The Prince of Midnight Read Free

the table.
Swordplay! Of all the damned crazy notions. He leaned on his elbows, chafing his
hands in his hair.
    When he looked up, he realized it was far more of a mistake than he'd
understood. She was staring at him, intense and half-drunk.
    "You
are
the Seigneur." Her lips worked. "I knew it. I knew it."
    "Allons-y!"
He stood up, hauling her to her feet. She was clearly
one of those females who couldn't hold her claret. She'd passed the point of
discretion—in a moment she'd be bursting into tears or performing some other
purely female exploit—and whoever she was, or whyever she'd come, 'twas hardly
chivalrous to leave her to reveal herself in a public ordinary. He grabbed the
bottle of wine, slapped his tricorne on his head, and took her around the waist.
She wilted against him. "Adolescent cabbage," he said disgustedly to Marc on his
way past.
    The tavern keeper beamed, all benevolence and grimy apron. "Don't forget my
Chantal's portrait," he called after them.
    S.T. lifted the half-empty bottle in salute, not even bothering to turn
around as he carted Monsieur Leigh Strachan away.
    He left her to sleep it off in a granary above La Paire and started home.
He'd see her again soon enough—that was one thing as certain as death and the
king's taxes.
    It was sunset and he was breathing hard from the climb before the ruined
towers of Col du Noir appeared, clinging to the cliff at the head of the canyon,
silhouetted against a clear, cool sky. The ducks came out to greet him, nipping
at his feet until until he bought them off with a chunk of bread. He stopped at
the garden and dug among the dry weeds for a garlic to flavor his dinner.
Dusting dirt off his hands onto his breeches, he ambled beneath the turreted
gate of his castle and through the lavender that grew wild in the courtyard...
    He whistled, and Nemo came bounding out of some shadowed crevice where he'd
been hiding. The great wolf leaped up and licked enthusiastically at S.T.'s
face, then dropped down to fawn and whine in pleasure, getting a tussle and a
bite of cheese for his trouble. He jogged circles around S.T. as he trudged up
the uneven stone stairs.
    S.T. paused in the armory, looking up at the huge painting just visible in
the last of the daylight. With Nemo snuffling at his boots, he gave the portrait
a fleeting stroke in the place where his hand had worn the painted luster from
the flank of a shining black horse...
    "Home again, old fellow," he said softly. "I'm back."
    He gazed at the picture a moment. Nemo whined, and S.T. turned abruptly away,
leaning down to give the wolf a hard shake. Nemo pressed against his leg,
shameless, basking and groveling and groaning with ecstasy at the attention. . .
    Dinner was short and simple, a pot of rabbit stew shared with Nemo, who'd
brought the rabbit, and the last of Marc's good red wine. S.T. sat before the
kitchen fire, tilted back against the table on two legs of a three-legged stool,
wondering vaguely if he ought to try to plant some grapevines and asking himself
if he wanted to paint badly enough to light the torches in the hall.
    He decided that he didn't, and went back to pondering the mysterious process
of making wine, which according to Marc was complex beyond reason. God only knew
what kind of pampering the vines would require. Weeding garlic was bad enough.
And something always ate his peppers in their helpless infancy if he didn't
bleeding get down on the ground and sleep with them all night.
    He sighed. The firelight flickered off plaster busts and pots of pigment,
casting shadows that made it seem as the room were filled with a silent crowd of
people instead of books and canvas and smudgy charcoal sketches.
    He clasped his hands behind his head and gazed at the disordered sum of his
life for the past three years. Half-finished paintings, roughed-out sculpture:
he threw himself into each new effort with fierce energy, but the only thing
he'd completed since he'd