A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

people. And they were all his people, one way or another: his relatives, his lion, his elephant, his servants . . . even the pickle-eating dog was his responsibility, though it sounded as if it might have escaped to the great hunting ground in the sky. Probably gratefully.
    “I’ll take a gun out and look for birds,” he told his manservant, a lugubrious man named Pole, who had been jettisoned from his brother’s court because he knew far too much about the sexual proclivities of every courtier.
    “Excellent,” Pole said, putting out a riding coat and breeches. “Young Alfred could do with some fresh air. Mr. Berwick is training him in service à la française and he’s not taking to it easy-like. He will do to carry back the birds.”
    “Right.”
    “May I suggest that you ask the Honorable Buckingham Toloose to accompany you?” Pole said, placing a pair of clean stockings precisely parallel to the breeches.
    “Who in the world is that?”
    “He arrived yesterday, with a note from Queen Charlotte. You would have met him this evening, but I gather the meal will be en famille , given the imminent arrival of your nephew. So it would be polite to greet the gentleman now.”
    “And he is of what sort?”
    “I would suggest that he is of a proselytizing nature—”
    “Oh no,” Gabriel said. “My brother’s court was overrun by religious types. I don’t want any of those here. You don’t want that, Pole. If I turn into my brother, you and the lion would be out in the cold.”
    Pole smiled in a slightly detached way, as if he had been told a joke of extreme indelicacy. “I have faith that Your Highness will not succumb to the delectations of a roving preacher, as did His Majesty Grand Duke Augustus. Mr. Toloose proselytizes in a different arena. I have warned all the younger maids to stay away from the east wing. He has a quite amusing way about him; he was exerting it on the Princess Maria-Therese this morning, but I fancy she was unmoved.”
    Gabriel brought to mind his beetle-browed, sixty-year-old aunt, as sturdy and ethical as a German-built boat. “I fancy you’re right about that,” he agreed. “And what is Mr. Toloose looking for in my household?”
    “My guess would be that he is rusticating due to debts in London,” Pole observed. “His stockings are quite interesting—a brilliant orange, with clocks—and his coat is worth more than a moderate-sized emerald.”
    If Pole said that, it was true. Pole knew all about emeralds.
    “All right,” Gabriel said. “Tell Berwick I’m in the gun room and send a note to Toloose requesting his company. I believe my uncle might like to go as well.”
    Down in the gun room, he set to polishing the barrel of his Haas. It was a lovely tool, one of the only air guns he’d seen with seven rifling grooves, allowing a man to switch in a moment from hunting deer to hunting pheasants.
    The German hunting air gun was everything life wasn’t: beautifully designed, spare, decorative. He didn’t actually care to hunt anything other than game birds and rabbits. But that didn’t mean he scorned the beauty of a Haas, its barrel etched with the coat of arms of the Duchy of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld.
    His older brother’s coat of arms, to be exact.
    A pulse of relief, so old that it felt as familiar as his morning beard bristles, panged in the area of his heart. He’d decided years ago that it was far better to be a prince than a grand duke.
    For all that Gabriel thought his older brother was a dried-up old stick, he felt sorry for him. It wasn’t a pleasant task, ruling a small principality, especially given the three brothers who stood between Gabriel and Augustus, each of whom rather thought they’d like to have a crown as well.
    And if not a crown, an heiress. He’d had a letter the other day implying that Rupert, the most handsome of his brothers, was toying with the sister of Napoleon.
    His mouth tightened. If Augustus hadn’t lost his mind a few months