Prince of Midnight

by Laura Kinsale

  “M’lady,” the Seigneur said. “My dance.”

  There was no grace in his invitation, none of the elegance she knew he could apply in abundance. He stood indolently,, with one hand braced on the back of a pea green damask chair. But his jaw was set hard; he looked at her intensely, without wavering.

  Leigh tilted her head and gave a small, assenting curtsy. The shy smile kept pursing the corner of her lips, impossible to govern. He straightened. When he let go of the chair, he moved oddly, faltering for an instant, and as Leigh took his arm she caught the faint odor of spirits.

  They joined the set. As they took their positions, he overbalanced a little, using her arm to steady himself. She looked up at him through her eyelashes. Perhaps he had been dipping too deeply for an ambitious country dance.

  But the dancers were already lined up, saluting one another with bows and curtsies. The Seigneur made only the barest of nods. He was staring hard at her face, frowning, his eyebrows giving him an air of fiendish intensity. A trickle of perspiration marked the light powder at his temple. She felt a surge of love and kinship: so familiar, so much a part of her past and present he was, that the months of black hurt and despair seemed to grow dim, fading away into distance.

  In time to the music, the couples joined hands and stepped toward each other. He moved with the rest, advancing a stride, his hand tightening suddenly on hers. For an instant, she held the whole weight of his move on her lifted arm, and then he pushed off. He wavered as he stepped back, swaying a little, never taking his eyes off Leigh. The couple at the top of the set came down the line between them, the ranks opened, and he gripped her hands hard as the circling began.

  Leigh was holding him steady by main force; they made the circumference of the square, but when the partners left one another and began to go round in opposing circles, alternating hands with the oncoming dancer, he lost control. He pulled the first startled lady off balance, swinging too far and stumbling into her partner, his shoulder striking heavily against the other man’s.

  The set broke into confusion. The Seigneur stood with his legs spread, his intensity gone to a look of pure despair while the rest of the dance went on beyond him.

  Leigh saw the desperation in his face, and suddenly she understood.

  She let go of whoever held her hand and stepped quickly toward him, smiling contritely at the other dancers. “Odiously foxed,” she said, shaking her head.

  He kept his gaze fixed on her, breathing unevenly. When she clasped his arm, he resisted the turn. She could see the panic in his eyes.

  “Mr. Maitland—” she said soothingly, “let us take some fresh air and allow the dance to go on.”

  His fingers closed on her upper arm as if it were a lifeline. “Slow,” he muttered under the music. “Oh, God, don’t let me fall. Not here.”

  “No, I won’t. They only think you’re drunk as a fiddler.”

  The set made up behind them, with a few joking shouts and the bustling in of another couple. The crowd on the sidelines parted amiably. The Seigneur’s rigid grasp loosened a little; he seemed to find some stability as they moved in a straight line through the doorway into the grand entrance hall.

  In the sudden, cool dimness, they were almost alone. Only a few couples strolled through toward the drawing room from supper. Pale stucco pilasters, Roman urns and statues gleamed softly against the ash gray background, a tranquil contrast to the light and color that revolved in the other rooms. Leigh paused, but the Seigneur moved ahead.

  “Outside,” he said. “I want to be out of here.”

  A footman opened the front door. Night air enveloped her. The courtyard was unlit, bounded by the dim hall and two wings with darkened windows. At the far end rose the shadowy Greek columns of the outer portico. S.T. kept walking.

  They reached the first row of pillars. He went past those, came to the second rank of temple columns, and stopped. She felt him take a convulsive half step, steadying himself. Just ahead was the great flight of stairs that led from the driveway up to the court. Leigh could barely see the pale mass of stone, but she knew it was there. She’d viewed it by daylight. At a London entertainment they would not have arrived until after eleven, but everyone came out into the Middlesex countryside so near to Hounslow Heath well before dark. Later there would be a convoy of carriages returning to London under an armed guard generously provided by their hosts. No one went home early or alone.

  Too many highwaymen.

  S.T. released her and leaned heavily against a pillar. “Damn,” he whispered harshly. “Damn, damn, damn!”

  “When did it come upon you?” she asked, not needing any explanation of what ailed him.

  “This morning.” His voice was bleak. “I woke up and moved my head, and the room went spinning.” He made an angry sound. “I couldn’t believe it. I thought it would go away. I thought—if I came down—if could control it. But I’d forgotten… lord, ’tis too easy to forget the way it feels! I thought I could dance.” He blew a sneering hiss. “Dance!”

  Leigh was silent. She watched him, her eyes on his dark outline against the pale column.

  “You don’t think anyone guessed?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Drunk,” he muttered. “How charmingly vulgar! The celebrated Prince of Midnight just becomes a drunkard and fades into the woodwork.”

  “Have you been drinking?” she asked softly. “Perhaps—”

  “Don’t I wish! Aye, I’ve taken a drop of brandy. Would I were three sheets to the wind,” he added savagely. “Mayhap then I wouldn’t care the deuce about it.”

  She moved away a few feet, down the steps, and sat on the stone rampart that flanked the stairs. The wide slab was cool and hard beneath her hands.

  “I won’t be able to ride,” he said with a kind of frantic wonder.

  “We’ll find a physician.” She kept her voice firm and steady. “We’ll cure you.”

  If he had anything to say to that, he kept it to himself. Music drifted on the light breeze. Somewhere off in the distance, a lamb was bleating for its mother, an anxious counterpoint to the gay melody.

  “Where is Nemo?” she asked.

  “Locked up in a box stall all day. Child’s been a rare sport about him, but I don’t dare let him run in the park alone.”

  “Shall we go and take him out?”

  “Now?” He snorted. “Not unless you believe yourself competent to stay up with a wolf’s pace in that prodigiously flattering ball gown. Because I assure you that I cannot, my love.”

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the silhouettes of trees on the horizon, and the glimmer of starlight on the little lake across the park. “Am I your love?” she asked.

  The faint light from the doorway fell across him, illuminating his face and clothes and the pillar in chiaroscuro: color brushed against ebony, as if he were one of his own intense paintings.

  “I beg you not to mock me,” he said. “Not just at this moment, if you please.”

  “I’m not mocking you.” She paused, and added shyly, “Have you not lately been wishing to ask me for some particular favor? Some ‘honor’ I might do you, as I thought.”

  He turned his face away. “A momentary lunacy,” he muttered. “Don’t regard it.”

  Her tentative smile faded. “Don’t regard it?” she asked uncertainly.

  He stood silent.

  A chill hand stole around the fragile glow of happiness that had been growing in her heart since she’d first seen him standing down the length of the gallery. “Don’t regard it?” she repeated in a dry throat.

  He turned his face away from her.

  The air seemed hard to draw into her lungs. “You’re not… staying,” she said faintly.

  He moved with a jerk, beyond her reach, a shadow against shadows. “I can’t,” he snarled suddenly. “I can’t stay!”

  Leigh took a breath. She stood up. “I have been correct all along, then,” she said stonily. “Your notion of
attachment—of love—is no more than gallantry and passion. You have bound my heart to no purpose. You have dragged me back into the world for nothing but your own indulgence”

  “No,” he whispered. “That’s not true.”

  Her voice began to tremble. “Then tell me why. Tell me why I must be brought to care, and then deserted. Tell me why I must be made to hurt again. You don’t even have your outlaw apology now. It is only heartless indifference.”

  “You don’t want me like this! Look at me!”

  “What do you know of what I want? So busy as you are with being the Prince! With this mythical highwayman so famous for his exploits.” She snapped her fan open, making an elaborate curtsy on the top step. “When take you to the road again, monsieur? What do you next to earn your renown? Or will you live upon your erstwhile glory forever?”

  “Oh, no… not forever,” he said softly.

  “No, indeed. They will forget you soon enough.”

  “Aye. That they will.” His quiet voice held a sardonic note.

  Leigh turned away, facing the open park. She put her fingers against her lips. Her body shook. Far away on the horizon, beyond the dark bulk of the trees, the sum of a thousand little crystal globes on the streets of London cast a faint glow into the sky.

  “I won’t forget,” she said.

  He touched her, his hand resting against the curve of her throat, fingering the powdered curls at her nape. “Nor I. I’ll remember you all my days, Sunshine.”

  She bit her lip and turned on him. ’Tis little enough to undertake. Such a miserable small promise.”

  He dropped his hand, “And what more do you fancy?” he asked bitterly. “Le Seigneur du Minuit! A ten-days’ wonder, now that he’s caged up and petted and made into naught! Aye, they’ll tire of me. Do you think I’ve not reckoned it? What else can I give you?”

  “Yourself.”

  “Myself!” he shouted, and it echoed all over the courtyard. “What am I?” He let go of the pillar and turned, then leaned back against the marble column with his fingers spread and his cheek against the stone. “I’m invented! I made a mask, and I invented myself. And everyone believes in it, save you.”

  Leigh stood silent.

  “You’ve made of me an arrant coward, do you know it?” He laughed, a hollow sound in the empty courtyard. “I never was truly afraid of anything, until I found myself pardoned.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said painfully.

  “Don’t you? I think you understood from the start. You scorned it all, Sunshine, all the illusions. You never suffered anything but honesty, but I’m all fraud and fabrication. And when it came time to offer myself in truth, I found it out. Damn me, but I found it out.” He pressed his forehead against the pillar. “Curse you—Leigh, why wouldn’t you believe in me? You’re the only one. The only one who wouldn’t believe. And now it’s too late.”

  She stood with her arms folded, pressed against her sides. She was shivering inside. “Too late for what?”

  “Look at me.” He pushed away from the column, holding on at arm’s length. “Devil out of hell—look at me!” he yelled to the sky. “I can’t stand up without my head spinning! You can’t believe in a farce.”

  “No, I can’t,” she cried. “I never could!”

  He scowled. “I’ll go on a ship. It worked once.” He made a frustrated sound. “But then what? So it cures me again. How long does it last? When next do I wake up a buffoon?” With a harsh, angry chuckle, he let his shoulder hit the pillar and stood leaning hard against it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said in a tight voice. “None of that matters!”

  “It matters to me,” he said inflexibly.

  Leigh felt a sensation of drowning creep upon her, a powerless sinking beneath forces beyond her ability to vanquish. “And you’d leave me for that? Are you really so proud?”

  He stared past her into the darkness, into the empty park, the cool night. “Is it pride?” His voice changed. She could barely hear it, soft as it became. “I wanted to bring you the best of myself.” Still he did not look at her. “It seems to me ’tis love.”

  A minuet floated on the night air, pianoforte notes that followed one another in a thin waterfall of melody.

  “Monseigneur,” she whispered. “You don’t know the best of yourself.”

  He lifted his hand and rubbed his ear, the blond lace swinging in a pale, graceful tumble from his wrist. “Aye—wonderfully elusive devils, my virtues are,” he said ruefully. “Can’t seem to keep a grip on ’em at all.”

  Leigh spread her fingers over her skirt and took a step away from him. “Courage is a virtue, is it not?”

  He turned his head toward her. His face was in shadow; the velvet of his coat burned a dull, tarnished gold where the light fell across his arm. “One of the greatest.”

  She said, ’Tis strange, then. Why have I so often wished you had less of it?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded disconcerted. “Perhaps I’ve not so much as you think.”

  She gave a little helpless laugh. “Or perhaps you’ve more-God help anyone who might wait for you and worry.”

  Behind her, he stirred; his dress sword made a metallic sound against the marble column. The minuet tinkled like a gay pirouette to its conclusion. Amid the sound of a muffled, genteel tribute from the guests, she closed her fist around her folded fan, crushing the feathery trim.

  “Do you love me at all?” she asked suddenly.

  He moved closer to her, close enough that she could feel his presence shield her from the almost imperceptible breath of evening air.

  “Sunshine… I love you. I cherish you. But I can’t stay. Not like this.”

  She bent her head, fiddling with the fan. “I wonder, Seigneur—if virtues are so important; if offering the best of oneself is so imperative… how did I ever manage to inspire such regard in you?” She gazed out at the park and bit her lip. “You’ve seen naught of me but my unloveliest scars, that’s certain”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She looked back over her shoulder. “Is that why you love me? For my appearance?”

  “No!”

  “What, then? What virtues can you see in me? What of my best have I offered you?”

  “Your own courage,” he said. “Your steadfastness. Your proud heart.”

  She smiled ironically. “As well love one of the king’s Horse Guards, Seigneur, if ’tis pride and staunch courage you admire.”

  “That isn’t all.” He stepped closer, clasping her shoulder. “Not nearly all.”

  “No? What more of my best have I given you?” She bit her lip. “Bitterness and vengeance and grief—are they so enchanting? What have I done to match your renowned horsemanship, your mask, your sword, all of your celebrated daring, Monseigneur du Minuit?”

  His hand tightened. She felt his breath on her bare skin, quick and deep. His head was bowed, his face turned a little toward her hair, not quite touching. “Pride and courage. Beauty. All of that. All of that, and… He pressed his mouth to her hair. “I can’t—explain it well.”

  Leigh stepped out of his hold and turned, opening her battered fan and staring down through the dimness at the painted design.

  He made a move, as if to reach out to her again. Then he dropped his hand. “You’re lovely,” he said, with careful emphasis. “Lovely and brave and…” He came to a precarious pause. “But it is not that. ’Tis none of that.” Beyond the portico, across the unseen lawn, the lake held a faint reflection of starlight and distant lamps.

  He stared into the dusky oblivion. He shook his head and gave an uncertain, suffocated laugh. “You’re the one who said ‘together.’”

  She lifted her head and looked at him.

  The remote lamplight caught his expression as he met her eyes. He stood frozen, as if he had only just heard his own words. There was discovery in his face, a quiet shock, a comprehension.

  “Aye, together,” she whispered, standing taut and trembling.
“Side by side. A family.”

  “Leigh,” He sounded desperate. “I don’t know how. I’ve never… no one ever… I don’t know how to do it!”

  “How to do what?” she asked in amazement.

  “How to stay! How to be a frigging family, for God’s sake. All I know is what I’ve been. I’ve tried—everything I’ve tried you’ve scorned; I tell you I love you, and you tell me I know nothing of it. I’ve shown you my best—I fought, I rode, I was everything I could be and it wasn’t enough. And now—now it’s gone again, now I’m no more than a—” he made a fierce gesture—“a shadow! No more than what I was when you came to me… now do you say you want me? If that’s ‘together,’ if that’s what love is, that I come to you out of weakness—Leigh… I cannot. I can’t do it.”

  She gazed at him. Bright music drifted on the still air.

  “Seigneur,” she said. “I love an allemande. Dance with me.”

  “I can’t dance!” he said furiously.

  She took his hands. “Dance with me.”

  “I can’t—my balance—”

  “I’m your balance.” She closed her fingers hard around his.

  He tried to pull away, and then suddenly his grip tightened on her hands. He lifted them to his mouth. “Ah God, you are… you are… and what can I give you in return?”

  “Give me your joy, Seigneur.” She pressed her forehead against their clasped hands. “Oh, give me your joy. I can go on alone if I must. I’ll endure, oh yes—I’m too strong to break. And I’ll grow old and turn into stone if you leave me. I’ll never look up and see you play with the wolf; I’ll never hear you call me sweet names in French; I’ll never learn to beat you at chess.” She shook her head violently. “Please… dance with me. Take me to Italy. Paint me in the ruins at midnight. Give me all your mad notions and your crazy heroics and your impossible romantical follies. And I’ll be your anchor. I’ll be your balance. I’ll be your family. I won’t let you fall.”