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.
He told himself to remain where he was. He could change the subject, distract her. With business. The inquiry. That, after all, was his reason for being here. It was also his amends.
"No, of course you did not make him hateful," he said gently. "No one—"
"Don't humor me," she snapped. Turning to the sofa, she began rearranging, with some violence, the heap of decorative pillows. "You weren't gossiping, of course. Just eliciting information. It's not my place to tell you how to conduct your investigation."
"The investigation, yes," he said. "I should have explained better—"
"Well, you couldn't, could you, with me maundering on about the past." She picked up a purple pillow and began untangling the fringe. She was blinking hard.
By Allah, how was he to keep his wits about him with her on the edge of tears?
He left his place and joined her at the sofa. "There was a purpose to what you told me," he said placatingly. "You gave me perspective—as you had done some days ago regarding Lord Avory. The victim's character often offers important clues to the crime, and sometimes, to the perpetrator."
"And his home life? Does that offer clues, too?" She shoved the pillow back among the others. "You said Francis was desperate. Because of love."
"Because it was contrary to his nature to love." Ismal felt his patience slipping. "He was at war with himself."
"Which he wouldn't have been if he'd never met me," she said bitterly. "He would have gone merrily on his way. And never hurt anybody."
"You cannot believe that."
"Oh, can't I? I've done nothing but look, every way I could, this whole livelong day, and I don't see what else to believe. And you just confirmed it. You as much as said he got tangled with the wrong woman."
"Madame, that is insane."
"Is it?" Her eyes flashed. "You think I'm trouble, don't you? My father was a traitor. I covered up murder. I have temper fits and lose my mind and wreck my studio. I made my
husband's life hell—drove him to drink and drugs and women. You didn't want to take this case, did you? Because the victim was a swine and his wife is a madwoman."
"You twist everything about," he snapped. "I said he loved you. This was trouble for him, yes, because his pride could not bear it. But his pride is not your fault, nor his vices. I cannot believe you make yourself wretched on his account. To weep—for him—"
"I wasn't—"
"You were weeping before I came, and the tears are waiting—for me to be gone, no doubt, so you can grieve all the night. For a pig."
She retreated a pace.
"A pig," he repeated. "Do you think I did not know what he was? Do you think me so witless as to believe the excuses he made, blaming you? I said he loved you. Does this make the man—any man—a saint? Ali Pasha loved his wife, Emine. All the same, he roasted men on a spit or had them torn in pieces or shot from a cannon. More than once, Ali slaughtered all the men, women, and children of a town in revenge for an offense a few men had committed decades before."
He advanced on her as he spoke, and she edged away, her hand trailing along the sofa back.
"Deeply, passionately he loved her," Ismal went on, his voice rising. "All the same, he kept three hundred women in his harem. What miracle did love work upon his character?" he demanded. "What do you think this one woman could have done? Was it her fault he was a madman?"
"I couldn't say." She blinked up at him. "Who is Ali Pasha?"
It was then Ismal realized that she would not have been blinking up at him if he were not standing practically on top of her, glaring down into her baffled face. Almighty have mercy, what had he done? Lost his temper. Lost control.
And betrayed himself: the first lunatic who had come to mind was not some western European—Napoleon, for instance—but Ali Pasha. Of all the monsters in all the world and in all of history, Ismal had chosen an Albanian—his countryman, his own mentor and tormentor. He thought quickly.
"Do not tell me you never heard of Ali Pasha," he said, his tones instantly back to normal. "I thought your Lord Byron and his friend, Lord Broughton, had made the vizier famous in their writings."
"There's a great deal I haven't read." She was studying his face, searching. She had heard something, glimpsed a secret beneath the skin. Ismal was sure of that. Which secret she'd lit upon was the question—and he didn't want to know the answer.
"You sounded almost as though you knew him personally," she said, answering his silent question.
Cursing inwardly, Ismal retreated two paces...to keep from shaking her. "I met him, yes. I have traveled in the East, you know."
"I didn't know." Her head tipped to one side. Still searching. "Was it government business, then?"
"If you are not in a humor to discuss the case, Madame, I shall be happy to bore you with tales of my travels," he said. "Only tell me what it is you wish, and I shall try to oblige."
"I wish you would not take that condescending tone with me," she said. "It's not as though you're in a perfectly equable humor yourself."
"How do you expect a man to remain tranquil when you snap at his every word and storm about the room? How am I to be orderly and logical amid the tempest you make? Almost, I think you do it on purpose."
"On purpose?" Her voice climbed. "Just what—"
"To distract me." His tone was dangerously low. "To make trouble. Is that what you wish? I can oblige, you know."
Run, he warned silently, as he closed the distance between them.
She wouldn't. She raised her chin and tried to stare him down.
"Perhaps that worked with him," he said. "But not with me."
He bent closer and saw her haughty confidence give way to alarm. Then she started to turn away.
Too late, for he was quicker than she, trapping her in his arms and bringing her back...and in the next maddened instant, his mouth crashed to hers.
Trouble was there, and he claimed it, amid the shock waves of rage and jealousy and need pounding through his veins. Trouble was the soft ripeness of her mouth and its treacherous sweetness, stealing through his blood...the sweet poison of desire.
Aye, trouble was there, and she found it as well. She wasn't immune. He tasted her hunger in the first instinctive response of her mouth. Quick and hot it was, but only for a moment. One tantalizing taste—then she twisted away. He released her.
"I know what that was," she said, her voice choked. "You're the one who wants to distract. I'm to tell everything, but ask nothing, is that it?"
He couldn't believe his ears. He could scarcely think past the tumult of desire, and she—the curst woman—was still intent upon the clues she'd wrested from him.
"You went to Quentin for justice," he said. "He put it in my hands, and I will see to it, as I always do, in my own way. You can tell me everything or you can tell me nothing. It makes no difference. The murder is to be solved, and I will solve it, however I must. This is my business, Madame. You play by my rules or you do not play at all."
She folded her hands tightly before her and, raising her chin, she answered, her voice low, level. "Then take your rules, Monsieur, and go to blazes."
Leila stood unmoving while he swung away and marched to the door. She didn't wince when the door slammed behind him. She remained arrogantly erect until his quick, angry footsteps had faded away. Then she walked to the cupboard, took out a fresh sketchbook, carried it to the worktable, and sat down.
She had cried for hours before he'd come, and she had more reason to weep now, but there weren't any tears left. He'd burned them up with one hot, punishing kiss.
Because she had asked for trouble. She'd done little else but vent her anger and hurt and guilt on him. As though it were his job to make it all better, to sort everything out and reassure her and fix all that troubled her. As though she were a child.
As, perhaps, she was. She looked about her, at the nursery she called a studio. Here she'd played with her toys and ignored what went on outside in the grownup world, where Francis had roamed like a monster at large.
She had shut him out with work, refusing to contemplate the destruction he wrought—until today, when Fiona had made her see what he'd done to the Sherburnes.
Because, perhaps, Francis' own marriage had made him callous and bitter.
Because, for years, he'd had nothing to come home to.
Because, after he'd betrayed her once too often, his wife had completely shut him out.
Because all she'd cared about was protecting herself, her pride. His infidelities were a convenient excuse to stay out of his bed...where she couldn't hide or pretend, but where she became what she truly was: worse than a whore—an animal, mindless, maddened, begging for more.
And Francis would laugh, and say she needed two men, or three, or perhaps a regiment.
In her humiliation, it had never occurred to her that he might have felt humiliated, too. He'd loved her and wanted her, yet he couldn't appease her. And so he'd sought more normal women, who could give and take pleasure. And she'd punished him for it.
She'd driven him off, as far as she could. She'd driven him into the streets of Paris and their irresistible temptations. It was she who'd given him the first push down the treacherous slope to corruption. Never once had she tried to draw him back.
That was why she'd been weeping. For her selfishness and ingratitude toward the man who'd saved her life, and made her an artist. And loved her.
Esmond had found her sick with guilt, desperate for some excuse to deny responsibility. Alone, she'd gone back again and again, all the way to the beginning, to Venice, looking for an excuse and unable to find one. She'd been desperate enough to go back once more with Esmond—but he'd seen what she had seen, and said so. Though he'd camouflaged the truth in pretty, romantic words, it was there all the same, ugly and painful.
She'd struck out at him, like a temperamental child, because he wouldn't help her lie. He wouldn't pretend she was a damsel in distress and take her in his arms and promis
e to take care of her and never abandon her.
Yet all the while, she'd been aware that this was real life, not a fairy tale. In real life, putting herself into his hands was asking to be his whore.
Under her restless pencil, the blank page was filling with line and shading: the outlines of the fireplace and the masculine figure before it. The figure was turned toward the sofa where she had stood. Or stormed about, rather, just as he'd said. Ranting like the mad, wicked creature she was at heart...who wanted to be his whore, wanted his arms around her, wanted the hot assault of his mouth.
That first taste of fire had warned of the conflagration to come and how it would end—in the ashes of despair and shame. Despite the warning, she'd been almost mad enough to succumb. Only her pride had saved her. She had broken away because she couldn't bear to let him see the disgusting creature lust would turn her into.
And so she'd driven him off, and he would never come back, and she was safe.
She dropped the pencil and buried her face in her hands.
¯¯
The following morning, Fiona paid a brief visit. She stayed just long enough to report that Lady Sherburne had worn the sapphires at dinner and express vexation at having to leave London. Lettice, Fiona's youngest sister, had fallen ill while visiting an aunt in Dorset.
"It seems I shall have to play the nurse, after all," Fiona said. "Or, more likely, it's relief from nursing that Lettice wants. Aunt Maud is very attentive, but her manner is that of one attending a deathbed. If I do not go, my little sister may well expire of gloom."
"Poor girl," Leila said feelingly. "It's dreadful to be sick away from home. She may be eighteen, but I daresay she wants her mama."
"She does, indeed, and I am that to all intents and purposes. Mama, you know, lost all her enthusiasm for mothering by Baby Number Seven. What a pity she did not lose her enthusiasm for Papa at the same time. But then, I doubt she was ever altogether clear on where babies come from. She was very much astonished each time she found herself enceinte. Papa was naughty not to explain to her."
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