Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  When finally he made the beach, S.T. dropped to his knees and put his head between his legs. He could hear the voices around him: the smugglers’ soft calls and Leigh’s quiet instructions about Nemo and their baggage, the rattling chunk of the waves as they broke on the shingle. Somebody threw his two swords down next to him; he heard the metal sheaths ring against the cobbles, but he could not bring himself to turn his head.

  He just wanted to stay perfectly still. It was lovely, this solid ground. It had saved his life. He pressed his forehead to a cold stone in desperate gratitude.

  A quiet voice spoke above him. “Monsieur, they say there’s a cart here. We can ride with our baggage closer to town.”

  He tried to bring his sluggish brain to attention. “Town,” he managed to say thickly. “What town?”

  “We’ve landed off Rye.”

  He stretched himself full-length on the beach, ignoring the discomfort of the shingle beneath his chest. “Let me sleep,” he muttered. “Just let me sleep.”

  “They’ll leave without us. They won’t dally for the revenue officers, monsieur.”

  “Sunshine.” He found words in the weary stupor. “I can’t… get on that cart.”

  He was vaguely aware of an enormous defeat as he said it. She would leave him now; she’d never wanted him to come and it was beyond him to move. She’d leave him for what he was, an impotent fool facedown on the ground and unable to get up.

  He was trapped in England now. Nothing would make him board a ship again. Nothing. God help him, he’d swing at Tyburn first.

  “Damn you,” she said softly. “I don’t want to wait.”

  Damn me, he thought in dull surrender. He closed his fist around an English stone, smooth and round. What am I doing here?

  The noises went on around him, but he could not summon the energy to think. He drifted in and out with the crunch of cobbles beneath smugglers’ boots and brandy kegs, the whiff of horses on the cold sea breeze. He woke once and they were growing distant, woke again and they were gone. There was only the endless chunk of the little waves breaking on the shingle.

  A star hung like a lonely lantern on the horizon. He blinked, trying to hold his eyelids open, but the lethargy swallowed him in its effortless void.

  When he opened his eyes again, in the very first faint dawn, he could see the outline of Nemo’s cage. The wolf stood inside, watching him.

  So—she’d left Nemo, at least—although that was no surprise. Short of making a few crowns by selling him into a traveling fair, a tame wolf would be of even less use to her than a spent highwayman.

  He lay with his cheek resting on his arm, utterly cheerless. Away down the empty beach, he could see a white headland shining subtly between the pearl gray of the sea and the sky. The tide had fallen. A black-headed seabird came skimming along just above the cobbles, a flash of white against the dark stretch of stone.

  Hesitantly, he risked lifting his head. He focused on the distant cliff and raised himself on his hands.

  Nemo whined. He pawed at the slats on the cage.

  “Calme-toi, S.T. muttered. “Keep your fur on.” He levered himself into a sitting position without any ill effects. It seemed almost strange, to have a steady head after the prolonged misery of the Channel passage. He pushed himself to his feet, the kind of move that always sent his balance spinning, and found even that was not so bad. In fact. in comparison to the agony he’d just endured, the world seemed to stay perfectly constant around him.

  The morning mist sent a shiver through his spine. When he turned his good ear away from the sea, the sound of the surf grew suddenly distant. He looked to see if they’d left him a greatcoat and found Leigh sitting against a boulder in the shadow of the cliff.

  She was awake; she watched him with her knees drawn up and her chin propped on her crossed arms. Her hat lay on the shingle beside her. She didn’t smile or say good morning—not that she was prone to such pleasantries at any time-but only stared at him balefully.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Her dark hair flowed down the back of her shoulders, loose. The dawn light softened her cheekbones to a delicate creamy pink.

  He couldn’t help himself. A slow grin curved his mouth. “You waited for me.”

  For a long moment, she looked out to sea without answering. Then she shrugged. “You have the money.”

  He tried not to let it nettle him. He remembered, vaguely, a soft voice and scented cloth amid that swimming nightmare aboard the lugger.

  She pushed herself upright and walked toward him. “What shall we do now?”

  It might have been deferral to his authority, or it might have been a mocking challenge. He preferred the former, and chose to take it that way.

  “Walk. Find transport. Take ourselves off to London Town.”

  Her brows lifted. “London!”

  Nemo scrabbled furiously at his cage and whined. S.T. walked over to it and sprang the lock. The wolf came bounding out, leaped up to greet him passionately, then loped to the base of the white cliff and began to mark new territory.

  “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “What if you’re recognized?”

  He snorted. “Aye—informed upon for a fine three pounds. That doesn’t worry me, milady.” He reached down to retrieve his swords, buckling the rapier around his hip. “I believe I ’m going to become a wealthy eccentric. On a walking tour.” He looked around at the sea and sky, leaning elegantly on his spadroon as if it were a gold-knobbed cane. “To view the terns.”

  “What of Nemo?”

  “Nemo?” He acquired an imaginary quizzing glass, lifted it, and peered at her. “Oh, do you mean that picturesque hound of mine? He is a quaint monster, isn’t he? Half Russian. The czars hunt wolves with them, don’t you know.” He whistled, and Nemo came racing up, curveting playfully at his feet until a faint hand signal sent him into a whimpering, eager crouch. S.T. pulled an invisible handkerchief from his cuff and sniffed at it stylishly. “Would you care to pet him? He’s quite harmless. A little shy of the ladies, I fear.”

  “No one will swallow that. You’ve maggots in your head.”

  He dropped his hand. “I daresay if you can pass as a male, I can certainly pose for a mere odd character.”

  “And what else should I be? Your ‘mollie-cull’?”

  Leaning on the spadroon, he stared at her blandly. “Do you even know what that means, Sunshine?”

  “I’m not a complete green-head.” She made a careless gesture with her hand. “That captain saw through my costume. He took me for your mistress.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “Not precisely.”

  He saw that she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing curiosity. That was well enough. If there were depravities she didn’t know about, he wasn’t going to engage her in an improving conversation on sodomy. She looked so young, standing there in her man’s clothes, her legs braced: so wide-eyed and frowning and virginal.

  “Just don’t throw the title about intemperately, ma petite, he said at last. ’Tis a hanging offense.”

  She frowned slightly, a betrayal of confusion that he found endearing. The entire topic was apparently beyond her ken. Whatever she thought she’d learned of worldly wickedness, and wherever she’d learned it, the schooling hadn’t been so sordid as she appeared to want him to believe. He began revising his original plans, thinking of where he could safely leave her while he made a prowl of his old, wild haunts in Covent Garden.

  “How do you do?” she asked abruptly. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Quite well, thank you.” In the relief of standing on ground that didn’t reel beneath his feet, he didn’t even feel unsteady in the way he usually did. “Excessively well. I believe I’ll stay off the water for the remainder of my natural life.”

  She tilted her head, a faint frown between her brows, very serious and beautiful. “Was that what you wanted with the apothecary? If I’d known how ill you’d be, I would have compounded a powder for you to take before
hand.”

  S.T. called Nemo to him and knelt on one leg to caress the wolf. Devise a powder, would she? It wouldn’t work. He’d had enough drops and pills and electuaries to reckon on that by now. What he really needed was something else entirely—an aphrodisiac, a love philter—a powder that would melt her ice down into sultry emotion before he lost his mind.

  He thought it was there. He caught her sometimes, looking at him.

  If he could be what he’d once been, he wouldn’t need love potions.

  He stroked Nemo’s thick ruff. “Powders don’t work.”

  “Are you certain? Perhaps—”

  “Do you think I haven’t tried them? Do you think I’ve not seen a hundred physicians? They don’t know what’s wrong—half of them never heard of such a thing, and the rest try to dose me with asses’ milk and tar water, and say ’twill go off in a few weeks. Well, it hasn’t gone off, not for me. It’s been three years.”

  “Three years!” she echoed softly.

  “Aye. ’Tis worse and better, in spells. Sometimes I almost feel all right—he way I feel now… as long as I’m careful. Then I turn my head or make a quick move, and the world goes round like a top.” He shrugged. “And I fall down. As you’ve noticed.”

  She gazed at him. Behind her, seabirds soared along the chalk cliff.

  “And that’s why, isn’t it?” she said slowly. “That’s why you ran.”

  He laughed bitterly. “Oh, aye, you ought to have seen me when I crossed to France!” He blew out a harsh breath. “They had to carry me ashore, and I couldn’t stand up for two days. There wasn’t even any bloody wind that time-the water was like glass. Never again will I board a ship. Never.”

  “How did this happen to you?” she demanded.

  “You needn’t look at me as if I ought to know better, damn it,” he snapped. ’Twas in a cave. I got myself cornered by the militia that Miss Elizabeth turncoat Burford set on me, and they exploded a heavy charge at the entrance.” His mouth tightened. “Killed my horse. Nothing hit me. Just the sound.” He bent his head into Nemo’s ruff. “Just the noise. It hurt. It hurt my brain. It made me dizzy to stand up or walk or move my head at all. My ear bled.” He took a deep breath and lifted his chin. “Can you repair that? Can you make a powder and give me back my hearing?” His voice rose, in spite of his attempt to keep it casual. “I’m deaf on the right side, did you realize it yet?”

  She stood frowning at him. He saw her finally put the signs and the truth together. Her expression went from discovery to shock to a furious frown.

  “Hell and the devil,” he muttered, and looked down, gripping the wolf’s thick fur between his fingers.

  “You didn’t tell me!”

  “Come along,” he said defiantly. “You didn’t see it for yourself-why should I?”

  She stepped back, her hands spreading. “Why should you?” she cried. “I don’t understand how you suppose to go on with this! What else is wrong with you that I don’t know? For the love of God—you’ll be no help to me. None!” She flung out her hand. “Why did you come at all? Go away! ’Tis nothing but a mockery!”

  S.T. stood up. His back was rigid. “You want to be shut of me?” He cast the spadroon at her feet in a ringing clatter. “Fine. You’ve been asking to carry a weapon since we left Provence. There it is.”

  She looked down at the sword and up again.

  “I’ll leave it with you if you want it,” he said roughly. “See how it fits your grip.”

  For only a moment, gallingly short, she hesitated. Then she knelt down and clasped the hilt, letting the sword slide from the sheath. She lifted it in one hand and steadied it between both.

  “Le voilà,” he snapped. “The Prince of Midnight.”

  “’Tis not as heavy as I expected.” She swished the blade experimentally through the still morning air.

  “Think you could kill a man?”

  She met his eyes coolly. “The man I wish to kill. Yes. I can do it.”

  S.T. drew his rapier with a snap of steel and in a single pass stepped forward, came under her wobbly guard, and disarmed her. The spadroon went clanging onto the stones. He pressed the tip of the rapier into the thick folds of linen at the base of her throat. “No,” he said gently. “Not if he’s got a sword, you can’t.”

  She took a prudent step backward.

  S.T. lowered the colichimarde and sheathed it. “I’m half deaf, mademoiselle. I’m not crippled.”

  The seabirds swooped and cried in the silence. Leigh stood with her chin lifted, her hands tight. “I apologize.” There was a clear tremor in her voice. “I see that I have misjudged you yet again.”

  He turned his back on her. He was angry with himself for allowing his emotions to seize him. It had been dangerous, that move, a showy circus trick on bad footing; he was rusty, with no call to pretend otherwise.

  But he hadn’t lost his balance. He realized it only as he thought of what might have happened if he had.

  He hadn’t lost his balance.

  He had not lost his balance.

  He stood still, suddenly afraid to move.

  That fencing attack, that abrupt drive forward… he should have lost his balance. For three years, no matter how stable he felt when he was motionless, a move like that had sent the universe careening.

  He put his hand on the hilt of the rapier. He shook his head from side to side and then even tilted it back until he was looking at the sky. He drew the sword and lifted it slowly in front of him, holding it steady at shoulder level, waiting for the slow reeling sensation to take possession of his head.

  “It’s gone,” he whispered. “Oh my God… it’s gone.”

  For the first time in three years: in thirty-six months, two weeks and four days—he’d kept count—he moved freely in a fixed universe, without his senses betraying him whenever he turned his head.

  “Oh God,” he said, throttled beneath his breath. “I don’t believe it.”

  He whirled around, facing the cliff. Nothing happened; no crazy pitch, no wild swing of the horizon.

  An awed smile spread across his face.

  He felt as if he’d been freed of fetters that he had not even known bound him. Normal felt so normal that he’d not even recognized it. Like a headache, the constant and unpleasant sense of instability had evaporated at some unknown moment when he wasn’t thinking about it, the exact instant obscured in the contrast between the heaving ship and the solid ground. He didn’t know when it had happened: he’d just fallen into harmony with himself.

  The ship. Could it have been the ship? Maybe that bloody surgeon had been right-maybe it had just required such an extremity of disequilibrium that he’d never been able to carry it far enough of his own will.

  Part of him was terrified. What if it came back? He shook his head again; closed his eyes, and waited for any trace of disequilibrium.

  The world stayed firm beneath his feet.

  He wanted to run. He wanted to dance. He turned suddenly to Leigh and grabbed her hand, sinking into a deep formal bow. “I’m at your command, mademoiselle. I beg you won’t send me away while I have the power to serve you.”

  “Don’t be a nod-cock.” She pulled her hand free. “’Twould appear that I haven’t the power to send you away even if I wished.”

  He straightened, frowning, hardly able to comprehend that she could not see the difference in him. It must be obvious, it must be—and yet he had not even perceived it himself.

  He could win her now. No longer was he the stumbling buffoon. He could ride, he could use his sword; he could do anything.

  What if it came back?

  Don’t let it come back. For the love of God, don’t let it.

  He stared at her, wanting to hide it, wanting to tell her… if he told her, and it came back…

  “I’ll go away,” he offered slowly. “If that’s really what you want.

  Her eyebrows lifted above those skeptical aquamarine eyes. She turned and walked away toward the cliff.

/>   “You came to me for help!” he shouted after her.

  She whirled and looked back. “Aye. I rubbed the bottle, didn’t I? And freed a genie. One wonders what you will do next.”

  He couldn’t restrain it; he met her scowl and felt his face break into an exhilarated grin. He was free, and nearly whole; he owned himself again. He laughed and swept the blade in an arc and circle above his head. It sang a lovely high-pitched note as it cut the air descending. He stood with the sword in his hand, his legs spread in easy balance. “Who knows what I’ll do? Depends on where I spring game, Sunshine.”

  Leigh walked behind the two of them over the downs, holding her hat on her head against the wind, watching as the Seigneur knelt once again to unsnarl Nemo from a difficulty. He had finally submitted to putting a rope on the wolf, but though he’d surrendered to the idea that Nemo would be safer leashed in the daylight, he wouldn’t allow a shorter length than the full ten feet of line that they’d salvaged from the bindings on the cage. The wolf didn’t seem to mind at all, beyond getting constantly tangled in bushes and wrapped around trees.

  Leigh felt unsettled. She felt precarious and tormented, unable to concentrate on the future. Whenever she looked at the Seigneur, she thought of him with the bared sword shimmering above his head, the morning light liquefying the blade into a runnel of silver as it moved. It was as if the image had gotten etched somehow on the back of her eyes, like a bright flash, overlaying all the other things she saw or remembered of him.

  His endless patience with the animal made her miserable and weak inside. She had to set her jaw to keep her lower lip from trembling at the most preposterous small events. She wanted to snap at him to stop this maudlin nonsense and simply keep the animal close at his side.

  Nemo had never accepted her. He was beautiful; fluid and quick and shrewd, but he was a royal bother—and inseparable from the Seigneur.