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was the only way it could be done.
    Ismal had quietly and thoroughly disassembled the Paris organization Beaumont had so hastily abandoned. The various governments were no longer troubled by that knotty problem, and Beaumont could do nothing now but rot to death.
    Considering the lives Beaumont had destroyed, the suffering and fear he'd caused, Ismal considered it fitting that the swine die slowly and painfully. Also fitting that he die in the way he'd ruined so many others — of vice and its diseases, of the poisons relentlessly eroding mind and body.
    The wife was another matter. Ismal hadn't expected her to leave Paris with her husband.
    The marriage, after all, was merely a formality. Beaumont himself had admitted he hadn't slept with his wife in five years. She became violent, he said, if he touched her. She'd even threatened to kill him. He treated the matter as a joke, saying that if a man couldn't have one woman in bed, he'd only to find another.
    True enough, Ismal thought, if one referred to the common run of women. But Leila Beaumont was… ah, well, a problem.
    While he pondered the problem, Ismal let his host lead him from one group of guests to the next. After he had met what seemed like several hundred people, Ismal permitted himself another glance toward the terrace doors. He caught a glimpse of russet, but could no longer see Madame Beaumont properly. She was surrounded by men. As usual.
    The only woman he'd ever seen linger at her side was Lady Carroll, and she, according to Lord Norbury, had not yet arrived from London. Leila Beaumont had come yesterday with one of Lady Carroll's cousins.
    Ismal wondered whether Madame had spied him yet. But no. A great crow-haired oaf stood in the way.
    Even as Ismal was wishing him to Hades, the large man turned aside to speak to a friend, and in that moment Leila Beaumont's glance drifted round the ballroom, past Ismal… and back… and her posture stiffened.
    Ismal didn't smile. He couldn't have done so if his life depended on it. He was too aware of her, of the shocked recognition he could feel across half a room's length, and of the tumult that recognition stirred inside him.
    He left his own group so smoothly that they scarcely noticed he was gone. He dealt with the men about her just as adroitly. He ingratiated himself without having to think about it, chatted idly with this one and that until he'd made his way to the center of the group, where Leila Beaumont stood, spine straight, chin high.
    He bowed. "Madame."
    She gave him a quick, furious curtsy. "Monsieur."
    Her voice throbbed with suppressed emotion as she introduced him to those nearest her. Her lush bosom began to throb, too, when one by one her admirers began to drift away. She was not permitted to escape, however. Ismal held her with social inanities until at last he had her to himself.
    "I hope I have not driven your friends away," he said, looking about him in feigned surprise. "Sometimes I may offend without intending to do so. It is my deplorable English, perhaps."
    "Is it?"
    His gaze shot back to her. She was studying his face with a penetrating, painterly concentration.
    He grew uneasy, which irritated him. He should not allow himself to feel so, but she had been irritating him for so long that his mind was raw from it. He returned the examination with a simmering one of his own.
    A faint thread of pink appeared in her cheeks.
    "Monsieur Beaumont is well, I trust?" he asked.
    "Yes."
    "And your work goes well, I hope?"
    "Very well."
    "You have accommodated yourself to London?"
    "Yes."
    The short, fierce syllables announced that he'd driven painting altogether from her mind. That was enough, he told himself. He smiled. "You wish me at the Devil, perhaps?"
    The pink deepened. "Certainly not."
    His glance trailed down to her gloved hands. The thumb of her right hand moved restlessly over the back of her left wrist.
    She followed his gaze. Her hand instantly stilled.
    "I think you have wished me at the