A Kiss at Midnight

  “You’re splitting hairs.” She kept her back turned to him, obstinate thing that she was. Yet somehow the delicate line of her back was even more seductive than the curve of her bosom. He would like to fall on his knees and trace each bump of her spine with his tongue.

  He shouldn’t be thinking that, Gabriel realized dimly. She wasn’t for him. Not for him . . . not for him. Kate bent over to peer more closely at something hidden in the grasses, and his mind presented him with a picture of himself kissing her waist, then slipping down, down . . .

  “Shall we have our luncheon?” he said, growling out the words.

  “There’s another marble here,” Kate said, pulling at a tangle of ivy and weeds.

  He grunted and came to her side. He wrenched so hard that a great bunch of ivy came loose, roots and all, sending dirt and leaves flying into the air.

  “A statue of a child this time,” Kate said, dropping on her knees.

  The irresponsible, lustful side of Gabriel’s body approved of that. Yes . . . on her knees . . .

  He turned away and stamped back outside the garden to fetch the picnic basket, cursing his lust.

  Wick was right. He was chasing Kate only because he couldn’t marry her, and he couldn’t bed her either. Because he was an idiot, in short.

  And probably she was right too. He was a self-important ass who snatched off her wig just to suit himself. He was getting as bad as Augustus. As Rupert. Wick had kept him in line for most of their lives, belting him when he started to believe that his title meant anything . . .

  But had he turned into an ass anyway, when Wick wasn’t watching? Probably.

  Twenty-three

  Kate cleared the last weeds from the statue of the child. She was a chubby toddler, sitting on the ground in a smock, and laughing. “Hello there,” Kate murmured to the little stone girl. “I wonder . . .”

  She pulled ivy from her pedestal and found a simple inscription: Merry, Darling.

  “Your gloves are ruined,” came a voice over her shoulder.

  “My maid brought along boxes and boxes of gloves,” she said. “Look, Gabriel. Isn’t she a dear? She has ringlets.”

  “And wings,” Gabriel pointed out. “She’s a baby angel.”

  “Do you suppose that she was Merry—or was Merry a beloved kitten, perhaps? She reminds me of the cupids in the north corridor. Perhaps she was made by the sculptor stolen from Italy, the one who escaped in a butter churn.”

  “Does one erect a statue just for a kitten? My guess would be that this is a memorial, if not the actual grave itself.” He bent down and brushed away a head of yarrow that nodded against the child’s cheek.

  “That’s so terribly sad,” Kate said.

  “There’s an instinctive wish to remember the child playing and laughing,” he said. “When we were excavating Barbary two years ago, we discovered that the tombs of children were full of toys so that they could play happily in the afterlife.”

  Kate nodded. “Not so different, I suppose, from putting a statue of Merry actually playing in the garden.”

  “I have a little pot upstairs that I’ve been working on. It came from a tomb, and it originally held knucklebones. Presumably they were the boy’s own toys. I’ll show it to you someday.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” Kate said, meaning it.

  “My old professor, Biggitstiff, is an arrant blockhead, and threw out the pot, knucklebones and all. In fact, he had the men simply throw dirt in the tomb after he discovered there wasn’t any gold inside.”

  “Is he interested only in gold?”

  “In truth, no. But he’s interested in fame. He wants the big find, the exciting discovery. Something as trifling as the grave of a poor child would never interest him. That’s what bothers me about his excavation of Carthage. He’ll be rampaging about, looking for Dido’s grave, and doubtless destroying all sorts of interesting artifacts.”

  His voice had moved away again and she looked over her shoulder to find that he was spreading a blanket in a relatively clear spot of grass.

  “Come and eat,” he called.

  She scrambled to her knees and came to join him. “It’s a feast,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Take off those filthy gloves,” Gabriel said. He waved a chicken leg at her.

  “Mmmm,” Kate said, stripping off her gloves. “Things smell so much better in the outdoors; have you noticed?” She bit into the chicken.

  He didn’t answer, just handed her a glass of wine that slid, light and faintly sparkling, down her throat.

  She didn’t notice until she’d eaten the chicken leg, a meat tartlet, a piece of mouthwatering cheddar cheese, and a pickled quail’s egg that he hadn’t answered. In fact, he wasn’t even eating; he was just propped up on his elbow watching her. And handing her food.

  She narrowed her eyes at him over a piece of almond cake. “What?” she demanded.

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Nothing.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Trying to fatten you up,” he said readily enough. “You’re too thin, even though you weren’t sick in the spring.”

  “I’ve never been plump,” she stated.

  “Ah, but you need more than that gorgeous mop of hair to catch a husband,” he said infuriatingly. “The best Englishwomen are soft. Luscious, really. Look at Lady Wrothe, your godmother. She’s like a gorgeous overbaked loaf, even at her age.”

  Kate ate the rest of her cake and scolded herself silently for minding that, apparently, he didn’t find her luscious.

  Gabriel had rolled over and was lying on his back, legs crossed, eating a chicken leg. His breeches clung to muscular thighs; her eyes drifted to broader shoulders. His eyes were squinted shut against the sun, and his eyelashes lay on his cheeks like an invitation.

  “I didn’t mean to say that you ripped the wings off butterflies,” she said abruptly, pulling her mind away from the prince’s princely attributes.

  “What about the illegitimate children I had with fields of milkmaids? Did you mean that?” he asked interestedly, though he didn’t bother to open his eyes. Instead he just reached out a hand. “May I have one of those little pasties?”

  She put a meat tart in his hand. “I would imagine that princes might have any number of bastard children,” she said. “What woman could resist you? And I didn’t mean that as a compliment to your charms.”

  “I heard you,” he said. He was silent for a moment.

  “Not that I mean you would have to employ force,” she added, feeling a qualm of conscience. He was so beautiful that he didn’t even need a title to have women at his feet.

  “I know.” He held out his hand again, broad but slim-fingered, a powerful man’s hand. She put a second tart squarely on his palm.

  “My brother Rupert,” Gabriel said, “has any number of bastards. He’s a pretty fellow.”

  “You’re—” She broke off just in time.

  “Not as pretty,” he said. “Rupert is more of a prince than I am. You should see him when he’s ruffled and bewigged. He’d drive you into a blind fury, no doubt about it.”

  “Really?”

  “He looks like someone in a fairy tale, and he acts like someone in one of Aretino’s books,” Gabriel said, turning over and propping himself up on his elbow.

  “Aretino? I seem to remember the name, but I’m not sure . . .”

  “You definitely don’t remember the name; he’s not an author known to ladies. Aretino was an Italian who specialized in books of naughty drawings that taught me a great deal as a lad. My father had a copy translated into English, though I have to say the language is fairly irrelevant. Ask your husband about his work someday.”

  Kate swallowed a grin. She knew exactly where she remembered that name from. She’d discovered Aretino’s School of Venus in her father’s library two years ago. The illustrations were revelatory.

  “Here, have some more wine,” Gabriel said. It poured into her glass like stained glass turned liquid, go
lden, fragrant, heady. “Rupert’s looks, together with his title, have had a bad effect on him.” He smirked. “I know you’ll have a hard time agreeing with me that a title could be an evil influence on a man.”

  She laughed aloud. Gabriel making fun of himself and his title was devastating. She felt a ping in the area of her heart and pushed it away.

  “He practiced on the household women from the time he was fourteen, until he started practicing on the countryside at large. My father thought it was funny.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Rupert could never get his mind around the fact that there was the chance that the women were afraid of losing their positions if they didn’t comply. It’s all fun to him: He sweet-talks them and undoubtedly gives pleasure in bed. But . . .”

  “What has happened to his children?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “We have a few of them in the castle with us. Along with their mothers, of course. When Augustus castle-cleaned, he threw fallen women out regardless of who tripped them up.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Kate said, biting down hard on a piece of candied pear. “But you don’t have any children of your own.” She knew it instinctively. Gabriel was as arrogant a male as a male could be—but the whole castle stood at his shoulder as evidence that he didn’t duck responsibilities.

  “Wick would kill me if I started producing false pennies,” he said lazily. “Otherwise I’d be seducing a milkmaid right now.” And he gave her an exaggerated leer that left no space for misunderstanding about the milkmaid in question.

  Kate reached over and snatched another bit of pear from his hand. “So Wick has kept you on the straight and narrow. I like it. He’s a good man.”

  Gabriel drained his glass. “Believe it or not, Katelet, I like to make love to women who won’t be hurt by my seduction. Otherwise . . .” He gave her a smile that the devil would love to imitate. “Otherwise I’d have you flat on your back in the grass, and you, my girl, would let me have my wicked way with you, title or no. Even if I was a swineherd.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Charming! You arrogant beast!”

  “I’m falling into the habit of honesty.” He leaned closer. “You’re the one who told me that English people favor uncomfortable truths.”

  “I fail to see what that has to do with anything. You are not English. And you’re not irresistible either.”

  “Let’s play English and trade uncomfortable truths. You can tell me one first. Or rather, since that’s your stock-in-trade, tell me another.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Tell me something that you think I don’t want to hear.”

  “There’s so much that you don’t want to hear,” she said, letting a touch of mockery edge her voice.

  “If you’re going to tell me that I’m outrageously handsome, I know it’s not true.”

  “You did say truths,” Kate said. His nose was too large for outrageous beauty, anyway.

  He laughed. “True enough, hard-hearted little Katelet. So go on, then.”

  “I think you’re . . .” She hesitated.

  “Arrogant?” he supplied.

  “You know that.”

  “Worse?”

  “I think that you will break your wife’s heart,” she said, coming out with it.

  She surprised him. He turned his head, and hair fell out of its queue, and curled by his shoulder. “Why?”

  “Because you intend to leave her, and go dig up this ancient city that you told me about. I can see, anyone could see, that you’re just biding your time here.”

  “I told you that myself. You can’t claim particular insight into my character.”

  “You’re going to leave for Carthage,” she said steadily, “and that’s not right. It’s not honoring the vows of marriage.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “To have and to hold,” she said. “In sickness or in health. With you off in Carthage, how would you know if your wife fell ill? If she died in childbirth?”

  “Her name is Tatiana. And I wouldn’t leave her if she were breeding!”

  “How would you know? Women often don’t know for months. To be even more blunt, are you planning not to bed Tatiana for three months before you skive off for Carthage? Because that’s problematic in a different way.”

  He sat up. “There are women who don’t want a husband sniffing around their petticoats all the time, you know. You seem to have a very romantic view of marriage in mind, and believe me, it’s not one that I see among royal families.”

  “I’ve read about dynastic marriages. Look at our own King James. He never loved his wife; they lived separately, and by some accounts, he loved the Duke of Buckingham better than she.”

  “Now you’re shocking me,” he said lightly. But his eyes avoided hers.

  “You won’t do it,” she said, suddenly realizing where she’d been blind. “You won’t be able to leave her.”

  “To leave?”

  She nodded.

  “I certainly will leave,” he said, with all the stubbornness of a very small boy insisting that he wants to ride his pony again.

  “No, you won’t. It’s not in you, Gabriel-the-Prince.”

  “Sods to that,” he said, and with one quick move, he pounced on her, flattening her onto the blanket.

  “Ugh!” Kate said, as the breath escaped from her lungs.

  He just looked down at her as if the heat of his body wasn’t burning into her limbs.

  “This is shocking,” Kate said, sounding like a silly, bleating lamb. But it was taking all her energy not to curl up against him and purr. Rather than wrap her arms around his neck, she made herself shove at his shoulders. “You, sir, are a regenerate!”

  He bent his head to one side and she felt his breath against her cheek. “Regenerate? Regenerate. Hmmm.”

  “Get off of me,” she said between clenched teeth. “You promised.”

  “I promised not to kiss you,” he agreed readily. “And I won’t.” His head dipped as she pushed against at his shoulder. “We degenerates don’t bother with kisses.” Then softly, wickedly, a wet tongue slid across the plane of her cheek. “Or did you mean that I’m a renegade?”

  “Oh!” A shiver went straight down Kate’s body, a kind of warning, followed instantly by a sweep of warmth. “Get off me!” she squeaked. “You promised not—”

  The tongue swept to her neck and she couldn’t help it, she squirmed against his hardness and a little whimper broke from her lips.

  “Are your kisses like your hair?” The question was so soft that she almost didn’t hear it, lost in a sensual haze. “For one man only . . . saved for the man you’ll marry?”

  “Yes, I’m saving both of them,” she said, gasping a bit, trying to pull herself together. Somehow her arms were caught between them so she couldn’t push him away the way she meant to.

  “What about licks?” he asked.

  She scarcely heard him over the wild beating of her heart. The very smell of him was intoxicating. Who knew that men—or was it only princes?—smelled like this, like secret spice with a touch of leather and soap?

  “It’s preposterous to think that my seeing your hair will delay your future domestic bliss,” Gabriel was saying into the curve of her neck. “It’s absurd.” His whisper burned her skin, sending little quakes down her body.

  “Isn’t it?” he said, raising his head and looking down at her. His eyes shone with a kind of dangerous pleasure. She knew it was dangerous, and yet—

  “I suppose,” she said, wondering what exactly she was agreeing to.

  “Rank superstition,” he said. His lips feathered along the curve of her cheek. “And don’t think this is a kiss, Kate, because it’s not. It’s rot to feel that you can’t show your hair to anyone until you’re trotting about under your own name.”

  She gasped. He was, his lips were, caressing her ear. “Oh!” She couldn’t help turning her head to the side so he could . . .

  “You like that,” Gabriel
said, his voice husky, melodic. The voice of the devil, Kate thought dimly, but she didn’t care. “If I promise not to corrupt you, Kate, may I kiss you? Please?”

  He was all enticing male weight and sweet voice, but Kate fought to think clearly. Did it matter if she kissed a prince in a garden? Would it change the fact that she was going to find a good man and marry him?

  She didn’t think it would. Not a kiss. If it stopped with a kiss.

  “You mustn’t seduce me,” she said, and then stiffened at the sound of her own voice, somehow dropped into a deep and sensuous register that she’d never heard before.

  He reacted to the sound too. His body seemed heavier on hers all of a sudden. He pushed up on his elbows, and her arms were free, but she didn’t strike him, or push him away. Instead they just stared at each other, there in the sunlit cloister surrounded by tangles of wildflowers and a few half-eaten meat pies.

  “I do not want you to seduce me,” she said, drawing on years of striking clear bargains with tradesmen. She had to make it clear so that he didn’t just swoop over her with all that princely beauty. “I am—I am a virgin and I intend to be so on my bridal night.”

  Gabriel nodded, and a lock of hair fell over his eyes again. He was so beautiful, so starkly masculine, that her throat closed and she couldn’t remember what else she had to say.

  “I will not take your virginity,” he said, his deep voice steady. Then his mouth quirked and he brushed his lips over hers again. “Even if you beg me to.”

  “Arrogant pig,” she muttered. “I’m not your entertainment, Gabriel. I can’t imagine why you’re here with me, but I know that you should be in your castle with your guests.”

  “For some reason, I’m mad about your kisses, Kate.” His eyes caught hers, and she stilled the way a rabbit does in front of a cheerful fox. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t stop thinking about you. Kissing you was the first thing I thought about this morning when I woke up,” he said conversationally.