A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-three

Kate cleared the last weeds from the statue of the child. She was a chubby toddler, sitting on the ground in a smock, and laughing. “Hello there,” Kate murmured to the little stone girl. “I wonder . . .”

She pulled ivy from her pedestal and found a simple inscription: Merry, Darling.

“Your gloves are ruined,” came a voice over her shoulder.

“My maid brought along boxes and boxes of gloves,” she said. “Look, Gabriel. Isn’t she a dear? She has ringlets.”

“And wings,” Gabriel pointed out. “She’s a baby angel.”

“Do you suppose that she was Merry—or was Merry a beloved kitten, perhaps? She reminds me of the cupids in the north corridor. Perhaps she was made by the sculptor stolen from Italy, the one who escaped in a butter churn.”

“Does one erect a statue just for a kitten? My guess would be that this is a memorial, if not the actual grave itself.” He bent down and brushed away a head of yarrow that nodded against the child’s cheek.

“That’s so terribly sad,” Kate said.

“There’s an instinctive wish to remember the child playing and laughing,” he said. “When we were excavating Barbary two years ago, we discovered that the tombs of children were full of toys so that they could play happily in the afterlife.”

Kate nodded. “Not so different, I suppose, from putting a statue of Merry actually playing in the garden.”

“I have a little pot upstairs that I’ve been working on. It came from a tomb, and it originally held knucklebones. Presumably they were the boy’s own toys. I’ll show it to you someday.”

“It sounds fascinating,” Kate said, meaning it.

“My old professor, Biggitstiff, is an arrant blockhead, and threw out the pot, knucklebones and all. In fact, he had the men simply throw dirt in the tomb after he discovered there wasn’t any gold inside.”

“Is he interested only in gold?”

“In truth, no. But he’s interested in fame. He wants the big find, the exciting discovery. Something as trifling as the grave of a poor child would never interest him. That’s what bothers me about his excavation of Carthage. He’ll be rampaging about, looking for Dido’s grave, and doubtless destroying all sorts of interesting artifacts.”

His voice had moved away again and she looked over her shoulder to find that he was spreading a blanket in a relatively clear spot of grass.

“Come and eat,” he called.

She scrambled to her knees and came to join him. “It’s a feast,” she said with satisfaction.

“Take off those filthy gloves,” Gabriel said. He waved a chicken leg at her.

“Mmmm,” Kate said, stripping off her gloves. “Things smell so much better in the outdoors; have you noticed?” She bit into the chicken.

He didn’t answer, just handed her a glass of wine that slid, light and faintly sparkling, down her throat.

She didn’t notice until she’d eaten the chicken leg, a meat tartlet, a piece of mouthwatering cheddar cheese, and a pickled quail’s egg that he hadn’t answered. In fact, he wasn’t even eating; he was just propped up on his elbow watching her.

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