"We spoke on occasion. That is not intimacy." The potent blue gaze settled again upon Leila. "My definition of intimacy is most precise and particular."
The room's temperature seemed to be climbing rapidly. Leila decided it was time to leave, whether her allotted ten minutes had passed or not. As the count accepted a wineglass from Francis, she rose. "I had better get back to work," she said.
"Certainly, my love," said Francis. "I'm sure the count understands."
"I understand, and yet I must regret the loss." This time Esmond's intent blue gaze swept her from head to toe.
Leila had endured far too many such surveys to mistake the meaning. For the first time, however, she felt that meaning in every muscle of her body. Worse, she felt the pull of attraction, dragging at her will.
But she reacted outwardly in the usual way, her countenance becoming more frigidly polite, her posture more arrogantly defiant. "Unfortunately, Madame Vraisses will regret even more the delay of her portrait," she said. "And she is one of the least patient women in the world."
"And you, I suspect, are another." He stepped closer, making her pulse race. He was taller and more powerfully built than she'd thought at first. "You have the eyes of a tigress, Madame. Most unusual—and I do not mean the golden color alone. But you are an artist, and so you see more than others can."
"I do believe my wife sees plainly enough that you're flirting with her," said Francis, moving to her side.
"But of course. What other polite homage may a man pay another man's wife? You are not offended, I hope." The count treated Francis to an expression of limpid innocence.
"No one is in the least offended," Leila said briskly. "We may be English, but we have lived in Paris nearly nine years. Still, I am a working woman, monsieur—"
"Esmond," he corrected.
"Monsieur," she said firmly. "And so, I must excuse myself and return to work." She did not offer her hand this time. Instead, she swept him her haughtiest curtsy.
He answered with a graceful bow.
As she headed for the door a tightly smiling Francis hurried to open for her, Esmond's voice came from behind her. "Until next we meet, Madame Beaumont," he said softly.
Something echoed in the back of her mind, making her pause on the threshold. A memory. A voice. But no. If she'd met him before, she would have remembered. Such a man would be impossible to forget. She gave the faintest of nods and continued on.
At four o'clock in the morning, the unforgettable blue-eyed gentleman relaxed in a semi-recumbent position upon the richly brocaded sofa of his own parlor. Very much in the same manner, many years before, had he often reclined upon his divan, to plot against his wily cousin, Ali Pasha. In those days, the gentleman was called Ismal Delvina. Nowadays, he was called whatever was most convenient to his purposes.
At present he was the Comte d'Esmond.
His British employers, with the aid of their French associates, had thoroughly documented his bloodline and title, Ismal’s French was flawless, as were most of the other eleven languages he spoke. To speak English with a French accent presented no difficulty. Speech, in any form, was one of his many gifts.
Apart from his native Albanian, Ismal preferred English. It was an unsystematic language, but marvelously flexible. He liked playing with its words. He had very much liked playing with "intimacy." Madame Beaumont had become wonderfully incensed.
Smiling at the recollection of their too brief encounter, Ismal sampled the thick Turkish coffee his servant, Nick, had prepared.
"Perfect," he told Nick.
"Of course it's perfect. I've had practice enough, haven't I?"
Nonetheless, Nick visibly relaxed. Though he'd served Ismal six years, the younger man had not lost his determination to please. Twenty-one-year-old Nick was a trifle short on patience, and he was not very respectful, except in public. But then, he was half-English, and in any case, Ismal had had his fill of obsequious menials.
"Practice you've surely had," Ismal said. "Even so, I am impressed. You've endured a long and tedious night following me and my new friend from one Parisian den to the next."
Nick shrugged. "As long as it was worth your while."
"It was. I believe we shall have disposed of Beaumont in a month. Were the matter less urgent, I should allow Nature to take her course, for Monsieur is well on the way to disposing of himself. This night he consumed opium enough to kill three men his size."
Nick's dark eyes glinted. "Does he eat it or smoke it?"
"Both."
"That does make it easier. You've only to add a few grains of strychnine or prussic acid—gad, you could do it with ground up peach pits or apricots or apples or—"
"I could, but it is not necessary. I have an unconquerable aversion to killing unless it is absolutely necessary. Even then, I dislike it excessively. Also, I have a particular aversion to poison. The method is not sportsmanlike."
"He's hardly been sportsmanlike himself, has he? Besides, it would get rid of him without a lot of fuss."
"I want him to suffer."
"Well, that's different, then."
Ismal held out his cup, which Nick dutifully refilled.
"It has taken many months to track down this one man," Ismal said. "Now that his greed puts him in the palm of my hand, I wish to play with him for a while."
It had begun in Russia. Ismal had been pursuing another inquiry when the tsar had thrust a more disturbing problem into his hands. Peace negotiations between Russia and Turkey were threatened because the sultan had obtained some letters that didn't belong to him. The tsar wanted to know how and why those letters had ended up in Constantinople.
Ismal was well aware that throughout the Ottoman Empire, spies routinely intercepted correspondence. Yet these letters had not been anywhere in the sultan's domains, but in Paris, safely locked in a British diplomat's dispatch box. One of the diplomat's aides had shot himself before he could be questioned.
In the following months, traveling between London and Paris, Ismal had heard a number of other stories—of similar thefts, inexplicable bankruptcies, and other abrupt, major losses.
As it turned out, the events were connected. Those involved had one thing in common: all had, at one time or another, been regular visitors to an unprepossessing building in a quiet corner of Paris.
The place was known simply as Vingt-Huit—number twenty-eight. Within its walls one might, for a price, enjoy any of the full range of human vices, from the most mundane to the most highly imaginative. There were some people, Ismal well understood, who would do anything for a price—and others desperate or corrupt enough to pay it.
It was Francis Beaumont they paid.
They didn't know this, of course, and Ismal himself hadn't a solid piece of proof. Nothing he could use in a court of law, that is. But Francis Beaumont could not be brought to a court of law, because none of his victims could be brought to the witness stand. Each and every one, like the young aide, would choose suicide rather than submit their sordid secrets to public scrutiny.
Consequently, it was left to Ismal to deal with Beaumont—quietly, as he'd dealt with so many other matters troubling King George IV, his ministers, and his allies.
Nick's voice broke in on his master's meditations. "How do you mean to play this time?" he asked.
Ismal studied the contents of the delicately painted cup. "The wife is faithful."
"Discreet, you mean. She'd have to be crazy to be faithful to that corrupt swine."
"I think perhaps she is a little crazy." Ismal looked up. "But she possesses a great artistic gift, and genius is not always fully rational. Beaumont has been fortunate in her artistic dedication. Her work occupies nearly all her mind and time. As a result, she scarcely notices the many men seeking her attention."
Nick's eyes widened. "You don't mean to tell me she didn't notice you?"
Ismal's soft chuckle was rueful. "I was obliged to exert myself."
"Well, I'll be hanged. I'd have given anything to
see that."
"It was most disconcerting. I might have been a marble statue, or an oil portrait. Form, line, color." Ismal made a sweeping gesture. "I look into her beautiful face and all I discern is lust—the lust of an artist. She makes me an object. It is insupportable. And so I am a bit...indiscreet."
Nick shook his head. "You're never indiscreet—not without a purpose. I'll lay odds your purpose wasn't just to make her pay proper attention."
"I believe you mean 'improper attention.' The lady is wed, recollect, and the husband was present. And so when I obtained a reaction not altogether artistic, I also obtained a reaction from him. He is vain as well as possessive. Consequently, he was displeased."