W hen Kate got back to her room she eyed the cord that would summon Rosalie to prepare her for bed, but she didn’t feel sleepy in the least.
Images were jumping through her mind, memories of her mother’s wistful face at the sight of her father, of her father’s polite courtesy toward his wife. Could it be that he was still in love with Henry? Or did he then fall in love with Mariana?
Her heart felt wrenched between her mother’s sadness and Henry’s, between the romance of young love and irritation at her father for allowing himself to be bought.
Finally she decided to take the dogs out for a walk. She calmed Caesar by fixing her eye on him, and then gave him a cheese bit once he stopped barking.
The great drawing room was still blazing with light as she entered the inner courtyard, the dogs pulling ahead. She walked the other direction, stumbling across the cobblestones.
The outer courtyard was only dimly lit, but there seemed to be a set of large cages lined up against the wall. The dogs were straining at their leashes, so she remembered Cherryderry’s advice and stopped walking until they calmed down. Then she gave them a round of cheese, and this time they stayed quite politely at her side.
“If you’re good,” she told them, “I’ll bring you into company tomorrow.” She had to do that in any case; Victoria had carried those dogs with her everywhere, and Mariana considered the dogs to be an essential part of her disguise.
They all looked up at her the moment she spoke. She was getting a bit fond of them, especially of Freddie. He was afraid of everything from a random fly to a dark shadow, but bravery is not a required virtue for dogs. Plus he was very nice to sleep with.
The cages were frightfully large. Light from the single lantern hanging on a hook on the wall didn’t reach past the bars. The dogs stopped short of the first cage, sniffing intently at the dark enclosure. Kate peered inside, but couldn’t see anything. There was a rather fierce smell, though.
“What on earth would a prince keep in a cage?” she said out loud. Caesar gave a little woof in reply, but kept his eyes focused on the cage. Freddie was huddled against her leg, showing no inclination to learn more. She reached up toward the lantern—when a big hand reached over hers and took it first.
“Who’s—oh!” She swallowed the word in a squeak. It was the prince himself, looking even more sulky and brooding in the wavering light from the lantern. His unruly hair was falling out of its ribbon and his mouth looked haughty. Thin-lipped, she told herself, raising her chin. Everyone knew royals were inbred.
“I keep a lion in this cage,” the prince said, matter-of-factly. “There’s an elephant over there, with her companion, a monkey. And there was an ostrich, but we moved her into the orchards along with some Himalayan goats.” He raised the lantern, and Kate saw a slumbering form in the back of the cage. As the light fell on it, one contemptuous eye opened, and the lion yawned, showing off rows of efficient-looking teeth.
“ Teeth isn’t really the right word for those,” she observed.
“Fangs,” the prince said with satisfaction.
The lion closed his eyes again, as if his observers were too boring to contemplate. Kate realized that Freddie was trembling against her ankle, and even Caesar had moved behind her, showing the first sign of real intelligence he’d displayed since she met him.
“You’d better keep those dogs out of the cage,” the prince remarked. “The lion threw up all day yesterday after eating my uncle’s dog.”
“Not the pickle-eating dog?” Kate said. “What a shame. Your uncle told me that he is quite convinced his dog will return soon.”
“Would you, given that diet?”
“It wouldn’t make me leap into a lion’s cage,” she pointed out.
“I doubt anything would make you so reckless.”
That was the kind of comment she hated because it implied something about her personality—but what exactly? She certainly wasn’t going to ask Prince High-and-Mighty himself for elucidation, so she just walked off in the direction of the elephant’s cage.
He followed her with the lantern. “The elephant’s name is Lyssa. She’s too big for the cage, so we’re making her a pen in the orchard. But if we put her out there, her monkey might run away.”
The monkey was sleeping at the elephant’s feet, one long arm curved around her leg. “I doubt it. It looks like love to me.”
“If that’s love I want nothing to do with it,” the prince said, and his eyes laughed.
“I know just what you mean,” Kate said, a giggle escaping her. “You’ll never catch me sleeping at someone’s feet.”
“And here I thought you were desperately enamored with my nephew.”
“Of course I am,” Kate said, sounding insincere even to her own ears.
“Ha,” the prince said. “I wouldn’t want to stake out poor Dimsdale in the orchard and hope his presence would keep you in bounds.”
He was rather terrifyingly attractive, when he wasn’t smoldering in a princely way, but laughing instead. “Algie would never allow himself to be put out to pasture,” she said, trying to think of a magnificent set-down.
But he cut her off. “Toloose says you’ve been ill. What happened?”
For a moment Kate’s mind boggled, and then she remembered Victoria’s sweetly plump face and her own angular cheekbones. “Nothing much,” she said.
“Other than a brush with death?”
“I hardly look that bad,” she said sharply.
He tipped up her chin and studied it. “Shadowed eyes, thin face, something exhausted about you. You don’t look good.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re terribly impolite for royalty. I would have expected that you were trained to be diplomatic in every circumstance.”
He shrugged. “It must be your beauty. It brought out that rare moment of truth in me.”
“Just my luck,” she said crossly. “You bolt from diplomacy just in time to tell me how dreadful I look.”
He put a finger on her lips and she stilled. It was as if she suddenly saw him again for the first time: all that restless energy and gleaming sensuality bound up with huge shoulders and a sulky mouth. “You, Miss Daltry, are talking rot and you know it. I can only imagine what you looked like with a little more meat on your bones, but you’re exquisite.”
His finger dropped away and she felt her mouth curling into a smile, like a fussy child soothed with a boiled sweet. He was leaning against the cage now, looking pleased with himself, as if he’d taken care of yet another little problem.
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she asked. “Don’t you want to return and be fawned over some more? Life is so short.”
There was a moment of silence after she issued this appallingly rude statement. Then he said, rather slowly, “I actually came out to see if the lion was still vomiting up bits of pickled dog. And the English do not fawn, in my experience.” He turned away to hang up the lantern, so his voice issued from a patch of darkness. “How did you meet my nephew, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“We met in a cathedral and fell in love immediately,” Kate said, after a second’s pause in which she wracked her brains to remember the story.
“In love,” the prince said. “With Dimsdale. Whom you affectionately refer to as Algie, I notice. Rather like some sort of pond life.”
“Yes,” Kate stated. “In love.”
“If you knew what love is, you certainly wouldn’t be marrying my nephew.”
“I love Algie,” she repeated.
“You’ll eat him alive by the time he’s twenty,” he said unemotionally. “You know he’s younger than you are, don’t you? Still wet behind the ears, the poor little viscount. Though perhaps you like it that way.”
“You are an odious man,” Kate said, shading her voice with just the right amount of cool disdain. “I am glad for your sake that your betrothal was a matter of imperial alliances, because I doubt you could catch a wife on your own.” Which was a rotten lie, because she couldn’t think of a woman who wouldn’t slaver to marry him. Except herself, of course.
She walked off, then turned and said acidly, “Your Highness.”
There was a flash of movement and an arm wrapped around her waist from behind. He was hot and incredibly large and she could feel his heart beating. He smelled wonderful, like a bonfire at night, smoky and wild and out of bounds.
“Say that again,” he said, his breath touching her neck.
“Let me go,” she said steadily, fighting the impulse of her body to relax back against him, turn her chin, invite—invite a kiss? She’d never been kissed, and she didn’t intend her first kiss to be given by an arrogant and unruly prince who was irritated because she didn’t fawn over him.
His voice was a smoldering, smoky demand. “I just want a taste of you, Miss Victoria Daltry.” His lips touched her neck, and the feeling of it shivered down her spine.
With one swift gesture she raised her pointed, jeweled heel and slammed it down in the spot where she guessed his foot had to be, twisting and wrenching away from him.
They had moved close enough to the walls that she could see him in the light from the windows. “You are an ass,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Did you have to be quite so violent? These are my favorite shoes,” he said. “And I don’t think I’m always an ass.”
She backed up a few more steps. “While I might pity you for your faulty thought processes, you have so many other attributes that command pity that I won’t bother.”
“If I am an ass,” he said, “what does that make you?”
“Uninterested,” she said flatly.
“A snappish little shrew,” he retorted.
His eyes were narrowed, and for the first time since she met him, he looked angry. Against all odds, the look of him made her laugh. “You look like a grocer whose daily allotment of potatoes didn’t arrive.”
“Potatoes,” he said. “You compare yourself to a potato?”
“Look, you just can’t go and kiss English ladies whenever you feel the urge,” she said. “Here, Caesar! Come back.” Caesar had apparently realized the lion was asleep and had started sniffing at the cage bars again. “I don’t want you turned into the lion’s supper.”
“Why can’t I?”
A mop of hair had fallen over his eyes and she had to admit that he looked like the sort of man who could kiss anyone he pleased. He looked explosive and utterly sensual and dangerous. Henry’s assessment of him came back into her mind at that very moment: He was just like her father, the sort of man who would never be faithful.
Her smile turned bittersweet. “Because you’re not for every woman,” she explained, trying to put it kindly. “For goodness’ sake, are all princes like this?”
He walked closer and she eyed him, but he didn’t look lustful as much as curious.
“You can’t tell me that a woman simply enters a royal court in Marburg or wherever it is you’re from and expects to be kissed by any prince who happens upon her.”
“Of course not!”
“Well, why on earth would you think I am available for kissing?”
“To be honest, because you’re here in the dark,” he said.
It was a fair point. “I’m here only because of my dogs,” she said defensively.
“You spoke to me for quite a while. You have no chaperone with you. Wick tells me that you arrived with a single maid to attend you.”
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.”