Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

He wiggled his cold toes. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “They’ll stiffen else.”

  He leaned over and pulled out the bundle of food. Nemo trotted up and sat, staring. S.T. tossed the wolf a chicken leg, which disappeared in one bite. He sheared the wax off the wine bottle and pried out the cork, took a savoring sniff, and then offered the bottle to Leigh.

  “I don’t take spirits, as a rule,” she said.

  Naturally not.

  He swallowed a deep draught and sighed. Nemo inched closer, gazing intently at the capon. S.T. sat up straight and growled. The wolf stopped, his ears dropping submissively, but as soon as S.T. took another drink. Nemo tried to slink forward again.

  S.T. waited, setting down the bottle as if he didn’t see the wolf advancing one stealthy step at a time. Then suddenly he reached out and grabbed Nemo by the ruff, launched himself on top of the wolf, and gave him a hard shake and a good snarl. Nemo instantly shrank to his belly and rolled over with his tail tucked, whining and wriggling. The moment S.T. let go, the wolf retreated hastily, ears pasted down in dismay. He took up a position a few yards away, put his head on his paws, and stared soulfully while S.T. ate half of the capon.

  He looked down at Leigh where she sat cross-legged on the grass, oiling his boots in the moonlight. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  She didn’t even look up. “I’ll eat when I’ve finished this.”

  S.T. spread the napkin across the antique block and arranged the bread and meat for her. He reached for her cloak bag and dug toward the bottom, intending to retrieve the silver cup and fill it at the stream for her.

  “Don’t,” she snapped. “I don’t want you pawing through my things.”

  “Why not?” He didn’t stop rummaging. “One dress with matching slippers, a set of bone stays, one pearl choker, sketchbook, two gold buckles, a lady’s fan, some medicinal powders, miscellaneous muslin, cup, spoon, three lives and twenty pence. Estimated value four guineas—not counting the seed pearl on the silk stomacher. I pawed through it all a long time ago.”

  “While I was ill?” She glared at him. “You are not a gentleman.”

  “Haven’t got a jot of virtue in me.” He smiled. “What can you expect? I’m a highwayman.” He found the cup and stood up in his stocking feet, picking his way carefully back toward the water. Nemo rose silently and trotted ahead of him, keeping a respectful distance. When S.T. knelt at the stream he looked toward the wolf and called quietly. A soft whine answered him, but Nemo still seemed dubious about his welcome.

  S.T. lowered himself all the way onto the ground and called again. “Come on, old chap—you know better than to try to steal dinner. Come here.”

  Nemo sat down, unresponsive.

  S.T. held out his hand. “Do you think I don’t love you anymore? What’s got into you?”

  The wolf tilted his head quizzically, staring into S.T.’s eyes.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” S.T. sighed. “Afraid she’s going to join the pack?” He tugged at a clump of grass and shook his head. “The thing is, Nemo—I’m a blockhead when it comes to women. Can’t resist them.” He glanced back toward the temple. “Have you looked at her? I mean… hell and damnation, do you really blame me?” He put his hands in his hair. “I can feel myself going. I try to stay rational; I know I’m a bloody dunce to fall in love. It never answers. It never comes to anything. I don’t even like her. Lord, she’s got all the sensibility of a fence post.” He closed his eyes. “It’s just been so long, Nemo. So… damned… long.”

  He sighed again, and drew it out into the canine version—a whine. Nemo pricked his ears. He trotted forward, placed his big front paws carefully on S.T.’s knees, and licked his chin and face in sympathy.

  “That’s better.” S.T. stroked Nemo’s ruff and scratched his ears and fussed while the wolf pressed up against him and wagged its tail. “Friends again?” Nemo made a mock swipe and S.T. responded, turning the reunion into a playful tussle on the damp ground.

  When they returned, Leigh was still hunched over the boots. S.T. sat on the grass, leaning against the stone. The light breeze fluttered the pages of the sketchbook where he’d left it on the block. He reached up and pulled it down.

  “You’re an artist,” he said, holding it in his lap.

  “I merely sketch. And I have not invited you to view my work.”

  He slid the book back into her satchel, thinking of papa asleep in his library and Anna with her tall captain. S.T. liked the idea of her family. It made him smile, nostalgic for things he’d never actually experienced. He wouldn’t have minded looking at them again, but it was too dark anyway.

  “Where were you trained to paint?” she asked.

  He looked up, surprised by the question. She examined the boot she was holding and set it beside the other.

  “You really want to know?”

  She stood up and brushed at her breeches. “I was curious—your style is romantic, of course, and you make extensive use of chiaroscuro, but I was unable to identify a particular school.”

  “The Venetian Academy. I studied under Giovanni Piazzetta.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye to see what she would make of it.

  “I see,” was all she said.

  “And Tiepolo,” he added, unable to help himself. “I assisted in Maestro Tiepolo’s studio for three and a half years.”

  She took a helping of food and sat on the ground, breaking the bread in her lap. Quietly, she said, “He would be proud of you, I think. Your paintings are… luminous.”

  S.T. let out a soft breath. He closed his eyes and looked away before she could see the rush of pleasure that made his mouth curve upward without his permission.

  She liked his paintings. She thought they were luminous. God.

  He yearned to kiss her. He wanted to hold her body close and drown in her. “Let me paint you,” he said hoarsely. “Come back to the castle… I’d paint you like this… in the moonlight, with the ruins. You’re beautiful.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He leaned on his knees and buried his face in his crossed arms. “You’re making me insane.” He lifted his face. “You want me to teach you the sword? Come back and sit for me, and I’ll do it.”

  She gave him a long, steady look. “I don’t believe you can manage it.”

  He shoved himself to his feet. “Why? Because I can’t fight anymore?” He blinked away the dizziness from the sudden move and walked to one of the pillars. He leaned against it. “My fencing master was eighty-eight years old when I began, Miss Strachan, and he taught me to be the bloody best there was.”

  ’Twas true, of course: his master had been the finest teacher on the continent, but there had been a hundred other students and officers and dueling virtuosos at hand to hone S.T.’s skills in practice. But she was looking at him thoughtfully, and he reckoned he could take her through the novice exercises well enough, which were all she could handle and then some. He’d been educated in a formidable school.

  “An artist and a blade,” she said pensively. “Who are you, Monseigneur du Minuit?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Pardon me.” She looked away. “I did not mean to pry.”

  “’Tis no great secret. My mother ran away from her husband and produced me upon arrival in Florence. I’m a bastard, almost certainly, but I suppose the dates were doubtful enough for him to acknowledge me. Poor fellow—what else could he do after my elder brother killed his man in eighteen duels and then broke his neck falling out of a whorehouse window?” S.T. smiled. “No doubt the old chap was praying I might display the firmness of character so unhappily lacking in the rest of the family.” He tilted his head back against the pillar. “He was sadly mistaken, but I go by the honorable English name of Maitland anyway.”

  She wiped her fingers on the napkin. “I think you put your Englishness on for me. Like a cloak.”

  “It’s just another language.” He massaged the back of his neck. “I don’t belong
anywhere particularly. My mother never went back to England. We moved about.” He closed his eyes. “Venice, Paris, Toulouse, Rome… wherever she could find an English gentleman to provide the suitably desperate romantic entanglement.” He paused. “He must be English, you see, so that I should be brought up a proper little country squire. I can be French or Italian—or as beefsteak as John Bull. Whatever you like.”

  “It sounds an unsteady life,” she said.

  Cushioning his head with his arm, he leaned against the stone column. “It was rather a lark. Maitland sent money for the fencing and equitation and regular letters about what a devilish mortification we both were to him, and my mother lived off her lovers. ’Twas she who charmed Tiepolo for my place.” He smiled into the dark. “We rubbed along well enough, maman and I.”

  He turned and caught her staring at him. Abruptly she drained the silver cup and gathered up the scraps of her meal in her lap. “Should I feed these to the wolf?”

  “Aye. Save one of the capons for morning. Throw Nemo the other. He won’t come close enough to take it from your hand.”

  Nemo lifted his head, pounced on the meat that landed in the grass a foot away, and carried it behind S.T. to eat.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “Here?” He was deliberately slow to understand. “I came to rescue you.”

  “Here in hiding. Why did you run away? Why are you not in England still?”

  “I didn’t ‘run away’,” he said indignantly. “I merely… emigrated.”

  “You’ve a price on your head.”

  “What of it? I’d a price on my head for thirteen years. ‘Robbed on the Monday last, by a man wearing a black and white mask, with polite manner, speaking sometime French and riding a tall horse, all black or dark brown.’ He snorted. “I ask you, where’s the awful danger in that? If England rejoiced in a secret police and a standing army as France does, we gentlemen of the highroad wouldn’t have it so fine, I vow.” He looked over his shoulder at her. ’Tis our great good fortune that no freeborn Englishman will stomach such a womanish tyranny as effective law enforcement. A parcel of country magistrates aren’t particularly menacing, provided a man’s discreet. Which you may be assured that I am.”

  “Are you indeed,” she murmured dryly.

  He crossed his arms. “The real threat’s from the thieftakers and fences, and they’re no better than thieves themselves. One had better know how to deal with them, or be sorry for it. And sometimes from Bow Street, round and about London. And then, too—’ware the statute of hue and cry. ’Tis raised on occasion, in the county Hundred where the robbery took place.” He tilted his head and winked at her. “But it wouldn’t be half so diverting if it were too easy, would it?”

  “Easy no longer, perhaps. They have your description now.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said savagely, “because a plump and pretty little black-eyed pigeon saw fit to inform upon me.” His mouth curled. “Miss Elizabeth Burford.” He shook his head. “God, I must have been bewitched—I let her meet me where I was hiding out… I let her take off my mask for sport.” He sighed. “I’d never done that before. I don’t know why I did it then, save that…”

  Leigh didn’t speak into his pause.

  S.T. took a deep breath. “Save that it all seemed a shade too tame to be amusing, at the time.”

  “So she laid your description with a justice? And you fled to France?”

  “Certainly not. Must you have it that I bolted like a frightened hare? No one knew my name; I may have been somewhat beguiled, but I wasn’t that caper witted. A description’s nothing if you move along posthaste and have a persuasive way with your fabrications. No one’s going to be hung on the grounds that they’ve peculiar eyebrows.”

  “Why, then? Why did you run?”

  He frowned. “I had reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “You’re a pushing sort, aren’t you?”

  She took the rebuff silently. He could feel her gazing at him. The moon hung low over the mountain, casting long ebony shadows across the silvered grass.

  “Why did you become a highwayman?” she asked at last.

  He smiled into the darkness. “For mischief. For the thrill of it.”

  She sat cross-legged, motionless as a statue, still looking at him. S.T. turned on his shoulder and leaned against the pillar.

  “Did you think it was for my high ideals?” He mocked her with his voice. “The first time was on a wager. I was twenty. I worsted an excellent fencer, won a thousand pounds and the gratitude of a lady fair. I could see that it was the life for me.”

  She tilted her head. The moon poured frozen light across her face.

  “And what of you, Miss Strachan?” he asked. “What is your story?”

  “Mine’s simple enough.” She unbuttoned her waistcoat and pulled it off, kneeling on the ground to arrange it with her frock coat into a pillow. “I’m going to kill a man,” she said. “And I want to learn how to do it.”

  The breeze rustled in the long grass. Nemo finished his dinner, sighed and heaved himself into a more comfortable position to lick his paws.

  “Any man in particular?” S.T. asked. “Or is it just a grudge against my sex in general?”

  She stretched out on the grass, propped up on one elbow. Without the tight waistcoat her feminine shape showed clearly, the slender swell of her hips and breasts unbound. She pulled the ribbon from her queue and shook down her hair. “One man,” she said. “In particular.”

  S.T. left the pillar and lowered himself beside her, sitting cross-legged. He leaned toward her. “Why?”

  She rested her head back on the makeshift pillow and spread one of her hands, holding it up and watching as she turned it slowly against the sky. “He murdered my family. My mother, my father, and my two sisters.”

  There wasn’t a tremor in her voice, not a trace of emotion at all. S.T. gazed at her cool moon-washed face. She stared back at him, unblinking.

  “Sunshine,” he whispered.

  She lowered her eyes.

  He lay down beside her and took her in his arms; held her tight against him and stroked her shining hair.

  Chapter Six

  “If you’re going to do it,” she said in his ear, “go on.”

  His hand stilled. He-took a deep breath, rolled onto his back, and blew out a harsh sigh. “What do you mean by that?”

  She didn’t move beside him. “I don’t object,” she said. “I owe it to you.”

  He stared up at the temple columns, watching the moonlight and shadow. The slender pillars seemed flawless in the dark: cold-white, beautiful. If they’d ever had life to them, if they’d ever echoed to the sound of human laughter, they were silent now. Stone dead and silent.

  “I don’t want your rotting gratitude,” he said.

  She lay perfectly still, a mirage of the impersonal moonlight, as lifeless as the ruins. He couldn’t even feel her breathing.

  “Then I’m sorry.” She spoke suddenly. “Because that’s all I have to give.”

  He heard the roughness in her voice and turned toward her abruptly, pulling her close against his chest. He buried his face in the curve of her throat. “For God’s sake. Don’t build a wall to keep me outside.”

  “I won’t build one,” she whispered. “I am the wall.”

  He cradled her, uncertain of what to answer, how to reach her. “Let me love you,” he repeated. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “How easily you fall in love.” Her gaze moved beyond him to the night sky. “How many times has that happened before?”

  He tried to marshal his emotions into reasonable order, but a lock of dark hair fell across her cheek and defeated common sense entirely. He brushed it away. She made no resistance as he stroked her skin and kissed her gently. “Never,” he said. “I’ve had women. Lovers. I’ve never felt like this. I thought it was love, but it never lasted.”

  She smiled, just barely, a grave, mocking curve of her lips.

&
nbsp; “I swear it,” he said.

  “Foolish man. You don’t even know what love is.”

  He stopped his faint caresses. “And you do.”

  “Oh yes,” she said softly. “I know.”

  He leaned away, resting on his elbow. “Do forgive me. I didn’t realize there was someone else.”

  Her smile grew drier. “You needn’t poker up, monsieur. I’m perfectly free of that sort of romantic notion.” She shook her head, as if she pitied him. “I’m not in love. Nor married. Nor even a virgin. So you see—you may ease your needs on me with a clear conscience.”

  He closed his eyes. He could smell her; warm musky female scent that made his body hot.

  “I know you want to bed me,” she said. “Don’t talk of love. I’ve more than one debt to you that I can repay. Let me. Don’t suffer for the sake of gallantry.”

  He closed his eyes tighter. “I don’t want it like that.” All along his body, he felt her lithe presence, her legs beneath the breeches. “To pay off a debt. I don’t want a whore.”

  “You want an illusion.”

  He opened his eyes. “I love you.” When he said it, gazing at the perfect lines of her face, it seemed so true. “From the instant I saw you.”

  “You want to bed me. I won’t forestall you.”

  “I want your heart—to hold and cherish.”

  She looked away from him. “You’ve been wasted as a highwayman. I believe you might have made quite a torrid troubadour.”

  Damn her. It wasn’t going properly. She wasn’t responding the way she ought at all. He wanted to drag her down into the grass and kiss her until she was beyond mockery. Until she was soft and eager and helpless in her passion, the way a love ought to be.

  He set his jaw, staring into the dark. “I’m not a mindless buck, anyway. I don’t care to be serviced like one.”

  She lifted her hand and touched his cheek, drew her finger slowly down his jaw and across his lips. He tasted her and his breath grew quicker.

  “Don’t deny yourself,” she whispered. “Not waiting for some sentiment I can’t give you.”

  Her finger slipped downward, traced a cool path on his throat and chest, drifting to her own neckline. She toyed with the tie on her shirt and pulled it free, exposing her throat in the deep open V.