The Prince of Midnight (16 page)

"How do you feel?" she asked.

He wasn't going to admit it. Not to her, oh, no. He pasted on a confident
smile. "Voracious. There's bound to be an inn at Aubenas."

She gazed at him intently. S.T. set his jaw and drove on.

Like all French inns, dim and dirty as it was, the Cheval Blanc laid a decent
table. Leigh did the ordering:
soupe maigre,
carp and roasted partridge
with fresh lettuce, chard, wheat bread, and mounds of butter. He could see that
after weeks of dry black bread and cheese, she found the fare very pleasant.

S.T. was not so cheerful. The travel sickness was slow to leave him. He sat
quietly, eating only the soup and the dessert of biscuits and apple, taken along
with some wine. Even the bill of nineteen livres—a ruthless extortion equal to
all they'd paid for food since La Paire—hardly seemed worth the trouble of
disputing. He paid without a murmur and then sipped his coffee, gazing out the
window into the dark.

"Are you quite well?" Leigh asked suddenly.

He glanced at her, and then away. "Yes."

"Perhaps we should put up here for the night."

"If you like," he said indifferently.

"I think I should prefer a bed to the ground. Was your wine drinkable?"

He looked toward her again, this time with a little more consciousness, a
slight lift of his eyebrow. "Very adequate, thank you."

"I wonder if they have a chess set?"

"A chess set." He sat back and gazed at her. "Your disposition becomes
friendly."

She avoided his direct look. "Merely a thought," she said.

He turned and spoke to the landlord in patois. The variation in dialect
caused S.T. some trouble in communicating, but after a long bout of questioning,
with recourse to French and much hand waving and repeating of
"Echi-quier,
monsieur?";
"Mais oui, ichiquier!",
a badly faded chessboard was
finally forthcoming. As he debated with the landlord, S.T. began to feel better.
By the time he procured the box of game pieces and a smelly candle, he settled
in his chair across the table and looked up at her with a grin.

"Will you trounce me in white or black?" he asked, holding out his closed
fists.

She hesitated, and then chose the left. He opened his hand on a black pawn.

"Very sinister," he said. "I'm winning already."

"Many a gentleman would give up the opening move to—" She stopped herself.

"A novice?" he supplied innocently, knowing she'd been about to claim her
prerogative as a lady.

1' A younger person."

"I suppose I'm perfectly primordial."

"You're far older than I am."

"Thirty-three. On terms with Noah." He dropped a white knight in its place.
"For that impudence, I'm afraid I shall be forced to deal with you as you
deserve." He sorted the other pieces and began to place them. "You needn't worry
that anyone here understands English, by the bye. They barely understand
French."

Leigh watched him open with the queen's pawn. She stared at the board,
settling into intense concentration. It took little time to recognize that she'd
challenged an experienced player, but his moves were so unfathomable that she
couldn't really judge his ability. The rest of the inn grew dark and empty as
they played; only their single candle shed a halo of light on the table, the
pieces casting long shadows across the board. The Seigneur lounged back in his
chair between moves, his hands folded across his waistcoat, his face composed.
She began to feel they were fairly matched. As she closed in with her purposeful
strategy, his play quickened, becoming even more haphazard, a sure sign that he
was floundering. She kept on until she had him trapped.

"Check," she said.

He sat forward and leaned on his hand. "Checkmate," he murmured, moving his
bishop.

Leigh slumped in her chair.

"We doddering ancients must take our victories where we may," he said
apologetically.

She bit her lip.

He looked up at her, still leaning his cheek on his hand, and smiled. "You're
only in need of wider experience, Sunshine. And a bit less predictability."

Leigh met his eyes. Like an instant flame, it was there— the powerful
awareness of his physical presence: of his body relaxed in the chair, his aim
resting easily on the table. The candlelight caught and emphasized the upward
curve of his eyebrows and sprinkled gilt on his lashes.

After the concentration of the game, the intimate glance took her by
surprise. For a moment it seemed to rush in her blood. She felt strangely
fragile, felt how it might have been in another time and place, how he might
have turned and caught her with a look: across a gay ballroom, a silent
invitation amidst the polish and refinement, a temptation to reckless things.

Forbidden worlds. Wild joy and romance. A midnight ride with an outlaw
prince, and life, and life, and life. He burned with it.

And she would have gone. Her throat grew thick with longing. She thought:
you should have come sooner. You should have come when I could feel.

He sat silently. His faint smile pierced her, wounded her in its tenderness,
like a sweet note vibrating on the evening hush, a joy too intense for the heart
to bear.

It terrified her. She felt the cliff, the crumbling edge-how easy it would be
to fall. Her back grew stiff. She sat up straight in the chair, her mouth curled
into scorn. "What will you have for a prize then, monsieur?" she asked.

S.T. did not immediately understand her. He'd been gazing at her, watching
her droop in the chair, smiling at her chagrin over the loss. She'd really
thought she was going to beat him, little tigress, settled over the chessboard
with that fierce scrutiny and charming frown.

He would have grinned and said, "a kiss"; he almost did—and then the cool,
contemptuous way her lips curved as she spoke struck him with abrupt and vicious
effect. The moment of affinity evaporated. He saw himself manipulated again, set
up and mocked, what he felt perverted deliberately into what she chose to make
it.

A mercantile transaction. A profanity, a desecration, a conscious attack.

His mouth tightened. "Nothing." He pushed back sharply from the table and
stood up. "Hire yourself a room," he said, low and hostile. "I'll sleep
outside."

Leigh watched him use the door frame to catch his balance as he pivoted. The
door slammed behind him.

She bowed her head. She stared at the table, hardly able to breathe.

Let him trifle with her. Let him flirt and romance her, use her as a whore .
. . anything. Just let him never look at her with that open tenderness again.

Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

The moon-eyed mare stood quietly in her stall, her nose in the empty trough.
By the light of a tallow lamp S.T. fondled her ears, leaning his shoulder
against the lava wall. She nodded gently beneath his touch, lipped the trough
and sighed.

He passed his hand over her cloudy eyes, trying to make her blink. He thought
she could still see a little; in a month or two the progressive moon-blindness
would render her completely sightless.

He ran his hand along the top of her neck. "What's to become of you,
cherie?"
he asked softly. "Who'll take a blind mare?" He massaged her thin
withers. "Damn . . . damn . . . damn . . . who'll take a sorry relic of a
highwayman? Not she. Oh, no." He leaned on the mare's shoulder and put his arm
across her neck. "It's hard,
cherie.
I wish to cherish her, and she
spits on me. She doesn't believe in me."

He scowled, stroking the unkempt roan coat. The mare rubbed her chin on the
edge of the feed trough.

"What shall I do about it, eh?" he muttered. "Shall I show her?"

Carefully, he set his hands on the mare's back. With one swift move, he hiked
himself up and swung his leg over, grabbing at her mane as his balance whirled.
He almost went off the other side. For a long moment he hung onto her neck like
a child with its first pony, his face buried in the long mane.

The mare stood steadily, braced on all four legs against his awkward
position. Slowly S.T. pushed himself upright.

"Quite the
cavalier,
no?" he murmured. "What do you know of the high
school, madame? Can you show me the
courbette?
The
capriole?"

He stroked her neck, smiling grimly to himself at the thought of this angular
mare suddenly rearing up and leaping on her hind feet, rising free of the earth
in the
courbette.
Or more absurd, perform a
capriole,
spring
into the air to thrust forward and kick out with her hind legs in the most
spectacular and difficult of all the airs above the ground.

"Ah, would that you had seen my Charon before you lost your sight," he told
her. "You would be in love, little peasant. A handsome stallion he was; all
black as pitch. A great one for the ladies." He leaned over and slapped her on
both sides of her withers. "I miss him. My God, look at me, Charon, my friend.
Look what it comes to. I've lived too long."

Experimentally, he pressed his leg against the mare's left side. The horse
ignored him, snuffling in the trough after stray corn.

"What a sad ignoramus you are,
cherie."
He tugged at the base of her
mane. "You came along smartly enough today—I shall have to teach you something
else. What should a blind mare know, hmm? Perhaps you would like to learn a
proper curtsy? Shall we cultivate your manners and see you fit to make your bow
to the king?"

She blew out a noisy breath against the wooden box.

"Mais oui. "
He braced himself on her neck and carefully dismounted.
Untying the lead, he backed her out of the stall and began the first stage of
the lesson.

By the time he was finished, the lamp had long since burned out and they both
worked blind. He thought that fair: it gave him a better notion of what the
mare's world was like. Since she'd already done a full day's labor, he didn't
try to finish the trick in one session, but only taught her the signal to place
her foreleg. Then he gave her another half measure of corn and tied her in the
stall.

He slept in the stable yard, sitting up in the cabriolet with the leather
hood raised to keep off the dew. Sometime Very late in the night, the chaise
rattled and bounced wildly. He woke to find Nemo trying to crawl into his lap.

S.T. grunted and shifted while the wolf sprawled heavily across his legs.
Nemo licked S.T.'s chin, sighed, and settled himself, bushy tail and one hind
leg hanging off the cramped seat.

Just at dawn, the wolf woke suddenly and pushed up-right, digging clumsy paws
into S.T.'s stomach. S.T. groaned sleepily and shoved, but Nemo was already
jumping down.

A female screech rent the morning quiet. S.T. jerked awake, thrusting himself
forward, catching the dashboard and stumbling down from the vehicle. In the half
light, a dark-eyed barefoot girl was at the stable door, shrieking in patois,
"Wolf! Father, come! Help! Father, Father, it's a wolf!"

S.T. grabbed her around the shoulders. "Hush!" He bent his mouth to her ear.
"Hush, hush—be quiet; it's nothing; you're safe."

"I saw a wolf!" She whimpered, clinging to him. "Here in the yard! A wolf!"

"Non, non,
little foolish one." He cradled her in his arms. "You
dream.
Le bite noire, oui?
A nightmare."

He could hear the commotion from the main house. The landlord came pelting
around the back of the inn, followed by a fat woman brandishing a broom.

"
C'est bien
," S.T. called, still holding the dark-eyed girl. "Only a
fright."

She leaned against him. "I saw it," she cried. "I saw it! Father, a wolf!"

S.T. patted her cap and kissed her forehead in urgent reassurance. "There was
no wolf. I'm certain. I was out early, to see to my horse." He looked up at her
father. "A witless little sparrow, eh?"

The innkeeper relaxed. He regarded S.T. and the girl, apparently not
displeased with the arm S.T. had around her waist. "Witless," he agreed gruffly.
"Don't pester the man, Angele."

The fat woman broke into voluble patois, called Angele an idle hussy, and
gestured with the broom toward the barn. S.T. gave the clinging girl a squeeze
of encouragement. He chucked her beneath the chin.

"Do your chores," he said. "There's no wolf, I promise you, sweeting."

She loosened her hold reluctantly. Her parents went back around the house,
but Angele adhered to S.T., holding his coattail in her fist, her black eyes
round.

"I saw it, monsieur," she insisted. "I saw a wolf, big as life. Beside your
chaise!"

"No—you're mistaken—"

"I
did
!" Her voice grew shrill. "I did, monsieur!"

"Silly child; just forget it!" By way of distraction, he drew her back,
tilted her chin up, and kissed her mouth.

Angele's body went rigid. After an instant, she softened against him, and
seemed willing enough to pass over the incident in those circumstances. She
stared up at him as he lifted his head. "Monsieur!" she murmured.

"Would I could stay another day," he teased.

She ducked her head. S.T. let her go. She looked up at him beneath her dark
lashes, the tip of her tongue just peeking between her lips. Then she giggled
and dashed into the stable. S.T. watched until she slipped inside, and began to
walk toward the inn.

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.

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.