Captives of the Night

  "No," she said. "I can't stop your doing what you want. But I shan't help. There's no 'we' in this. I won't be a party to it."

  He stepped closer. "Leila, you have trusted me to deal kindly with your friends. Surely you can trust me with this."

  She shook her head. "No. I never owed them. I owe him. I won't—" Her throat was tight, and her eyes were stinging. She couldn't trust herself to utter another word.

  "Leila, look at me," he softly urged. "Listen to me."

  She wouldn't. Dared not. In another moment, she'd disgrace herself. She was already moving away as quickly as she could without attracting notice. She needed to be alone, for just one minute, to collect herself.

  Scarcely able to see past the welling tears, she made for the nearest door.

  She hurried on through and down the corridor and down another. She didn't know where she was going. It didn't matter. One minute's privacy. That was all she wanted.

  "Leila."

  His anxious voice came from behind her.

  No. Please. Leave me alone. Just one minute, she told herself. That was all she needed. There were stairs ahead. She hurried up them to the landing.

  "Leila, please."

  She paused and turned, just as a footman emerged into the hall. She saw Ismal move to the servant to say something. She saw the light shimmer in his hair, heard the easy, friendly murmur...smooth and soft as silk. There was a strange buzzing in her ears, a flash of color.

  She sank down onto the nearest stair and held her head and took deep breaths. The dizziness passed swiftly, but the chilling dread remained. For a moment, she'd experienced the dream, yet it wasn't the same. Not the same hall. There was only one man with him, not two, and this one was English, while the ones in the dream were foreigners. She was dimly aware of footsteps, voices.

  "Madame."

  A hand covering hers. His hand.

  She raised her head. Ismal crouched before her. The servant stood behind him.

  "You are ill," Ismal said.

  Though she wasn't, she nodded for the footman's benefit.

  Ismal swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs, the servant leading the way.

  He took them to a small sitting room. Ismal gently deposited Leila on the chaise longue while the servant poured her a glass of water.

  While she dutifully sipped, he had another whispered consultation with Ismal, then left.

  "I have ordered a carriage," Ismal said when he returned to her. "One of the maidservants will accompany you home."

  She looked up, confused. "Aren't you coming?"

  "I think I have done enough damage for one night." His voice was harsh. "I drove you from the ballroom in tears. You nearly collapsed on the stairs. I think I might at least stop short of making scandal. I shall remain and make soothing excuses for you. A combination of a rich dinner, champagne, and an overcrowded room made you ill, I shall tell your friends. Meanwhile, I shall pray you did not swoon because you are with child."

  He turned away, raking his fingers through his hair. "Only tell me, Leila, if it is so."

  "Is which so?" she asked dazedly. "You didn't—" She gave herself an inward shake and quickly sorted reason from emotion.

  "I was overset," she said steadily. "I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself in company. I'm sorry I upset you. I assure you I'm not breeding—can't be."

  He let out a shaky sigh, then came back to her. "When you turn away, terrible things happen inside me," he said. "I am sorry, my heart. I have been most unkind, thoughtless. In too many ways."

  'Terrible things," she said. "Inside you."

  His eyes were bleak. "You are dear to me."

  She didn't know what was wrong, only that something was—something apart from alarm that she might be enceinte, something more troubling even than Andrew. She doubted she could bear it, whatever it was. Already her world was falling to pieces. If Andrew was false, nothing, nobody was true.

  All she had left was this man, whom she loved with all her heart.

  Don't, she begged silently. Don't be false. Leave me something.

  She heard footsteps approaching. "Don't keep away tonight," she said softly. "I need you. Come as soon as you can. Please."

  He came a few hours later.

  She had donned her nightgown and sat propped up against the pillows, the sketchbook in her lap, the pencil in her hand. Even after he entered the bedroom, it took her a moment to tear her gaze from the page.

  Ismal wanted to know what had captivated her quick mind, but even more, he wanted to get his ordeal over with.

  "There is something I must tell you," he said.

  "I want to explain," she said at the same time.

  "Leila."

  "Please," she said. "I need your help. I can't—I don't know what to do. I can't bear to fail you."

  His conscience stabbed deep. "Leila, you would never fail me. It is I—"

  "I understand," she said. "You just want things settled. You don't want to hurt anybody. I know you wish as much as I do that we could find a villain. Someone we could loathe. Someone we could want to punish. The trouble is, Francis was so horrible that one can't imagine anyone worse. So we won't get what we want. Instead, we get people we care about, sympathize with. I know you don't want to harm Andrew—if he's the one. I love you, and I want to be your partner—and I'd follow you to the ends of the earth. But—"

  "I do not ask it," he said. "I have no right to ask such a thing, to ask anything."

  "Yes, you do. I just need you to understand." She patted the mattress.

  "Leila, please. Before you say anything more, I must—"

  "I know," she said. "You've some ghastly confession to make."

  His heart pounded. "Yes."

  "Are you going to break my heart?" Her eyes burned too brightly. "Shall I go to pieces, do you think? And who shall pick me up, I wonder, and help put me back together? That's the trouble with Andrew, you see. One relies on him. Whenever I had a problem, I knew I could turn to him, and he'd help me set everything right. He set me right when I was a girl. He taught me how to be strong and as good as I was capable of being. And now I'm to view him as a coldblooded murderer. Now I can't help viewing him so."

  She rubbed her temple. "I wish you'd come sooner. I've had such horrible thoughts. I think I'm becoming hysterical. It was the near-fainting. And the buzzing in my ears. The last time that happened was the night Papa was killed, and Papa turned out to be false, too. So now it’s all mixed up. Papa and Francis and that gloomy hallway. I keep dreaming about it," she went on hurriedly. "I thought I was dreaming tonight. I saw you turn your head to speak to the servant, and I was so frightened. It wasn't the same hall or the same servant, but I was frightened for you all the same. Only this time I didn't wake up, because I wasn't asleep."

  He moved to the bed and took the sketchbook from her. On the page was one of her rougher drawings. Nonetheless, he recognized Mehmet and Risto and guessed who the vague figure between them was. The view was from above, the artist looking down on her subjects...as she must have done that night a decade ago.

  "This is what you dream," he said, his gut in icy knots. "Do you know what it is?"

  'The light's always the same," she said. "Coming from that open door. The same two men, and you between them."

  He sat down on the bed. "I was between them." He kept his eyes on the page. "Ten years ago. In a palazzo in Venice. There was a girl upstairs, Risto told me." He forced the words past the constriction in his throat. "I did not trouble to look. I assumed she was a child."

  The air about him throbbed ominously.

  "You?" Her voice was low, hard. "That was you?"

  He nodded.

  "You lying, false—you bastard."

  He felt the movement, heard the rush of air, but he moved a heartbeat too slowly. Something slammed against his head, and he fell forward, onto the floor. The world spun perilously toward darkness. There was a terrible clanging, like hammer blows, vibrating through his
skull. He grabbed blindly and something crashed beside him.

  There was a tumult—cries, pounding footsteps—but he couldn't make sense of it. All his will was fixed on resisting the darkness, unconsciousness. He heaved himself onto his knees just as the door opened.

  "Monsieur!"

  "Madame!"

  He dragged his head up and made himself focus. A toppled nightstand next to him...Gaspard...Eloise.

  He found his voice. "De rien," he gritted out. "Allez-vous-en!"

  "Get him out of here!" Leila cried. 'Take him away before I kill him! Get him—make him—" The rest was a sob.

  Eloise pulled her husband back through the door. It shut.

  Silence, but for Leila's weeping.

  Ismal's own eyes scalded. He turned toward her. She sat on the edge of the bed, her face buried in her hands.

  He couldn't ask a forgiveness that was impossible to give. He couldn't utter apologies for what could never be excused. All he could offer was the one true thing in his false, breaking heart.

  "Je t'aime," he said helplessly. "I love you, Leila."

  She gazed down despairingly at him. She didn't want to understand. She didn't want to cope with him, with anything, anyone, any more.

  Papa. Francis. Andrew.

  And this man, this beautiful, impossible man to whom she'd given everything—honor, pride, trust. She'd held nothing back. Body and soul she'd given herself to him. Gladly.

  And he had made her glad, her heart reminded.

  He'd given, too.

  He was, after all, almost human. She saw the hurt in his eyes, and her heart reminded her that the monstrous admission he'd just made, he'd made on his own.

  "You're all I've got," she said unsteadily. "There's only you. Give me something, please. I love you. You've made me so happy. Please, let's be fair with each other." She held out her hand.

  He stared at it for a long moment, his face taut. Then he put out his own hand, and she took it and joined him on the floor.

  "I know I should have told you long ago, but I was afraid," he said, his eyes upon their joined hands. "You are dear to me. I could not bear to lose you. But tonight, I could not bear what was. I could not comfort you. I could not take you home. Just as I could not be there for you when the dreams frightened you. I could not take care of my own woman, because she was not my wife. And I could not prevail upon you to be my wife. I could not even ask properly. Only in joke, making light of what was most important to me, because it was dishonorable to urge or coax until I could offer with a clean heart."

  "Is it clean now?" she asked. "Was that all? That night in Venice—you were the one with Papa, and those were your men?"

  "It is not all of my past," he said. "Not even the worst, perhaps. I injured others. Yet those debts have been paid long since. Even to your country I have made amends. I have served your king nearly ten years." He looked up, his eyes dark. "But to you I have not made amends. Instead, I only compound my sins."

  Ten years, she thought. A decade serving a foreign king, making amends by dealing with the worst and lowest of villains, the most complicated and delicate of problems. Whatever was too much, too dirty, or too disagreeable for His Majesty's government was thrust into Ismal's elegant hands.

  "If His Majesty is satisfied," she said carefully, "then I ought to be. Even if—even if you killed Papa, it sounds as though you've paid."

  "I did not kill him," he said. "Please believe this."

  "I believe you," she said. "But I should like...just to know…what happened."

  "It is not pleasant," he said.

  "I rather expected it wouldn't be."

  His expression eased a fraction, and he arranged himself in storytelling mode, his legs curled up tailor fashion.

  Then he told her, all of it, from the time he'd begun buying stolen weaponry from her father's partner, whose name Ismal said he wasn't at liberty to mention. He told her how his planned revolution in Albania had gone awry because he'd tangled with the wrong men and become besotted with Jason Brentmor's daughter. He told her how AH Pasha had poisoned him, and how Ismal had escaped with the help of his two servants, and gone on to Venice, where he'd terrified Jonas Bridgeburton into providing incriminating information against the anonymous partner. Ismal described how he'd used the unseen Leila to hasten the negotiations, and how he'd had her drugged.

  He told her about racing on to England—against his servants' advice—to get revenge on everyone he imagined had thwarted him: the anonymous arms dealer as well as Esme's lover, Edenmont—and, of course, Esme herself. He told her of the bloody climax in Newhaven and how Esme had saved his life and how he had paid the family—in precious jewels, no less—for his crimes.

  He told her of the voyage to New South Wales and the shipwreck that he'd used to his advantage, and of his encounter with Quentin, who decided that Ismal could be more useful in Europe than among transported felons.

  When he concluded, Ismal bowed his head—as though inviting her to whack him again.

  "It would appear that eighteen hundred nineteen was an eventful year for you," she said. "Small wonder being knocked on the head hardly fazed you. I'm amazed, in the circumstances, that you remembered Bridgeburton's daughter at all."

  "I remembered," he said grimly. "The instant you said your father's name. Even then, I was troubled. When you told me of Beaumont and how he took you away, I knew he stole your innocence, and this was why you wed him—and I thought I would die of shame. Ten years of wretchedness you endured, and all because of me."

  She bridled. "I was not wretched. You are not to make me out as a pathetic victim of that sodden pig. He was obnoxious, I'll admit—"

  "Obnoxious? He was faithless, and he did not even compensate by pleasing you in bed. He was a drunkard, a drug addict, a peddler of flesh, a traitor—"

  "He made me an artist," she snapped. "He respected that at least—and long before anyone else did. He recognized my talent and sent me to school. He made my first master accept a female student. He brought me my first patrons. And he had to live with the consequences—of my career and ambition, and of all his infidelities. He may have crushed others and ruined other lives, but not me, not my life. I am my father's own daughter, and I gave back as good as I got. I nearly knocked you unconscious with the bed-warming pan a while ago. I promise you that's not the first time the man in my life has felt the brunt of my temper. Don't you dare feel sorry for me."

  She snatched her hand from his and bolted up, to pace angrily before the fireplace.

  "Pity," she muttered. "You say you love me, and all it turns out to be is pity—and some mad notion of making amends. When you, of all men, ought to know better. You know everything—more than Francis ever did: all my failings, all my unladylike ways. No secrets from you, not a one—and yet you make me out to be some pitiable little martyr."

  "Leila."

  "It's that curst male superiority is what it is," she stormed on. "Just as Lady Brentmor says. Just because they're physically stronger—or think they are—they think they're the lords of creation."

  "Leila."

  "Because they can't bear to admit they need us. Adam needed someone, to be sure. He never would have had the courage to eat that apple on his own. Eve should have just eaten it herself and let him wander about Eden knowing nothing, and no better than the dumb brutes about him. The idiot didn't even know he was naked. And who sewed those fig leaf aprons, I ask you? Not him, you may be sure. He wouldn't have—"

  The door slammed.

  She whipped round.

  He was gone.

  She hurried to the door, pulled it open, and crashed into him. His arms lashed about her, holding her fast.

  "I am stronger," he said. "And my head is harder. But I am not a dumb brute. I made a mistake. I am sorry. I did not mean to insult you. I know you are strong and brave and dangerous. I love you for this, and for your devilish mind and your passionate heart and, of course, your beautiful body. Now, my tigress, may we make peace?"
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  When Ismal awoke, a warm feminine backside was pressed to his groin. He slid his hand over the luscious curve of Leila's breast and dreamily contemplated lovemaking in the morning.

  Morning?

  His eyes shot open—to sunlight. Quelling his panic, he was gently disentangling himself when she turned and murmured and nestled her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

  Then he could only smile down at her in idiotic pleasure, and stroke her back while he thought how well they fit together, and how sweet it was to wake to a sunny morn with the woman he loved in his arms.

  She moved under his caressing hand and in a little while raised her head to smile sleepily up at him. "What's so amusing?"

  "I am happy," he said. "Stupid but happy."

  She blinked as she, too, noticed. "By gad, it's morning."

  "So it is."

  "You're still here."

  "So I am. Stupid, as I said. I seem to have fallen asleep."

  She made a face. "I suppose it was the blow to the head."

  "Nay, it was my conscience. So many weeks of guilty worry had exhausted me. You wiped away the agitation, and I slept like an innocent babe."

  "Well, I suppose it's wicked and incautious, but I'm glad." She rubbed his beard-roughened jaw.

  "It would not be wicked and incautious if we were wed," he said. "Will you marry me, Leila?"

  She put her hand over his mouth. "I shall pretend I didn't hear that, and we'll start with a clean slate—on both sides. I have to tell you something, because you seem to have the wrong idea. I wasn't as clear as I might have been last night, and it wouldn't be fair—" Taking a deep breath, she hurried on. "I can't have children. I've tried. I went to doctors and tried different diets and regimens. I shan't bore you with the details. I'm barren." She took her hand away from his mouth.

  He looked down into her anxious eyes. "There are plenty of orphans," he said. "If you wish to have children, we may acquire as many as you like. If you had rather not, then we shall be a family of two. Will you marry me, Leila?"

  "Orphans? Would you really? Adopt children?"

  "There are advantages. If they turn out badly, we can blame their natural parents. We can also choose our own assortment of ages and genders. We can even get them ready-grown, if we wish. Also, strays can be most interesting. Nick is a stray, you know. But that was not so difficult, even for a bachelor to manage. He at least was an adolescent when I found him. I did not have to mix pap and wipe his bottom. Will you marry me, Leila?"