Free A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

had to hire three more downstairs maids. Thank God your bride is on the way; I don’t think we can afford another such event.”
    “We’ve got enough money without her,” Gabriel said, stung.
    “More or less. I have a bad feeling that repairs to this castle won’t come cheap.”
    After Wick left, Gabriel sat for a while, staring at his desk. It was inestimably better in England than in Marburg. There he was in constant danger of being dragged into some sort of political intrigue, or any of the other military frivolities that kept his brothers’ eyes bright and shining.
    It was wonderful to own a castle. It really was.
    Without really noticing, he pulled over the copy of Ionian Antiquities that had arrived two days before and started reading it. Again. Which was foolish because he had the whole issue memorized.
    Of course he couldn’t run off to Tunis. He tried to wrench his mind back to the present. He had to go to his chambers and submit to Pole’s ministrations, put on an evening coat, and greet his absurd nephew. He should be happy to have an estate, and be able to house the menagerie, and his uncle, aunts, illegitimate half brother, the court jester . . .
    If only he could stop dreaming of being in the heat of Tunis, finding out for himself whether that dig truly held the remains of Dido’s city. He had loved the story of Carthage as a schoolboy, caught by the determination of Aeneas sailing away to found Rome, leaving Dido behind, and then living with guilt after she threw herself on a funeral pyre.
    Ionian Antiquities would publish again in a mere . . . in a mere twenty-three days.
    He got up with a sigh.
    Time for dinner.

Eleven
    W e’re eating with the family,” Algie said nervously. “ ‘In family’ they call it.”
    “ En famille ,” Kate corrected him.
    “I suppose that’s the language they speak over in Marburg. I probably won’t understand a word.”
    “Actually, that’s French,” Kate said.
    “French? I learned that at Eton.” There was a pause. “More or less . . . do you suppose that’s what they speak at the table?”
    “I shall translate, if need be,” Kate told him, thinking that it was a good thing she had come rather than Victoria, who didn’t speak a word of French. Thankfully, she herself had learned the language before her father died. “Do you know anything of the prince’s entourage?”
    But Algie knew nothing of his mother’s family and had never, it seemed, bothered to inquire.
    The meal was served in a delightful room that, although Berwick referred to it as the “small morning room,” was bigger than any single chamber at Yarrow House.
    The prince himself sat at the head of the table, of course. He was wearing a midnight-blue evening coat over a violet waistcoat with gold buttons. In fact, her wig and his waistcoat would go very well together.
    All in all, he looked magnificent and outrageously expensive. And bored.
    She wouldn’t have minded watching him from afar, but in fact, Kate was rather horrified to find herself seated at the prince’s right hand. She sat down in a haze of embarrassment, acutely conscious of her diamond necklace and diamond-encrusted comb. She was tarted up like the daughter of a rich cit, thrusting herself into company in the hopes of a wealthy husband.
    Which, she reminded herself, I am not. My father was the younger son of an earl. An earl . And never mind the fact that her father had died without leaving her a dowry, or that he had married a woman of ill repute, or that . . .
    Or all the other ways in which her father had disappointed her. Blood is blood. I am an earl’s granddaughter, she told herself.
    With that, she raised her chin and straightened her shoulders. The prince was talking to a stout lady on his left, who was discoursing with deep earnestness on . . . something. Kate listened hard, only to realize that the lady was speaking German, and he was responding in French. The gentleman to her right was