The Prince of Midnight

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 tasseled 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.

  Turning 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?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  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 filigree 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.”

  “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 corer 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 ruched 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 card players 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 that 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.