“Do princes ever get to have intimate dinners of that fashion?”
“Of course!”
“But the castle is full of people demanding your attention,” Kate said. “Are you ever alone?”
“Of course,” he said again. But there was an odd expression on his face.
“When you go on archaeological digs, does everyone know you’re a prince?”
Gabriel pulled down a bit more ivy and inspected the fallen bricks. “They don’t care. I’m the foreign devil who’s odd enough to want them to excavate carefully, rather than simply tunneling toward the gold.”
That explained a great deal about Gabriel’s hankering for Carthage, to Kate’s mind.
“You’d better find another blue-eyed prig to marry,” he said, moving over to the vines clinging to the back garden wall. “It sounds as if Effie needs Hathaway or she’ll end up tatting baby bonnets for other people’s children.”
“Hathaway is not a prig!” Kate said, coming over to help. “He’s honorable, and decent.”
“So you said.” Gabriel sounded bored. “Perhaps what Effie needs is someone to take a skewer, rather than a fork, to Beckham.”
“It wouldn’t help Effie if you skewered him, unless Beckham confessed what happened so that everyone knew it was all a lie. I’m going to ask Henry to take care of it.”
“Lady Wrothe is undoubtedly a formidable knight, but what do you intend her to do?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “You know, this might be a portico. I think you’re wrong and there is a door into the castle courtyard. It only makes sense.”
“We looked from the other side,” Gabriel said, wrenching at a mass of ivy. It came down on top of him, trails and strands of ivy all around his shoulders. “There are no gates in the outer walls.”
“You look like a satyr,” Kate said, laughing.
“Give me my wine and my dancing girls,” Gabriel said, leering at her.
“Beware!” she said, dancing back. “I’ll stamp on your tail.”
“How do you know what satyrs look like? I thought you were so ill-educated.”
“I can read,” Kate said. “My father had Boyse’s Pantheon , so I read that.” She glanced over mischievously and couldn’t resist. “His library was quite thorough. He had Aretino as well.”
Gabriel was bending over, shaking his head to get the last leaves out of his hair. He straightened, and the look in his eyes sent a bolt of heat straight to Kate’s stomach.
“You’re trying to drive me mad,” he said conversationally, moving toward her with the grace of a predator.
“Well,” she squeaked, sounding like a bleating lamb, “I—I—”
Their kisses were everything he had described them to be: like a room on fire, like a house with no air. She melted into his arms and the pressure of his lips stole every sensible thought in her head.
And replaced them with lewd images from Aretino’s naughty book, pictures of male bodies that were all muscle and smooth skin, men with wild expressions on their faces—only they weren’t merely men; the face she saw in her mind’s eye was Gabriel’s.
His hands were sliding down her back now, moving slowly in a direction that they shouldn’t move, down . . .
But he shouldn’t be kissing her either, faithless man that he was.
“You promised,” she said, breaking away from him.
His eyes were black. “Don’t,” he said, and the word was like a groan. It weakened her knees.
“We agreed not to kiss.”
“That was before you admitted to ogling Aretino’s art, if one can give it that name.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”
He leaned back against the wall and laughed. “It means, my dear Kate, that you are that rare thing amongst young ladies: a woman with curiosity. And, to be blunt, lust.”
Kate’s cheeks started to turn pink; she could feel it. “I didn’t study the book,” she said haughtily, though she had. “I merely leafed through it and ascertained that it was inappropriate before putting it back on the shelf.”
“Liar.” He moved one lazy step, so he was just next to her again, though not touching. “What were your favorites, Kate o’ my Life? Did you like those naughty ones with more than two people in a bed?”
“No,” she said, refusing to give in to the molten invitation in his eyes. “I think I should return to my chamber now.”
“Good; I don’t like those either,” he said conversationally. “I’ve got no wish to have two women at my beck and call or, God forbid, another man inspecting my willy.”
“Willy?” She giggled. “You gave it a name ? Why not Petey? Or Tinkle, for that matter?”
“ Willy is a term, like rod , but not as descriptive,” Gabriel said. “And you, Kate, are like some sort of cursed mythological woman in a story.”
“That’s not very nice,” she said, frowning at him. “Next you’ll be saying that my hair is turning to snakes.”
“Not Medusa. One of those goddesses whom no one can resist.”
Despite herself, she smiled at that. But the sun was slanting lower over the old brick walls and tipping his hair with gold. “I really should return to the castle. Did we determine what this is?”
“It’s a door,” Gabriel said. He pulled the last swath of ivy to the ground.
It was a huge arched door, painted dark red, with elaborately wrought hinges in the shape of fleurs-de-lis. “This is not just any door,” Kate said, awed. “It’s like the door to a cathedral.”
Gabriel’s brow cleared. “Of course! It must enter the back of the chapel.” He pulled on the huge knocker, but the door didn’t budge. “Locked,” he muttered. “And no key that I recall.”
“It’s probably in the chapel,” Kate said. “I want you to promise something.”
“Anything for you,” he said, and foolish woman that she was, her heart gave a silly thump.
“No more traveling through that corridor behind my bedchamber. I’ll cover over the peephole, but I don’t want to feel as if people are peering at me at night.”
“If you have trouble sleeping, I’d be happy to rub your back,” he said wolfishly.
She wrinkled her nose at him and set off toward the picnic things. “You have to make me a promise too,” he called, staying where he was.
“What?”
“If I manage to skewer Beckham in such a way that Effie’s reputation is restored, then you . . .”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Just what would I have to do?”
“I am helping you,” he pointed out. “Purely virtuous on my part. If Effie’s reputation is salvaged, she’ll have her choice of beaux, and you’ll have a better shot at snagging hoity-toity Hathaway.”
“He’s not—” Kate began and gave up. “So what would I have to do if you achieve this miracle?”
He was next to her in one long stride. “You’d have to let me kiss you.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “Let’s count the kiss you just stole, and then you’re already in my debt.”