Heat swam up her neck. She was not a damned mare. She tried to draw back, but the hand clasping her waist didn't respond. "Monsieur," she said.
"Madame?"
"I am no longer in danger of falling."
"I am relieved to hear it. For a moment, I feared we were not well-suited as partners. But that, as you have discovered, is absurd. We are perfectly suited."
"I should be better suited at a greater distance."
"Undoubtedly, for then you should be at liberty to think of your greens and indigos and raw umber. Later, you may reflect upon them to your heart's content."
Her gaze, incredulous, shot up to his.
"Ah, at last I have your undivided attention," he said.
That night, Francis did not go out with the Comte d'Esmond, but accompanied Leila home and to her bedroom. He stood on the threshold for a moment, as though making up his mind about something, then entered the room and sat on the edge of the mattress.
"You're not staying in here," she said as she hung her evening cape in the wardrobe. "And if you've come to read me a lecture—"
"I knew he wanted you," he said. "He pretends he doesn't, but I knew—from that very first day. Gad, that innocent face of his. I've seen and dealt with them all, but he—Christ, sometimes I wonder if he's human."
"You're drunk," she said.
"Poison," he said. "Do you understand, my love? He's poison. He's like—" He made a vague gesture. "Like human laudanum. It's so pleasant…so sweet...no cares...just pleasure. If you take the right dosage. But with him, you don't know what the right dosage is—and when it's wrong, it's poison. Remember how sick you were all those years ago, that night when we left Venice? That's how I feel…inside, outside."
Francis hadn't mentioned Venice in years. She eyed him uneasily. He had come home delirious before, but never in this wretched state. Usually, he was in a fantasy world of his own. He'd ramble on incoherently, but the sound was happy. Pleasure, as he'd said. Now he was miserable and maudlin and ill. His cheeks were grey and sunken, his bloodshot eyes swollen. He looked sixty, not forty. He had been so handsome once, she thought, sickened.
She didn't love him. She'd recovered from her girlish infatuation years ago, and it hadn't taken him much longer to kill even the mild affection that remained. Yet she could remember what he'd been once and imagine what he might have become, and so she could grieve for the waste and the weakness that had brought him to this, and pity him. But for the grace of God, she might have sunk with him. Providence, however, had given her talent and the will to pursue it. She'd also been blessed with a wise and patient guardian. If not for Andrew Herriard, she might be pitiable, too, despite talent and will.
Leila moved to him and brushed the damp hair back from his forehead. "Wash your face," she said. "I'll make you some tea."
He took her hand and pressed it to his forehead. He was feverish. "Not Esmond, Leila. For God's sake, anyone but him."
He didn't know what he was saying. She would not let him upset her. "Francis, there isn't anyone," she said patiently, as to a child. "No lovers, not even a flirt. I won't be anyone's whore—not even yours." She took her hand away. "So don't talk rot."
He shook his head. "You don't understand and there's no point in explaining it because you won't believe me. I'm not sure even I believe it—but that doesn't matter. One thing's clear enough: we're getting out of Paris."
She was moving away, intending to fill the washbasin for him. Now she turned back, her heart thudding. "Leave Paris? Because you took more intoxicants tonight than was good for you? Really, Francis—"
"You can stay if you like, but I won't. Think of that, my sweet, if nothing else. I won't be around to keep your admirers out of your hair—which I know is about all I'm good for these days—a bloody bodyguard. But maybe you've decided you don't want one any more. You didn't want one tonight, obviously. Talk of whores," he muttered. "That's just what you'd be. One of hundreds. You should see the tarts when they get a glimpse of the beautiful Comte d'Esmond. Like maggots swarming over a ripe cheese. Anything, anyone he wants—as many as he wants—and it never costs him a sou. Even you, precious." He looked up at her. "You'd do his portrait for free, wouldn't you?"
The picture Francis painted was disgusting. It was also, Leila had no doubt, accurate. So, too, was his assessment of her. Francis was not a stupid man, and he knew her very well. She met his gaze. "You can't truly believe I'm in danger."
"I know it. But I don't expect you to see how dangerous he is—or admit it if you did." He rose. "It's your choice. I can't force you to do anything. I'm leaving for London. I want you to come with me." He gave her a bitter smile. "I wish I knew why. Maybe you're my poison, too."
Leila wished she knew why, too, but she'd given up trying to understand her husband years ago. She'd made a mistake in marrying him and found a way to live with it. Her life could have been better, but it also could have been far worse. A great deal worse could have befallen her had Francis not come to her rescue in Venice. At present, thanks to Andrew Herriard, she was financially secure. Despite her gender, she was gaining respect as an artist. She had a friend in Fiona. When she was working, she was happy. In general, she was happier than most of the women she knew, though her husband was a hopeless profligate. And he...well, he was as good to her as he was capable of being.
In any case, she dared not stay in Paris or anywhere else without a husband. And he, she knew, would never let her remain here without him, whatever he claimed.
"If you're truly determined to go," she said carefully, "of course I'll go with you."
His smile softened. "It isn't a whim, you know. I mean it. London. By the end of the week."
She bit back a cry. The end of the week—three commissions abandoned...but she'd get others, she told herself.
There wouldn't be another Comte d'Esmond. There would never be another face like that. Still, it was only that—a subject for painting. She doubted she could ever do it justice anyhow.
She thought perhaps it was safer not to try.
"Do you need longer?" Francis asked.
She shook her head. "I can pack up the studio in two days," she said. "One, if you help."
"Then I'll help," he said. "The sooner we're gone, the better."
Chapter 2
London, 1828
As it turned out, French aristocrats weren't the only ones wanting their countenances immortalized. A week after settling into the modest townhouse in Queen's Square, Leila was at work, and through spring, summer, and autumn, the commissions came thick and fast. The work left her no time for social life, but she doubted she could have had one anyhow. Her London clients and acquaintances moved in more exclusive circles than her Parisian ones. Here, the position of a bourgeois female artist was far more tenuous, and Francis' increasing profligacy wasn't calculated to strengthen it.
He had plenty of friends. The English upper classes, too, bred debauchees in abundance. But they were increasingly disinclined to invite him to their homes and respectable assembly halls to dine and dance with their womenfolk. Since Society would not invite the husband, it could not, with very rare exceptions, invite the wife.
Leila was too busy, though, to feel lonely, and it was futile to fret about Francis' worsening behavior. In any case, being shut away from the world made it easier to disassociate herself from his vices and villainies.
Or so she thought until a week before Christmas, when the Earl of Sherburne—one of Francis' constant companions and husband of her latest portrait subject—entered the studio.
The portrait of Lady Sherburne wasn't yet dry. Leila had finished it only that morning. Nonetheless, he insisted on paying for it then—and in gold. Then it was his, to do with as he wished. And so, Leila could only watch in numb horror while he took a stickpin to his wife's image and, with cold, furious strokes, mutilated it.
Leila's brain wasn't numb, though. She understood he wasn't attacking her work, but his evidently unfaithful wife. Leila had no troub
le deducing that Francis had cuckolded him, and she needed no details of the affair to realize that this time Francis had crossed some dangerous line.
She also saw, with devastating clarity, that the wall between her life and her husband's had been breached as well. In alienating Sherburne, Francis had put her in peril...and she was trapped. If she remained with him, his scandals would jeopardize her career; but if she ran away, he could destroy it utterly. He need only reveal the truth about her father, and she'd be ruined.
He'd never threatened her openly. He didn't need to. Leila understood his rules well enough. He wouldn't force her to sleep with him because it was too damned much of a nuisance to fight with her. All the same, she was his exclusive property; she wasn't to sleep with anyone else, and she wasn't to leave.
All she could do was retreat as far as possible.
She said nothing of the incident, hoping Sherburne's pride would keep him silent as well.
She ceased painting portraits, claiming she was overworked and needed a rest.
Francis, lost in his own drink and opiate-clouded world, never noticed.
For Christmas, he gave her a pair of ruby and diamond eardrops, which she dutifully donned for the hour he remained at home, then threw into her jewel box with the previous nine years' accumulation of expensively meaningless trinkets.
She spent New Year's Eve with Fiona at the Kent estate of Philip Woodleigh, one of Fiona's ten siblings.
Upon returning home on New Year's Day, Leila heard Francis angrily shouting for servants who'd been given the day off. When she went up to his room to remind him, she discovered, with no great surprise, that he'd had his own New Year's Eve celebration—mainly in that room, judging by the stench of stale perfume, smoke, and wine that assaulted her when she reached the threshold.
Sickened, she left the house and took a walk, down Great Ormond Street, onto Conduit Street, and on past the Foundling Hospital. Behind its large garden two burial grounds lay side by side, allotted respectively to the parishes of St. George the Martyr and St. George, Bloomsbury. She knew not a soul interred in either. That was why she came. These London residents couldn't disturb her, even with a memory. She'd escaped here many times in recent months.
She had wandered restlessly among the tombstones for an hour or more when David found her. David Ives, Marquess of Avory, was the Duke of Langford's heir. David was four and twenty, handsome, wealthy, intelligent and, to her exasperation, one of Francis' most devoted followers.
"I hope you don't mind," he said after they'd exchanged polite greetings. "When Francis said you'd gone for a walk, I guessed you'd come here. It was you I wanted to see." His grey gaze shifted away. "To apologize. I'd promised to go to Philip Woodleigh's, I know."
She knew she'd been a fool to believe the worthless promise, to hope he'd start the New Year fresh, among decent people…perhaps meet a suitable young lady, or at least less dissolute male friends.
"I wasn't surprised you failed to appear," she said stiffly. "The entertainment was tame, by your standards."
"I was…unwell," he said. "I spent the evening at home."
She told herself not to waste sympathy on an idle young fool bent on self-destruction, but her heart softened anyhow, and with it, her manner.
"I'm sorry you were ill," she said. "On the other hand, I did get my wish: for once, at least, you didn't spend the night with Francis."
"You'd rather I were ill more often, then. I must speak to my cook and insist upon indigestible meals."
She moved on a few paces, shaking her head. "You're a great vexation to me, David. You awaken my maternal instincts, and I've always prided myself on not having any."
"Call them 'fraternal,' then." Smiling, he rejoined her. "I'd much prefer it. Less wounding to one's manly pride, you know."
"That depends on your point of view," she said. "I've never seen Fiona, for instance, show any regard for her brothers' manly pride. She leads them all about by the nose—even Lord Norbury, the eldest—whereas their mother can do nothing with them." She shot David a reproving look. "Mine is more like the mama's case, obviously."
His smile slipped. "The Woodleighs are not an example, but the exception. Everyone knows Lady Carroll is the true head of the family."
"And you're too male to approve that state of affairs."
"Not at all." He gave a short laugh. "All I disapprove is your talking of the Woodleighs when you should be flirting with me. Here we are in a graveyard. What could be more morbidly romantic?"
He was one of the few men she would flirt with, because he was safe. Never once had she glimpsed the smallest hint of lust in that handsome young face.
"You ought to know by now that artists are the least romantic people in the world," she said. "You mustn't confuse the creators with the creations."
"I see. I must turn into a blob of paint—or better yet, a blank canvas. Then you might make anything of me you wish."
I dance with a beautiful woman who cannot distinguish a man from an easel.
She tensed, remembering: the low, insinuating voice, the force of collision, the shattering awareness of masculine strength...overpowering...the heat.
"Mrs. Beaumont?" came David's worried voice. "Are you unwell?"
She pushed the memory away. "No, no, of course not. Merely cold. I hadn't realized how late it was. I had better go home."
Surrey, England, mid-January 1829
Ismal paused in the doorway of Lord Norbury's crowded ballroom only for a moment. It was all he needed. He wanted but one swift glance to locate his prey. Leila Beaumont stood near the terrace doors.
She wore a rust-colored gown trimmed in midnight blue. Her gold-streaked hair was piled carelessly atop her head—and doubtless coming undone.
Ismal wondered if she still wore the same scent or had mixed a new one.
He wasn't sure which he would prefer. His mind was not settled about her, and this irritated him.
At least the repellent husband wasn't here. Beaumont was probably writhing in the arms of some over-painted, over-perfumed trollop—or lost in opium dreams in some London sinkhole. According to recent reports, his tastes, along with his body and intellect, had rapidly deteriorated upon his removal to London.
This was just as Ismal had expected. Cut loose from his sordid little empire, Beaumont was rapidly sinking. He no longer possessed the wit or will to build another enterprise like Vingt-Huit. Not from scratch—which, thanks to Ismal, was the only way it could be done.
Ismal had quietly and thoroughly disassembled the Paris organization Beaumont had so hastily abandoned. The various governments were no longer troubled by that knotty problem, and Beaumont could do nothing now but rot to death.
Considering the lives Beaumont had destroyed, the suffering and fear he'd caused, Ismal considered it fitting that the swine die slowly and painfully. Also fitting that he die in the way he'd ruined so many others—of vice and its diseases, of the poisons relentlessly eroding mind and body.
The wife was another matter. Ismal hadn't expected her to leave Paris with her husband.
The marriage, after all, was merely a formality. Beaumont himself had admitted he hadn't slept with his wife in five years. She became violent, he said, if he touched her. She'd even threatened to kill him. He treated the matter as a joke, saying that if a man couldn't have one woman in bed, he'd only to find another.
True enough, Ismal thought, if one referred to the common run of women. But Leila Beaumont was...ah, well, a problem.
While he pondered the problem, Ismal let his host lead him from one group of guests to the next. After he had met what seemed like several hundred people, Ismal permitted himself another glance toward the terrace doors. He caught a glimpse of russet, but could no longer see Madame Beaumont properly. She was surrounded by men. As usual.
The only woman he'd ever seen linger at her side was Lady Carroll, and she, according to Lord Norbury, had not yet arrived from London. Leila Beaumont had come yesterday with one of Lady C
arroll's cousins.
Ismal wondered whether Madame had spied him yet. But no. A great crow-haired oaf stood in the way.
Even as Ismal was wishing him to Hades, the large man turned aside to speak to a friend, and in that moment Leila Beaumont's glance drifted round the ballroom, past Ismal...and back...and her posture stiffened.
Ismal didn't smile. He couldn't have done so if his life depended on it. He was too aware of her, of the shocked recognition he could feel across half a room's length, and of the tumult that recognition stirred inside him.
He left his own group so smoothly that they scarcely noticed he was gone. He dealt with the men about her just as adroitly. He ingratiated himself without having to think about it, chatted idly with this one and that until he'd made his way to the center of the group, where Leila Beaumont stood, spine straight, chin high.
He bowed. "Madame."
She gave him a quick, furious curtsy. "Monsieur."
Her voice throbbed with suppressed emotion as she introduced him to those nearest her. Her lush bosom began to throb, too, when one by one her admirers began to drift away. She was not permitted to escape, however. Ismal held her with social inanities until at last he had her to himself.
"I hope I have not driven your friends away," he said, looking about him in feigned surprise. "Sometimes I may offend without intending to do so. It is my deplorable English, perhaps."
"Is it?"
His gaze shot back to her. She was studying his face with a penetrating, painterly concentration.
He grew uneasy, which irritated him. He should not allow himself to feel so, but she had been irritating him for so long that his mind was raw from it. He returned the examination with a simmering one of his own.
A faint thread of pink appeared in her cheeks.
"Monsieur Beaumont is well, I trust?" he asked.