“I would bet I could make you squeal in verse.” And then he started kissing her again.
But she didn’t need a singing lark to know the truth. Years of rising with the dawn told her that it was near, that she had to make her way back through those corridors.
“Gabriel,” she whispered.
“No.”
She wriggled away. “I must.” She toppled out of bed, and pulled on his wrapper again, curling her toes against the chill of the stone floor.
He was out of the bed too, his face set in bleak lines that made her heart hurt.
But she bit her lip and didn’t speak. She couldn’t help, she couldn’t help . . . this couldn’t be solved with another kiss, or a promise.
Two minutes later she was swathed in black lace and bundled up in his arms. “You don’t carry your aunt around the castle like this!” she gasped.
“If we encounter anyone, I’ll tell them that Sophonisba suffered a fatal apoplexy after too much brandy.”
She would have reproached him, but his tone was removed, cold as ice. “It’s not her fault,” she said, leaning her head against his chest, and listening to his heart beat.
“What isn’t?”
“That she never married, and ended up being thrown out like a piece of unwanted laundry. It’s not their fault, Gabriel, and you have to keep that in mind.”
“I never said it was.” He strode along another corridor, turned again . . . they had to be close to the door of her chamber now. “It’s Fate, that bloody impudent devil who brought down Romeo and Juliet.”
It sounded very dramatic to Kate, but she understood what he meant.
“I love you,” she said, when he put her on her feet at the door to her room. Risking everything, she pulled up the veil and looked into his face.
“I—” But the words seemed to catch in his throat, and her heart slammed against her chest at his silence.
Instead he bent down and kissed her and then, quickly, turned and left.
Kate waited until he turned the corner of the corridor, then tumbled through the door of her room. There was Freddie, waiting in the middle of her bed. He raised a sleepy muzzle and gave her a loving little woof. There were candles, guttering low on the mantelpiece. There were her book, and her slippers, and her nightgown waiting for her.
There was real life in this room, and behind her was nothing more than a fairy tale, and she would do well to remember that.
She could train herself in the boundaries of reality in the morning. For the present, she tucked Freddie’s warm little body under her chin and let him lick up the salty tears that slid onto his face.
Rosalie slipped through the door a few hours later, banging around the room, pulling open the curtains.
“No,” Kate groaned. “Please, go away. I can’t get up yet.”
“You don’t have to get up,” the little maid said cheerfully. “I have such wonderful news that you—”
“Out!” Kate said, sitting up, knowing that her eyes were still swollen. “Take the dogs with you, please. I’ll ring for you later.” And with that she fell backward, pulled a pillow over her head, and pretended to be unconscious.
She didn’t rise until two in the afternoon. She drifted listlessly over to the bell, rang for Rosalie, and then stared in the glass. It was faintly interesting to note that a deflowered woman looks just like any other woman.
In fact, she thought, leaning closer, she looked better than she had a week ago. Her skin had a glow to it, and her lips—
It must have been all that kissing that made them look crimson and slightly swollen.
Rosalie entered with a breakfast tray, followed by a line of footmen with hot water. “I have such a surprise in store for you!” she said again.
“Tell me after my bath,” Kate said wearily, sitting down at the dressing table and picking up a piece of toast.
“Drink this.” Rosalie handed her a cup of tea. “You had a nasty stomach upset last night. I felt terrible, not being able to tend to you, but Mr. Berwick said he just couldn’t do without me. I am good with flowers. And he promised to send you a maid. Was she helpful?”
“Absolutely. She was—she was perfect.”
“There, this will make you feel better.”
It wasn’t until she was out of the bath, dried, powdered, and dressed, that Rosalie said hopefully, “Would you like to know your surprise now?”
“I apologize,” Kate said. “Of course I would.”
“Your stepsister is here!” she said with a squeal. “Miss Victoria’s lip improved and she arrived yesterday late, but of course you were ill and not to be disturbed. Would you like me to knock on her chamber? She’s just next door. Mr. Berwick moved Mr. Fenwick up a floor so the two of you could be together.”
“Victoria is here?” Kate said, sitting down. “With my stepmother?”
Rosalie shook her head. “No. And isn’t that a blessing? Lady Dimsdale brought her, but her ladyship left immediately as she is preparing for Miss Victoria’s wedding.” She bustled to the door. “I’ll fetch her this moment. I know she’s longing to see you.”
Victoria entered the room rather tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure of her welcome. Kate got up and went over to greet her.
They could not be said to have grown up together; they had lived on the same floor of Yarrow House for only a matter of months until their father died, upon which Mariana promptly moved Kate from the nursery to the garret.
At sixteen, Kate was too old for the nursery, Mariana said, and there wasn’t any call for a poor relative to be housed on the main floor.
But Victoria had an intrinsic kindness about her that was missing from her mother, and had never joined in Mariana’s taunts or humiliations.
“Rosalie, will you fetch us more tea?” Kate asked.
The maid whisked herself out the door and Kate sat down next to her sister, beside the fire. Freddie came over and sprang into her lap. “How is your lip?”
“It’s fine,” Victoria said, patting it. “After being lanced, it was already much better by the next day.”
“It looks perfect to me,” Kate said.
“Isn’t this castle an oddity? It’s so huge. I thought I would expire from the cold last night, at least until Caesar came to bed with me.”
“Caesar!” Kate said, startled. Her hand froze on Freddie’s head. “I didn’t even realize he wasn’t in my chamber.”
“I could hear him barking,” Victoria explained. “I couldn’t bear it, so I finally slipped over here and brought him to my room. Freddie seemed perfectly comfortable so I left him on your bed.”
She fiddled with a fold of her gown, the color high in her cheeks. Kate looked at her and knew exactly what that meant. “I didn’t sleep in my bed last night,” she said with a sigh.
“I’m not one to judge,” Victoria said.
“Why did you come?” Kate asked, softening the question with a smile.
“Algie kept writing me.” And, when Kate’s eyebrow flew up: “He writes me every day. We both do, every day since we first met back in March, at Westminster Abbey.”
“You do ?”
Victoria nodded. “Sometime pages and pages. Algie,” she said with pride, “is a wonderful correspondent. I didn’t have a governess, you know, so I am considerably less—well—he doesn’t mind very much.”