Captives of the Night (Scoundrels 2)

Heat swam up her neck. She was not a damned mare. She tried to draw back, but the hand clasping her waist didn't respond. "Monsieur," she said.

"Madame?"

"I am no longer in danger of falling."

"I am relieved to hear it. For a moment, I feared we were not well-suited as partners. But that, as you have discovered, is absurd. We are perfectly suited."

"I should be better suited at a greater distance."

"Undoubtedly, for then you should be at liberty to think of your greens and indigos and raw umber. Later, you may reflect upon them to your heart's content."

Her gaze, incredulous, shot up to his.

"Ah, at last I have your undivided attention," he said.

That night, Francis did not go out with the Comte d'Esmond, but accompanied Leila home and to her bedroom. He stood on the threshold for a moment, as though making up his mind about something, then entered the room and sat on the edge of the mattress.

"You're not staying in here," she said as she hung her evening cape in the wardrobe. "And if you've come to read me a lecture—"

"I knew he wanted you," he said. "He pretends he doesn't, but I knew—from that very first day. Gad, that innocent face of his. I've seen and dealt with them all, but he—Christ, sometimes I wonder if he's human."

"You're drunk," she said.

"Poison," he said. "Do you understand, my love? He's poison. He's like—" He made a vague gesture. "Like human laudanum. It's so pleasant…so sweet...no cares...just pleasure. If you take the right dosage. But with him, you don't know what the right dosage is—and when it's wrong, it's poison. Remember how sick you were all those years ago, that night when we left Venice? That's how I feel…inside, outside."

Francis hadn't mentioned Venice in years. She eyed him uneasily. He had come home delirious before, but never in this wretched state. Usually, he was in a fantasy world of his own. He'd ramble on incoherently, but the sound was happy. Pleasure, as he'd said. Now he was miserable and maudlin and ill. His cheeks were grey and sunken, his bloodshot eyes swollen. He looked sixty, not forty. He had been so handsome once, she thought, sickened.

She didn't love him. She'd recovered from her girlish infatuation years ago, and it hadn't taken him much longer to kill even the mild affection that remained. Yet she could remember what he'd been once and imagine what he might have become, and so she could grieve for the waste and the weakness that had brought him to this, and pity him. But for the grace of God, she might have sunk with him. Providence, however, had given her talent and the will to pursue it. She'd also been blessed with a wise and patient guardian. If not for Andrew Herriard, she might be pitiable, too, despite talent and will.

Leila moved to him and brushed the damp hair back from his forehead. "Wash your face," she said. "I'll make you some tea."

He took her hand and pressed it to his forehead. He was feverish. "Not Esmond, Leila. For God's sake, anyone but him."

He didn't know what he was saying. She would not let him upset her. "Francis, there isn't anyone," she said patiently, as to a child. "No lovers, not even a flirt. I won't be anyone's whore—not even yours." She took her hand away. "So don't talk rot."

He shook his head. "You don't understand and there's no point in explaining it because you won't believe me. I'm not sure even I believe it—but that doesn't matter. One thing's clear enough: we're getting out of Paris."

She was moving away, intending to fill the washbasin for him. Now she turned back, her heart thudding. "Leave Paris? Because you took more intoxicants tonight than was good for you? Really, Francis—"

"You can stay if you like, but I won't. Think of that, my sweet, if nothing else. I won't be around to keep your admirers out of your hair—which I know is about all I'm good for these days—a bloody bodyguard. But maybe you've decided you don't want one any more. You didn't want one tonight, obviously. Talk of whores," he muttered. "That's just what you'd be. One of hundreds. You should see the tarts when they get a glimpse of the beautiful Comte d'Esmond. Like maggots swarming over a ripe cheese. Anything, anyone he wants—as many as he wants—and it never costs him a sou. Even you, precious." He looked up at her. "You'd do his portrait for free, wouldn't you?"

The picture Francis painted was disgusting. It was also, Leila had no doubt, accurate. So, too, was his assessment of her. Francis was not a stupid man, and he knew her very well. She met his gaze. "You can't truly believe I'm in danger."

"I know it. But I don't expect you to see how dangerous he is—or admit it if you did." He rose. "It's your choice. I can't force you to do anything. I'm leaving for London. I want you to come with me." He gave her a bitter smile. "I wish I knew why. Maybe you're my poison, too."

Leila wished she knew why, too, but she'd given up trying to understand her husband years ago. She'd made a mistake in marrying him and found a way to live with it. Her life could have been better, but it also could have been far worse. A great deal worse could have befallen her had Francis not come to her rescue in Venice. At present, thanks to Andrew Herriard, she was financially secure. Despite her gender, she was gaining respect as an artist. She had a friend in Fiona. When she was working, she was happy. In general, she was happier than most of the women she knew, though her husband was a hopeless profligate. And he...well, he was as good to her as he was capable of being.

In any case, she dared not stay in Paris or anywhere else without a husband. And he, she knew, would never let her remain here without him, whatever he claimed.

"If you're truly determined to go," she said carefully, "of course I'll go with you."

His smile softened. "It isn't a whim, you know. I mean it. London. By the end of the week."

She bit back a cry. The end of the week—three commissions abandoned...but she'd get others, she told herself.

There wouldn't be another Comte d'Esmond. There would never be another face like that. Still, it was only that—a subject for painting. She doubted she could ever do it justice anyhow.

She thought perhaps it was safer not to try.

"Do you need longer?" Francis asked.

She shook her head. "I can pack up the studio in two days," she said. "One, if you help."

"Then I'll help," he said. "The sooner we're gone, the better."

Chapter 2

London, 1828

As it turned out, French aristocrats weren't the only ones wanting their countenances immortalized. A week after settling into the modest townhouse in Queen's Square, Leila was at work, and through spring, summer, and autumn, the commissions came thick and fast. The work left her no time for social life, but she doubted she could have had one anyhow. Her London clients and acquaintances moved in more exclusive circles than her Parisian ones. Here, the position of a bourgeois female artist was far more tenuous, and Francis' increasing profligacy wasn't calculated to strengthen it.

He had plenty of friends. The English upper classes, too, bred debauchees in abundance. But they were increasingly disinclined to invite him to their homes and respectable assembly halls to dine and dance with their womenfolk. Since Society would not invite the husband, it could not, with very rare exceptions, invite the wife.

Leila was too busy, though, to feel lonely, and it was futile to fret about Francis' worsening behavior. In any case, being shut away from the world made it easier to disassociate herself from his vices and villainies.

Or so she thought until a week before Christmas, when the Earl of Sherburne—one of Francis' constant companions and husband of her latest portrait subject—entered the studio.

The portrait of Lady Sherburne wasn't yet dry. Leila had finished it only that morning. Nonetheless, he insisted on paying for it then—and in gold. Then it was his, to do with as he wished. And so, Leila could only watch in numb horror while he took a stickpin to his wife's image and, with cold, furious strokes, mutilated it.

Leila's brain wasn't numb, though. She understood he wasn't attacking her work, but his evidently unfaithful wife. Leila had no troub

le deducing that Francis had cuckolded him, and she needed no details of the affair to realize that this time Francis had crossed some dangerous line.

She also saw, with devastating clarity, that the wall between her life and her husband's had been breached as well. In alienating Sherburne, Francis had put her in peril...and she was trapped. If she remained with him, his scandals would jeopardize her career; but if she ran away, he could destroy it utterly. He need only reveal the truth about her father, and she'd be ruined.

He'd never threatened her openly. He didn't need to. Leila understood his rules well enough. He wouldn't force her to sleep with him because it was too damned much of a nuisance to fight with her. All the same, she was his exclusive property; she wasn't to sleep with anyone else, and she wasn't to leave.

All she could do was retreat as far as possible.

She said nothing of the incident, hoping Sherburne's pride would keep him silent as well.

She ceased painting portraits, claiming she was overworked and needed a rest.

Francis, lost in his own drink and opiate-clouded world, never noticed.

For Christmas, he gave her a pair of ruby and diamond eardrops, which she dutifully donned for the hour he remained at home, then threw into her jewel box with the previous nine years' accumulation of expensively meaningless trinkets.

She spent New Year's Eve with Fiona at the Kent estate of Philip Woodleigh, one of Fiona's ten siblings.

Upon returning home on New Year's Day, Leila heard Francis angrily shouting for servants who'd been given the day off. When she went up to his room to remind him, she discovered, with no great surprise, that he'd had his own New Year's Eve celebration—mainly in that room, judging by the stench of stale perfume, smoke, and wine that assaulted her when she reached the threshold.