Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  S.T. shook his head as the lass trotted away. “No torch. Don’t make such a fuss. Just—”

  “I need light,” she interrupted. “I want to examine your leg.”

  “And put me to bed and brew a posset, after which you’ll pour invigorating broth down my throat? It won’t be necessary. I don’t think I’ll linger here overlong, Sunshine.”

  She looked up abruptly.

  S.T. pulled his burned hand from the water and shook it. He tilted his head, nodding toward the crowd that gathered downhill. “M’thinks I recognize a justice of the peace, if a decade of dodging the breed gives me any aptitude.”

  Leigh turned around. Below, a sturdy squire who had arrived on horseback was gesturing and yelling instructions.

  “Mr. MacWhorter,” she said. She blew a puff of frost, as if the name annoyed her. “You’re right; he’s one of the magistrates.” Then suddenly her body stiffened. She looked from the squire to the retreating back of the girl in the pale cap. “Where’s Chilton?” she asked sharply.

  S.T. reached out with his unburned hand. He caught her shoulder and turned her toward a limp body that lay a few yards off from the tumult. No one attended it—there was just a black cloak thrown casually over the head and shoulders.

  Leigh stood still at the sight. S.T. kept his hand on her shoulder.

  She stared at Chilton’s body, and then up at Silvering.

  The bucket brigade flung their puny offerings at the house, trying to wet down what had not yet caught fire, but smoke poured from the open front door. The windows of every downstairs room glowed angry orange and yellow.

  S.T. saw the truth of it hit her. All the horror held in check by their struggle to escape, all the reality of what had happened—it came to her in that silent moment. She stood immobile, ignoring his touch, ignoring the shouts, just gazing at her home as it burned.

  So here is it is, S.T. thought. Revenge.

  “Sunshine,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. He pressed her shoulder, half expecting her to whirl away from him as she always did, rejecting any human comfort. But she didn’t. She closed her eyes and leaned against his hand. When he drew her back, she turned her face into his chest as if he could hide her.

  He held her close, in spite of the pain of her body compressed so tightly to his burs. He wanted to hurt; he deserved to smolder in hell for what he’d done.

  He couldn’t have Leigh. He knew it; he’d known it from the beginning.

  His moment was over now.

  Au revoir, ma belle… the time has come for us to part…

  Same verse as always. Same song, same ending. He had to leave. He could not stay.

  He thought: she was right. She’d called him a liar, looked ahead and seen this culmination, faced what he had not brought himself to confront. It came too soon, this farewell; he’d thought there would be more time. It crept in the background and then materialized, like death, denied and denied and still inevitable.

  “How did you do it?” she asked dully, and for an instant he didn’t understand the question.

  Then she lifted her head and looked toward Chilton’s body.

  “I didn’t.” S.T. took a deep breath into his burned lungs. “Another killed him.”

  But ’tis I who’ll be accused.

  He didn’t say it. He just stared grimly past her at this honest country squire, all these upright people who hadn’t stood against Chilton for her. They were fatal to him. He’d shown himself here, and now he had to go, as he always did, before the excitement died down and law-abiding people began to talk. Began to piece things together.

  It was happening already. The capped girl who’d brought the bucket reached MacWhorter’s stirrup. She spoke to him far longer than a mere request for a torch required. As S.T. watched, the squire dismounted. She pointed, and MacWhorter grabbed a lamp to light the way. He began to climb the hill toward S.T. and Leigh.

  S.T. shoved himself off the tree, standing straight. He kept his arm around Leigh, but she instantly moved back, looking over her shoulder. A shout rose up, and the firefighters shrank away as two windows imploded and the flames shot out, licking up the stone walls.

  His grip on her tightened. He wouldn’t leave her yet.

  Not now, when she needed him. Not this way, like some sneak thief, running from a solemn-faced, beak-nosed, backwater magistrate.

  Even from a distance, S.T. could see the man’s expression change in the torchlight as he recognized Leigh. The squire stared at her, and then handed the lantern to the girl and put out his hands, striding forward.

  “My lady!” he shouted above the sound of the fire. “Lady Leigh, good God—this is extraordinary!” He plowed up the hill. “We’d no notion you’d come home, and that chit says you were inside—” He reached them, shook Leigh by the shoulders and pulled her against him. “Child, child, oh my God, what are you doing? What’s happening?”

  Leigh endured his embrace for a moment and pressed herself free. “Can they save the house?”

  He wet his lips and glanced away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. There’ll not be much chance.”

  “’Tis all gone then. Everything.” She looked at S.T. with a sudden intensity.

  He didn’t understand that look. There was no blame in it. She seemed almost expectant, as if he could say something that would change it all. He met her steady gaze and thought that if the magic words existed that would turn time back and let him do it all differently, he would have sold his soul to buy them.

  She was still watching him. Abruptly she put up her hand and touched his blistered face. “Your poor eyebrows,” she said. “With the devil’s cur all burned away.”

  MacWhorter looked at her as if she were mad. “Milady, come away from here. You’ve had a terrible shock. I’ll send you home to Mrs. Mac, where you can be made comfortable.”

  Leigh didn’t take here eyes off of S.T.’s face. “He saved me, Mr. MacWhorter,” she said. “He searched the house until he found me.”

  For the first time, S.T. received a direct look from the squire, an uncomfortable glower, as if it were a trifle inconvenient to be introduced to this particular hero. “We owe you our deepest gratitude, then, sir.”

  S.T. bowed slightly. His leg ached and stung, but he stood stiffly, with his weight on it.

  “Mr. Chilton is dead,” Leigh said.

  MacWhorter cleared his throat. “Yes. I-uh-examined that.” He raised his voice above the noise. “Unfortunate man. Shot.” He looked at S.T. again, a narrow assessment.

  S.T. stared back.

  “’Twill be necessary to ask some questions,” the squire said loudly.

  “Will it?” Even amid the popping roar, the acid in Leigh’s voice came clear. “You never asked them before.”

  MacWhorter scowled. “We’ll convene a jury.”

  “Do that,” S.T. said in a grating voice. “’Tis safe enough now, I expect.”

  MacWhorter answered that with his chin jutting. “I’m afraid I must ask your name, sir—and what your situation may be.”

  “Samuel Bartlett. I’m putting up with the landlady at the Twice Brewed Ale.”

  “And your business?”

  S.T. smiled crookedly. “Beyond rescuing the odd damsel… I’m touring.”

  “The law does not appreciate levity, Mr. Bartlett.” MacWhorter gave him a cold eye. “I’ve had reports of disturbance in the past several weeks—suspicious characters at the Twice Brewed.”

  “Did you investigate?” Leigh enquired in a mocking tone. “Find it necessary to ask questions?”

  “I was on the point of it, indeed I was.”

  S.T. put his hand on the tree trunk, surreptitiously supporting himself. “The man you want is George Atwood. Lord Luton. He shot Chilton.”

  “And how is this?” The squire lifted his eyebrows and tucked his chin. “Do you say you saw it?”

  S.T. looked toward the burning building. “Aye, I saw it.”

  “A lord, you charge! I’m to think some lord ju
st happened by and shot the man? What for?”

  “Ask the girls,” S.T. said. “I left them at that ruin by the river, where the Roman bridge used to be.”

  “Witnesses to the murder?”

  S.T. moved his hand impatiently. “They didn’t see Chilton shot. They can tell you about Lord Luton, not that you’ll ever catch him now. He’ll belong gone away from this place.”

  “It seems to me passing strange that this Lord Luton should appear and disappear so conveniently,” MacWhorter said. “What is your piece in the affair, Mr. Bartlett? How come you to be here at such an hour?”

  “I was taking the air, Mr. MacWhorter,” S.T. said huskily. “Why else should I be here?”

  The magistrate’s Roman nose flared in contempt. “Taking the air. Mounted upon a black horse, perhaps. I’m told there’s one such tethered behind the last cottage, with a black-and-white mask in the saddlebag.”

  Another set of windows shattered, sending shouts and flames into the sky. The fire set MacWhorter in lurid silhouette as he leaned toward S.T.

  “D’you think to slip away from justice yourself, Mr.

  Bartlett? There have been rumors of you and what you are. ’Tis my belief that I could ask a few more questions to the point. ’Tis my belief that you just might be the man who shot him yourself, sir.”

  “I would have been,” S.T. said, his voice grinding, “but Luton got there first.”

  Leigh touched his arm, as if to silence him.

  S.T. raised her hand and kissed it, held it tight in his. “Nay, shall we forgo all this ingenuous posturing? You know what happened here, MacWhorter—you know all about it. One green girl has done what you and your fellows were afraid to do, and contrived to break the spell that held this place.” His voice grew hoarser as it rose. “You’re safe now, you and your family. You’re safe—and you stand here while this house burs and have the brass to speak of juries and justice.” His lip curled. “Aye, hold me for questions, you cowering bastard, if you think you’ll sleep better at night for hanging somebody.”

  The squire’s mouth was tight. He glared at S.T., breathing heavily through his nose. “I can guess what you are, sir. A common outlaw!”

  “And I know what you are,” S.T. said. “I don’t have to guess.”

  MacWhorter looked away, toward the milling crowd of the bucket brigade. The heat from the fire glistened on his forehead. His jaw twitched.

  “Get you gone,” he said savagely. “Get out of sight, then; leave my district.” With a brusque move, he turned away, and then looked back. “Take your sword and that mask. You’re safe ’till the morning, before I mount a posse to hunt you down on charges of murder and thievery.”

  The light from his lantern swung wildly as he stalked downhill.

  S.T. leaned his head back against the tree, closing his eyes. The sound of the fire whooshed and crackled in his good ear, black smoke dominating taste and smell. He hurt all over; even his eyes felt swollen and gritty.

  “I’ll bind your hand,” Leigh said.

  He opened his eyes and saw her reaching into the dancing shadows at their feet, collecting the strips of bark from the bucket. When she straightened up, he caught her wrist. He couldn’t really see her face: it was she, now, cast in shadow against the background of the blaze. The bright flame, haloed her hair, caught the curve of her cheek. He pulled her toward him with no intention but to put off going, to pretend he could hold her forever, his face pressed into the curve of her shoulder where smoky scent and pain and the reality of her filled up all his senses.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said harshly, and then gave a tortured laugh, muffled in her coat. “Oh, God-that’s one of them, isn’t it? One of the things I’ve always said. ‘I don’t want to leave; I love you; I’ll be back’… He held her tighter. “Jesus, Leigh—what have I done?”

  She turned her head, pressing her cheek against his. Her skin felt cool on his blistered face.

  He couldn’t say more. I need you, I’ll never forget you. Every word that came to him, every promise and vow that rose to his lips seemed worthless, turned to dust because he’d said it all before. Had he ever meant them, those pledges to return? Even once, had he ever found leaving harder than staying?

  He held her close and reckoned wildly, trying to find some way out, some chance that his arrest wouldn’t lead straight to the gallows. He might elude the murder charge—there was evidence enough to cloud that… but all of his past ensnared him. Once caught, he was finished. He’d crimes enough awaiting payment.

  It was Leigh who ended the embrace, ever-practical, pushing away to search for his burned palm and make her poultice of bark and torn cloth. He stroked her hair with his free hand, watching her work by the light of her blazing home.

  “The alder should be boiled,” she said. “But this is better than nothing.”

  She lifted her head, the task completed. S.T. looked down at his bandaged hand. Time seemed to be running past like water, unstoppable.

  “Leigh,” he said. “Where will you go now?”

  She was only blackness against the fire; he couldn’t see her face at all. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You have family?”

  “A cousin. In London.”

  “By what name?”

  She turned a little, and the fire showed him the outline of her cheekbone and her lips, smooth as marble, expressionless. “Clara Patton.”

  “Go there,” he said. “I’ll find you.”

  She looked back at him, a mysterious shadow again. “Why?” she asked.

  Because I can’t live without you. Because I love you. Because it can’t end like this.

  All those things he could not say. All those lies he’d told in his life.

  “I have to,” he said fiercely.

  “Foolish man,” she said, barely audible above the fire.

  “I have to find you again. I won’t let you go—I can’t… it’s impossible,” he said incoherently. “My leaving. Now. This way. I’ll think of something.”

  “Think of what?” There was a strange note in her voice. “A secret signal? Two candles in the window when ’tis safe to meet me in the garden?”

  Like an abyss, that future opened before him. He felt drowned, helpless, as shocked as if she’d tossed the bucket of icy water in his scorched face. He saw it; he knew it so well, that garden tryst, but now the excitement of it tasted bitter, the romance twisted into punishment.

  “Not that, he said. “Never that way, not for us.”

  “What way, then?”

  He closed his right fist, feeling the burn. “Sunshine, Sunshine—damn it all…”

  A dense wave of smoke drifted toward them. S.T. squinted against the stinging murk. Coughing doubled him over; when he found his breath and straightened, he saw that a small fire engine had been maneuvered into position. A team of men worked the pump, sending a wobbly arc of water into a window while the bucket brigade toiled to refill the reservoir.

  “Too late,” Leigh said. She wiped her sleeve across her eyes: tears or smoke, he couldn’t tell.

  “They might—save the wings.” he managed to say, swallowing in his tortured throat.

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone now.”

  “Leigh—”

  She looked back at him. He could see her clearly now in the glare: she had that expectant look again, a little upward tilt of her chin, a slight parting of her lips.

  “I love you,” he said in his rusty voice. “Will you remember that?”

  The expression faded. She smiled a little, sadly. “I’ll remember that you said it.”

  “I mean it.” His voice cracked. She picked up the water pail. She was going to walk away; he saw that, and panic welled up in his chest. He caught her arm.

  “You’ll go to your cousin?”

  Her eyes lifted to his. Not expectant or questioning or unhappy, but a glance like a saber flash. “I’m not sure,” she said deliberately.

  He hel
d steady under that challenge, refusing to surrender, to admit defeat, to call this the end. “Where else will you go, then?”

  “With you.”

  She said it simply. Quietly.

  He stood there, breathing in his aching throat.

  Amid the sound of fire and the haze of smoke; the heat and pungent smell, the bitter taste, he found what had eluded him all his life. It came as a gift, unadorned; unembellished by all the sweet ribbons and charms that disguised lesser tokens.

  She didn’t say she loved him. She didn’t need to say it. With two words she humbled him.

  Her eyes were intense as she watched him: proud and severe, a goddess with a soul of flame. That look offered and demanded at once, asked for the truth, commanded honesty.

  It burned him all through, seared away the fantasies, left him with the devastating face of reality.

  He dropped his hand away from her arm. “I can’t take you with me. Not now, with MacWhorter and his bloodhounds upon me. How can I take you now?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Wait for me,” he said. “I’ll find you. I’ll—think of a way for us.”

  She bent her head. He read contempt in that bending, and it shattered him, broke him at his heart. He felt too ashamed to touch her. All of his past, all of his folly—it came to this. She offered him a fortune and he had nothing to give in return but dreams.

  Dreams had always been enough, before. No one had ever asked for more.

  “It won’t be long,” he said, his voice harsh. “This stir will settle soon enough.”

  She looked up, looked through him. Without words, she mocked his promises.

  “I’ll think of a way, damn you!” He leaned his head back against the tree, watching sparks fly up into the black sky, winking in and out of the bare branches. “Believe me—just believe in me!”

  “That isn’t what I have to give you,” she said, and suddenly her voice was no longer so controlled. It trembled, the only betrayal of emotion in her. “I can’t be a maiden in distress for you always. I can’t be your mirror. I can only go with you if you ask me.”

  Anger seized him. He pushed: himself away from the tree, oblivious of the pain in his hand. “I’m asking you to wait!” Frustration and smoke destroyed his shout, fractured it to a broken snarl. “To have some faith.”