Captives of the Night (19 page)

"Perhaps I shall tell him so tonight." Fiona rose. "In that case, I shall want to appear my intimidating best — and Antoinette will want hours to accomplish that. All the same, she'll complain that I never give her time enough to dress me properly. You don't know how fortunate you are, my dear, to be allowed to dress yourself."

"And what a fine job I make of it," Leila said dryly. "If Antoinette could see me now, she'd go into palpitations — and this is one of my better efforts." She shoved a hairpin back into place.

"You look wonderfully artistic, as usual — but rather pale." Her expression concerned, Fiona took her hand. "I hope I didn't upset you, speaking of Francis in that way."

"Don't talk nonsense. If I'm pale, it’s only from gluttony. My blood has been flooded out by tea."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"The fussy mama role ill becomes you," Leila said. "When I'm truly ill, I shall tell you so — and make you nurse me."

Fiona answered with a look of horror so theatrical that Leila laughed. Melodramatically clutching her throat, Fiona ran from the room. Leila chased after her. There was more laughter, and joking farewells, and by the time the door closed behind Fiona, Leila's niggling doubt about her was altogether forgotten.

Leila returned to her studio, took up a sketchbook and pencil, and focused on the untidy bookshelves. But they wouldn't take shape upon the page. She drew instead the elderly woman she'd seen making her slow way down the street, then the carriage that had entered the square just as the old lady turned the corner. A dashing carriage, sleek and assured.

So Francis had been once, long ago: sleek and assured and strong. She had been frightened, confused, and sick. A damsel in distress. And he had been her knight in shining armor, carrying her away to live happily ever after.

Only it wasn't for ever after, because he had changed. Paris, with its easy pleasures and easy vices, had corrupted him. Slowly, year by year, Paris had dragged him down.

Fiona didn't understand. She hadn't known him, the way he'd been at the beginning, when he'd first entered Leila's life.

"She doesn't understand," Leila said very softly, her eyes filling. "You were good once. It’s just so easy… to slip. So damnably easy."

A tear fell onto the page. "Oh, damn," she muttered. "Weeping — over Francis. How ludicrous."

But another tear fell, and then another, and she let herself weep, ludicrous as it was, beast that he'd been — because she had known him when he wasn't a beast, and if she didn't weep for him, no one would.

This night, when Ismal entered the studio, Madame did not slam her sketchbook shut. She merely looked up, her eyes changing focus slowly as she brought herself from the inner world to the outer. Even when he came to the worktable, she still seemed distant, a part of her mind caught elsewhere. As he neared, he noticed the rawness about her eyes, the drawn look of the fragile skin. She had been weeping. His chest felt tight.

He looked over her shoulder at the drawing: the interior of a carriage. "It was elegant once," he said, his voice betraying none of his dismay, "but it seems to have fallen upon evil days. A hired carriage, I think, but not an English one."

She glanced up, her tawny gaze sharpening. "You're very good," she said. 'It isn't English." She flipped to the previous page. "There's an English one." She flipped back to the second drawing. "Even while I was working on the other, this came into my head."

"This held your mind more forcibly," he said. "The detail is more precise."

"Yes, it’s rather vexing sometimes. I last saw that carriage ten years ago," she explained. "It took me out of Venice the day my father was killed. I was addled and ill — I'd been given laudanum — and yet I remember every last scratch, every stain on the cushions, the shading of the wood."

Ismal drew back half a pace, his heart hammering. "Ten years ago, and you remember so clearly? An extraordinary gift, madame."

"A curse, rather, sometimes. I hadn't thought of it in ages. It must be because of Francis. Images come into my head, as though his death had jarred them loose. As though they had been sitting in cupboards, and something knocked the doors open, and the contents spilled out."

"Old memories, indeed. If it was ten years ago, these must be your earliest associations with him."

"The carriage is where I met him. That’s where I came to. It was Francis who rescued me. From my father's enemies." Her gaze reverted to the drawing. "I was remembering… that he wasn't always a swine. It’s not precisely relevant to the case — yet it is. When we started this, you said justice was an abstraction — "

"I was tactless," he said tightly.

"Yet I do owe him something," she went on as though he hadn't spoken. "The fact is, ten years ago, Francis simply stumbled into someone else's nasty situation. He could have turned his back. I was nothing to him, and he didn't even know my father."

She went on to explain what had happened, and Ismal found nothing in her version that didn't fit his own memories of the circumstances.

First, Bridgeburton had given Ismal countless names, but not Beaumont's — which made it unlikely they'd had dealings together. Second, Ismal had gone off alone immediately after the encounter to sample the pleasures of Venice. Away from their master, Risto and Mehmet could have done just what Beaumont had described to her. To ensure the safety of the master he idolized, Risto would have wanted to do away with the girl as well as the father.

In short, Ismal must admit it was more than possible that Beaumont
had
come to the defenseless girl's rescue. And so, thanks to Ismal, the pig had entered her life. He didn't want to hear more for which he could blame himself, but she was intent on proving how much she owed her husband, and Ismal, hearing echoes of his own native code of obligation, couldn't bring himself to change the subject.

She'd left Venice with nothing but the clothes on her back, she said. She'd known, though, that her allowance and school tuition had come from a Parisian banker. It was through the bank that Beaumont had — with no small difficulty — finally obtained the name of the man delegated to oversee Leila Bridgeburton's affairs. And it was Beaumont who sent for that man, Andrew Herriard.

Here again Ismal could discover no obvious wrongdoing on Beaumont’s part. She'd been at his mercy, yet he had acted conscientiously on her behalf. Most telling of all was that he'd called her plight to Herriard's attention. Having looked carefully into the solicitor's background, Ismal was aware that Herriard was and always had been incorruptible. From the day he was born, apparently. A saint.

If Beaumont had been bent on evil, he wouldn't have given up to a known saint his power over a lonely adolescent girl. All the same, none of Beaumont's actions fit the man Ismal had known. Could his nature have changed so very much in ten years?

"Your father showed great wisdom in naming Mr. Herriard as your guardian," he said cautiously.

"I hope that’s been marked to Papa's credit in the hereafter," she said. "He was a villain, yet an exceedingly protective father. For my sake, he did cultivate a few decent men — the banker, for instance, and Andrew. Everyone who dealt with my affairs was above reproach — and Papa saw to it they knew nothing of his actual activities. It was the police who told Andrew, when they questioned him — because he'd been named in Papa's will as my guardian."

She paused. "You can imagine the problem I represented for Andrew. He's a stickler for honesty. But revealing the truth — that I was alive — would very possibly prove fatal to me, and he strongly felt it was unjust for me to suffer for my father's crimes. And so, Leila Bridgeburton was permitted to be dead, and Leila Dupont was born."

"And he deemed Paris a safer place for you to live than London, no doubt. Less risk of being recognized, for instance, by a former schoolmate or friend of the family."

She didn't answer, didn't lift her gaze from the sketchbook.

Ismal perched on the stool near her. "The past is none of my affair," he said into the silence. "You only wished to clarify your sense of obligation to your husband. It is quite clear. I was unkind to mock your wish for justice."

"I fell in love with Francis." Her voice was low, taut. "He talked to me. Listened. He made me feel beautiful. Special. He
browbeat
one of the best painting masters in Paris to take me as a student. By the time Andrew came, wild horses couldn't have dragged me from Paris — from wherever Francis was. I let Andrew think it was all on account of my art studies, my need to earn my own way in the one profession for which I had talent. But the odds against a woman artist are daunting. I wouldn't have had the nerve to stay, to try, if not for Francis. I… needed him."

She looked up, her expression defensive. "To this very day, I don't truly understand why he bothered with me. He was handsome and charming and — oh, he might have had any woman he wanted. I don't know why he married me."

Ismal hadn't altogether understood, either. Until now. As his eyes locked with hers, he saw in those golden depths what Beaumont had seen. In his own heart he felt what Beaumont had felt.

Ismal had missed her, longed for the sight and sound and scent of her as an opium addict craved his drug. Desire, beyond doubt, was the drug to which Beaumont had succumbed. She'd intoxicated him from the beginning, and on through the ensuing years. She had loved and needed him at first, she'd said, and so she must have loved and needed passionately, as was her nature. Had Ismal been in Beaumont's place a decade ago, he would have been intoxicated, too. He would have done anything to have her… and keep her.

It wasn't difficult to guess what Beaumont had done. So easy to seduce an infatuated adolescent girl and leave her no choice but to marry him. Ismal would have done it. He wished desperately he had. He had always despised Beaumont, but this comprehension made it far worse. Now Ismal hated him with a maddening, searing jealousy.

"You see so deeply into others," he said, keeping his voice calm. "You know what they are and paint the truth you perceive. You do not see yourself. That is why you cannot understand what he felt, why he wed you, and why he stayed — even after you denied him your bed. He was your first infatuation — a man who was like a prince to you. In time, you outgrew it, and your heart became free of him. But he, so much older and wiser than you…" Ismal looked away. "His fate was settled, sentence pronounced. He loved you and he could not stop, however much, however desperately he tried."

That was some comfort, he told himself. Undoubtedly Beaumont had suffered. He'd been caught in his own trap. As he deserved.

"You make it sound like a melodrama." A wash of pink tinged her cheekbones. "I told you more than a week ago that he recovered from this alleged love' very quickly."

He shrugged. "Monogamy was not in his nature. From all I hear, he cared for nobody, rarely bedded the same woman twice. Such men usually abandon their wives. I cannot tell you how many times his friends have remarked upon his baffling possessiveness regarding you. Given what you've told me, there can be no other possible answer but love. And that seems to answer a good deal about him."

"His
friends
?" Anger smoldered in her tawny eyes. "Is that what you've been doing this whole bloody time? Gossiping about me with his dissolute friends?" She sprang off the stool. "Good grief. And I've just told you — will you gossip about this, too?"

"Certainly not." Ismal fought a surge of outrage — that she would think him so base. "You leap to the strangest conclusions. No one speaks ill of you. On the contrary — "

"It has nothing to do with me." Her voice rose. "He made enemies. You're supposed to find out what grudges they had against
him
. I didn't make him hateful. It wasn't — oh, for God's sake!" She hurried across the room, to the fire.

Ismal watched her warm her hands — for five seconds — then turn a small bust of Michelangelo to face right instead of left, only to turn it back. Then he saw her brush at her eyes and hastily drop her hand again. And that quick, angry movement tore at his heart.

She was wretched. He'd found her so, and for all he knew she'd been miserable for days. And alone, in whatever bitter sorrow it was. He doubted anyone, even her best friend, was trusted with the troubled secrets of her heart.

He knew that he of all people should not be trusted. Whatever he learned he'd be tempted to use to trap her. And that was unwise, on a hundred counts.