Prince of Midnight Page 6

  S.T. rubbed his ear. He began to wonder about this fellow’s wit.

  The count swept up his plumed hat from the table and made a deep bow. “I beg of you. The winnings are nothing; they are not of my interest—’tis my mind, you see. I have a lively mind. I’m trying to be good, truly I am, I promise you. But if I have no diversion, there’s no saying to what I’ll be driven.”

  Definitely witless. S.T. shrugged and smiled. He could put twenty louis d’or to good use.

  The count clapped his hands. “Excellent, excellent; you will play. Come and sit down. Allow me the honor of presenting myself. I am… ah—of Mazan. Aldonse François de Mazan.”

  S.T. bowed, politely ignoring the little stumble over the name. “S.T. Maitland. Your servant, Monsieur de Mazan.”

  “Ah. You have an English surname.” He stared a moment at S.T. with a peculiar avidity. “I love the English.”

  S.T. sat down at the table. “Sad to say, then, I must admit that I’m of Firenze. My father was English. I never met him.”

  “Ah, Florence! The beautiful Italy. I have just left her. You speak French very sweetly.”

  “Thank you. I have a small talent for languages. Do you have cards, seigneur?”

  The count had none—excellent evidence that he was no subtle sharpster. S.T. rang, and they settled down to the fresh deck Marc provided before he hurried back out of the salon without even hanging about to watch the first draw. Monsieur de Mazan was quite a decent player; though S.T. intentionally lost the first two of three deals, by way of keeping the count interested, he didn’t have to try all that hard. As the nobleman dealt the third hand, S.T. set about acquiring his gold louis. They came easily enough when he put his mind to the task, sliding across the table to sit beside him with their dull metal gleam of promise.

  With all twenty piled on S.T.’s side, the count gallantly offered to quit the table. S.T. gallantly insisted on putting his winnings at risk. He felt the old passion begin to dawn, the pleasure in the gamble.

  “Bless you,” said the count. “You’re saving my life. Here—another five hundred livres against your louis d’ors.” He watched S.T. deal. “So you’ve never been in England, then?”

  “Never,” S.T. lied cordially.

  “Pity. I should like to hear more of it. I’ve had several English friends to visit my chateau. Miss Lydia Sterne, the daughter of the distinguished Mr. Laurence Sterne. You’ve read his Tristram Shandy? So droll! I adore the English. And Mr. John Wilkes has told me of his Hell Fire Club—” The count smiled slyly. “That fraternity is of an interest most profound!”

  S.T. lifted his eyebrows and shuffled without answering.

  “Have you heard of this club?”

  He gave the count a level look and lied again. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Ah,” the count said, and spread his stock face down. “Pity.”

  The door to the salon opened again. The valet stepped aside, holding it open, and S.T. glanced up from his hand to see Miss Leigh Strachan calmly enter the room.

  All she did was walk past behind him in her blue velvet coat and silk breeches and accept a cognac from Latour. but S.T. found his concentration so suddenly cracked that he neglected to announce his carte blanche before he discarded and lost ten points ere the play even started.

  Plague take her.

  The count seemed equally bemused. He stared past S.T.’s shoulder at her, holding his cards loosely. Suddenly he ran his hand through his light hair. “Latour,” he said, “have you a new acquaintance here?”

  “Indeed, monsieur—the young gentleman wishes the pleasure of watching the play, if it is convenable.”

  The count grinned. “A thousand times convenable.” He stood up and swept a bow. “Come, come—present the boy, Latour.”

  The valet made a formal introduction of Mr. Leigh Strachan to the Comte de Mazan. S.T. did not stand up, but only nodded vaguely in her direction. He was determined to be finished with her. Quite finished.

  “Perhaps you would permit me to give you my chair,” the count suggested, making a move to rise.

  “No, merci, she said in her painfully stilted French. Her husky voice sounded blatantly feminine to S.T., but the other two appeared to accept her for what she seemed. “I prefer to stand.”

  “But you are not of this country!” The count cried delightedly. “English. You are English. We were just speaking of the English. I forbid you to be anything else!”

  She agreed quietly that she was English. S.T. drew a card and turned his head just enough to see her. She looked pale. He had to restrain himself from suggesting that she lie down before she fell down.

  “Where are you bound, Monsieur Strachan?” the count demanded. “Where’s the rest of your party? Do you make a grand tour?”

  There was a short silence, and then she said, “I’m not traveling with a party. I will be returning to England directly. As soon as I secure transportation to the north.”

  S.T. lost his trick.

  “But you needn’t seek transport!” the count cried. “I can see that you’re a gentleman; you’re young; you’re alone! You have had misfortunes, perhaps. No, no, you mustn’t be left to travel on some washerwoman’s ass.” He threw down his cards in the midst of the next deal and stood up. “Impossible. You must ride with us. We’re for Grenoble, should this ten-times useless valet of mine ever succeed in making our coach free. What news from below, Latour? I’m tired of piquet.”

  He walked away from the table. S.T. looked down at the half-dealt deck in his hand and tossed it on the table, turning toward the others with a frown. “That’s it?” he demanded. “You fold?”

  The count waved his hand. “Nay, let us simply forget the game entirely. You won’t begrudge my livres, will you, my friend? The louis are yours.” He sat, down on the couch. “I would rather talk to Monsieur Strachan. We must discuss our travel plans. You will come with us?”

  “You are kind,” she said in a disinterested tone. “If ’twill not discommode—I shall.”

  He grinned and leaned toward her. “I look forward to it. We can talk. I have a curiosity about the English.” His hand closed on her forearm and his voice rose to an eager note. “The English vice, do you know what I mean?”

  S.T. swung around sharply and frowned at him through a surge of dizziness. Just at that moment, a chorus of enthusiastic shouts rose from below. The count leapt up and strode to the balcony.

  “Vive le diable!” he howled. “We’re free! Venez, Latour, bring his portmanteau and let us be gone!” He stopped long enough to flip back his coattails in a deep bow in front of Leigh, and then caught her wrist and pulled her bodily to her feet. She made no resistance to this extraordinary familiarity, simply informed him that she had no portmanteau, only the cloak bag.

  “Wait a moment,” S.T. said. He started to rise, but she walked out of the room without glancing at him. “Wait,” he shouted. “You can’t just go off with—”

  The valet bowed briefly to him, retrieved the count’s gold-headed cane and plumed hat, and followed the others.

  “—strangers!” S.T. finished savagely. He took a step toward the door, stopped—and sat down again.

  He fingered the cards, shuffled and cut and stacked the deck over and over as he listened to the echoing sounds of departure from the cobblestoned street below. The slam of a door, the sharp calls of a post boy to the horses, the cries of advice and warning amid the sound of iron-shod hooves and wheels grating on stone faded into the indiscriminate noise of conversation as the chaise backed from under the portcullis.

  S.T. pressed his thumbs against the arch of the deck and sent it exploding across the table with a curse.

  He got up and poured himself a drink, staring down at the clutter of cards. Just as the fuss from below was dying away, the street filled again with the sound of horses. He turned toward the balcony, listening with his good ear. He could make nothing of the new shouts and shrill cries of the women, and abandoned all pride at last, striding t
o the balcony to see if they were returning.

  It was not the count’s chaise. The steep street filled with mounted soldiers from the other direction, the French side of the border. Cavalry horses milled and reared amid a crowd of townspeople, and S.T. suddenly recognized the French lieutenant from the guard post aiming his musket after the count’s coach. The sound of the shot blasted around and around the narrow chasm of the street, and then the whole troop pressed and jostled through the crowd and took off at a gallop across the bridge the way the coach had gone.

  Marc burst through the door. “Too late!” he shouted, and ran to the balcony. He leaned out over the rail, waving his fist at the last of the mounted soldiers. “You drunken bumbler! Too late by a trice!” He snorted and pulled back, shaking his head at S.T. “Zut! We did our best, did we not? You and I can say so. The cards, that was an inspiration of the finest, mon ami. But they’ll never catch him this side of the border again. And that poor young fool—the anglais—you couldn’t stop him going with them? These pups who want to be heroes! God only knows what will become of him.”

  “Become of him!” S.T. snapped in frustration. “What the devil is going on? They’re after Mazan for something?”

  Marc gave him a startled look. “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?” S.T. shouted.

  “Ha. Le Comte de Mazan. So he says, eh? Monsieur—he and his valet, Latour, were condemned to the stake a month ago in Marseilles. For blasphemy. And”—Marc lowered his voice to an eager whisper—“sodomy.” He shook his head with relish. “And attempted murder of two young girls. He is no comte, my friend. He is Sade. The Marquis de Sade.”

  Chapter Five

  S.T. had walked the mountain for hours, searching for Nemo far up over the flank until he was almost to the other side, whistling and calling. Now he sat on a lonely hilltop beneath the moon and cursed her.

  And himself. His own futile instincts that always betrayed him, that had never earned him anything but misery and a few moments of sensation, come and gone like a winning gamble, the swift thrill that never lasted.

  This time, he’d thought, as he always thought: this time it will be different. But it was not.

  He should never have sent Nemo away, never taken that desperate a chance for the sake of a woman. These grand gestures of his, they never endured beyond the moment of glory before they vanished, and another game had to be played and won again.

  And paid for. He’d paid for this one with his last friend. Though he still walked the mountain and searched, S.T. had the news he’d dreaded. He’d come across a Gypsy cutting wood and heard the tale. Two children had seen a monster up on the mountain flanks of Le Grand Coyer, a terrible supernatural creature with the head of a man and the body of a beast. They’d even brought home the wig it had snagged on a bush, and then the Gypsies had made incantations and potions and gone out to draw the beast into a trap, where some Romany witch had turned it back into a common wolf again before they killed it. He could go and see the skin and the tattered wig of the devil’s monstrosity if he liked, on display for a small donation in the church at Colmars.

  He hadn’t gone. He could not. He walked out here on the mountain and pretended there was some mistake, that it was all a dream and he would wake up and find Nemo asleep, curled in a furry, untroubled mound at the foot of the bed.

  And her… she deserved it, he thought; she got what she was asking for in leaving his protection, which might not rate all that it had in younger days, but was at least more than a match for some popinjay in marigold smalls. She got just what she warranted, running alone about the countryside dressed in breeches: a murdering aristocrat with unnatural tastes to use her and abuse her and leave her body for the birds.

  He tilted his head back in despair. A sound hovered at the base of his throat, a low moan of grief and loneliness that swelled into a long note he’d learned from Nemo in the days when they’d lounged on his castle steps hurling wolf music at the moon. He hoped the Gypsies heard it; he hoped the housewives and shopkeepers heard it in the towns; he hoped Sade heard it; he sang Nemo’s haunting call as passionately as his human lungs could carry it and hoped they all shivered in their beds, in their carriages and tents and houses and all the places they thought themselves safe.

  The wild melody filled him, made him an outlaw again, transmuting his solitude into exile. He sang until his chest ached and the wolf note fell like water into a deep well, cascading down to silence.

  He drew a breath. The night was still around him. In the waiting hush, he could hear the blood in his ears, the last faint echo of his wordless lament from the hills around. And then from far away there came an answer. A single, desolate voice raised the howl again on the night wind, rising up to a peak and sliding earthward. It was joined by a second singer, and a third, until at last it was a chorus: a reckless, savage symphony in celebration of his outlaw cry.

  Leigh had long since grown impatient with this count and his insinuations. He spoke so quickly that she could keep up with only half of his French, fidgeted and touched her arm and babbled on about the English and the Hell Fire Club, staring at her fixedly and then grinning avidly at his valet. She regretted accepting his invitation. Whatever evil he planned could only delay her, and she’d wasted time enough already in this vain journey.

  Looking back, she saw that it had been weakness that had sent her here in search of fighting skills she’d never learn. She’d left England driven by a nightmare; clinging to the illusion that she could take revenge as a man would take it. She’d come seeking a champion of justice, a shining, mysterious, half-remembered legend of her girlhood… and found that he was human—and lonely—and looked at her as if she could console him.

  She would have used that masculine hunger in his eyes, lured him into aiding her in her plan the way a hunter would coax some starving tiger into his baited trap. But when he’d stumbled and held on to her shoulder for support and looked at her with his fine handsome face full of pride and longing, he’d shown her the true extent of his desire.

  Something deep inside her had recognized that look. She saw the anticipation in him, and it went beyond uncomplicated lust. Aye, she’d have yielded her body as the price of her goal—she’d resolved on that long ago—but her body wasn’t enough. That look asked for more.

  So she had left him. She took the first available means, abandoning one more childhood delusion along with all the others. There was no one responsible for justice but herself. She would do what she must alone, in whatever way she could find to do it. She’d hoped to have vengeance with honor, but if honor was not possible, she would have vengeance all the same.

  The Comte de Mazan had been in a ferment of excitement all the way from La Paire, where the sound of musket fire had followed them out of town. Apparently the halfhearted pursuit had stopped at the border, since the chaise could have been easily overtaken on the rutted, twisting roads. The track worsened as they went along, reducing them to a pace slower than walking, the wheels falling heavily into holes, bouncing everyone inside, and then climbing out with a creaking groan.

  Leigh sat silent and tense, clinging to the strap to keep her seat. She judged it prudent to refrain from inquiring into the count’s recent past, holding him at a distance with cool replies to his enthusiastic conversation. The valet, Latour, spent the endless time frowning mutely at the road behind them, interposing that with intent glances at Leigh.

  “Look at this,” the count said, and leaned against her as the coach swayed. He slipped a little leather volume into her hand. ’Tis in English. Have you read it?”

  Leigh glanced down at the spine, barely able to hold the book steady. It was titled Aristotle’s Masterpiece. She didn’t open the cover.

  “Have you read it?” the count asked again.

  Leigh shook her head.

  “Ah, you will enjoy it. Keep it. Mr. John Wilkes gave it to me, and I’ll give it to you.”

  She slipped the book into her coat pocket.

&
nbsp; “You do not read it?” He gave her a disappointed frown.

  “Perhaps later. It’s too rough now.”

  “Yes, of course. Later.” He smiled at her. “We shall read it together. These English words, I was not certain of them all.”

  The count sat back and began to speak rapidly to Latour. He made several reverent references to a Mademoiselle Anne-Prospere, and Leigh gathered that he was to be reunited with his lover somewhere on his journey, but for now was without companionship beyond the valet. With the aid of a full moon, they traveled on at their snail’s pace long past dark, but on the report of a rock fall in the road ahead, Mazan decided to halt for the night at a tiny inn. Leigh swung outof the coach and stood in the yard. While Latour and Mazan followed the landlord inside, she looked up at the steep, moon-drenched valley walls that rose on all sides, throwing the river and narrow road into gloom.

  She walked a few yards down the roadway. It was wild and empty country, closer into the mountains than La Paire. The sound of the river seemed muffled by the overhanging rocks, strangely subdued, as if the mass of stone above pressed down on them all. Over the top of the precipice behind the inn, she could see the full moon hanging above the black flanks of a ponderous height.

  If she walked away from here, she’d be sleeping on the open ground. They hadn’t passed a light for three hours.

  “There you are!” The Comte de Mazan gripped her arm. “Come, come, we’ve arranged a nice bedchamber and a fire for ourselves. Morning will be upon us before you know it.” He shivered and grinned at her. “We must put our rest to good use.”

  He drew her forward with a bit more force than necessary. Leigh allowed it. She planned to get her supper out of these two, at least, before fading quietly into the darkness.

  The inn had no private parlor, only a single bedchamber with two beds and a tiny closet that contained a cot and a window protected neither by oil paper nor glass.