The Prince of Midnight (2 page)

"
Un bel homme
," she said. "Handsome."

"Ha. He is French?"

"He is of English parents." She drank again. "But he speaks French very
fluently. That is why they called him the Seigneur in England."

"Quelle stupidit
é
."
S.T. swept
his arm around the crowded tavern. "All speak French. All lords here, eh?"

She didn't blink. "In England it is not so common. They say he has—a certain
air about him. A newspaper dubbed him by that name, and now it sticks."

"Le Seigneur du Minuit," he mused, and shook his head. He'd really hoped that
sobriquet had died along with his reputation. "Absurd. Midnight,
pourquoi?"

She lifted her wine and took a long swallow. The chipped porcelain mug made a
solid sound when she set it down. She gave him a straight look. "I think you
know why 'midnight,' Monsieur Este."

He smiled a little. "Do I?"

She watched him silently as he poured her another portion. He leaned back
against the wall again. He didn't want to hear her sad story. He didn't want to
listen to her pleas. He just wanted to gaze at her and fantasize about the one
great lack in his life these days.

She took a breath, and another swallow of wine. He could see her thinking,
trying to reckon him. A faint touch of desperation had begun to seep into her
brooding expression. After another generous gulp of wine, she came at him
directly.

"Monsieur Este," she said, "I can understand that the Seigneur does not wish
to show himself to strangers. I know the danger."

He made his eyes grow wide. "Dan-ger? What is this? I like not dan-ger."

"There is none. For him."

S.T. snorted. "For him I care not," he said indignantly. "Is for me I care! I
think maybe well I do not know this bad Seigneur, yes? I think I do not help
seek for he."

She looked a bit disconcerted. The wine was having its effect: the fire in
those lovely eyes had grown a little smokier.

"Mon cher ami,"
he said gently. "You go to the home. You no seek
dan-ger ... this Seigneur so absurd."

The cold blaze sprang up again. "I have no home."

"And so—" He examined his thumbnail. "You go seek. I think I know this
'prince.' I con-jec-ture.
I
hear 'midnight'
and 'Seigneur,' and I know what kind of man this. Bad man?' Bad dan-ger. He is a
highwayman, no? He is chase from England like a
chien,
tail under legs,
no? Here we do not want him. Good men here only. Good king's men. No dan-ger. No
trouble. Go to the home,
mon petit."

"I cannot."

Of course not. Naturally he wouldn't get rid of her that easily. He wasn't at
all sure he wanted to. He watched her gulp down the rest of her wine. When he
did not offer to pour, she served herself from the fresh bottle Marc had
brought.

"Mon dieu.
What you want, boy?" he demanded suddenly. "Be criminal?
Thief? Why seek you this bastard?"

"He is not a bastard." Her head came up. She frowned, and when she spoke, the
wine was already slurring her voice. "You're
not
him, are you? You
don't . . . understand."

S.T. rubbed his forehead. He drank deeply and leaned on his elbow.

"He is a good man," she said, her voice breaking upward carelessly. She
polished off her mug and poured herself another. Beneath the tattered lace cuff,
her wrist seemed touchingly pale and slender. "Not a thief."

He smiled in derision. "People give to him jewels,
oui
? Rain on him
gold."

She bridled, flashing him a glance of blue fire. "You don't understand."
She'd forgotten her male role completely, but her natural voice had a luscious
soft huskiness. "He would help me."

"How?"

"I want him to teach me." She tilted the mug up and drank. She had to hold it
with both hands, well on her way to being half crocked. When she set it down,
she twisted a lock of loose hair around her forefinger with a delicate gesture
that was so feminine it made him smile.

Softly, he asked, "Teach you what,
ma belle
?"

She didn't notice the adjective. "Swordplay," she said with passion.

S.T.'s mug hit the table.

"How to use a pistol," she added. "And to ride. He's the best alive. In the
world. He can make a horse do anything."

She looked feverishly at S.T., who was shaking his head and swearing beneath
his breath. He met that concentrated stare and looked away, pushing his hand
into his hair in discomfort.

That was a mistake. He'd forgotten he was wearing the tie wig for his foray
into the village of La Paire; it slid askew beneath his fingers and he had to
pull it off. He cursed in French and tossed the scratchy nuisance on the table.
Swordplay! Of all the damned crazy notions. He leaned on his elbows, chafing his
hands in his hair.

When he looked up, he realized it was far more of a mistake than he'd
understood. She was staring at him, intense and half-drunk.

"You
are
the Seigneur." Her lips worked. "I knew it. I knew it."

"Allons-y!"
He stood up, hauling her to her feet. She was clearly
one of those females who couldn't hold her claret. She'd passed the point of
discretion—in a moment she'd be bursting into tears or performing some other
purely female exploit—and whoever she was, or whyever she'd come, 'twas hardly
chivalrous to leave her to reveal herself in a public ordinary. He grabbed the
bottle of wine, slapped his tricorne on his head, and took her around the waist.
She wilted against him. "Adolescent cabbage," he said disgustedly to Marc on his
way past.

The tavern keeper beamed, all benevolence and grimy apron. "Don't forget my
Chantal's portrait," he called after them.

S.T. lifted the half-empty bottle in salute, not even bothering to turn
around as he carted Monsieur Leigh Strachan away.

He left her to sleep it off in a granary above La Paire and started home.
He'd see her again soon enough—that was one thing as certain as death and the
king's taxes.

It was sunset and he was breathing hard from the climb before the ruined
towers of Col du Noir appeared, clinging to the cliff at the head of the canyon,
silhouetted against a clear, cool sky. The ducks came out to greet him, nipping
at his feet until until he bought them off with a chunk of bread. He stopped at
the garden and dug among the dry weeds for a garlic to flavor his dinner.
Dusting dirt off his hands onto his breeches, he ambled beneath the turreted
gate of his castle and through the lavender that grew wild in the courtyard...

He whistled, and Nemo came bounding out of some shadowed crevice where he'd
been hiding. The great wolf leaped up and licked enthusiastically at S.T.'s
face, then dropped down to fawn and whine in pleasure, getting a tussle and a
bite of cheese for his trouble. He jogged circles around S.T. as he trudged up
the uneven stone stairs.

S.T. paused in the armory, looking up at the huge painting just visible in
the last of the daylight. With Nemo snuffling at his boots, he gave the portrait
a fleeting stroke in the place where his hand had worn the painted luster from
the flank of a shining black horse...

"Home again, old fellow," he said softly. "I'm back."

He gazed at the picture a moment. Nemo whined, and S.T. turned abruptly away,
leaning down to give the wolf a hard shake. Nemo pressed against his leg,
shameless, basking and groveling and groaning with ecstasy at the attention. . .

Dinner was short and simple, a pot of rabbit stew shared with Nemo, who'd
brought the rabbit, and the last of Marc's good red wine. S.T. sat before the
kitchen fire, tilted back against the table on two legs of a three-legged stool,
wondering vaguely if he ought to try to plant some grapevines and asking himself
if he wanted to paint badly enough to light the torches in the hall.

He decided that he didn't, and went back to pondering the mysterious process
of making wine, which according to Marc was complex beyond reason. God only knew
what kind of pampering the vines would require. Weeding garlic was bad enough.
And something always ate his peppers in their helpless infancy if he didn't
bleeding get down on the ground and sleep with them all night.

He sighed. The firelight flickered off plaster busts and pots of pigment,
casting shadows that made it seem as the room were filled with a silent crowd of
people instead of books and canvas and smudgy charcoal sketches.

He clasped his hands behind his head and gazed at the disordered sum of his
life for the past three years. Half-finished paintings, roughed-out sculpture:
he threw himself into each new effort with fierce energy, but the only thing
he'd completed since he'd come here was the painting in the armory.

In one dark corner an unsheathed sword lay askew against the wall. He'd let
it go to rust, along with the brace of pistols wrapped in their dusty rags. But
the saddle and bridle he kept clean and oiled, hanging neatly from their pegs,
just as if he were going to use them.

He rubbed Nemo's head with his boot. The wolf sighed in heavy pleasure, but
didn't bother to bestir himself from his long-limbed sprawl against S.T.'s feet.

It took Monsieur Leigh Strachan until late afternoon the next day to produce
herself at Col du Noir. S.T. was a little surprised; he'd expected her by mid
morning at the latest. He'd moved his work out into the courtyard as he usually
did to catch the north light on these clear October afternoons, breathing the
scents of linseed oil and tarragon and lavender and dust that clung to his paint
rags and his hands. Nemo panted softly in a shady spot, his solemn yellow eyes
following S.T.'s short perambulations back and forth to get a perspective on the
canvas. But when the wolf lifted his head and looked toward the gate, S.T. put
his brush in a terra-cotta pot full of oil, wiped his hands, and sat down on a
sun-baked stone to wait.

Nemo heaved himself to his feet. A soft word from S.T. kept the wolf still.
He heard the ducks break into disturbing muttering—a noise which seemed to him
to come from somewhere off to the left where there was nothing beyond the wall
but a sheer cliff. He turned his head to catch more of the sound with his good
ear, then realized what he'd done and faced the gate directly with a little
frisson of self-annoyance. He'd yet to become accustomed to the disorienting
effects of his one-sided deafness. Even with Nemo's alert gaze trained on the
obvious direction of approach, S.T. had a difficult time convincing his brain
that their visitor wasn't somehow advancing on thin air across the canyon from
the left. And worse, if he closed his eyes or turned his head too quickly, the
whole world seemed to go into a tumbling spin around him.

Wisely, she created plenty of deliberate noise as she came. A clever
greenling, this. She knew better than to try to sneak up on a desperate and
dangerous highwayman with a king's ransom on his head.

The thought made S.T. smile. Once upon a time, he'd considered himself quite
a perilous character.

He leaned over, tugged at some weedy bushes within reach, and sat back armed
to the teeth with a fragrant little bouquet of lavender and chamomile. After a
moment, he added a few trailing stems of rockrose for color and composition.
While he turned the nosegay in his hand, idly inspecting the arrangement, she
appeared beneath the crumbling gateway.

She paused just inside the shadow. He waited. Nemo stood still, growling.

S.T. could see her eyeing the wolf warily. Nemo was something to see: huge,
with his coat of black and cream and silver, his teeth bared and a light
afternoon breeze ruffling his handsome markings. He was very clearly what he
was—no chance of mistaking him for a mere oversized watchdog.

Ignoring S.T., she took a step toward the animal. Nemo's hackles rose. She
took another, and then began to walk steadily straight at the wolf. Nemo's growl
became an open snarl. He crouched, his splendid tail waving slowly, his yellow
eyes fixed on the slender figure. She kept walking. Nemo took a step forward,
his whole body rigid with the savagery of his warning. The courtyard echoed to
the sound.

But she kept walking.

She was three feet away when Nemo's courage evaporated. The snarl gave out,
his tail flagged, and he turned in a little circle. His great head lowered and
his ears flattened in dismay as he slunk across the open space and crept into a
safe place behind S.T.'s back.

"I know," S.T. said soothingly. "Terrifying creatures, these females."

She stood silent, frowning at them.

"Watch this," S.T. said to Nemo. "I'm going to walk right up to her. No ...
don't whine, old chap—you can't stop me. It's a bloody awful risk, I know. I
don't fancy my chances above half." He stood up, looking down at the wolf. "But
mind you, pal, if I don't come back—" he gave Nemo a shake "—I want you to have
my share of the cheese."

Nemo prostrated himself in abject humility, yelping faintly and trying to
lick S.T.'s hand. S.T. pushed him over onto his side, scratched his belly, and
left him lolling on his back in exuberant disgrace.

She watched S.T. as he approached, her dark, slanted brows drawn down with
far more doubt than when she'd eyed the wolf. He offered the flowers silently.

For a long moment, she stared down at the little bouquet in his hand, and
then looked up into his eyes. He smiled.
"Bienvenue, mon enfant,
" he
said softly.

Her lower lip twitched. Suddenly those superb blue eyes were glazed with
tears. She whacked his hand away with a hard fist. Flowers went flying, and the
scent of crushed lavender drifted on the air. "Don't do that," she snarled,
fierce as Nemo. "Don't look at me that way."

S.T. took a startled step back, nursing his hand. She possessed a dashed
convincing right punch. "As you please," he said wryly, and then added with
deliberation,
"monsieur."