The Prince of Midnight by Laura Kinsale
He took exquisite care with the horse. Even when the drizzle started in the late afternoon, he didn’t rush. He never tried to force the animal to obey, only set up each situation so that the horse preferred to do what he asked rather than be compelled to keep running around the enclosure. Then he took what was offered, returning praise and friendly scratching.
When finally the moment came and he swung softly and fully into the saddle, the horse stood still, its ears flicked back alertly. In the waiting silence, Leigh could hear the sound of the light rain and feel the expectation from the crowd. The gray had had plenty of time to recover its wind and object to this imposition forcefully.
But the horse just peered around at him from both sides, heaved a sigh, and looked bored.
A loud cheer broke out. The farm boys began to whoop and the horse copers pitched their hats in the air. The gray lifted its head and stared around, but the lessons of the day were not lost. The horse held its place calmly, and then after a moment walked off around the paddock, rotating its ears in casual interest.
The Seigneur was grinning. For the whole of her life, Leigh thought she would remember the expression on his face.
She put her head in her arms.
How can I go on? I’m weak, I’m going to fail, I’m not strong enough; Oh, Mama. I can’t keep on with this.
She kept herself buried, not watching anymore, pressing her forehead into her arms and trying to find the bitterness that had sustained her. The evening grew colder as she sat hunched beneath the tree, and finally it was one of the copers who squelched up in the drizzle and timidly said, “Ma’am? Was you wishing to ride back?”
She lifted her head. He stood there holding the chestnut. In the early dark, the rest of the audience had dispersed, and Leigh saw the Seigneur already halfway down the lane, riding the black and leading the rogue alongside.
She accepted the coper’s leg up onto the sidesaddle that the Seigneur had insisted upon purchasing for her. The chestnut didn’t wait for any signal from Leigh: as soon as the man let go of the bridle, it swung around and trotted quickly after the other horses.
Leigh allowed it, having no better decision at hand. The Seigneur never even turned around and looked at her.
Back in the stable yard, he swung off the black and told the boys that he’d tend to the horses himself. They seemed glad enough to stay clear of the rogue, but there were low whistles and speculation as the big horse stood calmly amid the flickering bustle in the yard.
As Leigh dismounted, the Seigneur caught her bridle. He took off his tricorne and handed her the rogue’s lead. “What do you prefer to call him?” he asked shortly.
She gave the horse a weary look. He’d said it could be a weapon. She needed one. Now, more than ever before, she desperately needed weapon to help her go on. “Revenge,” she said harshly. “That’s what I’ll call him.”
He scowled at her. “No. That’s a stupid name.”
“Revenge.” She set her jaw. “That’s his name, if you give him to me.”
“Right-ho,” he said in a low, angry voice. “The way you always call me ‘Seigneur.’ I’m a person, Leigh. I’ve got a name. This is a horse, a living breathing animal; he’s not a goddamned mission.”
She brushed her damp hair back from her face. “I don’t even know your name. You only have initials.”
“You never asked.” He turned to work at the black’s girth. “But why should you? That would make me real, wouldn’t it? Something more than a tool to get you what you want.”
Her throat thickened in that desperate, painful way that kept overcoming her wits. In a caustic voice, she said, “So tell me your name.”
He looked back at her sharply. She lowered her face, staring at the lamplight shining on the wet stone cobbles and the horses’ hooves.
She heard the rattle of the girth as he dragged the saddle off the horse’s back. She felt bruised inside, unable to look up and encounter his face directly, to see his hair crowned with golden lamplight and rain.
“Sophocles,” he said gruffly, in an undertone. “Sophocles Trafalgar Maitland.”
He paused, as if expecting her to say something. She couldn’t seem to lift her head. He carried the saddle away and came back.
“Well you may stare,” he said, and gave a peculiar little humorless laugh. “Silliest name on earth. I’ve never voluntarily told it to anyone before.”
She could see his hand on the reins, sliding the leather between his fingers.
He turned away to the chestnut. “Begotten aboard ship off the Cape of Trafalgar.” He unbuckled the sidesaddle’s balance strap. “So the story goes. My mother claimed her lover was a rear admiral of the white squadron.” He yanked the leather girth straps free. “One might ask how she managed to find herself aboard a navy flagship, but who knows? Maybe it’s true.” He pulled the sidesaddle off the chestnut and stopped beside Leigh, holding the cantle against his hip. “I go by my initials. S.T. Maitland. And don’t bloody well tell anyone the rest, understand?”
She gazed at him.
The truth came upon her with a simple, horrible clarity.
I love this man.
I love him, I hate him… oh, God.
She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Instead she only stared stonily. “Why should I tell?” she asked. She flicked the gray rogue’s lead. “Where shall I put Revenge?”
He looked from her to the hose, and then plucked the rope out of her hand. “I’ll take him,” he said. “His name’s Mistral.”
Chapter Fifteen
Three weeks and three hundred miles, and fifty times a day S.T. thought of what she’d said.
You importune me. You inconvenience me.
You’re a fraud.
With Nemo loping alongside, he rode Mistral from dawn to dusk, alternating every three hours with a lesson on the black he’d named Sirocco. On the road, he taught both horses to give to his hand, to halt with and without reins, to retire backwards, to trot and gallop the Roman S. For three hours in the morning, before they traveled, he worked Mistral alone.
His balance didn’t desert him. At first he thought about it, lying warily still when he woke, afraid to move his head. As the miracle held, it became harder to remember, strange to realize in the middle of a school that he’d made some effortless quick maneuver without thinking of the consequences.
When he did recall it, he shook his head vigorously, trying to make himself dizzy as a sort of preventive measure, the way his lowly surgeon had advised. But the renewed feeling of disequilibrium was so unpleasant, the sensation of stability so natural, that he found his efforts growing fewer and farther between.
He had his balance back. It wouldn’t leave him. It could not. He concentrated all his mind on the task at hand.
S.T.’s equestrian masters had been Italian, French, Spanish—with one law between them: many horses make a rider; one rider makes a horse. In his life, he’d ridden hundreds, but not since Charon had he found a mount with the natural balance and intelligence of this powerful gray demon. It was a joy and a-passion; an obsession; to supple Mistral into the terre-à-terre with smaller and smaller figure eights, to begin the courbette by teaching him to pick up his forefeet neatly and together, then school him in the ruade, asking him to kick out his hind legs with a stroke of the rod under his belly. Mistral had a particular talent for that air, having kicked down more than one stall in his notorious career.
The black Sirocco was an honest, phlegmatic animal, harder to move than to restrain, but Mistral did not suffer a fool gladly. His exuberance and sensitivity required the slowest and most empathetic of hands, the greatest of patience. But the moment that Mistral comprehended a lesson, he was capable of performing it. S.T.’s prime concern was to fight his own urge to bring the horse along too fast. Sometimes, instead of the serious schools, he spent the morning hours in play, showing the gray rogue the same tricks he’d taught the blind French mare, or just standing alongside Mistral and scratching his with
It was in those quiet moments that his pride kept tossing up to him the words Leigh had said.
You importune me. You inconvenience me. You’re a fraud.
He’d left her stranded in Rye and come alone. It was like a quest: kill the dragon—win the lady.
Damn her, he’d drape her in dragon skin. He’d feed her dragon soup. He’d build her a bloody frigging castle out of dragon bones.
Let her think him a fraud then.
The Reverend James Chilton might call it his Heavenly Sanctuary, but the place had been known as Felchester for more than a few centuries. First a Roman fort on the Pennine Way, almost within sight of Hadrian’s pagan wall, and then a stronghold of the Danelaw. The Norman French had not found it worth the building of a castle, but the weekly market and the river ford had kept it alive into the fifteenth century, long enough for a stroke of rare good fortune: a native son, gone to London and come home rich. This proud citizen had seen fit to build a stone bridge across the river, and Felchester’s life as a town was assured.
All this, S.T. knew from Leigh. What he had not expected was the charm of it, tucked as it was at the foot of a great, gloomy fell, between the heights and the river. The workaday slate houses of the north were softened, some of them plastered and whitewashed, their formidable outlines obscured by the exuberant twisty lace of bare fruit trees and the reddish winter remnants of creeper. On a clear day in late January, broad patches of sun lay across the wide main street, warm in the sheltered valley.
S.T. felt conspicuous in his point-edged hat and cloak of thick brandy-colored wool. It seemed that the sort of tourists who visited the Reverend James Chilton’s model town wore clerical garb and carried hymn books instead of swords.
“You see—I try so very, very hard,” Mr. Chilton was saying. After an hour of enthusiastic exposition, his red hair stood out in all directions from his head, heavily powdered, so that the natural color had become a strange shade of pale apricot. “Gentlemen, I’m honest with you. We could not expect a heaven on earth. But now I want you to look around our little home—stop with us tonight if you please, and welcome; any one of the members can direct you to the guest’s dormitory.”
The visiting clergymen stood around, smiling and nodding. Chilton gave S.T. a particularly friendly smile, offering his hand. His freckles made his face seem young and old at once. For an instant he looked directly into S.T.’s eyes, without a blink. “I’m so glad you’ve come along,” he said. “Are you interested in philanthropy, sir?”
“Just curious,” S.T. said, wanting no part of being hounded for a donation. “Is there somewhere I can stable my horse?”
He was the only one who’d arrived mounted. The rest had come in the Sanctuary’s own plain wagonette, met at the front of the church fourteen miles away in Hexham.
“Of course you may take him down to the livery, but I’m afraid you’ll have to care for him yourself. As I explained, that is our rule here, gentlemen—responsibility! One stands upon one’s own feet. Though you’ll find everyone most accommodating and helpful when you have need.” Chilton nodded toward S.T.’s sword belt. “I’ll ask you to leave that in the stable, too, my dear sir. You’ve no need for such things here on our streets. Now—I must leave you all to your own devices and see to the preparations for my noonday service. Do come up to the parsonage for a dish of tea in an hour, and then I hope you will attend service with us, and we’ll talk further.”
As the group broke apart, S.T. gathered Sirocco’s reins and led the patient black horse down the high street in the direction Chilton had indicated. He returned a nod and a smile from a shepherd girl as she passed. Her flock of three white-faced sheep gave the scene a pastoral air, like something out of a sentimental etching. A pair of little girls, capped and gowned like their elders, giggled at each other as they carried a milk pail between them.
The females of Heavenly Sanctuary went about their business in buoyant spirits, from what he’d seen. He could hear someone singing from an open doorway across the road.
The stable still held the night’s chill, empty of men or beasts but meticulously clean. He put Sirocco in the first stall, pitched hay, and pumped water. The black stuck its nose in the hayrack, only flicking an ear backward as S.T: hung up his saddle. He debated briefly, decided he didn’t owe Chilton any particular compliance, and walked out with his sword still on.
He stood at the door of the livery, considering how best to reconnoiter. He wanted this done, and done quickly, but nothing so far was as he’d anticipated. No one in this town seemed downtrodden; no air of evil hung about the place… and Chilton—well, Chilton looked nothing more than a bluff and rather boring crusader, if the lengthy speech on morals and methods with which he’d greeted them all this morning was any indication.
It might be a little difficult just to assassinate the fellow, as much as S.T. suspected he’d be happy to do so after sitting through a Heavenly Sanctuary service and an afternoon of Chilton’s prosy philosophy.
He tried to conjure Leigh: her face set, her body shaking as she told him what had happened here. But all he could recall clearly was the sound of her voice as she reviled him with his failings.
He began to wonder if she was rational. Or if he was. Distress could break a mind. Perhaps it had never happened at all—perhaps there had been no family, no father or mother or sisters lost.
He knew that he ought to forget about Leigh Strachan.
But here he was.
The high street widened at the market cross, opening to the bridge on one hand and a wide, gracious avenue lined with spreading trees on the other. At the end of the avenue, mounting the steep flank of the fell, stood a handsome mansion of silver stone, topped by a copper cupola and a graceful balustrade.
He stopped.
That, he had seen before. In the background of a young girl’s watercolors, he’d glimpsed that symmetrical facade with its tall windows, stately and beautiful and warmly intimate.
Silvering, Northumberland, 1764—
Long grass grew through the magnificent wrought-iron gates. There at the end of its own fine avenue, with the neat houses marching up the slope to their crowning gem, Silvering itself stood alone and unkempt, like a proud old courtier still arrayed in fading paint and powder.
He felt a sudden hot longing for Leigh, an overwhelming ache at the base of his throat. To stand here and look at the place that had once echoed to her laughter—laughter he’d never heard himself—made him feel supremely alone, jealously solitary.
They’d been a family here. He’d seen the pictures, witnessed the depth of her grief at her loss.
He wanted…
Connection. Kinship. He wanted what that house had been. A home, and something to fill it.
He wanted Leigh, and everything she refused him.
Except it wouldn’t work. He saw that, suddenly, standing here beneath the empty mansion. Between her sketchbook and this weed-grown house, there was no human way to repair the broken bond. It had warped her mind and her heart and her memories, this suffering, twisted reality into an obsessive search for retribution that had carried her all the way cross France. Whatever had happened to her family—and he no more thought these cheerful girls had actually killed them than he believed they could be resurrected—the world of the watercolors was gone.
The dragon had turned out to be a puppy, and S.T. could never win her what she truly wanted, which was the life she’d lost.
Which left him with nothing. No way to merit her love, nothing to master and prove himself. He had the weapons honed, his swordplay polished and the gray rogue trained up to the foundations of his art. In three weeks, he’d accomplished it, wanting the victory that badly.
All for naught. He could kill Chilton and go back to Rye with the man’s head in a damned basket, and it wouldn’t buy him more than a curt thank you. Why should it? She’d got herself convinced she wanted revenge, she’d made Chilton into an evil scapegoat,
She’d turn from S.T. and go away and leave him as she’d found him.
He crossed his arms, leaned his head back against the carved stone of the market cross, and thought of what a sad coxcomb he looked now, like some eager recruit arrived at the battlefield, only to find no one else there.
Merde.
For want of a better idea, he walked back down the street and smiled wanly at a pretty girl who sat working at a pair of lace ruffles in a bright doorway. He leaned on the garden gate. “Pray—will you tell me where I might find something to eat?”
“Most willingly,” she said, laying aside her work and springing up from the stoop. She came forward and nodded up at him. “You must go down the high street—that way—” She pointed, bending her head close to his shoulder as she leaned over the gate. “Then give yourself the trouble of turning to the right, toward the hill, at the first lane beyond the market cross. Be so good as to continue past the infirmary, and in the first house on the left you will find the men’s dining hall.”
She looked up at him, still bending close. Her plain, tight cap covered every curl on her head, but her blue eyes and fair skin made S.T. envision a cascade of blonde.
He took off his hat with grave courtesy and bowed. “Thank you, mademoiselle,” he said. And winked at her.
She stared up at him. “It’s no trouble,” she said. “Certainly it has been a pleasure for me.” He put his hat back on. “But I’m keeping you from your work.”
“Yes,” she said, and turned back to the house without another word.
S.T. paused a moment, slightly disconcerted by the abruptness of her withdrawal. Then he turned away and followed her directions, walking slowly down the street the way she’d pointed.
The little black flock of visiting clergy came out of a shop a few yards ahead of him. They spoke quietly together, full of wise nods and thoughtful looks. One of them appeared to be taking notes in a journal. S.T. lifted a finger to the brim of his hat and walked on alone.