The Prince of Midnight (20 page)

"What of Nemo?"

"Nemo?" He acquired an imaginary quizzing glass, lifted it, and peered at
her. "Oh, do you mean that picturesque hound of mine? He is a quaint monster,
isn't he? Half Russian. The czars hunt wolves with them, don't you know." He
whistled, and Nemo came racing up, curveting playfully at his feet until a faint
hand signal sent him into a whimpering, eager crouch. S.T. pulled an invisible
handkerchief from his cuff and sniffed at it stylishly.

"Would you care to pet him? He's quite harmless. A little shy of the ladies,
I fear."

"No one will swallow that. You've maggots in your head."

He dropped his hand. "I daresay if you can pass as a male, I can certainly
pose for a mere odd character."

"And what else should I be? Your 'mollie-cull'?"

Leaning on the spadroon, he stared at her blandly. "Do you even know what
that means, Sunshine?"

"I'm not a complete green-head." She made a careless gesture with her hand.
"That captain saw through my costume. He took me for your mistress."

"Ah." He smiled. "Not precisely."

He saw that she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of showing curiosity. That
was well enough. If there were depravities she didn't know about, he wasn't
going to engage her in an improving conversation on sodomy. She looked so young,
standing there in her man's clothes, her legs braced: so wide-eyed and frowning
and virginal.

"Just don't throw the title about intemperately,
ma petite, "
he
said at last. " 'Tis a hanging offense."

She frowned slightly, a betrayal of confusion that he found endearing. The
entire topic was apparently beyond her ken. Whatever she thought she'd learned
of worldly wickedness, and wherever she'd learned it, the schooling hadn't been
so sordid as she appeared to want him to believe. He began revising his original
plans, thinking of where he could safely leave her while he made a prowl of his
old, wild haunts in Covent Garden.

"How do you do?" she asked abruptly. "Are you feeling better?"

"Quite well, thank you." In the relief of standing on ground that didn't reel
beneath his feet, he didn't even feel unsteady in the way he usually did.
"Excessively well. I believe I'll stay off the water for the remainder of my
natural life."

She tilted her head, a faint frown between her brows, very serious and
beautiful. "Was that what you wanted with the apothecary? If I'd known how ill
you'd be, I would have compounded a powder for you to take beforehand."

S.T. called Nemo to him and knelt on one leg to caress the wolf. Devise a
powder, would she? It wouldn't work. He'd had enough drops and pills and
electuaries to reckon on that by now. What he really needed was something else
entirely—an aphrodisiac, a love philter—a powder that would melt her ice down
into sultry emotion before he lost his mind.

He thought it was there. He caught her sometimes, looking at him.

If he could be what he'd once been, he wouldn't need love potions.

He stroked Nemo's thick ruff. "Powders don't work."

"Are you certain? Perhaps—"

"Do you think I haven't tried them? Do you think I've not seen a hundred
physicians? They don't know what's wrong—half of them never heard of such a
thing, and the rest try to dose me with asses' milk and tar water, and say
'twill go off in a few weeks. Well, it hasn't gone off, not for me. It's been
three years."

"Three years!" she echoed softly.

"Aye. 'Tis worse and better, in spells. Sometimes I almost feel all right—the
way I feel now ... as long as I'm careful. Then I turn my head or make a quick
move, and the world goes round like a top." He shrugged. "And I fall down. As
you've noticed."

She gazed at him. Behind her, seabirds soared along the chalk cliff.

"And that's why, isn't it?" she said slowly. "That's why you ran."

He laughed bitterly. "Oh, aye, you ought to have seen me when I crossed to
France!" He blew out a harsh breath. "They had to carry me ashore, and I
couldn't stand up for two days. There wasn't even any bloody wind that time— the
water was like glass. Never again will I board a ship. Never."

"How did this happen to you?" she demanded.

"You needn't look at me as if I ought to know better, damn it," he snapped. "
'Twas in a cave. I got myself cornered by the militia that Miss Elizabeth
turncoat Bur-ford set on me, and they exploded a heavy charge at the entrance."
His mouth tightened. "Killed my horse. Nothing hit me. Just the sound." He bent
his head into Nemo's ruff. "Just the noise. It
hurt.
It hurt my brain.
It made me dizzy to stand up or walk or move my head at all. My ear bled." He
took a deep breath and lifted his chin. "Can you repair that? Can you make a
powder and give me back my hearing?" His voice rose, in spite of his attempt to
keep it casual. "I'm deaf on the right side, did you realize it yet?"

She stood frowning at him. He saw her finally put the signs and the truth
together. Her expression went from discovery to shock to a furious frown.

"Hell and the devil," he muttered, and looked down, gripping the wolf's thick
fur between his fingers.

"You didn't tell me!"

"Come along," he said defiantly. "You didn't see it for yourself—why should
I?"

She stepped back, her hands spreading.
"Why should you?"
she cried.
"I don't understand how you suppose to go on with this! What else is wrong with
you that I don't know? For the love of God—you'll be no help to me. None!" She
flung out her hand. "Why did you come at all? Go away! 'Tis nothing but a
mockery!"

S.T. stood up. His back was rigid. "You want to be shut of me?" He cast the
spadroon at her feet in a ringing clatter. "Fine. You've been asking to carry a
weapon since we left Provence. There it is."

She looked down at the sword and up again.

"I'll leave it with you if you want it," he said roughly. "See how it fits
your grip."

For only a moment, gallingly short, she hesitated. Then she knelt down and
clasped the hilt, letting the sword slide from the sheath. She lifted it in one
hand and steadied it between both.

"
Le voila, "
he snapped. "The Prince of Midnight."

" 'Tis not as heavy as I expected." She swished the blade experimentally
through the still morning air.

"Think you could kill a man?"

She met his eyes coolly. "The man I wish to kill. Yes. I can do it."

S.T. drew his rapier with a snap of steel and in a single pass stepped
forward, came under her wobbly guard, and disarmed her. The spadroon went
clanging onto the stones. He pressed the tip of the rapier into the thick folds
of linen at the base of her throat. "No," he said gently. "Not if he's got a
sword, you can't."

She took a prudent step backward.

S.T. lowered the colichimarde and sheathed it. "I'm half deaf, mademoiselle.
I'm not crippled."

The seabirds swooped and cried in the silence. Leigh stood with her chin
lifted, her hands tight. "I apologize." There was a clear tremor in her voice.
"I see that I have misjudged you yet again."

He turned his back on her. He was angry with himself for allowing his
emotions to seize him. It had been dangerous, that move, a showy circus trick on
bad footing; he was rusty, with no call to pretend otherwise.

But he hadn't lost his balance. He realized it only as he thought of what
might have happened if he had.

He hadn't lost his balance.

He had not lost his balance.

He stood still, suddenly afraid to move.

That fencing attack, that abrupt drive forward ... he should have lost his
balance. For three years, no matter how stable he felt when he was motionless, a
move like that had sent the universe careening.

He put his hand on the hilt of the rapier. He shook his head from side to
side and then even tilted it back until he was looking at the sky. He drew the
sword and lifted it slowly in front of him, holding it steady at shoulder level,
waiting for the slow reeling sensation to take possession of his head.

"It's gone," he whispered. "Oh my God . . . it's gone."

For the first time in three years: in thirty-six months, two weeks and four
days—he'd kept count—he moved freely in a fixed universe, without his senses
betraying him whenever he turned his head.

"Oh God," he said, throttled beneath his breath. "I don't believe it."

He whirled around, facing the cliff. Nothing happened; no crazy pitch, no
wild swing of the horizon.

An awed smile spread across his face.

He felt as if he'd been freed of fetters that he had not even known bound
him. Normal felt so normal that he'd not even recognized it. Like a headache,
the constant and unpleasant sense of instability had evaporated at some unknown
moment when he wasn't thinking about it, the exact instant obscured in the
contrast between the heaving ship and the solid ground. He didn't know when it
had happened: he'd just fallen into harmony with himself.

The ship. Could it have been the ship? Maybe that bloody surgeon had been
right—maybe it had just required such an extremity of disequilibrium that he'd
never been able to carry it far enough of his own will.

Part of him was terrified. What if it came back? He shook his head again;
closed his eyes, and waited for any trace of disequilibrium.

The world stayed firm beneath his feet.

He wanted to run. He wanted to dance. He turned suddenly to Leigh and grabbed
her hand, sinking into a deep formal bow. "I'm at your command, mademoiselle. I
beg you won't send me away while I have the power to serve you."

"Don't be a nod-cock." She pulled her hand free. " 'Twould appear that I
haven't the power to send you away even if I wished."

He straightened, frowning, hardly able to comprehend that she could not see
the difference in him. It must be obvious, it must be—and yet he had not even
perceived it himself.

He could win her now. No longer was he the stumbling buffoon. He could ride,
he could use his sword; he could do anything.

What if it came back?

Don't let it come back. For the love of God, don't let it.

He stared at her, wanting to hide it, wanting to tell her ... if he told her,
and it came back . . .

"I'll go away," he offered slowly. "If that's really what you want.

Her eyebrows lifted above those skeptical aquamarine eyes. She turned and
walked away toward the cliff.

"You came to me for help!" he shouted after her.

She whirled and looked back. "Aye. I rubbed the bottle, didn't I? And freed a
genie. One wonders what you will do next."

He couldn't restrain it; he met her scowl and felt his face break into an
exhilarated grin. He was free, and nearly whole; he owned himself again. He
laughed and swept the blade in an arc and circle above his head. It sang a
lovely high-pitched note as it cut the air descending. He stood with the sword
in his hand, his legs spread in easy balance. "Who knows what I'll do? Depends
on where I spring game, Sunshine."

Leigh walked behind the two of them over the downs, holding her hat on her
head against the wind, watching as the Seigneur knelt once again to unsnarl Nemo
from a difficulty. He had finally submitted to putting a rope on the wolf, but
though he'd surrendered to the idea that Nemo would be safer leashed in the
daylight, he wouldn't allow a shorter length than the full ten feet of line that
they'd salvaged from the bindings on the cage. The wolf didn't seem to mind at
all, beyond getting constantly tangled in bushes and wrapped around trees.

Leigh felt unsettled. She felt precarious and tormented, unable to
concentrate on the future. Whenever she looked at the Seigneur, she thought of
him with the bared sword shimmering above his head, the morning light liquifying
the blade into a runnel of silver as it moved. It was as if the image had gotten
etched somehow on the back of her eyes, like a bright flash, overlaying all the
other things she saw or remembered of him.

His endless patience with the animal made her miserable and weak inside. She
had to set her jaw to keep her lower lip from trembling at the most preposterous
small events. She wanted to snap at him to stop this maudlin nonsense and simply
keep the animal close at his side.

Nemo had never accepted her. He was beautiful; fluid and quick and shrewd,
but he was a royal bother—and inseparable from the Seigneur.

At his decree, they walked toward Rye. Leigh didn't care which way they went.
She stared out across the high chalk downs and desperately wished she were
alone.

This was not why she'd traveled to France, not to come back shepherding an
erratic Robin Hood half as wild as his wolf. He'd been bad enough with his
romantic mooning about and making up to anything in skirts. But there was a new
anticipation in him now, an intensity shimmering just behind his satyr's grin.
Her hands still stung from the jarring impact of his blade against the sword
she'd held.

That had been an extremely enlightening moment.

With the sword in her hand, she'd felt . . . effective. She'd known she
wouldn't shrink from killing Chilton, and for an instant, just an instant, she'd
had the means to do it. She'd held a blade, honed and balanced to kill.

And then he'd taken it from her.

There were moments of humbling in life that one did not soon forget.

She felt bleak and afraid. Not for herself, but for making a mistake, a fatal
overestimation of her ability to carry out her chosen course. For death she
cared nothing—'twas failure that she could not contemplate.

All along the road through France, she'd known she should leave the Seigneur
behind. She thought about him too much. She hated finding herself tangled in his
frivolous little peccadilloes. She hated worse than anything moments like that
one at the French farmhouse—finding herself mistaken in her presumptions, in
matters that were none of her concern.