The Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  Chastity said timidly, “Could ’eejus’ go back for Sweet Harmony? I do be afraid…” Her voice trailed off.

  The Seigneur looked up at her. A subtle shadow hardened his jaw. “Afraid of what?”

  “Of her—of her punishment. Sweet Harmony, she didn’ heave no rock at ’ee—an’ she still ’us standin’ up; not kneelin’ down when Master Jamie prayed. And Divine Angel, she seen it.” She worried her lip. “They’ll be wicked cross, ’cause I’d ride off wiv’ee.”

  “You see?” Leigh said sharply. “They’ll persecute this girl Sweet Harmony now.”

  He stood up, dangling the spurs. “And what would you have?” His steady gaze pierced her. “Do you say I should have left Chastity there? You doctored her hands—you saw what they did, just because I singled her out.”

  “Of course I saw it! Why don’t you see it?” Leigh gripped the high wooden back of the settle. “You know what he’s capable of doing, and yet you go in and stir them; you rush ahead with no more sense than a horse that’s bolted. Chastity said one of them had a gun.” She pushed off the wood. “’Tis luck you weren’t shot before ever you saw Chilton’s face.”

  He leaned toward her, scowling, his shoulder against the settle. “But I wasn’t, was I? I know what I’m doing, damn you. I’ve faced far worse than a broken-down blunderbuss.”

  “And completely forgotten the consequences, I see!” He straightened up as if she’d struck him. “Oh, no,” he said softly. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Think on it, then.” She walked to the front door and dragged it open. “While I leave you to the enjoyment of your seraglio.”

  Chill morning air hit her face. She slammed the door behind her and walked past Mistral, who stood in halter with the lead trailing down to the ground. The horse watched her cross to the stable yard, but didn’t move. He wouldn’t, unless Leigh were to pick up the lead. Another dumb beast caught in the Seigneur’s spell.

  The stable smelled of frost and hay, lit by shafts of thin, dusty sunlight that brought no warmth. Nearby lay the Seigneur’s sheathed rapier, balanced across a bucket, with the sword belt dangling where he’d taken the weapon off temporarily while he worked Mistral from the ground. She propped back the door with a stool to let in more light and reached for a grooming box.

  A human shadow fell across the floor. The Seigneur stepped inside, pushing back the door. He grabbed her by the elbow. “Seraglio! Is that the burr under your saddle?”

  She felt heat flood her face. “Let go of me.”

  He didn’t. He pulled her closer and shut the door, sealing them into the dusky stable. “You’re jealous.”

  “You’re an insufferable peacock.”

  It sounded childish, and she knew it. He released his tight hold. Something changed in his face, an unexpected softening, a perceptive half smile. “Am I?” he asked in a low voice.

  Leigh wanted to fling herself away. Instead she stood frozen, encumbered by her weakness, paralyzed by his light hold. “I thought you weren’t going to go back,” she said painfully. “And then you do worse yet. You tease Chilton into madness, you bring that girl; what are we to do with her? What are we to do with both of them?”

  His hand moved up and pressed her arm gently. “There’s a stage leaves Hexham on Thursday,” he murmured. “I’ve already looked into it. The girls will be on board.”

  “To where?”

  He moved his head casually. “I don’t know. I’ll ask. Wherever they came from.” The stroke of his hand worked up to her collar. One finger slipped inside, between the linen and her throat. “Does that please you?”

  Leigh stood still, feeling the coax of his hand on her skin, the warmth of his body close to hers. He was going to kiss her. She saw the relaxing of his face, the downward brush of his lashes lit by the faint light from the hayloft.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Tell me what I can do.” He brushed his lips against her temple. “You know I’d do anything you asked.”

  She closed her eyes. “Then I’m asking you again. Don’t go back to that place.”

  His fingers tightened cruelly on her shoulder. But he kissed her eyes and her cheek, his breath a subtle caress. “Don’t fear for me, Sunshine. I know what I’m doing.”

  She shook her head slowly back and forth.

  He pulled her into his arms and leaned back against the partition of an empty stall. “I can destroy Chilton for you. I can turn the town against him. That’s why you came to me, Leigh—have you forgotten it? I can give you your revenge; ’tis what I’ve spent my life at doing.”

  She started to pull away, then gripped his coat instead and pressed her forehead against his chest. “I tell you, I tell you—’tis no longer the same. I don’t want…” Her throat closed.

  I don’t want to lose you to him, she thought. She clenched his coat until her fingers hurt. Damn you, damn you; I just could not endure it.

  He stroked her hair. Feathered kisses drifted down her cheek and jaw. His breath was warm in the freezing air, his body solid and close beneath the leather coat, scented with hay and horse and his own male essence.

  He twined a lock of her hair around his finger and kissed the top of her ear. “What don’t you want?” he whispered.

  She pulled back sharply. “I don’t want revenge! Everything’s changed. He’s driven out everyone I ever knew or cared about. There’s no point in it anymore.” She let go of his coat. “I don’t need vengeance. I don’t need you to do it.”

  He caught her shoulders, but she resisted. “Do you understand?” She met his eyes. “I do not need you!”

  His hands tightened. The golden, mocking brows drew down.

  “Forget about Chilton,” she said. “Go back to France. I don’t want you to do anything for me. Take yourself off to your castle and your paintings and your garlic.”

  He let go of her. For an instant he stood against the stall, very still. “Garlic,” he said, as if the word were a mortal affront.

  Leigh closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “Do you understand me at all?”

  “I understand.” His voice was low and violent. “You think I can’t do it.”

  She turned away and slumped down onto a trunk, holding her head between her hands. She stared at the dirt floor in despair.

  “I can,” he said, the words bruised with bitterness. “I can and I will, devil take you; I’ve done it for years. I never got caught, not even the last time. I know what I’m doing; I have the best horse I ever set eyes upon; I have my sword and my balance—I can do it. Blast you-don’t doubt me.”

  She shuddered, pulling her arms around her knees. “I don’t want you to do it.”

  “Aye, you’d have me go back to my garlic, would you? I’m to think you don’t give a fig for Chilton anymore, or your family or what you’ve lost.”

  “I don’t!” she cried, pressing her hands to the sides of her head. “I don’t.”

  “Rot!” The stable reverberated to the sound of his boot heel as he smashed it against the partition. Two stalls down, her chestnut’s head came up in alarm. “You’ll turn me into a madman.”

  “Kill yourself, then!” she said violently. “Go on and kill yourself!”

  He stared at her a moment, his mouth set. Then he slowly shook his head. “You just don’t believe I can manage it, do you?”

  She didn’t answer. The chestnut moved restlessly in his stall, rolling his eyes and trying to see over the partitions.

  “Infinitely obliged,” the Seigneur said, softly and sarcastically. She heard the grating drag of the stable door. The wide shaft of sun flashed and dimmed and brightened again as he passed beyond it.

  He left her alone.

  She sat on the trunk and toyed with a grooming brush, turning it over and over in her hand: Then she stopped, listening.

  From far away, muffled by the stable walls, came the low-pitched moan of the wilderness. Nemo’s call began in a deep chord and slowly rose, swelling to a rich, plaintive
peak, a loneliness that shivered in the empty air. It was the first time he’d howled since they’d been at the inn, and the melancholy sound seemed to pull at her with a physical force.

  Leigh stared at the Seigneur’s discarded sword. It was the lightweight weapon, the one he called a colichemarde, meant for fencing with the tip instead of cutting sideways in a murderous slash like his flat-bladed broadsword. She reached for the weapon and drew it across her lap.

  The hilt was plain, unlike the beautiful and complex interweave of the broadsword’s basket hilt. The narrow hand guard of the colichemarde gleamed with a dull rainbow of metallic green and red and blue on steel, the decoration on the hand grip worn almost smooth by constant use.

  She stood up, propped the tip on the ground, and buckled the belt around her waist as she’d seen him do, dragging the leather thong up three holes to keep it on her hips. The blade felt awkward, far too long, sticking out behind her and bumping against the walls when she turned.

  Leigh went to the anxious chestnut, pulled off his rug and set to work with furious strokes, brushing him down in the half light. He sidled and quivered, catching the heat of her emotions. By the time she heaved the sidesaddle on him, he was tossing his head in agitation.

  She mounted off the trunk, struggling to control the ungainly scabbard and the horse at the same time. She ducked wildly as the chestnut shot out the stable door. If the Seigneur was still with Mistral in the yard, she didn’t know it; she didn’t look, but gave the chestnut a kick that sent it cantering recklessly out the gate, across the road, and toward the barren moors.

  Clouds moved in from the north, swallowing the sunlight ray by ray. They spread low over the wild and empty landscape, sullenly familiar in their dismal chill. In her childhood, she’d loved the Roman wall, loved it even in this mournful, freezing weather when the stones stood black and eerie against the sky. When she was small, her mother had taken Leigh on winter outings bundled to the ears, allowed her to scramble over the fallen masonry, and told her stories of the pagan days when Caesar’s cavalry held the rampart against the barbarians of the north. She’d dug for coins, and found a tiny clay lamp once, and a lumpy, discolored piece of metal that her mother had carefully scraped clean to reveal as a pair of bronze tweezers.

  Leigh took the covert way to the place that had once been home, crossing by the drove road that cut the ancient wall and skirting along in the northern shadow of the cliffs. The chestnut moved in its long, pushing strides, head up and blowing nervously as they neared the open gap where the wall curved down between two hills. In the cold air, faint steam rose from the horse’s sweaty coat. The sword hilt lay at a difficult angle across her thigh, never meant to conform to a female on a sidesaddle.

  On the north side of the gap she reined the chestnut to a halt; faced into the wind, and lifted her chin. She gathered all her breath into her lungs.

  She howled. It was a sad imitation of the full-throated cry she’d heard from the moors, but she raised her voice to its limits in spite of the horse’s uneasy sidling beneath her.

  Before her breath had given way, Nemo answered. His deep harmony rose with hers, far closer than she’d expected. The chestnut shied in agitation. Leigh grabbed its mane and broke off her cry. She dismounted, the sword banging her calves, and held the frightened horse as a gray shadow came bounding down from the trees atop the cliffs. Nemo leaped across a frozen puddle, his mouth agape, uttering little wows of excitement.

  Leigh lifted her head and howled again, and the wolf stopped a yard away, raising his chin to join in ecstatically. The caroling drowned out her own, loud enough to hurt her ears. His rich, wild note surrounded her, shivering into her skull as she fought to hold the chestnut under control.

  Nemo left off his cry and leaped up to greet her, his teeth colliding with her chin in a painful blow. She tottered, scrambling to hang onto the reins and stay on her feet as Nemo planted his huge paws against her shoulders and washed her face with his tongue, a coarse and ruthless laundering that stung where he’d cut her.

  She pushed him off, a rebuff that sent the wolf into a wallowing bask at her feet. As Nemo fawned, the horse settled down to restive strutting, staring dubiously at the wolf.

  Leigh reached up and stroked the chestnut neck. “What a brave fellow,” she murmured, knowing she was fortunate the horse hadn’t bolted for a mile. “Brave, clever fellow.”

  One ear flicked toward her, and then pricked back anxiously, riveted on the wolf. Nemo rolled over expectantly. Leigh bent, keeping the reins in a firm grip, and rubbed the wolf’s belly until Nemo wriggled and squirmed, trying to lick her arm and wag his tail at the same time.

  Her chin throbbed and stung where his teeth had grazed it. She pressed the back of her hand to her jaw and came away with bright red blood on her skin. But Nemo was licking her hand as if he’d never loved anyone more. When she stood up, he rolled to his feet and pressed against her legs with enough affectionate force to send her toppling again. She only saved herself when the tip of the sword caught against the ground, providing an instant of stability.

  Nemo bounded away on stiff legs, his ears flattened to the sides, his eyes wide, inviting her to play. His comical expression took all the menace from his clear yellow eyes; his tongue lolled, tempting a frolic. Leigh had seen the Seigneur respond to that, run and roll and play tag, and sometimes come back with a bleeding scratch like her own from Nemo’s strenuous wolf games. The Seigneur played, but he never quit until he was on top, refusing to surrender his sovereign position even in fun.

  But Leigh could not take time for amusement. She had a goal. Dove had been quite specific in her description of the rigid routine at Heavenly Sanctuary. In the late morning, Chilton would be found at his preparations for noonday service, working alone in the church.

  Leigh remounted, turning the chestnut east. Nemo fell in behind. He trotted in single file after the chestnut, just far enough back to avoid a stray hoof.

  Leigh kept her bare hand on the sword hilt, warming the frigid steel. She’d gone to France to find the Seigneur with no family and no future and no fear, with a wellspring of hate in her heart. But now she was afraid. Now she was cornered and desperate. Now she had something to lose.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  S.T. didn’t discover that she’d taken his sword until he broke for the midday meal and brought Mistral into the stable. It must have been her—the potboy that the Twice Brewed’s landlord was pleased to call an ostler hadn’t been near the place. S.T. cleaned up the stalls, dressed Mistral, pitched hay, and spent a quarter hour searching through the stable for a sword he knew he’d left in plain sight.

  He’d seen her ride off like the devil to go; who could miss it? Nothing in creation would have made him trail after her, playing the groveling pup. Dove had been waiting, anyway, with a pint of small beer for him and a lump of sugar for Mistral, and Leigh could go to hell.

  The silliness of the theft roused his temper. Steal his sword, would she? Perhaps she thought the lack of it would be enough to send him back to France and his garlic. Mayhap she really thought him that much a humbug.

  He swept up a bent horseshoe and hurled it into the wall. The metal rang against stone, and Mistral lifted his head from his oats as the shoe bounced to the floor. The horse looked around, blew out a long breath, and began munching again. S.T. shoved back a loose lock of hair and retied his queue with a jerk, planting his hat on his head as he stalked out the door.

  The potboy was just leading a newly arrived pair of job horses inside as he left. S.T. glanced at the animals, judged them well above the standard of horseflesh normally to be expected at a carters’ inn, and gave one an acknowledging slap on the rump as he passed. A weathered black traveling chariot stood outside the stable, mud splashed, its empty shaft propped on the watering trough. He tucked his gloves under his arm, breathing clouds of frost in the glacial air. The door to the Twice Brewed stood open; inside he could see the dark outlines of the newcomer and the landlady.
/>   He pulled off his hat and bent his head to enter.

  “Harkee,” a cordial voice said. “What have we got here? By my soul—that can’t be S.T. Maitland!”

  S.T. froze with one foot over the threshold.

  There was no hope of evasion. Slowly, he put his gloves inside his hat and lifted his head.

  The gentleman in the pink lace coat and steep macaroni wig stood beaming at him. “By God if it ain’t. How d’ye do? Haven’t set eyes upon that remarkable phiz for years. Bob Derry’s Cyder Cellar, was it?”

  S.T. reluctantly inclined his head. “Lord Luton,” he murmured.

  “Did you ever see the like?” Luton rolled his pale eyes toward Dove and Charity, who stood together near the fire. “Couldn’t find better in London, could we?” He tapped his tasseled walking stick against S.T.’s shoulder. “What’re ye doing here? I’ve just got in, and cold as hell it was to drive in that wind. Sit down by the fire and share a bottle of Toulon, and tell me what dissipation brings you into the outlands.”

  S.T. saw no help for it. Luton was as wild as he was depraved; he disposed himself elegantly on the settle, one leg propped up, displaying the high red heels and ribbons of his Italian shoes. He arranged his cuffs, staring openly at the girls while he talked, a faint curl at the corner of his aristocratic mouth.

  “Where are you bound?” S.T. asked, taking the bottle from the landlady and pouring for them both.

  “I’m in no hurry to go anywhere.” Luton sniffed at his wine and wrinkled his nose, never taking his eyes from Dove and Charity, who kept their faces shyly averted. “Perhaps I’ll put up here for the nonce.”

  S.T. snorted. “You’ll rue it,” he said. “It’s naught but a carters’ lodging. Not a tall in your style.”

  Luton smiled and held up his glass. “To auld lang syne,” he said dryly, and watched as S.T. met the toast and drank. “Do you wish me out of your way, old friend?”

  S.T. cast a meaningful glance toward the girls. “And what do you think, old friend?”