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"That's your conscience," she said, striving to keep her tones cool. "Telling you how unfair and sneaky and disrespectful you've been. If I were you, I should make a clean breast of it. You'll feel better, and so shall I. I should like to have it all clear and settled, so we can put it behind us and get down to our present business. We'll never make proper progress with this—this—whatever it is—hanging between us."
He wanted to. She saw that in his taut stance and in the rigid planes of his perfectly sculpted profile. More important, she could feel it.
"Oh, come, Esmond," she said. "Be reasonable, will you? Just tell me the story. A report, if you will. As though we were colleagues. I've already figured out it's going to be nasty. But I have a very strong stomach. Obviously. No woman of delicate sensibilities could have survived ten years with Francis."
"I should have killed him." His voice was low, tight with remorse. "I should not have brought you into it. A stupid mistake."
She believed the remorse she heard was genuine, too. He had used her, as she'd guessed. But not altogether coldbloodedly, as she'd feared.
"Yes, but your mind was clouded by lust," she said. "It happens to the best of men. Nobody's perfect."
She waited through a long, unhappy silence. Then, finally, he came to the sofa, and without looking at her, sat down.
Then, still without looking at her, he told her about a place called Vingt-Huit.
Ismal didn't tell her everything. He limited himself to a few of the milder examples of Vingt-Huit's activities. And his concise summary of what he'd done to destroy it and Francis Beaumont’s sanity didn't include Beaumont's infatuation with himself. This wasn't to spare her the news that Ismal had deliberately misled the man, but because he didn't want her to know her husband had for years been betraying her with his own sex as well as with women. She was English, like Avory. And if Avory could regard one drunken episode with Carstairs as an unforgivable, beastly and unnatural crime, Ismal had little doubt Leila Beaumont would be sick with horror that she'd ever let her husband touch her.
Even now, though she heard him out quietly, Ismal had no idea of her state of mind. When he finished, he braced himself for the bitter recriminations that were sure to follow and, worse, the tears he knew he couldn't bear.
After an interminably long moment, she let out a sigh. "Oh, Lord," she said softly. "I had no idea. But then, I couldn't, could I? Even professionals—even you—had a devil of a time getting to the bottom of it."
She laid her hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, Esmond. You have relieved my mind. There wasn't anything I could do. Francis wasn't just weak. He was evil. Even Papa's crimes seem small compared to this. Papa was greedy and conscienceless, I'm sure. But Francis was cruel. I can see why you wish you had killed him. I can also see why you wouldn't want to dirty your hands."
She had not taken her hand away, and it took all his self-control to keep from pressing his cheek against it and begging forgiveness. "I am not an assassin," he said.
"No, of course not." She squeezed his shoulder. "Are all your missions so horrid and complicated? How the devil do you bear it—dealing with the lowest of vermin, and having to walk on eggs the whole time. No wonder the Royals think so highly of you." She laughed softly. "Francis said you weren't quite human—and he didn't know the half of it."
That affectionate squeeze, the compassion he heard in her voice, bewildered him. Her laughter left him utterly at sea.
"You are laughing," he said stupidly.
"I'm not a saint," she said. "I'm not above enjoying a bit of vengeance. Francis deserved to suffer. And you, apparently, were the only one who could make him do so. I wish you'd told me sooner. It appalls me to think of the tears I wasted on that filthy, despicable—Gad, I don't know any words bad enough." She got up from the sofa arm. "But you do, I daresay. You've twelve languages at your disposal, Avory says. Would you like some champagne?"
He couldn't make sense of her. He rubbed his head. "Yes, yes. I should like something."
"Lady Charlotte and Sellowby gave me a few bottles," she said, moving toward the door. "At first, I was sufficiently vexed with you to consider breaking them, one by one, over your head. But you've risen above yourself tonight, Esmond. And I think one ought to reward good behavior."
Numbly, he watched her leave the studio.
She wasn't angry, hurt, disgusted. She thought he'd been good.
She had actually thanked him a moment before and said he'd relieved her mind. And she had touched him, all on her own, unbidden. In affection. And sympathy. "Horrid and complicated" she'd called his work—as it was. And she'd wondered how he bore it—as he wondered sometimes, late at night, alone.
She could have turned away and hated him, for using her, for leaving her to deal with the maddened wretch he'd made of her husband.
Instead, Leila Beaumont had turned to him, and touched him, as though he were the one who had suffered and needed comforting.
He realized then how very much he'd wanted comforting. Because the task had been vile, and he had resented it and the demands the curst Royals made upon him. And he had grieved for Beaumont's victims, just as he'd grieved today for Avory's lonely misery.
And, yes, Ismal had wanted her compassionate voice and the touch of her strong, beautiful hand, because he was almost human, and he wished, like any mortal, for someone to turn to.
Which was a risk he couldn't afford.
Ismal was standing at the worktable when she returned with the champagne.
Moving to her work area had helped him bring his mind and heart back to objectivity. He had collected his composure and his wits, and had sunk his unsettling emotions back into the quagmire that passed for his heart.
After he'd filled their glasses and given her hers, she said, "I shall propose the first toast. To you." She touched her glass to his. "For your clever handling of a thorny problem—and for showing a proper respect for my intelligence. For once."
"I am in awe of your intelligence," he said. "I knew you were perceptive. I did not realize, though, how diabolically quick your mind was."
Or how generous your heart was, he added silently.
"Flattery," she said, and sipped her wine.
"Truth," he said. "Your mind is diabolical. It goes with your body. I should have realized."
"You were bound to say something like that." She brought her glass to his. "Very well, Esmond. To my confounded body, then."
She took a longer sip this time, then settled onto one of the stools at the table and proposed they get down to business.
"I've already relayed my most momentous discovery," she said. "My hosts believe or pretend to believe Lettice chose to go away for a change of scenery and rest. They are aware of David's interest in Lettice and of Fiona's disapproval. Lady Charlotte is on Fiona's side. Sellowby is square on David's. That was how I learned about Carstairs. Sellowby was pointing out to his sister that David had lost a brother, then, a year later—in shocking circumstances—a close friend. Sellowby feels David is fundamentally a model of propriety who went a bit wild on account of confusion. Furthermore, being young, David needed a good bit of time to sort things out."
"Sellowby is closer to the mark than he can know," Ismal told her. "Avory is confused, and Carstairs' death was the start of his problems. We spent half the day together. I learned his terrible secret."
Her fingers tightened about the glass stem. "How terrible?"
"Actually, it is not so bad. He is impotent and—"
"Oh, God." Her face white, she set down the glass with shaking hands.
Ismal hadn't expected her to take it so hard. Hadn't she listened to the tale of Vingt-Huit and her husband's perfidies as calmly as though it had been a lecture on galvanic currents? But she'd despised her husband. Avory she cared for very much. Ismal should have understood the difference.
Inwardly cursing his tactlessness, he took her hand. "Do not upset yourself. It is not permanent. A simple case to remedy. You do not think I would l
eave your favorite to suffer, do you?"
He released her hand and gave her back the glass of champagne, and ordered her to drink. She did.
"Avory's ailment can be easily corrected," he assured her. "When I tell you the story, you will understand. He was out debauching with Carstairs the night the papers were stolen. The next day, Carstairs shot himself. The shock of his friend's death, along with some needless guilt and too much liquor, caused Avory a common, but temporary malfunction. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, he met up with your husband, to whom he confided his problem during some drunken evening. Your husband told him it was an incurable disease—worse than the pox—contracted through certain intimate activities."
"Don't tell me," she said. "I can guess. There isn't any such disease, is there?"
Ismal shook his head. "But Avory believed the lie, and his mind, deeply affected, affected his body. If he had told a doctor what he told your husband, he might have been healed long since. But Beaumont made Avory so sick and ashamed that he could tell no one else. And so he has lived two years with the loss of his manhood. Also, in recent months, I am sure he lived with the anxiety that your increasingly irrational husband would expose the hideous secret."
