The Prince of Midnight by Laura Kinsale Read Free Book Online Page B

village with a note. I didn't
have to. You didn't ask."
    The bed sheet rustled as she stood up. "Where are my clothes?"
    He looked up at her. She swayed a little and held on to the back of the chair
for support. "You don't need your clothes. You're going back to bed."
    "No," she said. "I'm going with you."
Chapter Four

    Lying with her cheek pillowed against her cloak bag, feigning sleep beneath a
pine tree, Leigh watched him from under her lashes. If not for the painting of
the black horse Charon, she wouldn't have credited that this man was really the
Seigneur.
    It was true enough that he fit the physical description. He sat cross-legged
in his shirt sleeves, tricorne tossed negligently aside, looking out over the
steep-sided valley and chewing on a sprig of wild thyme. His hair was tied back
in a careless queue; the sunlight of the south turned it to that shimmer of gold
and deep earthen shadow that had sounded so peculiar by report and turned out to
be so extraordinary in reality. The black ribbon tumbled halfway down his back.
His easy smile and the strange fiendish curve of his brows gave his face a
satyric cast, laughing and wicked at once.
    But he talked to himself. And though his normal motion was easy and fluid, if
he turned quickly, he lost his balance. She'd seen it happen three times now on
their hike down along the gorge. At first she'd feared it was an early symptom
of the fever, but he seemed unaffected otherwise—save for the way he looked the
wrong direction half the time when she spoke to him.
    It didn't seem possible that a man with clumsy balance and flawed reflexes
could be much of a swordsman, though he wore a rapier at his hip. Or a horseman
either—and the Seigneur had been a master of both.
    But there was the painting of the black horse. And his legendary way with an
animal, asking a wolf to do his bidding as if it were a reasoning being instead
of a wild beast. And his singular coloring, green and gold and gilded chocolate,
which was what had led her to him from as far away as Lyon, where they knew all
about the eccentric Englishman with the manner of the true
noblesse,
who spoke
fran ç ais
so creditably
and had unaccountably taken up residence in a ruined pile of stones.
    She'd found him. He was the Seigneur du Minuit, without doubt.
    He just wasn't precisely the Seigneur she'd been hoping for.
    In truth, she could almost feel enough to pity him. To come to this: living
in unkempt isolation, grubbing off the barren land with only a wolf and a few
ducks for company after what he'd been and done. 'Twas no wonder if he'd gone a
little mad.
    He looked toward her. Leigh maintained her pretense of sleep, not wanting to
speak or move yet. Through the web of her lashes, she watched him use a tree
branch for stability as he hiked himself up.
    He stood still a moment on the canyon rim, his face half turned toward her
but his attention focused intently elsewhere, like someone trying to catch the
words of a distant song. The deep sleeves of his linen shirt moved in a faint
breeze. It fluttered the simple fringe of lace at his cuffs and outlined his
shoulders beneath the fabric. In the back seam of his waistcoat there was a
small tear that needed mending before it grew, and his soft leather top boots
could have done with a vigorous polish. On his elbow a patch of blue paint
marred the creamy white of good linen.
    He looked lonely.
    Leigh shifted restlessly, turning her face into her arms. The sharp scent of
pine needles engulfed her. She closed her eyes. Her body wanted to sleep, to
rest and mend, but her soul resisted it. There were decisions, questions, new
plans to be made if the old ones wouldn't do. She had nothing to spare for
sentiment. If he wouldn't teach her— if he couldn't—she had to go on to another
course.
    But she owed him something. She'd stay with him until the danger of fever
passed, little as he seemed to credit it, and she hoped that a pitiless