The Courtesan's Book of Secrets

He wound his way through the crowd, grumbling at the new craze for long trains. They lay all over the floor like wrinkled rugs and Rafe toed more than one out of the way to keep from tripping. Avoiding the new fashion distracted him from searching for Cornelia. He peered over the heads of the crowd, recognising many former opponents from Madame Boucher’s, but not seeing Cornelia. Hopefully, she wasn’t already seated. With the Comte’s money, she could hire a box and take advantage of the semi-privacy to look over society and choose her victims.

At last he spied her on the staircase. Her black silk dress shot with red swayed with her hips as she took each step, teasing Rafe with just a hint of the round derri?re beneath. While he admired the curve of her long back and the white flesh of her shoulders above the dark silk, she paused on the centre landing to look over the assembled guests.

He ducked behind Lady Treadaway and the tall ostrich feather protruding from the top of her turban.

‘Is there something I may help you with?’ Lady Treadaway turned, scrunching her eyes at Rafe, the wrinkles in her thin face hardening with disapproval.

He offered her a low bow and a rakish smile. ‘No, my lady, your plumage has benefited me enough this evening.’

Her pinched expression softened into an amused smile. ‘Lord Densmore, you are too much.’

He took her hand and clasped it to his chest, warming the thin skin with a small squeeze. ‘And you, Lady Treadaway, are perfect just as you are.’

He pinched her cheek and she swatted him away, her faded eyes twinkling with the playfulness of a green girl after her first stolen kiss. ‘A tease, just like your father.’

‘I assure you, I’m serious in all my compliments.’ With a wink, he released her and bowed back into the crowd before making for the stairs.

At the top he paused, looking up and down the long hallways before catching the black train of Cornelia’s dress as it disappeared into the third box from the end.

He followed her, the actors’ voices echoing through the hallway as he pushed open the curtain and stepped inside. ‘Good evening, Cornelia.’

She whirled in her chair to face him, her full lips forming a tantalising O before tightening into a scowl. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You know how much I adore the theatre.’ He looked out over the audience, the story on stage not nearly as gripping as the one taking place in the box across the way. He snatched Cornelia’s opera glasses from her gloved hands and held them up. In the dim glow of the footlights he could just make out a couple intertwined in the shadows, engaged in a performance of their own. He struggled to see their faces, but Cornelia grabbed the glasses back from him.

‘I believe your seats are further down, near the orchestra,’ she hissed, then turned to the stage, her back stiff.

‘How very kind of you to ask me to join you.’ He slid into the empty chair behind hers and leaned over her shoulder, the curve of her neck so close to his lips. ‘I’ve been considering your plan. You need my help.’

Her skin pebbled beneath his breath, but still she refused to face him. ‘No, I don’t believe I do.’

Rafe brought his lips next to her ear, aching to slide his teeth over the tender lobe. ‘He won’t pay you.’

She turned her head, her almond-shaped eyes hooded and seductive as she peered over one smooth shoulder at him. Her lips parted, moving in a tantalising rhythm to form each whispered word. ‘He’s already agreed to pay me.’

The shock struck Rafe like cold water.

‘You met with him?’ More than one head in the audience turned and looked in their direction. He dropped his voice. ‘When?’

‘This very morning.’ Her lips, so tempting before, now chafed with the way they curled up in a triumphant smile. ‘By the end of the week, I shall have a tidy sum in my possession.’

He took her arm, the warmth of her skin beneath his fingers rattling him before he regained his focus. ‘You shouldn’t have met with him alone. It’s dangerous.’

‘As you can see, I escaped the meeting unscathed.’ She whacked his knuckles with her fan. He pulled back his hand, more annoyed by her flippant attitude than his stinging knuckles. ‘If all goes well tonight, I shall continue to prosper.’

She nodded across the theatre.

He followed her gaze to Lord Edgemont. The square-jawed man sat in his box watching them, not bothering to conceal his interest. ‘No. It’s one thing to toy with your dolt of an Earl, but not Edgemont.’

‘You needn’t bother trying to protect me. My welfare is no longer your concern.’

‘You have the register. That makes you my concern.’ He leaned in close again, trying to ignore the way the heat of her skin heightened the notes of her verbena perfume. ‘I needn’t remind you what Edgemont is capable of.’

‘Which is exactly why he deserves to suffer,’ she hissed, her calm mask sliding. ‘I want to see him squirm.’

‘I agree, but when you threaten a man like him, you make him desperate. You can’t underestimate a desperate man.’

‘Like I underestimated you?’

Rafe jerked upright, surprised by the venom in her accusation. ‘What did I do in Paris to give you such a low opinion of me?’

‘I’m sure if you think very hard, you’ll discover the source of it. For the moment, I have no need of your assistance, so leave, or I’ll make such a fuss the whole theatre will rally to my defence.’ She shifted around to face the stage, raising her glasses to watch the performance.

Rafe moved to say something, but caught the glint of more than one lorgnette turning to study them from across the theatre, including Edgemont’s. Having no desire to set society’s tongue wagging with gossip, he rose and pulled aside the curtain, leaving the curtain rings to clank against the rail as he stormed into the hallway.

Impudent wench. He hurried along the upper level of the theatre and down the main staircase, banging the banister with his fist as he descended into the nearly deserted foyer. Whatever wrong she thought he’d committed in Paris, it’d taken a stubborn hold in her mind. For the life of him, he couldn’t say what he’d done except try to help her, and this was how she chose to repay him? Dismissing him like some servant and then blaming him for her actions in France.

He stepped outside, ignoring the hackneys waiting by the kerb and letting his anger carry him towards a less respectable part of London. Cornelia would be nowhere without him. He shuddered at the memory of her and Lord Waltenham in Lord Perry’s garden and what might have happened if he hadn’t followed them. After the old man insulted her, her father probably would have wagered her away again, or sold her to some moll for a few sovereigns. She certainly wouldn’t have become a Comtesse with a generous inheritance.

Rafe halted in the middle of the pavement, ignoring the inviting calls of a doxy lounging in a doorway across the street. Despite his former misgivings about her morals, it still seemed strange a rich widow would want to dabble in blackmail, not with all those diamonds dangling from her tender ears and caressing her pretty breasts. They’d twinkled with her current good fortune, or were they there to hide the lack of one?

No matter what Cornelia might have done to him in France, if the Comte’s riches were as rickety as his legs then it was a revenge not even Rafe could have designed.

He whirled around on one heel and headed back towards the theatre. If Cornelia wore her finest baubles to distract society from any scent of money problems, it might offer his last hope to reel her in and remove his father’s name from the register.

* * *

Cornelia tried to focus on the play, but the actress’s sing-song voice grated on her nerves as much as Rafe’s sudden appearance tonight. When he’d gripped her arm, she’d nearly bolted from the box. The Comte used to curl his gnarled fingers around her and try to drag her to their bedroom, his ragged nails biting into her skin before she’d shake him off. After their first horrid night together, when he’d tried to rally his body enough to violate hers and she’d shoved him away, she’d refused to let him near her again. It’d stopped his amorous advances but not the cruel insults he’d taken sport in constantly hurling at her.

She stamped down the nasty memories and rubbed her arm, trying to feel Rafe’s warmth, but the skin was cool. His warning grasp was nothing like the Comte’s rough handling, but strong and reassuring. Until he’d pressed his flesh to hers, she hadn’t realised how much she missed the comfort of it.

Apparently, Rafe didn’t miss her quite as much. If she didn’t have the register, he wouldn’t even be troubling with her, just as she wouldn’t deign to acknowledge Lord Edgemont.

She peered through the glasses across the theatre.

Lord Edgemont sat deep in the shadows of his box, his staunch nose made more prominent by his high forehead and close-cropped hair. He was the one man in London she hated more than Rafe. She could still hear his mocking voice at Lord Perry’s card party, encouraging her drunk father to wager her hand, laughing at her father’s desperation and hers. Then, in France, he’d tried to play her, believing she was as weak and gullible as her father.

He’d regret thinking so little of her.

The audience broke into wild laughter and Cornelia shifted in her chair again, eager to leave but determined to stay. She’d spent more than she should have to hire the box for the evening. It galled her to think the expense would only result in a stinging rebuke from Rafe. What she needed was society’s notice of her and her new title, and the invitations to card parties it might garner. If the Earl found a way to delay his payment, gambling was her only chance to raise enough money to live on or pay for Andrew’s school.

It wasn’t just society’s attention she needed, but Lord Edgemont’s. Despite the uncomfortable weight of his narrow-eyed stare over the audiences’ heads, she wanted him to come to her. If he approached her tonight, in a box in front of a theatre full of people, it would make blackmailing him a touch easier and safer.

For all her bravado in front of Rafe, she was wary of the thick-necked Baron.

Cornelia jumped as the actress let out a high-pitched laugh on stage.

Hang Lord Edgemont. She stuffed the opera glasses in her reticule and quit the box, determined to find a better, cheaper place to ensnare him.