Free A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James Page A

occupied, so she nibbled her fish and listened to the prince’s French replies.
    The lady said something; the prince characterized her comment as a wild guess. The lady replied; the prince broke into German, so Kate watched him under her eyelashes, since she couldn’t understand enough to eavesdrop.
    The first thing one noticed about him was that he was a prince. That was stamped on his face. She couldn’t call it simple arrogance, though he was certainly arrogant enough, she thought, cataloguing the harsh line of his jaw.
    She thought it had more to do with the way that he looked so easily commanding, as if he’d never seen anything in the world that he couldn’t have for the asking. She considered it for a moment. A prince would never have done any of the things she had found herself doing in the past years. The time she’d helped with the birth of a calf came to mind as a particularly odiferous and unpleasant chore.
    A prince would not have three small dogs locked up in her chamber at this very moment.
    A prince . . .
    She took another bite of fish.
    “What are you thinking about?”
    His voice was like velvet, accented and deep.
    “I am contemplating the fish,” Kate told him, dishonestly.
    And he knew it. There was a devil in those eyes, and they registered her fib. “I would guess,” said he, “that you are thinking of me.”
    Everything English in her rose up in protest at his effrontery, at the nerve of him saying such a thing.
    “If it will make you happy,” she said sweetly, “I was indeed.”
    “Now you sound like my majordomo.”
    “Ah, Berwick is English, is he?”
    That caught his interest. “As it happens, Berwick grew up with me and I’ve known him my whole life. But what would it mean if he were English?”
    Kate shrugged. “We never ask people if they are thinking of us.”
    “Why not? Since you are unable to inquire, I was thinking of you.”
    “Really.” Kate gave the word all the coolness with which she addressed the baker after he overcharged for loaves of bread.
    “Your wig,” he said, with another one of those wicked, sideways smiles. “I’ve never seen a purple wig before.”
    “You must not often travel to London,” she told him. “Or Paris. Tinted wigs are all the fashion.”
    “I think I would prefer you without a wig.”
    Kate told herself to be quiet, but she simply couldn’t. “I can’t imagine why you think that your preferences are of any interest when it comes to my hairstyle. That would be as odd as you assuming that I have interest in your hair.”
    “Do you?”
    The effrontery of the man knew no bounds! Kate felt all the irritation of the dispossessed. Just because he was a prince, he apparently assumed that everyone was fascinated by him.
    “No,” she said flatly. “Your hair is just—hair.” She glanced at it. “Rather unkempt and slightly long, but one must make allowances for a man who clearly has no interest in fashion, and does not travel to London.”
    He laughed, and even his laugh had a slightly exotic sound, like his accent. “I had the impression on our first meeting that you disapproved of it. Having exhausted the subject of our respective hair, Miss Daltry, may I inquire how you are finding Lancashire?”
    “It seems quite lovely,” Kate said. And then, before she stopped herself, she asked, “How is it different from your home in Marburg?”
    Of course, he smiled. She’d done the expected and turned the conversation to himself. She let a shadow of contempt steal into her eyes, though she doubted he would even catch it. Men like that didn’t recognize scorn directed toward themselves.
    “It’s much greener here,” he said. “It occurred to me while I was out riding that the English countryside is the opposite of the English people, really.”
    “How so?” Someone had taken her fish while she wasn’t looking and replaced it with another plate, which made her suspect that this was one of those dinners she had only read