Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  Leigh stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame.

  Merde, S.T. thought.

  He stopped and smiled tentatively. “No wolf.”

  “Only a two-legged one.” she said, and turned her back on him.

  Chapter Nine

  A week beyond Aubenas, in the dismal flat heath of the Sologne, Leigh sat crammed beside the Seigneur, forced into intimate proximity by their baggage piled into the cabriolet instead of tied on the rack behind. After the upheaval at the Cheval Blanc, he’d surrendered to the inevitable and ordered a crate built to hold Nemo. The wolf now rode behind bars on the baggage rack.

  The blind mare pulled the extra load patiently. The bright winter of the south had fallen behind, yielding to low clouds. Rain set in, and the folding leather hood of the cabriolet afforded only slight protection.

  Leigh drove much of the time, using the Seigneur’s voice commands and trusting to her growing faith in the blind mare’s native surefootedness. The Seigneur slept whenever he wasn’t driving, having worn himself out, Leigh didn’t doubt, in making love to the tap maid he’d found so enchanting and talkative at supper in Bourges last night.

  Sometimes amid the bumps and rocking, his body grew heavy against hers and his head came to rest on her shoulder. And sometimes she just let him stay there, while she stared into the cold drizzle, listening to the carriage creak and the mare’s hooves slap in even time through the puddles, feeling his breath warm on her neck.

  She drifted into a reverie, dreaming that they traveled to some unnamed place, some home she’d never seen, where her family waited… New Year’s Eve, ’twould be, and everyone gathered with the hot spiced ale and mince pies and plum pudding, with the bells ringing all through the sky at midnight. Her papa would be mumbling the important lines of his New Year’s sermon, so that he wouldn’t forget them, and Mama would supply the proper word when he faltered—at the same time that she handed out noisemakers and coaxed everyone from their games at the stroke of the clock to greet the first visitor to step over the threshold in the New Year. And what a splendid First Footer the Seigneur would make, to bring in the traditional New Year luck: handsome and male and unmarried, with his remarkable coloring and fine height, as auspicious as could be desired. And surely nature could not have been so cruel as to make him flat-footed. By unchangeable superstition that flaw would be ill fortune indeed for the coming year. Leigh caught herself glancing speculatively at his feet in the worn pair of top boots.

  Reality revived. She frowned and gazed ahead, feeling numb still after all these months, yet unable to believe it was true, wanting to lift her face to the leaden clouds and shriek and scream that it wasn’t, that it could not be, that she would not allow it. That so much love and life could not just… vanish, into nothing, as if it had never been. That they must be alive and snug and happy somewhere, waiting for her.

  The Seigneur turned his head into her shoulder. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he mumbled sleepily.

  She shoved at him, blinking hard. “Get off me.”

  He lifted his head and peered at the landscape without sitting up. “Have we passed La Loge yet?”

  “No.” The tears menaced behind her eyes. She could not look at him.

  He nestled back into place, his cheek turned into her body. “I’d rather stay here,” he murmured.

  “Get you off,” she snapped, pushing him desperately. “Get off, get off. Don’t touch me!”

  He struggled upright. His sleepy, confused look only made her angrier. She turned her face away, toward the puddle-marked ditch beside the road.

  “It’s time for lunch,” she said sullenly.

  He rubbed his palms over his eyes. “Eh bien. His voice was quiet. “Pull up under that chestnut.”

  Leigh directed the mare into the shadow of the tree, where the yellowing leaves and outstretched branches created something of a shelter from the cold drizzle. He pushed himself off the seat and stepped down from the chaise, leaving a chill where his warmth had pressed up against her.

  He walked to the mare’s head. “Hungry?” he asked the horse.

  The mare lifted her nose high in the air and nodded up and down in a perfect imitation of a positive answer.

  Startled, Leigh looked from the horse to him. He patted the mare’s neck, not meeting Leigh’s eyes. She scowled. After a moment, she got down from the chaise. She stretched and turned her back on him and began to search for provisions.

  Their midday routine was well established. After the Seigneur spread a rug over the horse, he went around to the rear of the cabriolet to release an urgently impatient Nemo. The wolf did a dance of excitement and then raced along the empty road, sending showers of water out of the puddles. He came flying back at a whistle, and leaped into the air as the Seigneur raised his arm, coming down with a splash and then whirling around to leap again the other way.

  Involuntarily, Leigh found herself watching them as they moved slowly away along the road playing catch with chestnuts. The wolf was a glorious sight, vaulting into the air after the targets, showing his incredible long teeth in a gape that ended with a snap Leigh could hear even from a distance. Several times, the Seigneur made a motion with his hand, and the wolf dropped onto its belly. They would stare at one another for long moments, and then the Seigneur would tilt his head left or right and Nemo would go racing off in that direction. Once, the wolf disappeared into the bushes, and the Seigneur walked casually on down the road until Nemo erupted from his cover, yelping and cavorting delightedly at his friend’s melodramatic whoop of surprise.

  Leigh leaned against the chaise. She squinted at the mat of wet yellow leaves on the ground. She swiped angrily at her eyes and rummaged in her satchel for her medicinal wallet, taking out a vial of eye bath she’d prepared from a powder of lapis calaminarius, rose water, and white wine. She walked to the mare’s head and pulled back the blinkers, applying two drops with a glyster pipe to each of the horse’s eyes. When she saw the Seigneur turn back, far down the road, she bundled up her medicinals and prepared to stuff the wallet away.

  The corner of her sketchbook stuck out from beneath the flap of the traveling satchel. As she tied the wallet, she looked at the worn cover of the book. She glanced again at Nemo, watched the wolf spring into the air, all muscle and rippling fur and wild joy, with the Seigneur flicking a chestnut off one thumb.

  She fingered the sketchbook. She chewed her lip, and then suddenly pulled the book free. He had charcoal and pencils at hand for his own little drawings that he never bothered to finish of houses and trees and old peasant women they’d passed. Leigh sat against the footrest of the chaise and opened her book, flipping quickly past the watercolors to the last blank pages. She grasped a pencil stub between her fingers.

  She stared at the creamy page. There was an old smudge on it, the print of her own thumb, left from some other day—some other scene that had caught her heart. Some forgotten, never recorded occasion… a birthday, an afternoon’s teatime, one of the small things that she sketched when she wanted to crystallize a moment in time and take it with her into the future.

  She held the pencil. She put the point down on the paper. For a moment she thought of the wolf, the outline of it, the proper shading—she never got it right, really she was only a dilettante…

  She pressed her trembling lips together. Suddenly she gripped the pencil in her fist and tore it across the page with a violent move; gritted her teeth and pressed the point down hard, scrubbing it viciously into the book, scrawling a black jagged scribble of nothing over the paper.

  Her hand seemed to move of its own will, not drawing, attacking—battering and violating the empty page, tearing through the paper with slashes of dark and gray and white. She could hear herself breathing, dry sobs as she bent over the book, squinting down at the work, not stopping until she’d torn the page into ugly shreds that hung from the binding like old clothes.

  She looked down at it, at the pencil and her smeared hands. Then she stood up and threw th
e book away from her as far as she could throw it.

  She turned around to the scratched and faded sideboard of the chaise, panting as if she’d been racing: as if she’d climbed and crawled to the top of a mountain. She pressed her palms together and held them to her mouth while her whole body shuddered. She swallowed, and swallowed again, and slowly her breath came back to her. The force that gripped her muscles let her go; she could move again, and think.

  She closed her eyes for a long moment. She heard the wolf go panting past her, and looked up to see the Seigneur. She wanted to turn away, but she watched as he walked over to a puddle in the road and picked up the open sketchbook that lay half in and half out of the skim of muddy water.

  He didn’t look at Leigh. He brushed away the wet leaves that clung to the book and then separated the pages, drying the comers with his coat sleeve. The copy of the thieftakers’ bill lay a few feet away; he dried that too, and with his stiletto, he stood in the road and painstakingly cut away the tatters of the mutilated page.

  He wadded up the torn pieces and tossed them in the puddle. Then he walked to the chaise and packed the book in his own bag, sliding it carefully between his shirts, slipping linen shirttails between the wettest pages and padding the book’s corners before he closed the valise again.

  He never looked at Leigh. He said nothing. If he had, she would have disintegrated into a thousand shivering rags of mad anguish.

  But he didn’t, and she held on.

  They ate without talking, the way they did almost everything. Leigh sat in the chaise, while he leaned against the trunk of the chestnut with Nemo at his feet. It was peaceful and cold, the road vacant of any other traffic. Nemo put his head on his wet paws and napped.

  When the Seigneur finished his lunch, he went to the mare’s head, removing her nose bag. “Was your meal perfectly satisfactory, madame?” he asked.

  The horse nodded extravagantly.

  “You’ve taught her that,” Leigh said, making her voice curt, so that he would not think her disarmed by such a child’s trick.

  The mare nodded again.

  “I don’t perceive how you’re doing it,” she said.

  He stroked the mare’s forehead. “Oh, once I learned she spoke English, ’twas easy enough to strike up a conversation.”

  “How droll,” Leigh said sarcastically.

  He smiled a little. “I’m pleased to hear you like it,” he said, and folded back the blanket.

  Five more dreary days to Rouen, where Leigh went quietly out to the stable just before she retired to her chamber at the Pomme du Pin. She took her medical kit to bathe the mare’s eyes, even though after a fortnight she doubted the treatment was having much result. She’d not really thought it would, but she looked ahead and thought of what would become of the faithful creature when they reached the coast.

  She was a little later than the usual hour of her evening visits. Normally she only waited until the Seigneur had occupied himself with whatever flirt he’d discovered for the night, and slipped out just after supper. The drops only took a moment to apply; then she went directly upstairs to her room.

  This night, after supper at the common table, the twelve-year-old son of an English family staying at the Pomme du Pin had engaged her in a game of chess—the Seigneur having been so kind as to promise the boy that Leigh was monstrous good at the game, and to issue an extravagant challenge on her behalf: a sack of bonbons to the Seigneur’s jar of pickled cherries from Orléans. Leigh had lost, but at least it had been by design.

  The Seigneur himself had long since disappeared, of course, out seeking his pleasures according to habit.

  She’d borrowed a lamp from the inn, but she could see a shaft of light pouring across the cobbles from a crack in the door. Beyond the roofs, the asymmetrical towers of the cathedral showed black and gothic against the sky, their bells pealing an echoing call to late mass. Her breath frosted around her as she reached for the door.

  Laughter and voluble French drifted out of the stable. Inside, a little group of stable hands clustered in the open area outside the stalls, gathered around the roan mare, who sat on her rump in the center.

  Quite literally sat, her forelegs splayed out in front of her and her tail spread on the clay floor.

  Leigh stopped in the doorway and put down the lamp. No one noticed her, least of all the Seigneur. One of the grooms asked a loud question, and the mare nodded vigorously. The little audience roared with laughter, which spooked the mare, but before she gained her feet the Seigneur was tapping her rump with a whip, murmuring, “Non, non—à bas, chérie!”

  She sank back with an equine grunt. He rubbed her ears, feeding her a biscuit and calling her sweet names in French. Then he stepped back. “A-vant!”

  The mare heaved herself to her feet and received another warm cherishing. In the midst of interested comments from the bystanders, the Seigneur looked up and saw Leigh.

  He grinned and turned the mare toward her. The blind horse struck out with a foreleg and lowered herself onto one knee in an impeccable bow.

  All the ostlers applauded.

  Looking at their delighted expressions, Leigh suddenly realized what he’d done. He’d-trained the sightless mare into value, given her a solid worth, made her an asset when she’d been only an encumbrance. While Leigh watched; the mare stood up and stuck out her nose, nibbling at the Seigneur’s tricorne, then taking the brim in her long yellow teeth and pulling the hat off. She shook it up and down, while the ostlers screamed with mirth.

  Leigh lowered her eyes. She couldn’t help the way her lips curled upward. “Good,” she said softly.

  The Seigneur bent his head. He rubbed the mare’s ears vigorously, slanting Leigh a sidelong smile as he took his hat and settled it on his head again. He handed the mare’s lead to an ostler.

  “And what brings you out so late?” he asked, coming toward her. “I thought you snug in bed.”

  Leigh shrugged. She leaned against the door and held the wallet behind her. “I wished for some air.”

  “Come here,” he said softly: He walked past her out the door. “I want to show you something.”

  He moved off into the shadows. She hesitated, and then followed him. In the darkest corner of the yard, beneath the alley wall, he stopped and turned. Leigh ran up against him and he slipped his arm around her, his hand closing on the medical wallet.

  For an instant she resisted, out of instinct. Then she let go. “I’ve been bathing the mare’s eyes.” she said, feeling somehow even more defiant for it, now that he’d produced a more eligible remedy.

  He took the wallet gently. “I know.” She couldn’t see what he did with her kit. His arm came around her again. “Ma bonne fille, I know.”

  Leigh began to breathe faster. “Hush!” she whispered harshly. “I’m not your good girl, I assure you.”

  “Kind and sweet,” he said, bending closer. “So sweet.” His lips drifted over her temple. “So very sweet.”

  “Don’t,” she said, appalled that her voice quivered. She could feel his body close to her, without seeing him as if he were the darkness made real and warm. “Not now.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Leigh…” He kissed the comer of her mouth. “My beautiful heart…” His lips closed over hers, coaxing rich pleasure from the cold black well inside her. For an instant she leaned into him, let him hold her; for an instant she let him prevail in all his hunger and heat.

  His arms slipped downward, pulling her into him. “Je t’aime,” he groaned, kissing her hard. “I need you. I want you. I adore you.”

  Her passion and anger and pain rose to a pinnacle as she stood trembling in his hold. She put her arms against his chest and shoved, tearing herself away. He caught her elbow. “Unhand me,” she said through her teeth, “or I’ll kill you.”

  “Pistols at dawn, monsieur?” His voice was low. “When are you going to buy a dress and put an end to this farce?”

  “At my pleasure.” She jerked her arm
away. “Not yours.”

  He made no move to catch her back. She stood with her hands in fists, her legs braced, struggling with the sensation that burned behind her eyes and in her throat.

  “Leigh,” he said out of the darkness. “Don’t go.”

  Her spine stiffened. “Could you find no other willing game tonight? I suppose if you must gratify yourself, I’m—”

  “No, don’t say it!” he uttered fiercely. “Just don’t.” He pushed past her—then stopped and turned. “Your medicines,” he said, shoving the wallet into her hand. “Perhaps the eye bath helps.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. And then added, in a stifled voice: “But… ’tis nothing… to what you’ve done for her. Teaching her the tricks.” She put her hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

  He stood still, only an outline against the lights of the inn, his breath frosted and bright around his head. He was silent. She couldn’t see his face.

  “God, you’ll drive me mad!” he said at last, and expelled a harsh laugh as he walked away.

  They reached the coast at Dunkerque, and sold the mare. S.T. spent a few days investigating the town and prospective buyers. When he’d given the horse over to her proud new owner, an elderly tinker with a spotted dog and a merry eye, he felt hopeful that she’d be esteemed and kept fed for her talents.

  Leigh didn’t take the parting well. She’d quit trying to doctor the horse’s eyes after Rouen, and stopped the surreptitious treats that S.T. knew she’d been slipping to the animal. Those extra favors of an apple or a sweet, given for no reason, hadn’t helped his training program, but he’d let her do it. And when she stopped the treats, when she left off patting the mare, or speaking to it, or even looking at it very often, he almost wished she’d go back to disrupting his carefully disciplined methods with her unthinking indulgence.

  The morning he gave over the mare to the tinker, Leigh claimed with a frown that she had better things to do with her time, and left S.T. on Dunkerque’s dockside, holding the horse’s bridle. She never even looked back.