The Prince of Midnight (26 page)

"Ale." The voice from the bed had a sepulchral ring. "For God's mercy."

"And put some arsenic in it," Leigh suggested, smiling sweetly at the
landlord. Then she peeped behind him. "My dear Mr. Piper!" She stood up. "You
wish to speak to my husband, of course. It's so excessively mortifying, but I'm
afraid he's not yet up to snuff. I apologize with all my heart. You can't
possibly know what a painful trial he is to me."

Mr. Piper, a small, barrel-chested gentleman with a voice very like a frog,
gave a bobbing bow. "Indeed, ma'am," he said in his low grate, "I do most
sincerely feel for you. But I believe I'm owed some restitution, ma'am—I really
must insist on indemnification—especially now, when they're saying 'twas my
horse that—"

"Ale, "
the hollow voice repeated. "Oh, God . . . who the devil's
that . . . croaker?"

"That, my darling ass, is poor Mr. Piper. You stole his horse."

"Aye, and near ran the poor creature into the ground, too!" Mr. Piper's
rumbling voice rose in indignation. " 'Tis by nothing but the grace of God that
he didn't bow a tendon. I've had the groom poultice him, just in case, and walk
him gently for an hour this morning. They tell me he's sound, but I've a notion
there's a little weakness in that nearside hock."

The Seigneur groaned and peered at his accuser from beneath the pillow. "A
regular jaw-me-dead," he muttered, and pulled the corner down. "Go away, before
you

. kill me."

"I will not go away, sir. I've been waiting since five o'clock to speak to
you—I have business elsewhere, and the constable wants to impound my horse!" Mr.
Piper's color rose. "I've been interviewed this morning as if I were a common
criminal, and I did not like it, sir! Not one bit did I like it!"

"Oh, dear—of course you didn't like it," Leigh said, in the same soothing
tone she'd used all the evening before with him. "Whoever had the impudence?"

"The constable, ma'am! There was a coach robbed on the Romney road last
night, and the culprit rode a horse with four white stockings, so what must they
do but send out the town crier, and look out every unfamiliar nag with white
stockings in the neighborhood for to interview the owner! As if a poor honest
businessman had any notion to go out robbing coaches after a hard day's work.
They'll be wanting to speak to your husband, too, ma'am." He bobbed stiffly
toward her again. "Since I don't scruple to say that I told them he was out on
my horse, which is nothing but God's truth, and I hope for yourself's sake,
ma'am, that he can say where he's been!"

Leigh's heart was beating so hard she felt sure that her voice must shake,
but before she could speak, the Seigneur dragged himself up from the depths of
the bed and sat looking at Mr. Piper with revulsion. He ran his hand over his
face. "What," he said, holding back his hair, "must I pay to have you thrown
bodily from my room?"

"Thirty guineas," Mr. Piper said promptly.

The Seigneur sputtered. "Thirty guineas." He swung his feet to the floor and
sat with the sheet pulled across his lap, leaning on his knees with his face in
his hands. The queasy groan that leaked out of him made even Leigh feel a little
anxious.

"That's the value of my horse," Mr. Piper said stubbornly. "They're
threatening to impound him."

"Don't even remember . . . your bloody horse," the Seigneur mumbled,
spreading his hand on his abdomen. "'Ah damme, but I'm queer."

"I have witnesses, sir. Willing to speak! I must insist on restitution. I've
no wish to bring a formal charge, but

"Take it." The Seigneur swallowed several times. "Take it. Take it." He
gulped a deep breath and waved one weak hand. "Just ... go away and leave me in
peace."

He looked toward Leigh with a helpless appeal that was outrageous in its
credibility. What an amazing fraud he was! She half believed in his
morning-after agony herself. As he sat there, drooping in his misery, she
searched in his purse with shaking fingers, right past the incriminating diamond
necklace itself, and gave Mr. Piper enough Rye notes to equal thirty-one pounds,
then scrupulously counted out four crowns in silver.

"And keep your damn nag," the Seigneur muttered. "Don't want the ... spavined
beast."

"I'm so sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Piper," Leigh said, and meant it.
"Have they really taken your horse?"

He tucked the notes into his coat. "Not yet, ma'am. They'll want to speak to
him
first, I warrant." He gave the Seigneur a lofty glance. "I advise
you to do your best to bring him to a rational state in preparation, ma'am, and
I hope he hasn't been out cutting up stupid larks on honest gentlemen's horses."

The Seigneur bent over, with an ominous gagging sound. Leigh moved
instinctively toward him, and the other two men moved instinctively away.

"I'll have a tonic sent up," the landlord said hastily. "Come along with me,
sir—if you're satisfied here."

"Bring the ferryman—" the Seigneur croaked, barely lifting his head. "I
'member now. Last night—just a little . . . jollity with the ferryman."

"Very good, Mr. Maitland. I'll have him brought round, then, to vouch for you
to the constable—if such a thing proves necessary."

The door closed on the pair of them. Leigh stopped, with her hand on the
bedpost. All her limbs felt precarious, as if they might give way with her. The
Seigneur lay back on the bed, his arms behind his head. His mouth curved with
immoral humor.

"How tiresome," he murmured. "To choke down a tonic, when I'd far rather have
a pork sausage. I don't suppose you thought to save me one off your tray?"

She took a deep breath. "Were you drinking with the ferryman?"

"Sadly, no. I was terrorizing the highroad on a horse with four white
stockings all last evening. An unfortunate setback, those stockings. Let us hope
my largesse has been well placed."

Leigh bent her head. "And if not?"

"Then they hang me, Sunshine."

She pressed her hand to her temple.

"Don't concern yourself overmuch," he said easily. "I'll attest your
innocence to my last breath."

Pushing away from the bedpost, she walked to the window. "I find I
cannot—take it all so lightly."

A moment of silence passed. She stared down into the stable yard. Behind her
the bed creaked.

"Don't get up," she said sharply. "The tonic—what if someone comes?"

"So they'll see that IVe made it to my feet,
cherie.
Cultivate a
somewhat more indifferent manner, if you please. You put me all in a flutter."

She closed her eyes, listening to him move about the room and dress, resting
her closed fists on the windowsill. Her mind played over and over the coming
disaster. Would they burst in and take him by force—or come politely, asking sly
questions, expecting to trap him in his story? She imagined him in manacles and
had a wild thought of throwing the necklace out the window as far as she could
hurl it.

Chains. 'Twould be like the wolf on a leash . . . wrong, wrong, wrong.

He came behind her. She whirled on him, flinging his hands away. "Don't try
to touch me! Don't come and say you did it for me."

He went down on one knee with a gallant flourish. "What else am I to say, my
love?"

"I don't understand why!" she cried softly, looking down at his familiar
full-sleeved shirt, at the gilded hair retied in black satin. "There was no
reason for it."

He turned his face up to her, smiling faintly. "I can't help myself."

"Nonsense," she snapped. "You're preposterous."

The slight, coaxing smile faded. At a scratch on the door, he came to his
feet and disposed himself in an affecting slump against the post. As soon as a
curtseying housemaid had left his tonic and gone, he opened the window, checked
up and down the yard, and poured his morning bracer into the gutter below the
sill.

An hour later, the innkeeper came up in person again. Leigh gripped the arms
of her chair. She sat immobile as the Seigneur bade the landlord enter—with the
message that Mr. Maitland's alibi had been quite confirmed by the ferryman, Mr.
Piper's mount released, and a proclamation posted with a reward for any
information on the missing horse with white stockings.

"And a pinch-penny reward it is, Mr. Maitland," the innkeeper said
carelessly. "Five pounds!"

"Dog cheap, in fact," the Seigneur said, sitting down in his riding boots and
shirt sleeves at the dressing table. He folded a piece of paper around some
money and rummaged in the stationery box for wax. "Ask one of your excellent
ostlers to carry this to the ferry, will you? Convey my solicitations to the
ferryman, and I hope his head doesn't ache like mine."

"With pleasure, Mr. Maitland." The innkeeper took the fat envelope and bowed
out.

Silence fell. The Seigneur sat looking at himself in the mirror. He met
Leigh's eyes in the glass.

He smiled at her ... a slow, wicked grin that transformed his face into the
devil prince of the green forest.

She stood up. "Iniquitous enough that you've got away with it," she said, not
quite able to keep her voice steady. "You needn't relish it quite so
immoderately!"

"Relish it! That bauble's costing me a fortune, my girl-Ten pounds to our
quick-minded ferryman—and well he deserves 'em—which brings the sum to ... let's
see . . . good God, over fifty. I wonder if you're worth it."

She looked up at him. He appeared to quickly decipher the expression on her
face, for his eyes slid away and he turned back to the mirror with a demeanor
reminiscent of Nemo sidling cautiously into a corner out of harm's way.

"No doubt you are," he murmured. "
Dolce mia. Carissima
!"

"Italian now?" She sat down and laid her head back on the chair. "A fool in
three languages."

"Che me frega, "
he said in a velvet undertone, flicking his fingers
against the underside of his chin.

If her French was shaky, her Italian was nonexistent. The words might have
been a gutter curse or a lover's compliment, but the little mocking gesture of
those fingers was as eloquent as any thumbed nose.

He leaned his elbow on the dressing table, toying with an ivory comb. She
frowned at his reflected image, at the gilt eyebrows with their singular curve
that was fiendish and cheerful at once. His easy speech in an alien tongue made
him seem even more exotic—beyond mere common humanity: something mad and
mercurial, able to conjure diamonds out of the dark.

He'd his full balance back, she was certain. Since they'd left the ship, he'd
moved easily, confidently, with a freedom and boldness impossible to disregard.
The medical enigma intrigued her. The alchemy of his character fascinated and
alarmed her.

Outside in the stable yard, there was a sudden crash. He turned his head
alertly ... the wrong way, toward the door.

It was nothing, an upset haycart or some such incident. Through the open
window Leigh could hear voices yelling in irritated retort, but she was watching
the Seigneur. He stared expectantly at the door for a moment, and then his
mistake dawned on him.

He glanced at her. A dull flush crept up his neck to his hair.

"Oh, yes," she agreed softly. "You're a sham, aren't you?"

His mouth grew hard. He stared at the tip of his boot without answering.

" 'Twas not your prowess—'twas nothing but devil's luck got you through this
silly trick, was it?"

He brushed his finger back and forth over the feathered tip of the quill in
the inkstand.

"I'm not deceived," she said. " 'Twas luck."

"I understand a horse fair begins today at the market," he said stiffly.
"Perhaps you would like me to help mount you, mademoiselle."

It felt strange to be female again, to be led around puddles and supported up
steps. Between the skirts and borrowed muff and high-heeled shoes and steep,
cobbled hills, Leigh found she had to lean on the Seigneur in spite of herself.

She submitted to a sedan chair, more to save herself the threat of a sprained
ankle than to avoid the foggy chill. They had shut an unhappy Nemo in the room,
and the Seigneur walked beside her, carrying his hat and acting icily polite.
Misty sunlight gave his coat and hair a soft gleam, made him a golden idol amid
so many dusty chimney sweeps.

One of the ancient fortified gates loomed up like a black cave in the vapor.
They passed by it, then wound through the narrow streets into the market square.
She lowered the window. The horse fair was in full voice and pungent odor, the
square crowded with animals standing in uneven lines for inspection or being
trotted out by hand to show their soundness.

"Do you like anything?" he asked, as they moved slowly among the horses.

She tapped the front glass on the chair, and the attendants stopped in front
of a pretty bay mare. The Seigneur opened the door, bowing with an excess of
formality. One of the chairmen rushed to help her forth.

Several shirt-sleeved men had been eyeing Leigh and the Seigneur as they
passed; instantly one of them took the mare's halter and led her out. Her snowy
white stockings flashed as she trotted quietly up and down amid the confusion,
away from them and back again. She came to a smart halt and stood still under
the man's light hold. The Seigneur looked her over critically.

"First rate," he said, bending slightly to speak into Leigh's ear. "Fine
points, adequate bone, superb manners. You won't get her for under fifty."

She frowned.

He gave her a sideways glance. "Insufficient funds, Sunshine?"

"As you are quite aware," she said stiffly.

"Pity," he said. "She's a nice little piece."

"I shall sell this dress," she said, keeping her voice low.

"That's won't bring much, I'm afraid."

"You said yourself it was worth four guineas. That will get me to
Northumberland. And there are my pearls."