“I thought you were speaking of fornication,” Esmond said.
“Same thing, in Dain’s Dictionary,” said Beaumont. He rose. “I think I’ll toddle downstairs to throw a few francs into that rathole calledRouge et Noir. Anyone else?”
Vawtry and Goodridge followed him to the door.
“Esmond?” Beaumont asked.
“Perhaps,” said the count. “I will decide later, after I finish my wine.” He took the seat beside Dain that Vawtry had vacated.
After the others were out of earshot, Dain said, “It’s nothing to me either way, Esmond, but I am curious. Why don’t you simply tell Beaumont he’s barking up the wrong tree?”
Esmond smiled. “It would make no difference, I promise you. With me, he has the same problem, I think, he has with his wife.”
Beaumont rutted with just about anything he could get his hands on. His disgusted wife had decided, some years ago, that he was to keep his hands off her. All the same, she still had her hooks in him. Beaumont was furiously possessive, and Esmond’s interest in his wife was driving him demented with jealousy. It was pathetic, Dain thought. And ludicrous.
“One of these days, maybe I’ll understand why you waste your time on her,” Dain said. “You could have something very like Leila Beaumont, you know, for a few francs. And this is the right place to find precisely what one likes, isn’t it?”
Esmond finished his wine. “I think, perhaps, I shall not come to this place again. It gives me…a bad feeling.” He stood up. “I think, tonight, I prefer to visit the Boulevard des Italiens.”
He invited Dain to join him, but Dain declined. It was nearly a quarter to one, and he had a one-o’clock appointment upstairs with an Amazonian blonde named Chloe.
Perhaps Esmond’s “bad feeling” had put Dain’s instincts on the alert, or perhaps he’d drunk less wine than usual. Whatever the reason, the marquess took careful note of his surroundings when Chloe welcomed him into the crimson-draped room.
He discerned the peephole as he was about to pull off his coat. It was several inches below his own eye level in the middle of the wall to the left of the bed.
He took Chloe’s hand and led her to a spot directly in front of the peephole. He told her to strip, very slowly.
Then he moved, very quickly—out the door and into the hall, where he yanked open the door of what appeared to be a linen closet, and kicked open the door behind that. The chamber beyond was very dark, but it was also very small, and he hadn’t far to reach when he heard the man move—toward another door, apparently. But not quickly enough.
Dain yanked him back, swung him round, and, grabbing the knot of his neckcloth, shoved him back against the wall.
“I don’t need to see you,” Dain said, his voice dangerously low. “I can smell you, Beaumont.”
It was not hard to recognize Beaumont at close quarters. His clothes and breath usually reeked of spirits and stale opium.
“I’m thinking of taking up art,” Dain went on while Beaumont gasped for breath. “I’m thinking of titling my first work ‘Portrait of a Dead Man.’”
Beaumont made a choked sound.
Dain eased his grip a fraction. “There was a remark you wished to make, swine?”
“Can’t…kill me…cold blood,” Beaumont gasped. “Guillotine.”
“Quite right. Don’t want to lose my head on your filthy account, do I?”
Releasing the neckcloth, Dain drove his right fist into Beaumont’s face, then his left into his gut. Beaumont crumpled to the floor.
“Don’t annoy me again,” Dain said. And he left.
At the same moment, Jessica was sitting on her grandmother’s bed. This was the first chance they’d had for an extended conversation, without Bertie fussing and fretting about. He’d departed about an hour ago for one pit of vice or another, at which point Jessica had ordered up some of his best cognac. She had just finished telling Genevieve about her encounter with Dain.
“An animal attraction, obviously,” said Genevieve.
With that, Jessica’s small, desperate hope—that her inner disturbances had been a feverish reaction to the effluvium emanating from the open gutter in front of Champtois’ shop—died a quick, brutal death.
“Damn,” she said, meeting her grandmother’s twinkling silver gaze. “This is not only mortifying, but inconvenient. I am in lust with Dain. Of all times, now. Of all men,him.”
“Not convenient, I agree. But an interesting challenge, don’t you think?”
