Captives of the Night (35 page)

She pushed the door open. "My bedroom," she said. "Please make yourself at home, monsieur. I'm well aware you can't be kept out. What you might want here is another matter altogether. I haven't the least idea. But I collect I'll find out. And I suppose I'll survive. I'm good at that. At bouncing back. Surviving."

She stormed into the room, tearing her bonnet off and hurling it aside. Ismal followed and gently closed the door behind him.

"I'm good at a lot of things," she raged on. "At falling in love with the Devil's spawn, certainly. I have a genius for it, don't you think? And for leaping out of the pan, straight into the flames. From Papa to Francis to
you
."

He leaned back against the door, a sledgehammer driving at his heart with slow, fierce blows. "In love?" he repeated, his mouth dry. "With me, Leila?"

"No, with the Bishop of Durham." She fumbled at her cloak fastenings. "For all I know, you'll be
him
next. And do as brilliant a job as you did disguised as a constable." She ripped off the coat. "What else have you been, I wonder? How long have you been a French count? How long have you been
French
?"

He stiffened.

She swept to the dressing table, flung herself onto the chair, and began pulling pins from her hair. "Alexis Delavenne, Comte d'Esmond, is it? Where did they find your title, I wonder? One of the unfortunate families decimated during the Terror? Were you the infant Delavenne — sent away and hidden — until it was safe to return and claim your birthright? Is that the story you and your colleagues fabricated?"

He stood unmoving, outwardly calm: a normal, civilized man patiently absorbing the outpourings of an overwrought woman. Yet the barbarian inside him believed the Devil must be whispering these secrets in her ear. It was surely the Devil who made Ismal choke on the smooth denials and evasions ready to spill from his tongue. It must be the Devil who held him helpless, transfixed on one treacherous word: love.

It was that word which tangled his brain and tongue, which opened the rift in his proud, well-guarded heart, leaving a place that ached, needing tending. Needy, he could only ask, like a foolish, besotted boy, "Do you love me, Leila?"

"If you can call anything so monstrous
love
. I'll be damned if I know what else to call it." She snatched up her hairbrush. "But names don't signify, do they? I don't even know yours. There's the hell of it," she said, dragging the brush through her thick, tangled hair. "That I should care for and want the respect of a man who's utterly false."

His conscience stabbed deep. "You must know I care for you." He came away from the door to stand behind her. "As to respect —
-do
you not understand? Do you think I would seek your help — send you on your own to work — if I did not respect your intellect, your character? Never have I relied upon and trusted a woman as I have you. What better proof could you want than what I did this night? I did not interfere. I trusted you to deal with your friend. I trusted that you judged aright in sending her away with Avory."

She met his gaze in the mirror. "Does that mean it wasn't a mistake? Does that mean David isn't what Fiona said he was? Was she wrong about him? About Francis — and the rest?"

The rest. It was himself she meant. Ismal stared incredulously into her accusing tawny eyes. "Allah grant me patience," he whispered, stunned. "Do you truly believe I was your husband's lover? Is
that
what has upset you?"

She set down the brush. "I don't know who you are," she said. "I don't know
what
you are. I don't know anything about you." She rose to push past him to the nightstand. Yanking the drawer open, she pulled out a sketchbook.

"Look at that," she said, thrusting it at him. "I draw what I see, what I sense. Tell me what I've seen and sensed, Esmond."

He opened the sketchbook and began leafing through the pages. It was filled with sketches of him — standing before the fire, at the worktable. He turned the page and paused. On the sofa. Lying in state, like a pasha. He turned to the next page. Again. Pages later, her clever pencil was transforming him. The cushions about his head became a turban. The well-tailored English coat had softened into a loose tunic. The trousers were full, the fabric falling in silken folds.

The old scar in his side was throbbing ominously. This was the Devil's work, he told himself. The Devil whispered his secrets in her ear and guided her mind, her fiendish hand.

"You just said 'Allah.' " Her voice was low, troubled. "You call yourself
Esmond
. Es… mond. 'East of the world’ one might translate. Is that where you really come from? Another world, to the east? I've heard it's different. Altogether."

He closed the book and laid it down on the nightstand. "You have a curious image of me," he said.

"Esmond."

"I do not lie with men," he said. "It is not to my taste. I did not tell you about your husband's tastes because I knew you would make yourself crazy and sick. I was unaware Lady Carroll knew of the matter. In Paris, your husband was discreet. Evidently, in England he became reckless about this, along with everything else. Suicidal, perhaps", for it is a hanging offense in this intolerant country."

"Intolerant? Do you — "

"What does it matter what one human being does in private with a willing partner — or ten partners, for that matter? What should it matter what I have done or not done? Or what
you
have done or not done?" he demanded — and silently cursed himself when she backed way, to the foot of the bed.

He caught the shreds of his self-control. "How am I to know what tastes your husband cultivated in you?" he asked more gently. "Or fears? Or revulsions? Do you not think both of us must have some trust? Never have I wanted a woman as I want you, Leila. Do you truly believe I would wish to distress you, shock you?"

She was rubbing her thumb against the bedpost, her brow furrowed.

He started cautiously toward her. "Leila — "

"Tell me your name," she said.

He stopped short. Curse her. To hell with her. No woman was worth —

"You don't have to," she said, still frowning at the bedpost. "We both know you can lure me straight into this bed with some lie or evasion or other. And I know that learning your name won't change anything. I'll still be a whore. And you'll know everything about me. It can't be helped. I'm… besotted." She swallowed. "I'm so tired of fighting with myself, trying to be what I'm not.

I just want this one thing, you see. Your name. That’s all."

He would have given her the world. If she asked, he would gladly abandon everything and take her away and shower her with his treasures. Anything she wanted.

She wanted his name.

He stood, fists clenched, heart pounding.

He saw a tear glisten at the corner of her eye. He watched her blink it back.

The rift inside widened.

Shpirti im
, his soul called to hers. My heart.

He turned his back and left the room.

To hell with him, then, Leila told herself as she prepared for bed.

To hell with him, she told herself hours later, when she woke sweating from a dream, which she angrily banished to the deepest recesses of her mind.

Whatever Esmond felt for and wanted from her, it wasn't important enough to make him yield one small point: his curst name.

He expected trust. He was incapable of giving it, even to a woman who'd offered all hers, and her pride as well. She'd told him she loved him — as though that would matter. Women, men — and wild beasts, for all she knew — had been falling in love with him all his life. He thought no more of it than he did of breathing.

At least she wasn't the only idiot, she consoled herself hours later, when she rose and dressed and went downstairs, determined to eat her breakfast. She would not starve on Esmond's account. She'd refused to let Francis make a wreck of her, hadn't she? She was damned if she'd let Esmond affect her appetite.

Leila had scarcely sat down before Gaspard entered the dining room to announce that Lady Carroll was at the door. Moments later, Fiona was at the breakfast table, slathering butter and preserves on one of Eloise's enormous muffins.

"I thought you'd want to be the first to know," she was saying. "David leaves this afternoon for Surrey, to seek Norbury's permission to court Lettice."

The permission was merely a formality. If Fiona had pronounced David acceptable, the others must. Leila filled her friend's coffee cup. "Then I may conclude you're satisfied he's not a monster of depravity."

"Not a monster, no. But he didn't pretend to be a model of innocence, either, and so one must give him credit for honesty. And for poise," Fiona added as she dropped a lump of sugar into the coffee. 'For I did set my teeth and tell him direct that Francis claimed an intimate knowledge of his hindquarters. 'Well, he was lying, as usual,' says His Lordship, quiet and polite as you please. So I got just as quiet and polite and asked if anyone else had such a knowledge, because I wouldn't put my sister in the hands of a mollying dog. Marriage is difficult enough, I told him, without those sorts of complications."

"Complications," Leila repeated expressionlessly, while she wondered whether murder would fall into the same category.

"Well, I know what goes on at public school, don't I? Or if not there, then at some point during the Grand Tour." Fiona bit into her muffin and chewed thoughtfully. "Forbidden fruit. Boys will be boys, Papa would say. But one must draw the line when it becomes a habit. Bad enough to catch your husband with the chambermaid, but when it’s the groom or the pot boy — "

"I quite understand," Leila said. Grooms, serving lads, boys on the streets, for all one knew, she thought, sickened.

Her Ladyship went on talking between mouthfuls. "Anyhow, he bravely admitted to one drunken episode, a few years ago. He gave me his word of honor that was the first and only time. Then, still polite as ever, he wanted to know if there was anything else troubling me. 'Should I know of anything else?' I asked him. 'Can you promise that my sister will be safe and happy in your hands?' Then he became rather maudlin. I shan't repeat his effusions. Suffice to say, he is wretchedly in love with Letty, and she thinks the sun exists solely to shine on him. It’s thoroughly disgusting. Is there sausage in that covered platter, love?"

"Bacon." Leila handed it over. "Did you mention the garter business?"

"I treated him to the whole story." Fiona dropped three rashers of bacon onto her plate. "It was obvious he hadn't known. He went white as a sheet. When he finally collected himself, however, he did it thoroughly. No more dramatics. He simply said, 'No one shall ever distress her again, Lady Carroll. You have my word. I shall take care of her, I promise you.' Well, what was I to say? I told him he might call me Fiona, and recommended he speak to Norbury as soon as may be — and get to Dorset before Letty murders my aunt."

Leila mustered a smile while she watched her friend make short work of the bacon. "And they all lived happily ever after," she murmured.

"Perhaps he'll ask Esmond to stand as groomsman," said Fiona. "Speaking of whom — "

"We weren't."

"What
has
been going on while I've been away?" Fiona attacked another muffin. "Something terribly discreet, no doubt, for I haven't heard a whisper."

"You've heard nothing because there is nothing."

"You were looking at each other in the same famished way David and Letty gaped at each other during the Fatal Ball. It was quite painful to watch."

"To imagine, you mean," Leila said stiffly. "Just as you imagined David was some evil pervert longing to do unspeakable things to your little sister."

"Actually, it was the promiscuity that bothered me. Neglect, disease — the sorts of things a wife has virtually no control over. As to unspeakable acts — Letty is no milk and water miss, you know. If she doesn't like it, she won't put up with it."