A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page B

and I don’t want to become confused in company.”
    “Not at all,” Kate assured him. “How does my sister address you?”
    “Oh, as Algie,” he said, cheering up. “You should as well. That’s one of the things that I love about Victoria. She never stands on ceremony . . . she started calling me Algernon directly after she met me, and then she shortened it to Algie. That’s how I knew,” he added, somewhat mysteriously.
    “Knew what?”
    “Knew that she was the one for me. It was fated, really. We felt a wonderful closeness and we both knew.”
    It was fated due to the lack of a governess, to Kate’s mind. Victoria’s charming intimacies—verbal and otherwise—were the result of inadequate guidance. She would even guess that Mariana had encouraged various improprieties.
    Kate would rather slay herself than marry Algie, but she could see why Victoria adored him. He had a coziness, a kind of sweetness around his mouth and eyes that was a soothing antidote to Mariana’s bitterness.
    “I just wish we’d arrive at the castle,” he said tetchily. His collar was so high that it was chafing his ears, Kate noticed. She herself was lounging back on the padded carriage seat, so comfortable that she could hardly move. Normally by this time in the day she would have already been on a horse for hours.
    “Are you worried about meeting your uncle?” she inquired.
    “Why should I be? He comes from a little backwater, a principality they call it over there, but in England it wouldn’t be more than a small county. Hardly a kingdom. I can’t imagine why he has a title. It’s absurd.”
    “I believe there are many small principalities on the Continent,” Kate said, with a touch of doubt. Mariana didn’t believe in taking a newspaper, and her schooling, such as it was, had come from filching books from her father’s library, not that her stepmother had ever noticed their absence.
    “I would just introduce you, and then we could leave in the morning, but the prince insisted that you attend his ball. Most clear, his letter was. I expect he’s worried that he won’t be able to fill the ballroom.” He eyed her. “My mother suspects that he might be making a play for you.”
    “Not for me,” Kate corrected him. “For my half sister.”
    “And isn’t that a turn-up for the books,” Algie said gloomily. “I must say that I thought the colonel existed. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Daltry told me the truth of it last night. You’d never know it from looking at her, would you? If my mother ever finds out, she’ll explode.”
    Kate thought that one would know it from looking at her stepmother, but she nodded, out of some vague sense of family loyalty. “There’s no reason your mother need ever discover the truth. I certainly won’t tell anyone.”
    “At any rate, I love Victoria, and I must marry her, and my mother wants me to have the prince’s approval, and that’s that.”
    Kate gave Algie an approving pat on the knee. It must have been difficult to get so many thoughts in logical order and she certainly didn’t want to ignore his accomplishment. It was interesting to see what a healthy fear he had of his mother; that might explain why Mariana’s demand that he marry Victoria had instantly borne fruit.
    “We should be entering his lands now,” Algie said. “The man owns an awful amount of land in Lancashire, you know. My uncle thought it was an abomination, turning good English soil over to a foreigner. For all he went to Oxford and so on, the prince still has foreign blood.”
    “As do you,” Kate pointed out. “You are related to him through your mother, no?”
    “Well, my mother . . .” Algie said, letting his voice trail off. Apparently he didn’t consider her blood to carry the foreign taint. “You know what I mean.”
    “Have you ever met the prince?”
    “Once or twice, when I was small. It’s rubbish, his being my uncle. He’s not that much older than I am: perhaps ten