The Prince of Midnight (52 page)

"But where are the chairs?" Mrs. Patton said, turning. "I want to see the
chairs shaped like Apollo's lyre!"

"Against the wall, Cousin Clara," Leigh said, nodding toward a corner of the
crowded room. "There is one."

"How very modish! Come, Mr. Walpole, I want to sit on an example of these
wonders."

"And so you shall, m'dear. But the dancing begins; this is a very forward
entertainment, you see ... Mrs. Child doesn't wish anybody to be so antiquated
as to sit down to supper together in a proper manner. We must be modern. Can I
not persuade you to exercise yourself in the gallery? 'Tis full a hundred and
thirty feet long, you know."

"That is a compelling length," she agreed, "but if I wish to exert myself, I
will crane my neck to view the Rubens ceiling in the staircase. Take Lady Leigh
instead."

"With infinite pleasure." He bowed to Leigh, flourishing a leg in the finicky
tiptoe way that he had. "If she is agreeable?"

Leigh accepted his offered arm. She had not planned to attend this affair.
She'd told S.T. that she wouldn't. But in the days between, she'd kept thinking
of those moments in her cousin's garden, the way he'd held the broken rose until
it drew blood. This morning at breakfast she had shocked Clara, and even herself
a little, by agreeing with her cousin's daily mechanical suggestion that Leigh
attend whatever event was scheduled, and consented to ride out of the city to
Windmill Lane for the Childs' private ridotto.

Clara had responded with enthusiasm, insisting that Leigh appear in one of
the new gowns her cousin had ordered. Mrs. Patton's seamstress made the tucks
and alterations on the watered violet silk within an hour, flicking and tugging
at the niched silver lace to make it spread properly over Leigh's elbows. With
her own hands, Clara chose a fan and an amethyst necklace especially to match
the flowered embroidery on the stomacher and draw the desirable amount of
attention to Leigh's décolleté neckline. The rest of the day passed in bathing
and perfuming and having her hair dressed: padded and curled and set with
feathers while the coiffeur complained bitterly over the shortness of her locks.

She had not yet seen S.T., not during the concert, when the Childs' green
damask drawing room had been full of seated guests all facing the harpist at the
head of the room. Nor had he stood with his hosts when they greeted their
visitors, nor been amongst the cardplayers in the library. She had begun to
think he must have left Osterley, when she saw him come into the gallery at the
door halfway down the long room.

Mr. Walpole was leading her into the dance. She only had time to glimpse the
Seigneur's golden figure in his bronze velvet and blond lace before she had to
turn and step into a animated gavotte. Through the figures she could sometimes
see him; he hadn't moved from the doorway, but stood there with his hand on the
hilt of his dress sword, leaning casually against the frame.

Something strange welled up in her, something light and giddy. She found
herself smiling. She discovered pleasure in the dance, in the party, in prim Mr.
Walpole and the color of the wall hangings.

He was here. He hadn't gone away.

When the dance was over, she followed Mr. Walpole off the floor away from the
Seigneur. She had no choice; she could not bring herself to approach him even if
it had been proper. How strange it was mat she had come to this—alienated by
etiquette and emotion from a man who had taken her to bed. Who had touched her
bare skin, kissed and caressed her and whispered that he loved her. Who had
shared life and death, the taste of smoke and blood. She wanted to ask him where
Nemo was, how Mistral fared; if the horse had learned new tricks. She wanted to
tell him that Sirocco and the chestnut were sound and well cared for in Mr.
Patton's own mews, exercised daily by a boy she'd chosen herself. She wanted to
speak to him of all these things—matters that had not occurred to her in the
garden, questions that seemed to have bubbled up through the ice in her soul as
it cracked at the memory of that tortured rose.

Clara was just wandering out of the eating room with a little covey of
friends. Mr. Walpole immediately pressed his desire to partner her, and found
her willing this time. Amid a flutter of conversation and gallantry, Leigh stood
quietly and watched her cousin move out on Mr. Walpole's arm into the gallery.
The music began. Fans quivered and jewels flashed around her as the ladies
nodded and the gentlemen smiled. Someone touched her elbow from behind.

"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—I 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 ballgown. 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."