January knew without turning that Galen Peralta stood behind him in the doorway.

It was his cue to depart. He was sorely tempted to remain and spoil her lines but knew it wouldn't do him or Madeleine Trepagier any good. And Peralta would only order him out in any case.

The boy was trembling, torn between rage and humiliation and desire. Angelique moved toward him, her chin raised a little and her body curving, luscious. "Aren't we a brave little man, to be sure?" she purred, and shook back her outrageous hair, her every move a calculated invitation to attack, to rage, to the desperate emotion of a seventeen-year-old.

Stepping past the ashen-faced boy in the doorway, January felt a qualm of pity for him.

"You... you..." He shoved January out of his way, through the door and into the hall, and slammed the door with a cannon shot violence that echoed all over the upstairs lobby.

It was the last time January saw Angelique Crozat alive.

THREE

Bitch, thought January, his whole body filled with a cold, dispassionate anger. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Anger consumed him, for the way she had looked at him, like a piece of property, and at the knowledge that this woman had flitted and cut and stolen her way through the life of the woman who had once been Madeleine Dubonnet. That for one moment he had wanted her-as probably any man did who saw her-disgusted him more than he could say. His confessor, Pere Euge-nius, would probably call it repentance for the Original Sin, and he was probably right.

Back in the ballroom, major war appeared to have broken out.

January heard the shouting as he crossed the upstairs lobby, which was completely deserted, men and

women crowding the three ballroom doors. Monsieur Bouille's shrill accusations rode up over the

jangling background racket of a brass band playing marches in the street outside. "A swine and a liar, a