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pleasure-loving woman as it does for her male counterpart? It makes one think."
    "I don't need to think about it. I don't wish to think about it. I don't care what the words are. I will not sink to Francis' level."
    Fiona let out a sigh. "You haven't even got to the point of flirting with your lovely count," she said patiently. "And he's not going to drag you to bed forcibly, my dear. I assure you, my brother does run a respectable household, and you may stay out your week without the least fear of being sold into white slavery."
    "
No
. It's… He's treacherous. I don't — oh, how am I to explain?" Leila pushed her hair back from her face. "Can't you see for yourself? Francis was right, as usual. Esmond does something to people. It's like — oh, I don't know. Mesmerism."
    Fiona lifted her eyebrows.
    Leila couldn't blame her. Of course it sounded insane. She sat down on the bed beside her friend. "I had resolved not to dance with him," she said. 'It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Then — oh, I know it sounds laughable, but it wasn't. He threatened to — to
coax
me."
    "Coax you," Fiona repeated expressionlessly.
    Leila nodded. "And immediately,
that
became the last thing in the world I wanted." Looking down, she saw that she was rubbing her thumb over her wrist. She frowned. He'd noticed even that. He missed nothing, she was sure. The smallest self-betrayal. It had told him she was uneasy, and he used it. He'd threatened to coax her because he knew — the wretch
knew
— she was afraid he'd addle her even more than he'd already done.
    "I don't think it's Esmond at all," Fiona said. "Your nerves are frayed, and that's Francis' doing, mostly — and overwork, as you admitted weeks ago."
    "What Francis does is of no concern whatever to me. If I heeded his moods, I should go mad. But I know it's the opiates and the drink, and so I ignore it. He's the one with the frayed nerves. So long as he keeps out of my studio, he can tear the house to pieces for all I care. I scarcely see him anymore — and the servants are well-paid to clean up after him."
    "Yet you prefer to go back to that? When you might have the Comte d'Esmond just by crooking your little finger?"
    "I strongly doubt Monsieur comes at any woman's beckoning. Rather the other way about, I suspect. He does precisely as he pleases." Leila rose and resumed packing.
    Despite Fiona's unceasing remonstrances, Leila was finished in another half hour. Very soon thereafter, she climbed into a hired carriage and headed for London.
    She was home shortly after noon. She changed out of her traveling dress into an old day gown, donned her smock, and marched into her studio. Then and only then did she begin to release the turmoil that had been roiling inside her since the moment she'd spied Esmond in the ballroom at Norbury House.
    Fortunately, she didn't have to decide what to do. She had assembled a still life before she'd left, and no one had touched it. The two daily servants never entered her studio to clean unless expressly told to do so.
    The heap of bottles, jars, and glasses seemed merely a haphazard mess, but it presented an ideal painterly exercise. One had to
look
, concentrate totally, and paint only what one saw.
    She looked, she concentrated, she mixed her colors, she painted… a face.
    She paused, staring disbelievingly at the canvas. It was the face of the man she'd fled.
    Her heart thudding, she scraped away the paint with her palette knife, then began again. Once more she focused upon her subject, and once more the face appeared.
    And she knew why. Esmond's countenance haunted her because he was an enigma. She could read faces intuitively, but not his.
    The mystery had plagued her in Paris. She hadn't seen him, refused to think of him, for ten months. Yet after less than ten minutes in his company, she'd been lost again in the puzzle. She couldn't stop herself from trying to understand what he did, how he did it — whether his eyes told the