A Kiss at Midnight
Page 21

Damn Mariana for throwing their governess out of the house. “I would have brought my maid downstairs with me but she has indigestion,” Kate said.
“I think you forgot to summon her. I assure you that young ladies in the court never forget their maids, and they are never alone,” he stated. “They travel together, like flocks of starlings. Or packs of dogs,” he added, as Caesar growled at the lion.
She could hardly explain that her governess had been dismissed the day after her father died, and consequently she had never learned to travel in a flock. “I should have been accompanied by my maid,” she said, “but you mustn’t assume that every woman wishes to kiss you.”
He stared at her.
“This is a ridiculous conversation,” she muttered. “Caesar, come here! It’s time to go.” The dog stayed at the cage, growling.
“Absurd animal,” she said, scooping him up.
“I thought,” the prince said, “that I might seduce you.”
She turned around, mouth open. “You can’t go about trying to seduce young ladies!” she squeaked.
“If I weren’t betrothed already, I would consider marrying you.”
Kate snorted. “You might consider it the way you would consider a case of the measles. No, you wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t imply that you would.”
He took one step and looked down at her with his midnight eyes. Some dim part of her mind registered that his lips weren’t thin at all. Quite the opposite, really.
“I’m a shrew, remember?” she told him. “Look, what are you doing? You’re a prince. This is a remarkably improper conversation, and you shouldn’t try to do it with other young ladies or you will be forced to marry someone, likely at the end of a dueling pistol held by her father.”
“Your father?” he asked, still staring down at her.
“My father is dead,” she said, feeling a queer thump of her heart. “But you and he had a great deal in common, and I’m afraid that that has given me immunity to your particular charms.”
“Not to mention, you’re in love with Dimsdale. Did your father want you to marry him?”
“My father died years ago. He doesn’t belong in this conversation. Anyway, you’re quite mad. You couldn’t marry me, and it’s unkind of you to raise my expectations. What if I believed you? You are marrying a Russian princess, by all accounts.”
“It’s true that I need to marry an heiress,” the prince said casually. “You’re one, by all accounts. I don’t necessarily want someone well-connected. I just want someone rich.” His eyes drifted over her bosom. “Beddable.”
Kate hoisted Caesar a little higher, so the dog almost covered her wax breasts. “This is the most improper conversation I’ve ever had in my life,” she observed.
“It must be your age that inspires my impropriety,” he said. “I’ve had many improper conversations, though not, I admit, with nubile maidens.”
She felt that like a sting, though she didn’t quite work out whether he was implying she was young or old. “Do you often confess your desire to marry a woman for her money, then?”
“Generally we speak of other desires.”
“I can just imagine,” she muttered. “This has been absolutely charming. Just so you know, I’m not available for marriage. And I’m not rich either.” She buried the memory of Henry’s belief in her mythical dowry. It was too fantastical for truth.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not? Does Dimsdale know that? Wick seems to think you have a healthy inheritance.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Algie loves me anyway.”
“Interesting. My nephew strikes me as the sort who would put adoration a strong second to monetary policy.”
“Unlike you, who would apparently put it at the bottom of the list.”
“As would you,” he said cheerfully.
“Does this mean that I can walk my dogs without fear that you’ll leap out at me from a dark corner?” she asked, putting Caesar back on the ground.
“One would certainly think so,” he said. “But then . . . you’re extraordinarily beautiful.” And while Kate was still registering that comment, he gathered her up in his arms in a businesslike fashion and lowered his head to hers.
And then he wasn’t businesslike anymore. All that restless, wild energy she felt in him poured into his kiss, into a demand that she had no hope of denying. She thought kissing was about a brush of the lips, but this . . . this was about tasting and feeling. He felt like silk and fire.
He tasted like fire. She leaned into it, opened her mouth, feeling a tremor go down her back again. He murmured something into her mouth, something hot and sweet. She dimly remembered that she meant to give him a lesson, to teach him not to kiss any lady he met.
She ought to give him a slap.
But then he might take his lips away, or his large warm hand from her waist, or . . . it was only innate self-preservation that saved her. His kiss had started out with a question, but it was quickly turning into a demand, and inexperienced though she was, her whole body was answering in the affirmative.
Yet one rather small, cool voice in her head reminded her exactly who she was, and whom she was kissing.
She pulled back; he resisted for one second, one glorious blazing second, and then it was over.
Her first thought was utterly irrelevant: that she’d never noticed how thick his eyelashes were. Her second was that she’d done nothing more than feed his absurd conceit, and now he would think that he was irresistible even to Englishwomen.
In that split second, she drew on years of composure honed in Mariana’s presence. She opened her mouth to say something that ought to shrivel his self-esteem, but he spoke first.
“Oh damn,” he said, and there was a kind of hoarse hunger in his voice that spoke of truth, “I wish you were my Russian princess.”
And just like that, her irritation with his pompous princely self drained out of her and she started gurgling with laughter. “You’re—” She stopped. Did she really want to compliment him, to add to his already monumental self-regard?
It was only fair.
She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his. “If money could buy kisses like that, I wish I were an heiress. I’d even go so far,” she added, “as to wish myself a princess’s pedigree.”
His hands came up and cupped her face. “I have to taste you again,” he said with a queer kind of groan in his voice.
They were thinking the same things, she thought dazedly, about tasting—but then she was tasting, and he tasted like dark honey and something smoother and wilder, something that made her tremble and—
And then he put her away.
“You are dangerous,” she said slowly.
His smile told her that she’d said the wrong thing, fed that monumental self-conceit again.
“Princes,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose you do have some usefulness after all.”
That stung, and she noted it with satisfaction because her knees were trembling and her—her legs—
“No,” he said, a bit harshly. “I have little utility, I assure you. Now, unless you wish to be caught and kissed by another stranger, Miss Daltry, I strongly suggest that you return to your room posthaste, and do not emerge again unchaperoned.”