Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online

truth or lied, whether the sweet, lazy curve of his mouth was reality or illusion.
    He had caught her, and understood what she was doing, and didn't like it. She'd seen the anger: one evil spark in those fathomless blue depths, there and gone in the space of a heartbeat. He'd caught her trying to peer behind the mask and didn't like it. And so, he'd driven her off. He'd done that with his eyes alone, with one look of burning intensity… and she'd backed off, scorched.
    Yet some dark part of her had wanted to be burned again.
    Perhaps it was not entirely the artist in her, but this dark part that had kept her with him in the first place. She might have walked away any time, might have greeted him and gone, but she didn't. Couldn't. Wanted to, didn't want to.
    She wasn't an indecisive or unsure woman. Yet she'd remained with him, all the while barely able to think, let alone speak, because she felt as though she were being torn in two. Yes. No. Go away. Stay.
    Now, though he was miles away, she couldn't drive him out of her mind with work. Now he was
in
the work, and she couldn't get him out.
    Concentration washed away, and anger flooded in. Her temples began to throb. She threw down the brush and hurled the palette at the canvas, knocked oils and solvents to the floor. Furious tears streaming down her face, she stormed from one end of the studio to the other, tearing it to pieces. She hardly knew what she was doing, didn't care. All she wanted was destruction. She was ripping the drapes from the windows when she heard her husband's voice.
    "Dammit, Leila, they can hear you all the way to Shoreditch."
    She swung round. Francis stood in the doorway, clutching his forehead. His hair was matted, his jaw dark with stubble.
    "How the devil am I to sleep through this?" he demanded.
    "I don't care how you sleep," she said, her voice choked with tears. "I don't care about anything, especially
you
."
    "Gad, you picked a fine time for one of your fits. What in blazes are you doing home, anyway? You were supposed to be at Norbury House the week. Did you come back just to have a tantrum?"
    He entered the studio and looked about. "One of your better ones, by the looks of it."
    She pressed her fist to her pounding heart and looked about at what she'd done. Another tantrum. God help her.
    Then she saw him pick up the canvas. "Leave that alone," she said too shrilly. "Put it down and get out."
    He looked up at her. "So this is what it’s all about. Pining for the pretty count, are you?" He tossed the canvas aside. "Want to run back to Paris and be one of the maggots crawling over him, do you?"
    The thunder in her head was abating, but the furious frustration remained. She set her jaw. "Go away," she said. "Leave me alone."
    "I wonder how he'll like dealing with a temperamental artiste. I wonder what he'll think of
Madame's
little rages. I wonder what method he'd use to quiet you down. No telling with him. Maybe he'll beat you. Would you like that, my love? You might, you know. Some women do."
    She felt sick. "Stop it. Leave me alone. Talk your filth to one of your whores."
    "You were one of my whores once." He eyed her up and down. "Don't you remember? I do. You were so young and sweet and so very eager to please, insatiable, too, once you got over your girlish shyness. But that was only to be expected, wasn't it? Like papa, like daughter."
    A claw of ice fastened on her belly. Never, since the day he'd first broken the news, had Francis referred openly to her father.
    "Ah, that gives you a turn, does it?" As his glance moved from the canvas back to her, his dissolute mouth twisted into a smirk. "What a fool I was not to have thought of it before. But then there was so little at stake in Paris. What do the French care what your papa did or was? The English, though — they're another matter, aren't they?"
    "You bastard."
    "You shouldn't have made me jealous, Leila. You shouldn't be painting the face of a man you haven't seen in nearly a