Captives of the Night (Scoundrels 2)

"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."