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She was rubbing her thumb against the bedpost, her brow furrowed.
He started cautiously toward her. "Leila—"
"Tell me your name," she said.
He stopped short. Curse her. To hell with her. No woman was worth—
"You don't have to," she said, still frowning at the bedpost. "We both know you can lure me straight into this bed with some lie or evasion or other. And I know that learning your name won't change anything. I'll still be a whore. And you'll know everything about me. It can't be helped. I'm...besotted." She swallowed. "I'm so tired of fighting with myself, trying to be what I'm not. I just want this one thing, you see. Your name. That's all."
He would have given her the world. If she asked, he would gladly abandon everything and take her away and shower her with his treasures. Anything she wanted.
She wanted his name.
He stood, fists clenched, heart pounding.
He saw a tear glisten at the corner of her eye. He watched her blink it back.
The rift inside widened.
Shpirti im, his soul called to hers. My heart.
He turned his back and left the room.
To hell with him, then, Leila told herself as she prepared for bed. To hell with him, she told herself hours later, when she woke sweating from a dream, which she angrily banished to the deepest recesses of her
mind.
Whatever Esmond felt for and wanted from her, it wasn't important enough to make him yield one small point: his curst name.
He expected trust. He was incapable of giving it, even to a woman who'd offered all hers, and her pride as well. She'd told him she loved him—as though that would matter. Women, men—and wild beasts, for all she knew—had been falling in love with him all his life. He thought no more of it than he did of breathing.
At least she wasn't the only idiot, she consoled herself hours later, when she rose and dressed and went downstairs, determined to eat her breakfast. She would not starve on Esmond's account. She'd refused to let Francis make a wreck of her, hadn't she? She was damned if she'd let Esmond affect her appetite.
Leila had scarcely sat down before Gaspard entered the dining room to announce that Lady Carroll was at the door. Moments later, Fiona was at the breakfast table, slathering butter and preserves on one of Eloise's enormous muffins.
"I thought you'd want to be the first to know," she was saying. "David leaves this afternoon for Surrey, to seek Norbury's permission to court Lettice."
The permission was merely a formality. If Fiona had pronounced David acceptable, the others must. Leila filled her friend's coffee cup. "Then I may conclude you're satisfied he's not a monster of depravity."
"Not a monster, no. But he didn't pretend to be a model of innocence, either, and so one must give him credit for honesty. And for poise," Fiona added as she dropped a lump of sugar into the coffee. "For I did set my teeth and tell him direct that Francis claimed an intimate knowledge of his hindquarters. 'Well, he was lying, as usual,' says His Lordship, quiet and polite as you please. So I got just as quiet and polite and asked if anyone else had such a knowledge, because I wouldn't put my sister in the hands of a mollying dog. Marriage is difficult enough, I told him, without those sorts of complications."
"Complications," Leila repeated expressionlessly, while she wondered whether murder would fall into the same category.
"Well, I know what goes on at public school, don't I? Or if not there, then at some point during the Grand Tour." Fiona bit into her muffin and chewed thoughtfully. "Forbidden fruit. Boys will be boys, Papa would say. But one must draw the line when it becomes a habit. Bad enough to catch your husband with the chambermaid, but when it's the groom or the pot boy—"
"I quite understand," Leila said. Grooms, serving lads, boys on the streets, for all one knew, she thought, sickened.
Her Ladyship went on talking between mouthfuls. "Anyhow, he bravely admitted to one drunken episode, a few years ago. He gave me his word of honor that was the first and only time. Then, still polite as ever, he wanted to know if there was anything else troubling me. 'Should I know of anything else?' I asked him. 'Can you promise that my sister will be safe and happy in your hands?' Then he became rather maudlin. I shan't repeat his effusions. Suffice to say, he is wretchedly in love with Letty, and she thinks the sun exists solely to shine on him. It's thoroughly disgusting. Is there sausage in that covered platter, love?"
"Bacon." Leila handed it over. "Did you mention the garter business?"
"I treated him to the whole story." Fiona dropped three rashers of bacon onto her plate. "It was obvious he hadn't known. He went white as a sheet. When he finally collected himself, however, he did it thoroughly. No more dramatics. He simply said, 'No one shall ever distress her again, Lady Carroll. You have my word. I shall take care of her, I promise you.' Well, what was I to say? I told him he might call me Fiona, and recommended he speak to Norbury as soon as may be—and get to Dorset before Letty murders my aunt."
Leila mustered a smile while she watched her friend make short work of the bacon. "And they all lived happily ever after," she murmured.
"Perhaps he'll ask Esmond to stand as groomsman," said Fiona. "Speaking of whom—"
"We weren't."
"What has been going on while I've been away?" Fiona attacked another muffin. "Something terribly discreet, no doubt, for I haven't heard a whisper."
"You've heard nothing because there is nothing."
"You were looking at each other in the same famished way David and Letty gaped at each other during the Fatal Ball. It was quite painful to watch."
"To imagine, you mean," Leila said stiffly. "Just as you imagined David was some evil pervert longing to do unspeakable things to your little sister."
"Actually, it was the promiscuity that bothered me. Neglect, disease—the sorts of things a wife has virtually no control over. As to unspeakable acts—Letty is no milk and water miss, you know. If she doesn't like it, she won't put up with it."
Fiona swallowed the last of the muffin. "Or am I naive? Is there something you know and I don't? Was Francis a brute in bed as well as out of it?"
"David is not Francis, as I told you several times last night," Leila said. "As I hope you discovered for yourself. From what you tell me, David answered in a frank, gentlemanly way—which is more than most of the men we know would do in like circumstances. To have his masculinity impugned—and with Francis, of all men—a filthy, sodden lecher—"
"Oh, I knew I was risking my neck, to accuse him of a hanging offense." Fiona wiped crumbs from her mouth. "Indeed, it's a wonder His Lordship didn't throw me from the carriage. But that's why I could believe him, you see. He took it like a man and answered me straight, man to man—without turning into the maddened animal most men become when you touch a sore spot. Except for the few, like Francis, who answer with a stab at your sore spot. Francis was good at that, laughing and mocking at what troubled you, and making a cruel joke of it. Gad, he was a swine." Her voice deepened and darkened. "He's dead—and the brute is still troubling us, still poisoning our minds and lives. He fouled everything he touched. Because of him, I nearly ruined my sister's chance for happiness. I listened to his filth, and believed it—when I of all people should have known better. When I'd spent years watching what he did to others—and worst of all, to you."
"It's over," Leila said, uneasy. "You've mended it."
"It isn't over for you, though, is it?"
"Of course it is," Leila said. "I've helped fix what I could. The Sherburnes are living in each other's pockets. David and Letty will be betrothed before the week is out, I daresay. And—"
"And you're still not cured of Francis Beaumont."
"I do not—"
"Francis didn't want you to know even a moment of happiness with any man," Fiona interrupted. "Especially not Esmond." She got up and came round the table to crouch beside Leila's chair. "Recollect what your husband did to my sister after I taunted him about Esmond," she said, her eyes searching Leila's. "Recollec
t the poison he dropped in my ear about David. I know Francis poisoned your mind about love—and lovemaking, no doubt—long ago. Don't tell me he didn't increase the dose when it came to Esmond."
"You're obsessed with Esmond," Leila said tightly. "You know far less of him than you do of David, yet you've been urging me to an affair practically from the moment you clapped eyes on that curst Frenchman. You invited him to Norbury House, you sent him after me when I fled, and you seem unable to spend an hour in my company without mentioning him. Yet you know no more of his character than you do of the man in the moon's. I half suspect it's sheer spite. Francis is dead, and you still want to spite him.”
"I shouldn't mind in the least if it added to his eternal sufferings." Fiona took Leila's hand and pressed it to her cheek. "I shouldn't mind anything that added to his punishments for what he did to you—to anyone I hold dear,” she said softly. "When I have trouble sleeping, or feel in the least agitated, I imagine him in his death agonies, or enduring the hideous torments of hell. It is wonderfully soothing." She smiled. "Do I shock you, love?"
Deeply. Chillingly. A question was forming in Leila's mind: Where had Fiona been the night before Francis died?—the night she'd been so late reaching Norbury House?
"You might," she said, "if I didn't know you never mean half what you say. All the same, it isn't soothing to my sensibilities to be urged to ruin just to satisfy your hunger for revenge."
