‘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.