The Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  The corpulent figure who opened the door and thumped into the library was a complete stranger. S.T. sat looking up at him, waiting for an introduction, figuring his own identity was obvious enough.

  For a silent moment, the stout man gazed at S.T., looking him over as if he were some object on the market, walking left and right with the floor complaining at each step. In spite of the fleshy figure, his turquoise silk coat had the cut of a fashionable tailor, and his neck cloth was spotless linen. He stopped and stuck out his lower lip, his hands in his waistcoat pockets.

  “Care to examine my teeth?” S.T. asked curtly.

  “Don’t be impudent.”

  S.T.’s handcuffs clashed as he tightened his fists against the chair. “Then don’t stare at me as if you’re some bumpkin at the king’s menagerie. I want you to draw me up a testament before we talk of the trial.”

  The bulbous eyes lowered. “I am Clarbourne,” he announced icily.

  S.T. lifted his chin, frowning. He gazed at the proud, immense figure, the heavy jowls and powerful shoulders. Then it struck him, with such force that he uttered, “My God!” and threw back his head with a bark of black laughter. “Clarbourne! Egad, I thought you were my lawyer—and lavishly overdressed for the business at that.”

  The Earl of Clarbourne, maker of ministries, favorite of the king and prime force within the exchequer, appeared to find no humor in the misunderstanding. His wide mouth drew downward contemptuously. ’Ware the liberties you take, sirrah.”

  S.T. eyed him with suspicion. “What the devil does the treasury want with me?” He looked up slantwise, breaking into a sly grin. “Perhaps you’d like to appoint a Highwayman-General to supplement the coffers? I’m perfectly willing, but I shouldn’t think you in need of any amateur help with the enterprise.”

  Clarbourne regarded him with distaste. “I have come to inform you of your situation, my dunghill cock.” He folded his hands behind his back. “The Crown is in possession of substantial evidence of the activities of this so-called Prince of Midnight. Sufficient to hang him a score of times over if it so pleases His Majesty.”

  He paused, allowing a portentous silence to fill the room.

  “I thank you,” S.T. said. “Most kind of you to come all this way to share His Majesty’s view of the matter.”

  Clubroom drew a snuffbox from his waistcoat and took a pinch, sneezing heavily. “Your name is Maitland,” he said. He walked to the windows and drew one of the drapes aside a crack with his forefinger. “Sophocles Trafalgar Maitland, so says the family Bible which your father’s solicitors consulted on my behalf. Lord Luton confirmed your identity.”

  S.T. waited, keeping his face impassive.

  Clubroom rubbed his nose and sniffed. “This—person—by the name of James Chilton, who was so disobliging as to get himself shot… there is some question as to who did the foul deed. I understand that you accuse Luton. He is so amiable as to accuse you. It is all very boring and inconvenient. At a trial”—he squinted out the narrow gap—“witnesses would be called. Questions would be asked. Certain-circumstances-would inevitably come to the public notice.”

  “Circumstances?” S.T. murmured.

  “I have a daughter,” Clarbourne said suddenly.

  S.T. went still, gazing at the huge silhouette by the darkened window.

  Clarbourne dropped the curtain. “The Lady Sophia.” His lip curled. “An exceedingly silly girl. She has lately been calling herself Dove of Peace.”

  A carriage passed in the road outside, the clatter of hooves and grate of the wheels the only sound in the quiet room. Clubroom chafed his hands behind his back and then turned slowly to look at S.T. with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Ah,” S.T. said softly. “Here’s a heat.”

  “A heat indeed. Lady Sophia is betrothed. The family settlements are of some consequence. You may not realize that she has been—abroad—for the past year. Perhaps there would be some confusion at your trial, and girls in whom she has foolishly confided would mistakenly declare that she has been—elsewhere.” He shrugged. “Perhaps not. I am not a man who likes uncertainty.” The earl took another pinch of snuff. “I do not choose that any trial should take place.”

  S.T. looked down at his lap. He took one breath, and then another, keeping them even.

  “Can you guard your tongue?” Clarbourne asked. S.T. lifted his head and met the man’s eyes. “Only give me sufficient reason.”

  Clarbourne stroked his forefinger across his upper lip. He stared at S.T. like a huge, sleepy toad staring at a fly. Then he reached inside his coat and drew out a folded parchment embellished with dangling seals. He trod heavily to the door, paused, and dropped the thick vellum on a small ebony table. “His Majesty’s full pardon,” he said. “You do not sully my daughter’s name by hazarding to speak it.”

  He opened the door, stalked ponderously out, and closed it behind him.

  S.T. stared at the folded parchment. He leaned his head back and rested it on the chair frame, with a slow, incredulous grin spreading across his face.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A full month he’d been in London. A month he’d known where to find her at her cousin’s house in Brook Street. He had not gone. Every morning he rose and dressed and called for a chair to take him, and every morning he’d found some distraction, some trivial errand, some chance-met acquaintance, some reason why it would be better to wait.

  Perhaps he would see her at the new Pantheon or a garden musicale, somewhere more romantic than a drawing room crowded with morning callers. Perhaps he would meet her on the street and take her hand and see her face light with pleasure. Perhaps she would hear of his pardon, recognize his success; perhaps she’d write a letter, send a message, do something—anything—oh God.

  For a month, S.T. had been the darling of the London social season, the prize of competing hostesses and an absolute sensation when he’d appeared at a Vauxhall masquerade in his harlequin mask and silver-studded-gauntlets. His family name had always given him entree into society, and in the past he’d been welcome as one of those not-entirely-respectable guests who added a bit of spice to the list… but now, revealed as the Prince of Midnight, he found himself the rage.

  He spent his free time rehearsing the words he’d say when he saw her. At every entertainment he moved restlessly through the crowds, edgy and brooding until he was sure she wasn’t present, and then he could be at ease. After the first fortnight he began to realize that he wouldn’t meet her; she hadn’t been into society at all—no one knew her, no one spoke of her, and the ladies began to tease him about becoming sadly tame and approachable after all.

  He even accepted an invitation to Northumberland’s ball.

  The last time S.T. had been Hugh and Elizabeth Percy’s guest at Syon, he’d spent his days gambling and sleeping late and his midnights making love beneath a scaffold. Percy had been a mere earl then; now he rejoiced in a dukedom. Tonight the scaffolding and the illicit lover were long since gone, and the interiors that Robert Adam had refitted shone in all their rainbow glory: veined marble of red and green and gold, patterned floors and gilded statues, carpets specially woven to reflect every complex detail of the painted and plastered ceilings. Within it all moved the duke’s guests, as bright as exotic birds in a flowering jungle, fluttering fans and gracefully flicking lace cuffs, smelling of perfume and wine and a social squeeze on a warm June evening.

  “I shall simply die, I promise you I shall,” Lady Blair simpered to S.T., “until I make you tell me what became of my pearl tiara with the darling ’ittle-weensy diamond drops.”

  He lifted his finger and flicked playfully at the emerald that dangled from her ear, allowing his hand to brush her white throat. “Methinks I gave it to your second housemaid.” Smiling, he brought his hand back to his lips and kissed it where he’d touched her. “After you dismissed the chit for impertinence. Did your husband buy you nothing better to replace it, ma pauvre?”

  She gave a delighted shiver, her ba
red shoulders wriggling and her mouth in a babyish pout. “Oh—p’rhaps I’ve been wicked to someone else, an’ oo’ll steal my earrings, too.”

  “Perhaps I shall.” He looked into her eyes. “And demand a kiss at sword point on the open heath.”

  She laid her closed fan on his sleeve and rubbed it up and down the green velvet. “How very—violent,” she murmured: “I’m certain I should scream.”

  “But that only makes it all the more interesting.” S.T. turned his head. “And what if your husband should come to the rescue? I see him galloping this direction now, armed with champagne and a glass of claret.”

  She rolled her eyes meaningfully, but S.T. only smiled and inclined his head in a polite bow to the ruddy-faced man who wove toward them through the crowd. “Lord Blair,” he said. “Well met.”

  The man returned a cold nod. “Maitland,” he said shortly. He handed his wife her champagne and pulled out a lace handkerchief, dabbing at the perspiration that beaded at the hairline of his powdered wig.

  “We were reminiscing,” S.T. said. “I was just about to complain to Lady Blair that I carry the scar from your sword to this day.”

  “Eh?” Lord Blaire’s scowl lightened. “Good God, that must have been ten years ago!” He squinted at S.T. “I thought mayhap I’d pinked you, but I wasn’t certain of it.”

  “I was laid in my bed for a month,” S.T. lied cheerfully, and then perjured himself beyond redemption by adding, “You’ve a wicked twist to the left in quite. Caught me entirely by surprise.”

  “Did it so?” Lord Blair’s color heightened. He glanced left and right and then leaned toward S.T. “I’ve said nothing in public about crossing swords with you,” he muttered. “Didn’t really think—that I—one doesn’t wish to puff off one’s bravado, you see.”

  “Certainly not.” S.T. winked. “But you won’t take it amiss if I should warn anyone off from a quarrel with you.”

  Blair cleared his throat, turning very bright red. He grinned and clapped S.T. on the shoulder. “Well, shall we let bygones be bygones, eh? You’ll allow you were a bit misguided to be lying out for Lady Blair and myself—but I don’t doubt the most of your victims got their just deserts.”

  “I like to think so,” S. T, murmured kindly, and took his chance to move away. The second housemaid, if he remembered aright, had been dismissed for the impertinence of allowing herself to be raped and impregnated by the heroic Lord Blair. S.T. left the champion expounding to his wife upon a fight that had never taken place beyond his hopeful imagination and one halfhearted sally with a smallsword. No Englishman but Luton could truly claim to have put a cut on the Seigneur du Minuit. Luton, however, was not here to assert the honor, having apparently been persuaded that it was in his interests to take an extended tour of the continent.

  Perhaps the Duke of Clarbourne had paid for his passage.

  “You’re perfectly shameless,” a female voice said in his left ear. S.T. turned around and bowed to his hostess, lifting her hand to kiss.

  “But not boring, I hope,” he said. “What misdeed do you intend to tax me with? I’m certain I never robbed a duchess.”

  “Oh, too timid for that by half, I don’t doubt. I’m not made of such paltry stuff as Blair.” She tilted her chin and looked down her patrician nose at him.

  “Certainly better with a sword, I’d wager.”

  The duchess tossed her dark curls. “There—I said you were shameless. Poor Blair is trying to convince anyone who will listen that he had the wherewithal to wound you!”

  S.T. smiled.

  “Did he?” She lifted her eyebrows.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, madame.”

  “Which means that he did not,” she said in a satisfied voice. “I thought as much—and so I’ll reply to anyone who asks. I’ll give that little smile, just the way that you do, and whisper: ‘He told me he wasn’t at liberty to say.’ ’Twill drive Blair mad, won’t it?”

  “What a diverting thought. How does your charming niece go on?”

  The duchess fluttered her fan. “Oh, she dines at eight, goes to bed at three, and lies there until four in the afternoon; she bathes, she rides, she dances… you may see for yourself—if you can make your way through the flocks of languishing gentlemen.”

  S.T. didn’t need to look to envision the young lady in question surrounded by a ring of enthusiastic admirers. “I believe I’ll conserve my strength.”

  “She’s saving the first polonaise for you, if you believe you can dodder through it, my poor weakling.”

  He bowed. “But perhaps you have this set free yourself, duchess? While I still maintain some slight degree of vigor—will you honor me?”

  She smiled and held up her hand. S.T. led her past the fluted columns to the white and gold ballroom, where the crowd coalesced into an elegant group at the first stately strains of music.

  At the head of the set, he bowed as his partner curtsied. He moved through the familiar steps, making the sort of light conversation that he’d learned at his mother’s knee. Not for nothing had Mrs. Robert Maitland been the toast of London and Paris and Rome in her day. S.T. reckoned that he had idle party chat bred in his blood.

  It needed only casual attention to make himself pleasant and execute the changes to the strains of flute and hautboys and harpsichord. He cast a glance down the set as he lifted the duchess’s hand and circled.

  He saw Leigh.

  Only pure instinct kept him moving. He finished the circle and went down the set in mechanical response to the duchess’s steps, not hearing the music, not seeing the dancers, aware only of the monumental disaster that was about to put him across from her in the set.

  He couldn’t tell if she’d seen him. Her face was composed, utterly gorgeous, all her hair piled and powdered on her head and that tiny black patch at the comer of her lips. He couldn’t seem to draw his breath quite deep enough in his chest; when he reached her end and paused at his place opposite her in the pattern, his body just took its own course, independent of his mind. He didn’t even look at her; he only lifted her hand, circled, and passed on up the set.

  After he’d done it, he began to breathe too fast. Idiot!

  Bleeding blockhead! Of all the things he’d meant to do when he saw her, of all he’d planned to say, composing the words over and over in his mind until he got them right—oh lord, oh Jesus, oh sweet bloody hell… he could not believe what he’d just done.

  He’d just cut her. He’d given her the cut direct. Perhaps she hadn’t realized it—maybe she’d done the same thing to him. Maybe somehow, in some perfect world, she’d managed to overlook six feet and one inch of ex-highwayman, and after this interminable dance he could go to her and make his speech and she would understand.

  But he looked at her and his heart froze in his chest, and all the pretty words just vanished.

  The music lifted and came to an end. S.T. offered his arm to the duchess. For an awful instant, she seemed inclined to turn toward the foot of the set, but then someone called to her from the ladies’ anteroom. S.T. took his chance and squeezed her arm, guiding her in the safe direction.

  Leigh pressed her cheek against the carved oak paneling of the passage where she’d come to hide herself after the dance. Impossible to stay amid the music and laughter, unthinkable to see him again and have him look past her as if she weren’t there.

  She didn’t know what she had expected. A declaration? The Seigneur on his knees at her feet? A chance to tell him what she thought of him?

  Liar! Hypocrite! Treacherous, preening cockerel, all dressed in his green and gold with his remarkable hair tied casually at his nape, not even powdered for decency, gleaming in the candlelight.

  Oh, all the nights she’d lain in her bed, afraid for him, wondering where he was and how safe. All the mornings her heart had pounded in her throat as she tried to speak casually of the papers to her Cousin Clara. Any news of note? Any weddings, births, broken engagements? No highwaymen arrested? Oh, yes, what a sad
bore. No, please, she didn’t think she felt up to going to the theater tonight.

  And then, in one day, the announcement of his imprisonment and pardon and arrival in London.

  She’d waited.

  Why, why did she let it hurt like this?

  She hadn’t expected love, oh, no; she hadn’t believed in him for one instant. She’d known him for what he was. And yet she’d turned around with Silvering and everything left of her life burning down before her eyes, and laid her heart and being at his feet.

  Why hadn’t he come?

  She truly hated him. Hate seemed to fill up her life; she still hated Jamie Chilton in his grave, and Dove of Peace, and all the silly girls who’d come to Leigh and said Mr. Maitland had sent them to her because she would know what to do.

  Of course she knew. It was easy enough to browbeat Dove into admitting her real name, easy enough to predict that the powerful Clarbourne would take back an heiress of Lady Sophia’s substance no matter where she’d run away to. Sweet Harmony, too, had a family anxious to have her back, willing to go to any length to cover up the scandal. Leigh had settled Chastity; she’d made certain all of them made homeless by her revenge on Chilton had somewhere to go—but she didn’t forgive. She hated every one of them.

  Mostly she hated S.T. Maitland. And herself, because she was a great fool to hurt, and hurt, and hurt.

  She should not have come out to this affair. Of course he would be here, basking in his legend. She’d heard about Vauxhall—attending in his mask, the puffed-up coxcomb; he’d even had poor Nemo along and terrified all the ladies. Never mind that the wolf must have been more frightened than any squealing courtesan. S.T. knew how Nemo was with females. Leigh should have stayed home at her cousin’s the way she had for months—waiting, hoping, hating.

  She was afraid, too, frightened of what she found herself becoming. She felt that she was transforming into a malevolent black spider, hunched back in her crack, staring out at the world and despising everything and everyone for having what she did not.