The Prince of Midnight (19 page)

"Do you not? Then who do you expect will be accountable for this foolish wife
when her husband tosses her out for sleeping with another man? They're a family!
'Tis something precious, what you're playing with. You haven't even any
discretion about it. I expect it makes no difference in a public inn, and I've
said nothing every night since we left Aubenas, but in a private home like this
when you claim to go for a walk after supper and then come back at dawn, there's
some notice taken, I assure you."

"Is there indeed! Notice taken by whom? The boy? He's long asleep. Her
husband? We haven't seen that mullet-monger in person yet, have we? He's too
busy netting smelt to have a care for his poor lonely wife. 'Tis you takes
notice! A precious family, is it?" He gave an angry laugh. "I bow to your
greater experience—I don't know much of that! So what's my punishment to be?
Another six weeks of bad humor and cold shoulder? Is that what you're pleased to
call 'accessible' to me? God, I don't know how I'll bear the delight!"

Faint color rose in her cheekbones. She turned her face away. "I pity the
woman. Yes, she is lonely. She's weak. Why must you take advantage of her?"

"I made her laugh. I called her pretty. I kissed her hand at the kitchen
fire. That's the sum of it. As to all these shameful, wanton hours after
midnight, it's Nemo I spend 'em with, not some willing female—much to my regret!
I take Nemo out and let him run free while he has the chance, when there's less
prospect he'll be shot by some stalwart village knight with a notion to protect
the populace. I hate it that he has to go back into that damned kennel box we
had built for him. Can you comprehend that? Lord, did you truly think I've slept
all day in an open chaise just because I've been debauching myself beyond
bearing every night? If you're going to spy, you'd best go a little further with
the effort and get your facts straight before you make your accusations."

She stood very still, staring at him, her figure silhouetted in deep colors
against the dingy sky.

"Not that bedding her isn't a perfectly splendid notion," he added wildly.
"She's got warm blood in her in place of ice water, which is more than I can say
for you."

Her shoulders lifted. She held them back, rigidly straight.

"Does that offend you?" he sneered. "Good."

The color in her cheeks had become a blaze. She moistened her lips. "I beg
your pardon," she said in a deathly hollow voice. "I have been mistaken."

His harsh breath made the cold air frost around his face as he watched her
walk away from him. He twisted the paper package and crushed it in his fist.
When she was almost to the farmyard gate, he called her name.

She didn't turn. The chained dog began to bark again, but she ignored that,
too. S.T. took a deep breath and strode after her, but by the time he reached
the yard, she had disappeared into the gabled farmhouse. The boy was just
running out the door toward him, begging to pet Nemo and give the wolf a handful
of smoked fish.

S.T. stared past him at the farmhouse. It took a conscious effort to force
his hands to relax. He was a brute; a bastard; he well knew why she had no
warmth in her. But the way she treated him, the endless cutting snubs in spite
of every attempt to win her admiration—it drove him beyond endurance. After a
long moment, he turned on his heel and followed the boy into the barn.

S.T. had thought he was prepared for the channel crossing. He wasn't.

All those queasy weeks of bouncing along in an open chaise, where at least he
could focus on stable landscape, were nothing to the reeling horror of a ship's
berth in a heavy sea.

While he could still reason, he wished he'd taken the powder he'd purchased
at the quack
apothicaire.
If it had killed him, so much the better.

He couldn't see; his vision swung and pitched if he opened his eyes,
amplifying every lurch of the ship until his insides seemed stuck in his throat.
His hand clenched on the wooden rail that edged the berth. He kept swallowing,
trying to draw breath enough in his lungs to think. It seemed that a massive
hand throttled him, pressing down with unrelenting force. He'd lost what little
he'd eaten before they'd even left the shore boat to board the smuggling lugger,
and now he had nothing but sick agony squeezing his stomach and chest and head.

He heard the slide and rattle of the curtains drawn back from across the
berth. A soft touch pressed against his cheek and temple, sweet-smelling release
from the dank odors. He turned his face into it, tried to speak and only managed
a choked groan.

"You're breathing too quickly," Leigh said. She braced against the bulkhead
and sponged his face with the scented water. "Try to slow down."

He gripped her hand so hard that it hurt her. She held steady while he panted
against her skin. He was trying to obey her: a harsh exhalation, a suspended
moment, and then another desperate rush.

"Slower," she said softly. "Slower than that."

"Can't." He swallowed convulsively. His breathing went back to the quick and
shallow pants.

Leigh bit her lip, knowing of nothing more to do for him, even out of all her
mother had taught her. Earlier, she'd tried to coax him to take an infusion of
boiled fern root, prepared on deck with great difficulty over an iron pot full
of charcoal, but he could not keep the first swallow down.

Heavy boots sounded in the passage. The captain of the little smuggling
vessel came up behind her, peering over her shoulder into his berth. "Bust me,"
he muttered. "I seen 'em in rum case in my time, but I hain't never seen nobody
took this bad before. Sure it's only the seasickness, are you?"

The Seigneur opened his eyes. He seemed to be trying to focus, but his head
moved with the motion of the ship and instead of fixing on Leigh or the captain,
his line of sight swung as if he were watching a fly circle their heads. She
stroked his damp forehead. "Don't try," she murmured. "Close your eyes,
monsieur; you needn't talk."

He made a sound, a low-pitched whimper that was almost lost in his labored
breathing. He was quiet compared to the crying and moaning crowd of seasick
passengers Leigh had seen aboard the mail packet on her first trip across the
Channel to France; very quiet and far more ill. It was the same way he'd looked
with his dizzy spells on the road north—his skin sweaty and white, his jaw
clamped against the sickness—only on the lugger's deck it had gone on and
worsened until he'd seemed to lose command of his very limbs and sunk slowly
down onto one knee, slumped against her leg. Taking him below to the captain's
berth hadn't revived him; he'd only lain panting and ashen, driving to empty
heaves if he tried to keep his eyes open.

"I don't know why he's in such extremity," she said, still stroking his face.
"I understand this sort of thing varies with the individual sufferer."

The captain snorted. "There's a passle o' fancy words. You're an educated
young gentleman, then, are you?" He watched her hand a moment and then grinned.
"You his mollie-cull?"

Leigh paused in her stroking. The Seigneur turned onto his side with a heavy
sound.

"No need to frown. 'Tis no nevermind to me," the Captain said. "Live and let
live, says 1.1 think I could like a pretty rogue, myself." He lifted a lock of
hair that had fallen over her ear. "I like a soft cheek, I do."

Leigh put her hand on the dagger beneath her coat, but before she could draw
it, the Seigneur made a sudden move. The captain lurched in the direction of the
berth, his waistcoat caught in the Seigneur's grip.

"Mine,"
he snarled, his voice hoarse and frightening between violent
pants. He'd hiked himself half up in the berth; his teeth showed white in the
dimness as he twisted the waistcoat in his fist. A button popped free, bouncing
against the rail and then the deck.

"Here now," the captain said. "You're a sick man."

"I'm not—dead," the Seigneur growled.

The captain pulled free with a grin. "Couldn't 'a proved it by me. You bloody
well look like a corpse."

"Don't touch ..." the Seigneur said shakily, his eyes shut. "Cut . . . y'r
heart out."

"Aye, I'm a basket o' nerves, I am." With a good-humored chuckle, the captain
bent down to search for his button. "Got no time for it anyhow. We're within
sight o' Cliff End." He straightened up and stuffed the cracked pearl button
into his waistcoat pocket. "I'm not going any closer. You two chaps and your
circus beast can lighter ashore with the goods as best ye may."

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 hatefully.

"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."