him now.”

Kate didn’t want to think about her father. She had tried not to think of him in the last seven years, since his death. It was too painful to think about the way he laughed, and the way he would stand by the fireplace and tell her amusing stories of London, reflected firelight glinting from his wineglass.

And now there was a whole new reason to not think of him.

She returned Victoria’s embrace politely, then disengaged herself and turned to Mariana. “Why must I come to dinner tonight?”

“Lord Dimsdale has some doubt that you two look enough alike to fool someone who might have met your sister.”

“But my hair—”

“It’s not the hair,” her stepmother said. “We’ll put you in a decent gown and you’ll see the resemblance soon enough. Victoria is known for her beauty, her dogs, and her glass slippers. As long as you don’t indulge your churlish tongue, you’ll pass.”

“What on earth is a glass slipper?” Kate asked.

“Oh, they’re marvelous!” Victoria cried, clasping her hands together. “I brought them into fashion myself this season, Kate, and then everyone started wearing them.”

“Your feet are about the same size,” Mariana said. “They’ll fit.”

Kate looked down at her tired, gray gown and then up at her stepmother. “What would you have done if my father had lived? If I had debuted when I was supposed to and people recognized the resemblance between myself and Victoria?”

“I didn’t worry about it,” Mariana said with one of her shrugs.

“Why not? Wouldn’t there have been the risk that someone would have seen the two of us together and guessed?”

“She’s five years younger than you. I would have kept her in the schoolroom until you married.”

“I might not have taken. I might not have found a husband. My father would have . . .”

A smile twisted the corner of Mariana’s lips. “Oh, you would have taken. Don’t you ever look in the mirror?”

Kate stared at her. Of course she looked in the mirror. She saw her perfectly regular features staring back at her. She didn’t see Victoria’s dewy eyes, or her light curls, or her charming smile, because she didn’t have any of those.

“You’re a bloody fool,” Mariana said, reaching out for her cigarillo case and then dropping it again. “I’m smoking too many of these, which is entirely your fault. For God’s sake, get yourself into a decent dress by eight this evening. You’d better go see Victoria’s maid straight off; you’re not fit to scrub the fireplace in that rag you’re wearing.”

“But I don’t want Algie to see my lip like this,” Victoria said, sniffing.

“I’ll instruct Cherryderry to put a single candelabrum on the table,” her mother said. “Dimsdale won’t be able to see a rat if it jumps on the plate in front of him.”

So it all came back to the rats, which was fitting, because that’s where the story began.

Four

K ate knew quite well that the household was on her side. They couldn’t help it; it was bred into the bones of the best servants. They were trained to serve ladies and gentlemen, not those of their own class. Obviously they had sensed that Mariana’s origins were not genteel. For her part, Kate had imagined that her stepmother was a shopkeeper’s daughter, who had married a colonel. She hadn’t thought she was—

What she was.

A fallen woman. Her father’s mistress. A trollop, by any other name.

No wonder poor Victoria found herself with child. Her mother was hardly qualified to steer her through the season. For that matter, Kate wasn’t entirely sure how to behave in polite society either. She had been only twelve when her mother retired to bed, and sixteen when her mother finally died and her father remarried. Though she’d learned how to use cutlery, the finer nuances of behavior in polite society escaped her.

She’d had a year of dancing instruction, but it felt as if it had happened in another lifetime. Weren’t there rules about talking to princes, for example? Did you have to back out of the room after speaking to one? Or was that a rule that applied only to kings and queens?

She found Victoria’s maid, Rosalie, in Victoria’s dressing room. Years ago the chamber had been designated for guests, but at some point Victoria had amassed so many dresses—and they had no visitors—that it had been transformed into a wardrobe.

Kate looked around with some curiosity. The room was lined with cherry cabinets clearly stuffed with gowns. Flounces of lace and corners of embroidered fabric poked from half-open drawers. The room smelled like roses and fresh linen.

“Cherryderry told me of the dinner tonight, and the seamstresses coming tomorrow,” Rosalie said, “and I’ve been through all of Miss Victoria’s gowns.” That would have been no small task, given that Victoria had half again as many as her mother, though they were more neatly arranged. “I think you should wear this tonight, as it won’t need more than a stitch or two around the bodice.”

She held up a gown of the palest pink silk. It wasn’t particularly low-cut, but it looked to be tight until just below the bosom, when the overskirt was pulled up into curls and furbelows, revealing a dark rose lining.

Kate reached out a finger. Her father had died before they would have begun the visits to modistes to assemble a wardrobe for her debut. She had gone straight from funereal blacks to sturdy cambrics, reflective of her changed position in the household.

“ Couleur de rosette ,” Rosalie said briskly. “I fancy it will set off your hair a treat. You won’t need stays, being so slim.”

She started to unbutton her, but Kate pushed her hands away.

“Please allow me—” Rosalie began.

Kate shook her head. “I’ve been dressing myself for years, Rosalie. You can help me put that gown on, if necessary, but I will pull off my clothing myself.” Which she did, leaving her in nothing more than an old chemise. She did own a pair of stays, but they were too uncomfortable to wear, as she was on horseback every day.

Rosalie didn’t say a word, just looked at the tired chemise, and the way Kate had darned it (not terribly well), and the length of it (too short). “Mr. Daltry . . .” the maid said, and paused.

“Turning in his grave, et cetera,” Kate said. “Let’s get on with it, Rosalie.”

So the maid began pulling out hairpins and clicking her tongue like someone counting pennies. “I never would have thought you had all this hair!” she said finally, having unpinned and unwound all of Kate’s locks.

“I don’t care to have it messing about,” Kate explained. “It gets in my way while I’m working.”