"I like the windows," he said. "They are the largest in the house." He knew the studio was no larger than this room, but it was airier, thanks to the draught from the tall windows. He wanted more air. The tension between them thickened an atmosphere already heavy with Beaumont's secrets…with evil.
His reply elicited one sharp glance, but that was all. In silence, Madame Beaumont led him to the studio.
Windows, Leila thought ruefully as she attacked the mess on the studio worktable. That was her piece of lint about him, her small, vague clue. The Comte d'Esmond liked big windows.
His presence in her sanctuary made her edgy. He prowled the space just as he had prowled the parlor, examining everything, though here he touched nothing. He was wandering the opposite end of the room, studying the bookshelf, the fireplace, the sofa, and the shabby rug on which it stood. As though every object hid a secret. Her secrets.
"There's another stool behind that stack of canvases in the corner," she said rather too sharply. "Just shove them out of the way."
Even as the words came out of her mouth she realized that the idea of Esmond "shoving" anything was ludicrously incongruous. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him gently stack the canvases, one by one, against the wall. You'd think they were Ming vases, the way he handled them.
She was already seated, a folded sheet of foolscap before her, when he brought the other stool to the table.
"Do you want to discuss them first, or shall I just write down everyone I can think of?" she asked. "Or perhaps you'd rather write. My penmanship is not elegant."
She pushed the foolscap and pen toward him. She didn't have to push far. She'd shoved most of the extraneous materials to her right and left, to clear a space opposite hers. But he had placed his stool to her right, and sat before a heap of sketchbooks, brushes, pencils, bits of charcoal, and other artistic miscellany.
"No, you must write," he said. "I cannot read my own hand, and it vexes me. Just write the names of all your husband's friends you can think of. Later, we can discuss." "London friends?"
"All."
"That could take all night," she said.
"Stop when you are weary."
Strangling an oath, Leila dipped her pen into the ink, bowed her head, and proceeded to write. It went quickly at first, with the obvious names, then more slowly as she strove to recall the host of men and women she'd met or heard mentioned, but rarely interacted with.
Absorbed in the task, she didn't notice the time passing. As much as half an hour may have gone by when she became aware that Esmond had not moved a muscle, scarcely seemed to be breathing...and that he was watching her.
She hadn't looked up. She didn't need to see it. The awareness was a troubling warmth upon her skin—her face, her neck, her hands—and a tingling in her scalp. It was something like a caress, but something more like the pull of the air just before the lightning crackles.
She had felt it too many times before—even at a distance, in the inquiry room, when she had recognized him...sensed, as he'd said.
She hadn't wanted to think about what he meant by "sensed," but she couldn't avoid it now. It was an animal awareness, elemental as scent.
Silence blanketed the room. She could hear her own breathing, and the hurry of it, in time with the hurried beat of her heart. Her hand stiffened, and the pen tore into the paper, spluttering ink. She set the pen down.
"You are weary," he said.
"My hands," she said, frowning at them as though they truly were the cause. "Sometimes I—there's a—a spasm. It'll go away in a minute." She spread her hands on the table, stretching the fingers. "It happens. The same muscles, you know, overused. Fiona says I should soak them several times a day in warm, scented water, but I haven't the time or patience."
"Let me see."
"There's nothing to see. It's muscles. You can't—"
She caught her breath as he took her hand.
He turned it palm up and pressed his thumb against the soft flesh. "The little muscles are in knots," he said. "There, you see." He pressed, and Leila swallowed a moan. "And there."
"Oh." That at least was not a moan. More of a gasp, she consoled herself while the blood raced to her cheeks.
"I shall untie them," he said.
"That isn't neces—"
His fingers coiled with hers, and she couldn't speak or think past the surge of sensation.
Esmond had held her hand before—in greeting or farewell, or while dancing—and the contact had disturbed her. That was nothing to the pulsing intimacy of this: his fingers twined with hers while his thumb kneaded the muscles, warming, coaxing, and drawing out the tension like a thread.
She was aware of his voice telling her of bones and muscles and circulation, but she couldn't concentrate on the words. She was too conscious of his hands and what they were doing to her, mind and body.
As the muscles began to ease, the warmth he stirred became liquid pleasure, coiling through her blood.
It was intoxicating. Sinfully so. Her mind grew drunk with it, conjuring images of those devil's hands moving over her skin…everywhere. She could, almost, feel those caresses, and that "almost" made her yearn for what she imagined.
Her gaze lifted to his, to the blue enigma of his eyes and the unearthly beauty of his face, and she searched for some hint that he knew what he was doing to her. All she found was a quiet concentration, as detached as the words he uttered. No potter could have been more soberly focused upon his wheel. Her hand might have been a piece of clay.
His thumb slid to her wrist, to the hammering pulse, and paused.
"You have strong hands," he said softly. "Have you ever sculpted?"
She shook her head and wished she could shake it into sense. "I was happier with a brush." So weak and breathless her voice sounded. But she was weak. Even now, though he'd stopped, she couldn't find the will to free her hand. His were strong, too, and warm, and so sure. They possessed her, held her as his eyes could hold her. Perhaps he could do this so easily because she was not sure, because her outer assurance was a veneer, concealing the wanton within. She hadn't realized how thin that veneer was until she'd met him. Never before had it felt as fragile as it did now.
"I cannot sculpt or paint or draw," he said. "Even my penmanship is an abomination. Yet my hands are good." He released her and, edging a bit nearer, laid his left hand flat, palm down, upon the table.
It was perfectly proportioned and graceful, the fingers long, the nails smooth oblongs, neatly manicured. It told her nothing.
"You're right-handed," she said. "Show me that one."
"They match, Madame."
"Any artist knows they never do exactly. Let me see."
His smoothly composed countenance tightened, but only for an instant, and the change was so subtle and fleeting that she might have believed it a trick of the light. Her intuition didn't believe that, however.
He set his right hand down next to its mate.
As she studied it, her brow wrinkled. Something was wrong…the wrist. She leaned closer, looking from one to the other. "That's odd," she murmured.
She stared at her own wrists, then his again. She moved his hands closer together, then traced the back of his wrist with her fingers.
"You broke it," she said. "Badly."
Very badly. She couldn't begin to imagine what it must have felt like, but it hurt just to look. The bones had been skillfully set, but the perfection could not be restored. A practiced eye could discern the distortion, the faint scars. Leila could feel the damage, too—the several places where the bones didn't meet perfectly. There was a spur at the base of his thumb, and that knuckle was uneven.
She had thought him a perfect work of art, but he was not. A part of him had been broken. Though the mending was well done, it was there. It hurt to look at it, to touch it.
Something stirred her hair, a warmth on her scalp. Belatedly, Leila realized what she was doing—stroking his hand—and noticed that his head had bent nearer, and w
hat she'd felt was his warm breath. And something else, sensed rather than felt: the fire she was playing with.
Sliding her hand away, she drew back. "I studied anatomy," she said. "I was…curious. How rude. I beg your pardon."
"It was broken," he said. He didn't draw back. "But it happened a long time ago, and my hand has fully recovered. I was fortunate in my physician."
"Oh. A boyhood injury."
"Yes. Boys are often foolish."
'It must have hurt like the very devil. You broke it in several places. You're very lucky it mended so well. You might have lost use of it entirely."
"Yes. It might have been much worse."
Something in his tone made her gaze lift again to his smoothly composed countenance. Faint fines had appeared at the corners of his eyes.
"Is that why you don't like to write?" she asked.
The lines tightened, and one fierce shaft of blue fire shot at her before his lashes lowered to veil his eyes. "No. My hand functions well enough. It is my laziness. To write clearly and beautifully was always too much work."
She couldn't imagine what there was to lie about, why he needed to. Yet she was sure he was lying. A part of her wanted to persist, to probe, but the searing blue flash warned her off. A moment ago she'd sensed danger. How many warnings did she need?
Francis had told her this man was irresistible—like a drug, and just as treacherous. She ought to know better than to venture too close.
She couldn't afford to let herself be drawn, even by curiosity. At heart, she wasn't so different from Francis. She'd taught herself to avoid temptation, because she doubted her strength to resist it. From curiosity to fascination would be, for her, the first small step down a treacherous slope to ruin. Already she'd let herself be drawn too far.
"That’s more honest than my own excuse," she said, dropping her own gaze. "I claim that my thoughts go too quickly for my hand." She picked up her pen and frowned at the point she'd spoiled.
"You are weary," he said.
"It's been rather a long day."
"I should have considered," he said. "Not once, but twice did you tell your painful story. I know it took great courage to do so. I should have let you rest this night, and begun our work tomorrow instead."
Leila wished the work had never begun. She had a dark picture in her mind of how it might end. In heartbreak and rage...the maddening frustration...and the shame.
"Confessing to Quentin wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd imagined," she said. "But then, one always imagines the worst. Anyhow, I'm used to hard work—hours of it. With some of my patrons, every brushstroke is like lifting immense rocks, or tunneling a coal mine. That all happens in my head," she added with a forced smile, "but it makes me just as tired."
"I understand," he said. "This case, regrettably, will prove much the same as a difficult patron. Tedious. Exasperating. And I shall be the most tedious and exasperating of all, I fear. But no more tonight, Madame."
He picked up the sheet of foolscap, folded it, and put it in his breast pocket. "I shall have plenty to occupy me until tomorrow evening." He smiled. "Then, I shall be inconsiderate again. You would be wise to go to bed soon and sleep late tomorrow. I shall tell Nick to encourage you to rest."
Ismal told Nick nothing whatsoever, scarcely glanced at his servant en route to the back door. Nick did not spare his master more than a glance, either, but steadily continued rubbing the kitchen worktable with one of his special mixtures. It would be a waste of breath to tell him that when Eloise, the housekeeper, came, she would only rub it again with her own exotic preparation. If there was a piece of furniture about, Nick must treat it: clean it, massage it, work oils and herbs into its surface. No slave in a harem could have tended a concubine more lovingly than Nick would tend that scarred, worn table.
Madame's studio table was battered and worn, too, Ismal recalled as he slipped into the garden. His scarred hand had lain upon it, she couldn't know how unwillingly.
He'd realized it was futile to hope she wouldn't see. He should have distracted her. He had that skill. Yet he hadn't done it. He had submitted...and died ten small deaths of shame and another ten of pleasure.
The shame lay in the truth he didn't tell her: that it was Lord Edenmont who had broken his wrist when, like an animal, Ismal had fought for Esme—for a woman who would have cut her own throat before submitting to him. Yet he had wanted her, and at the time, he would have committed any barbarism to have her.
Now he wanted another woman, and once again his mind would not let it go. Leila Beaumont had only to touch his hand, and sorrow for him, and his mind turned dark and savage with desire.
He had even wanted, for one terrible moment, to tell her the truth—and worse, to show her what kind of man he truly was, in his soul. He'd wanted to sweep the artist's clutter from that battered table and have her there. Like the conscienceless barbarian he was.
He brooded on these mortifying truths until he'd reached his townhouse. Only then, after the door was closed and bolted and Leila Beaumont safely out of reach, did he allow himself to meditate on the pleasure.
He walked into the library, took off his coat, removed the paper from the pocket, unwrapped his neckcloth, and stretched out on the sofa to study her handwriting.
As she had told him, it was not elegant. It was angular, the bold strokes crushed together—a scrawl as insolent as the way she moved.
Ismal traced the strokes with his finger. Almost, he could feel her pulse beating, as it had under his thumb. He had made it beat so—rapidly, unevenly. He'd made love to her hand, and that was a little mad, but also…delicious. Her penetrating eyes had become enchantingly dazed, but not for long, not nearly long enough.
He'd watched her confusion soften to yearning and had known he might have gone further. He had wanted to, badly enough—to press his mouth to that hammering pulse—to touch his mouth to her flesh—her neck, her shoulders, her breast…He swore under his breath.
To want anything badly, especially a woman, was fatally unwise. He was thirty-two years old, and even in his youth he had not panted and salivated over women like a rutting mongrel. He was as calculating in seduction, as artfully manipulative in lovemaking, as in all else. Even in the throes of pleasure, he remained in control.
He could not control Leila Beaumont properly. One moment, she was clay in his hands. In the next, she slipped free somehow and...questioned. Everything.
More disquieting still, she seemed to sense every untrue answer. The falsehood about his broken hand hadn't satisfied her any more than those about his penmanship. He doubted she'd have been satisfied even if he could have overcome his innate caution so far as to put pen to paper.
That caution went far too deep to be overcome, though, because it had been bred into him early. In Albania, there was no such thing as private correspondence, thanks to Ali's spies. Very young, Ismal had understood that even the most harmless remarks could be fatally misconstrued by the periodically deranged vizier. Thus, what one wrote became part of the game of survival. On the rare occasions Ismal had put anything in writing, he'd taken care to employ another's style—sometimes to shield himself, more often to make trouble for the other.
It was beyond doubt a useful skill in his present profession. No one, for instance, would ever know who'd written the discreet warnings to Vingt-Huit's most vulnerable patrons, or the complaints about the place to the Parisian police.
Assuredly, it would have been easy enough to forge another's handwriting for Madame's benefit, but that was still too risky. Undoubtedly, she'd notice something false or wrong, just as she had the instant she'd looked at his hands...and wrought so much havoc in the process.
The pitying way she had looked at them, and tenderly touched them, moving closer—too close—of her own volition, so that her scent coiled about him and stole into his blood...and her hair, so soft…her neck…the silken skin that made him so hungry.
And so he'd endured ten deaths fighting to keep his baser instinct
s under control.
"Fool," he reproached himself. "Imbecile."
He willed himself to focus on her list. She had made four and a half dense columns of names across the wide paper. He perused each column several times. Most of these people he had met. Several he eliminated as too stupid for the crime. None of the other names stirred his instincts—probably because they were obstinately fixed upon Leila Beaumont.
He considered the first column again, the names that had come quickest to her mind. Among them were Goodridge, Sherburne, Sellowby, Lackliffe, and Avory…
Ismal frowned as he scanned the column again. In Quentin's office, she'd said Beaumont was a corrupting influence with a talent for attracting innocents. Yet precious few on her list qualified as such.
Tomorrow night, then, Ismal would pursue that question.
Tomorrow night, he thought, would be a long time in coming. He was impatient for it already—he, the most patient of all men.
He rose from the sofa and moved to the window, her list still in his hand. The gaslights winked in the mist-laden darkness. It was not so late. London was fully awake—most of it. The demimonde had only begun to play.
There would be diversion, certainly, at Helena Martin's cozy establishment this night. At present, she was the most fashionable of London's courtesans. Several of the men on Madame's list would undoubtedly be there. Yet a visit need not be all work. Helena had delivered her invitation personally, and another sort of invitation had glowed warmly in her dark eyes.
That would be best, Ismal decided. Just as Beaumont had told him: if a man couldn't have one woman in bed, he had only to find another.
Ironic that both men were obliged to seek substitutes for the same woman.
Ismal shrugged. Life was full of ironies.
Chapter 6
Within ten minutes of joining the throng at Helena Martin's, Ismal located three of the men on the list. Two—Malcolm Goodridge and the Earl of Sherburne—were busy vying for Helena's attention. After exchanging a few social pleasantries, Ismal decided he would leave Helena to them. Though she was a beautiful, vivacious woman, he saw in a moment that she wouldn't make a satisfactory substitute.