The Prince of Midnight (51 page)

She was afraid, too, frightened of what she found herself becoming. She felt
that she was transforming into a malevolent black spider, hunched back in her
crack, staring out at the world and despising everything and everyone for having
what she did not.

Someone came into the passage; she heard the door open and the sound of
distant music grow louder. For a moment she nearly turned and fled, unable to
face any sympathetic inquiries into whether she felt quite well, but that course
only promised even closer questions. So she stood where she was, stiff and
proud, facing the doorway into the hall.

"Leigh?" he said softly, and at the sound of that voice her chin rose higher
and her back grew even stiffer, her fingers closing on the edge of a table until
they hurt.

The Seigneur came from the shadow into the pale edge of the light. Leigh
glared at him, daggers and swords and lances, only wishing looks could kill. But
he stayed there, very much alive, a-shimmer in the soft light from the
chandelier over her head.

"I wanted to see you," he said quietly.

She kept her chin high. "I beg your pardon?" Her voice was frigid.

"I wanted to see you," he repeated. "I. . . don't know why I didn't come."

She simply stared, willing away the blurring in her eyes. When it threatened
to spill over, she turned her face sharply away.

"You've heard that I'm pardoned?" he asked.

"I believe it's common knowledge," Leigh said tautly.

He was silent. She stared at the corner of the table, watching the candles
overhead cast a soft reflection of her face in the polished wood.

"Leigh," he said in a queer voice, "would you do me the honor . . ."

His words trailed off. She looked up. He was gazing at her, as if he thought
she might speak. When she met his eyes, he looked away, almost as if he were
embarrassed, and inclined his head in an awkward gesture.

"I'm not dancing any more tonight, thank you," she answered woodenly. "I've
the headache."

He looked down at the tassled handle of his dress sword, fingering the
braided silk.

"I see," he said. "I'm sorry."

He made a brief bow, turned, and vanished back into the shadows of the unlit
hallway.

Leigh swallowed. Weeping was beyond her now. Tears were not enough.

* * *

S.T. presented himself in Brook Street the next afternoon. He had to do it.
He had to. He stood in the hall while his card was sent up to Leigh, his mouth
set, his eyes focused straight ahead on the fifth stair, rehearsing his lines
over and over.

He found the extent of his courage in that wait, and it was mortifying.

The butler showed him up. While the servant intoned, "Mr. Maitland," S.T.
stood in the drawing room door, searching among the callers drawn up in a circle
of chairs, but it was a plump, petite woman he'd never seen before who rose and
met him at the door.

"I am Mrs. Patton," she murmured, as the general conversation resumed after a
moment's significant pause. "My cousin hasn't yet come down."

S.T. bent over her hand, the lace at his cuff falling in a pale foam. "I'm
honored to pay my respects," he said, maintaining a formally neutral manner,
unsure of his reception—whether his notoriety would earn him a rebuff in this
respectable household. "I fear I'm a stranger to you."

But Leigh's cousin, Mrs. Patton, only looked up at him curiously a moment.
"Then do come and make yourself known," she whispered. Her round face dimpled
provocatively. "Not that your interesting reputation doesn't precede you! We're
all agog to meet Mr. Maitland. I'm sure I didn't collect that Lady Leigh had
your acquaintance, or I should have pressed her to present you, sir."

"It has been my loss alone," he said politely.

She smiled in knowing appreciation. "You will have met her in France, I don't
doubt? That unhappy child—she wrote us almost nothing while she was away." She
leaned toward him. "This has been so difficult for her, you know," she said in a
low voice. "So good of her mother's friend—Mrs. Lewis-Hearst, was that her
name?— to take her away for a change of scene after the tragedies. I grieve that
I could not have done it myself, but I was confined with my little Charles. But,
oh—'twas too much, far too much for a mere girl to bear. Poor love, I've wept
for her! And to be gone for so long! Over a year! We had one letter, from
Avignon—I suppose she could not bring herself to write. And then this fire—it is
beyond enduring." Mrs. Patton laid her hand on S.T.'s arm. "The truth to say, I
do not think she improves. I finally succeeded in enticing her out last night
for the first time since she came to us, and today ..." She shook her head
sadly. "I'm glad you've come calling, sir."

"You're generous," he said, "to welcome me. I did not expect it."

"I believe she needs—a diversion." Mrs. Patton frowned. "She will not see her
childhood friends since she returned, and no one else has asked for her." Then
she impulsively took his hand. "Mr. Maitland—I declare I would welcome the
chimney sweep, if he could make her smile, just once, as she used to do. You
cannot know, if you met her—after ..." She colored and bit her lip. "But listen
to me! Chimney sweep—what a dreadful comparison! I'm sure your soul is nowhere
near as black as a sweep. The past is past, of course—I should be most spiteful
to hold against you what the king himself does not, shouldn't I? Besides—" She
peeked at him mischievously. "You are quite a drawing room prize, you know. I
shall be telling everyone that the notorious highwayman came to call quite out
of the blue!"

"Thank you." He searched for words, and then glanced at her plump, gentle
face. "For your warm heart."

The mischief vanished from her expression. She tilted her head and looked at
him with a new interest. "What an unusual man you are, to be sure!"

S.T. shifted, not entirely comfortable under the feminine shrewdness of that
look. "Do you think the weather will hold fair?" he asked casually.

"I've not the faintest notion," she said, drawing him toward the circle.
"Now, come along and have some refreshment. Mrs. Cholmondelay, may I present Mr.
Maitland, our so-shocking highwayman? Do keep him amused. I shall just pop
upstairs and see what is detaining Lady Leigh."

S.T. stood sipping tea, all that was offered, and exerted himself to make
conversation, doing his best to appear as tame as possible to these worthy
ladies. Their initial wariness began to thaw, and by the time Mrs. Patton
returned, they had extracted from him the interesting information that he was
staying with the Child family at Osterley Park, and were deeply engrossed in
questioning him on Mrs. Child's new chairs with the backs taken from the pattern
of antique lyres.

Mrs. Patton walked over to him. "I must give you my apologies, Mr. Maitland.
Lady Leigh is indisposed. I fear she won't be joining us today."

S.T. lowered his eyes before her searching glance. Of course Leigh wouldn't
see him. Damn—what could he expect? He felt himself flushing. All the ladies
were looking at him. "I'm sorry to hear it," he said, his voice rigidly
dispassionate.

Mrs. Patton took his hand as he bowed in parting. "Perhaps another day," she
said.

He felt the small folded paper pressed into his palm. His fingers closed
around it. "Another day," he repeated mechanically.

The drawing room door closed behind him. He stopped in the dim hall and
flipped open the note.

She is walking in the garden,
it said succinctly.
Jackson will
show you.

At the foot of the stairs, the butler stood looking up expectantly. S.T. took
a deep breath, crushed the paper in his hand, and descended.

Leigh had grown to accept the way her mind played wistful tricks on her. The
way a certain sound could cause her to turn, expecting to see her father behind
her, or a pretty gauze make her think, "Anna will like that." At first such
moments had been frequent, like the dreams, but slowly they'd faded and grown
more rare. Still, when footsteps and the scent came to her—the strong,
unmistakable burst of newly cut lavender—she lifted her head from her book
without thinking, and then realized as she did it that the vivid premonition was
only fragrance and memory, and not a person in reality—not a place she'd been,
where dust and sunlight mingled in a ruined courtyard.

She would not turn and find the Seigneur standing there among his wild
lavender and weeds.

She closed the little octavo volume of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
and
leaned her head on her hand, awaiting her cousin's soft insistence. Clara truly
wished to help, Leigh knew, and yet the pressure to return to life, to the
outside world, only made Leigh more unhappy and angry. She had nothing; no one
and nothing. It had all betrayed her—even her revenge, which had lost her
Silvering and gained her only bitterness.

And worse, worse ... to still hurt. To long not only for the family she'd
lost but for a man who knew nothing more of love than flirtation and lust. Who
could look through her as if she didn't exist, and then callously ask her to
dance.

To have tried so hard to barricade her heart against him, and to have failed
so monstrously.

She heard the footsteps come to a stop on the gravel path before her, but she
didn't want to lift her head and open her eyes. She only wanted to feel nothing.
Not to think, or endure, or even exist.

"Please," she whispered, "Clara, please—just go away."

There was a soft rustle of silk. Warm hands cupped her cheeks—not a delicate
feminine touch, but strong and gentle fingers that cradled her face, bringing
the intense perfume of crushed lavender, the brush of the thin, aromatic leaves
on her skin. She opened her eyes and he was there, on his knees, concrete and
real in front of her.

"Sunshine," he said softly, and drew her close to him, holding her head
against his shoulder.

For a moment it was everything: comfort and union and love that she
desperately wanted, love the way she'd known it all her life, secure and
unshakable. She pressed her face to his coat, her throat aching. "Oh, you are so
dreadfully good at this, aren't you?" she whispered. "Damned charlatan."

He didn't speak or shake his head. He didn't deny it. Leigh spread her hands
against his shoulders and straightened, pushing upright. Perfumed powder from
her hair dusted the wine-colored silk of his coat, mingling with the scent of
lavender from the bruised stems in his hands.

He laid the tiny, broken bouquet carefully on the marble bench beside her. "I
saw them by the doorstep," he said, without looking up. He fingered one of the
crushed flowers, and then asked quietly, "Are you going to send me to the
devil?"

She gazed at his bent head. He lifted his face, regarding her soberly, his
green eyes and wicked eyebrows steady, slightly uncertain, like a watchful satyr
in the shadows of a deep wood.

"I'm sure my cousin won't mind if you pick her flowers," she said,
deliberately misunderstanding.

He released a slow breath and rose. Leigh gazed at the cut-steel buttons on
his coat. She kept her hands locked in her lap.

Riming a little aside, he brushed the open bloom of a pink rose with his
knuckles. "Leigh, I—" He pulled one of the petals loose. "I know you're vexed.
I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I'm sorry."

"You're very much mistaken," she said. "I never expected you to call."

He plucked another petal. He held it between his fingers and tore it down the
middle, folded it, and tore it again. "You didn't?"

She looked up at him. "Why should I?"

The torn pieces of rose petal fluttered to the ground. "No," he said in a
low, dull voice. "Why should you?"

Leigh watched him pull two more petals and roll them between his thumb and
forefinger. He kept tearing the petals loose, one by one.

"I came because I wanted to see you," he said abruptly, frowning down at the
half-destroyed rose. "I want to talk to you." He plucked another petal. "I need
you."

She gripped her hands together in her lap. "I find your conversation does not
amuse me."

"Leigh," he said ruefully.

Leave me alone,
she thought.
Go away. Don't begin this farce
again. Please don't.

He fingered the drooping flower. "You're still angry."

"I am not angry. I have done what I set out to do. I only wish—that my home
had not burned."

He closed his eyes. "I shouldn't have left you there alone. I didn't want
to." The rose petals fell in a shower, leaving the flower barren. "I was a
damned fool."

"You were in jeopardy. Why should you linger?"

He turned his head with a faint, harsh chuckle. "This is like a nightmare.
You're saying all the wrong things."

"Indeed? I must beg your forgiveness."

"Leigh . . .I'm pardoned," he said.

"I am aware. You have my congratulations."

"Leigh—" His voice had a strange emphasis, almost a pleading in it.

She looked up at him. He stared at her, and then lowered his eyes to the
rose.

"Will you do me the honor—" He gripped the stem of the denuded flower,
breaking it off in his hand. "—of . . . ah . . ." He twisted the green stem into
a deformed circle.

The restless movement brought a thorn against his thumb. He pressed the prick
into the pad of his finger, clenching his fist, slowly driving in the thorn as
if he didn't even feel the pain. "Will you do me the honor—" he began again.

Leigh lifted her head, watching the thorn and the bright spot of blood it
drew, a new perception slowly dawning on her.

She met his eyes. His face was set, almost white. He took a step back and
said, "May I have the honor of a dance at Mrs. Child's ridotto Tuesday next?"

Mr. Horace Walpole stood with Leigh and Mrs. Patton in the eating room at
Osterley Park, where their hostess had provided a running supper after the harp
concert. "All the Percys and Seymours of Syon must expire of envy, don't you
agree?" Mr. Walpole waved his handkerchief fussily and looked up around the
walls and ceiling at the white-painted plaster filagree on grounds of pink and
green. "Yet another chef d'oeuvre of Adam! Such taste! Such profusion!" He
leaned a little toward Clara. "Such expense!" he murmured. "Positively
bacchanalian."