The Courtesan's Book of Secrets Read online

  Except today it wasn’t desire quickening her pulse, but fear. If he’d recognised her through the veil or noticed the register clutched against her like a shield, who knew how he’d have reacted. Thankfully, more carnal thoughts had distracted him from seeing what was plainly in front of him.

  She opened her eyes and shifted against the worn leather, irritated at the way her traitorous body warmed with the memory of Rafe’s dark eyes caressing her like a fine shift. She swept her fingers across her neck, the light gauze covering her breasts suddenly as heavy as wool. After the Comte’s waxy hands, even Rafe’s gentle touch would be a welcome relief.

  Emptiness slipped in beneath the desire. She rubbed her cheek, still able to feel the scratch of Rafe’s shirt against it as he’d held her in their Paris apartment two months ago. She’d been so terrified that night, clinging to him as she’d repeated the rumours of British men being arrested once war was declared. She’d feared for him and their future. As a woman, she would have been free to go, but he faced the threat of being caught and left to linger in some disease-ridden prison.

  If only he’d received such a deserving fate.

  She clenched her hands, the black gloves pulling taught over her knuckles. Like a fool, she’d trusted him, sending him off to the card room with the last of their money, believing his promise to return with enough to buy their passage home. Instead he’d fled like a coward, saving himself and leaving her to her fate.

  She banged her fists against the worn-out squabs. After all he’d done for her before, how could he have been so cruel?

  The hackney made a sharp turn and she gripped the strap above the door. In the rattle of the wheels, she could almost hear Fanny, her stepmother, laughing at her change in fortune. Thankfully, her father would never learn of it. When the letter from Fanny had finally reached her, she hadn’t cried. She couldn’t bring herself to mourn the man who’d felt nothing for her his entire life.

  Out of the window, the arch of St Paul’s dome stood over the tops of short buildings and marked the end of long streets. The familiar sight eased some of her anger and pain. There were too many days during her thankfully brief time at Château de Vane when she’d thought she’d never see this beautiful sight again. During the endless hours she’d spent wandering the dark hallways, she’d tried to convince herself marrying the Comte had been a great victory. Who knew the Comte was a bigger charlatan than any she’d ever encountered in a card room?

  The hackney hit a bump and she clutched the register to keep it from sliding off her lap. When the vehicle settled back into a rocking gate, she opened the worn leather cover, the papers beneath it yellow with age. The past no longer mattered. In her lap lay a better, more secure future for her and Andrew. With the money she’d raise from the register, she could keep paying for Andrew’s school and prevent Fanny from making good on her threat to send him to her brother in the disease-ridden West Indies.

  She closed the book, knowing it wasn’t only Andrew’s future she held.

  The fate of Rafe’s entire legacy now rested on her thighs.

  The tart taste of revenge filled her mouth, followed by a pang of guilt. She ran her finger down the first list of names, wondering on which page Rafe’s father’s name appeared.

  He’ll come after it.

  She snapped the book closed, wrinkling her nose against the dust escaping from the paper. Let him come, let him try to charm the book out from under her with all his wit and games. She’d listen, all the while dangling it before him like a sweetmeat in front of a dog’s nose. Then she’d pull it back and watch him writhe in frustration.

  It’s exactly what he deserved.

  * * *

  Rafe stepped through the crumbling brick arch into the narrow alley filled with the deafening chorus of men’s cheers. The noise called to him, drawing him through the sharp turns like a sweet smell draws a child to the kitchen. He stepped around the last corner and into an open courtyard. A large crowd circled two men, yelling and jeering as the hulks in the centre pummelled one another. They fought bare from the waist up, their broad backs covered in open cuts and dark bruises, each blow sending sweat and blood splattering into the dirt.

  A smile eased Rafe’s jaw as the crowd’s excitement vibrated through him, shifting the lingering tension from this morning’s escapade in Gracechurch Street. He’d spent the better part of the past hour walking the streets and considering his options, of which there were few. Cornelia possessed the register and there was no way to raise enough blunt to tempt it away from her. He owed more than he cared to remember to several moneylenders, including the garlic-loving Mr Smith. It was a wonder the cockroach hadn’t scurried out of the shadows to demand repayment since the debt was almost a year outstanding. Rafe wouldn’t even have dealt with the rat if he hadn’t needed money to keep his mother from starving while he was in Paris and to buy his and Cornelia’s passage to France and their way into the most lucrative card rooms. He’d hoped to repay the moneylender with their winnings, but like too many other plans, it hadn’t proceeded as he’d expected.

  Now, the outstanding loan was just another of the heavy debts hanging around his neck. With any luck, one of Mr Smith’s less-than-genteel clients would find a more creative way to eliminate his debt and save Rafe from the money man’s foul breath. Rafe doubted he’d get so lucky. Luck had avoided him like the pest house these past few months.

  He tapped his pocket, making Mrs Ross’s letter and the pound notes from the sale of the spoons crinkle. It was a shame he couldn’t use the letter to settle the old bet in the book at White’s and prove it was the maid and not the old trollop who’d died in the fire twenty-two years ago. His smile widened at the idea of entering the club and watching a few faces go pale as he held up the missive and collected his money. He could also imagine the stampede to Cornelia’s door. No doubt she’d get rich selling the damning evidence to all those heirs and then where would he be? Certainly not sharing in the wealth.

  If I’d have known this was how she planned to repay me, I’d have left her at Lord Perry’s where I found her. He tugged the bottom of his waistcoat straight, not believing his own words. Her father might have been hard hearted enough to consign his own daughter to the pawing hands of Lord Waltenham, but Rafe hadn’t been cruel enough to condemn a young woman to such a fate.

  ‘Densmore,’ a voice hailed. Lord Hartley, a short fellow made higher by his tall hat, pushed his way out of the crowd, pausing to let a young urchin scurry in front of him before he trotted up to Rafe. ‘I see Napoleon threw you out. Afraid you’d steal Josephine’s jewels?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be the first to touch her baubles.’ Rafe took the Viscount’s extended hand as the other clapped him on the back. Another cheer went up from the crowd and they turned to watch the smaller of the two fighters stagger back. He quickly regained his footing and landed a sharp hook on his opponent’s jaw. ‘No, I couldn’t stay in France, not with such cultural delights beckoning.’

  ‘Then you’ll want to bet on the next fight, on Joe James.’ Hartley stepped closer, holding one hand to his mouth and dropping his voice as much as he could in such a racket and still be heard. ‘I spoke to a man who knows his trainer and assures me he can’t lose.’

  ‘Sounds like a most reliable source,’ Rafe chided.

  Hartley shrugged. ‘More reliable than most. Come, what do you say?’

  He knew too much about bribed pugilists to risk his money on a fight. ‘No, thank you. I prefer the certainty of cards, where if a man slips a deuce from his boots, justice against him is swift.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve always been eccentric that way. Come with me anyway. Keep me company while I take my chances.’

  Rafe swung his arm towards the two men in the dirty tricorns sitting behind the betting table. ‘Lead the way.’

  He followed Hartley around the circle of men, catching glimpses of the fighters over the heads of the ever-shifting mass of bodies. The larger man pounded the smaller one to the delight of the spectators whose bloodthirsty cheers grew louder, eager for the larger man to deliver the coup de grâce and put his poor contender out of his misery.

  ‘Whatever happened to the delightful little widow I used to see you with in Paris?’ Hartley asked.

  The larger boxer slammed his fist into the smaller man’s face, sending him spinning to the ground in a puff of blood and dust. ‘She married the Comte de Vane.’

  Hartley’s eyebrows shot up before scrunching down in disbelief. ‘The relic from the Ancien Regime who used to haunt Madame Boucher’s card parties?’

  ‘The very one.’ The old codger used to enjoy playing Cornelia at the tables, his rheumy eyes raking her body as he tried to capture her interest. Rafe once admired the artful way she’d kept him at bay, flirting with him just enough to encourage more wagers. Never in all the games had Rafe guessed she was scheming to win more than the Comte’s counters.

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s a more practical way for a woman to earn her wealth.’ Hartley shrugged, more amused than disgusted by the pairing. Unlike Rafe.

  ‘Apparently.’

  Rafe picked at a small chip on a waistcoat button, recalling her saucy smile their first night at Madame Boucher’s when she’d laid down her cards to win a tidy sum and the notice of all Paris society. He’d proudly watched her from across the room as she’d risen from the table and tucked the bills into the small pocket sewn into the front of her stays. She’d been so beautiful, the cunning fox. Her yellow dress hugging her full breasts and emphasising her willowy height had made her a rare daisy among roses. As she’d crossed the gilded and mirrored ballroom, she’d collected every man’s gaze. Then, when her vivid blue eyes and radiant smile had fixed on him, he’d almost forgotten the terms of their arrangement and dropped to his knees to propose.

  Almost.

  If he had, he certainly wouldn’t be in his current predicament. Though she wouldn’t have accepted him, not with men like the Comte sniffing about her skirts, but he hadn’t known that back then.

  His big toe rubbed at the ragged edge of the hole in his stocking. If the soft weight of her cheek on his chest and the delicate tears moistening her lashes during their last night together in Paris hadn’t muddled his thoughts, he might have caught her ruse. Instead he’d strode out to the card rooms like some besotted fool, thinking himself the hero for finding the money to get them home before the impending blockade could trap them in France.

  It’d been a nasty awakening when he’d returned to see her driving away in the Comte’s carriage. She hadn’t even possessed the decency to write him a note. Instead, she’d left the empty wardrobe and missing portmanteaus to explain everything, the finishing stanza of her message delivered when he’d overheard Lord Rollingham in a card room discussing her marriage to the Comte.

  Never once in all their time together had he thought her so manipulative, so hard hearted and cunning. How wrong he’d been.

  The sneaky wench.

  The crowd shoved past Rafe, knocking against his shoulders as it surged forward to congratulate the winner. The boxer raised his hands in triumph, flashing a near-toothless smile through a cut lip and one swelling eye.

  Rafe ground his jaw at having been so easily duped, but as much as he cursed the Comte for winning Cornelia, he should’ve thanked the decrepit crook for forcing their separation. Marriage was never meant to be part of their partnership. He hadn’t saved her from one disgrace only to pull her into a poverty he couldn’t even describe as genteel, living with his mother in the few habitable rooms of Wealthstone Manor or huddled in his draughty lodgings in Drury Lane.

  Two men dragged the unconscious boxer from the ring and into one of the brick buildings flanking the yard. The crowd moved away from the centre, breaking into small groups to commiserate over their losses and plan their next wager.

  ‘Last chance to bet, Densmore.’ Hartley moved forward in line, eager to part himself from his blunt.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Rafe stepped to one side to make room for others.

  Movement in a small window overlooking the square caught Rafe’s attention. He looked up at the sagging building to meet the hard eyes of a dark-haired woman watching the gathering. The image of Cornelia in the hackney rushed back to him and he swallowed down the foul taste in his mouth.

  He could imagine a number of reasons why she might want the register, none of them good. It certainly wasn’t to protect her father’s name. The soused country Baronet couldn’t have known anything of value to sell to the French. There was something more nefarious behind her acquisition. If there wasn’t, she wouldn’t have skulked past him this morning like some sharper creeping off to plan her next swindle.

  Worry crept over him like the small hand sliding into his pocket.

  Rafe snatched the arm of the ragamuffin standing next to him. ‘Nothing for you there.’

  ‘I didn’t do nuffin’,’ the boy squealed, trying to twist free, but Rafe held him tight. ‘I’m only running an errand for me ma.’

  The panicked boy shot a look up at the building and Rafe followed it to see the dark-haired woman gripping the window pane. Her narrow chin and the mole above her lip reminded him of the daughter of a squire, a Miss Allen, he’d met some years ago at a country garden party. It was the last one he and his mother had attended before his father’s mounting debts had forced them to shun invitations. If it was the same young lady, then she’d fallen a long way since he’d last seen her in Sussex.

  Rafe studied the thin boy, his face streaked with dirt, his hair covered with a threadbare cap. He was hardly worth the hangman’s rope. He dug a coin out of his pocket and pressed it into the boy’s grimy palm. ‘Take this to your mother and don’t come back in this crowd again.’

  He let go and the boy staggered back, clutching the coin to his chest as he darted through the door of the tumbledown rookery. Rafe tipped his hat to the woman in the window.

  She mouthed ‘thank you’, then receded back into the shadows.

  If only all cheats were so easily dealt with. The sense this round was lost to Cornelia still rubbed, the frustration of Rafe’s current situation more annoying than the ever-widening hole in his stocking. Without the register, any effort to protect and build back the Densmore fortune and name, to spare his mother from further poverty and degradation, would come to nothing. If Cornelia showed anyone in the House of Lords the evidence of his father’s crime, he and his mother were finished. The Bill of Attainder was still in place and the greying Lord Twickenham still intent on enforcing it. Wealthstone would be seized and Rafe’s title forfeit.

  It was enough to ruin a good boxing match.

  Hartley appeared at Rafe’s side, holding his ticket and practically fluttering with excitement. ‘Come on, I want to get a good place.’

  They walked around the edge of the circle of men. Rafe’s height gave him the advantage in the crowd, but they moved three times before Hartley was content with his view. A cheer went up as the fighters appeared in the doorway of one building. The crowd parted, allowing the two boxers to pass into the circle of spectators. They stood across from each other, looking less like a pair of Hercules and more like two blocks of stone some sculptor had hacked at to give them arms, legs and something of a face.

  ‘Which one is your man?’ Rafe asked.

  ‘The ox with the scar on his arm.’ Hartley rubbed his hands together in anticipation. ‘This should be good.’

  Rafe studied the scarred fighter, agreeing with Hartley’s description of his bovine features. The man walked in a tight circle, his steps heavy, his arms swinging about his body like two logs. ‘A fiver says your man goes down in the first round.’

  Hartley adjusted his hat. ‘That’s no way to wish a man luck.’

  ‘You’re confident in your tip?’

  ‘It’s the best one I’ve had in weeks.’

  ‘Then ten pounds says he falls like a chopped oak.’

  Hartley levelled a finger at Rafe. ‘I’ll take the bet and you’ll wish you hadn’t made it.’

  The fight began and the two boxers moved to the centre of the ring, circling and jabbing at each other. The unblemished man moved faster than his opponent and landed one good punch to the ox’s gut before catching him with a right hook. The crowd went silent as the ox tipped on his heels and landed flat on his back in the dirt.

  The smaller man lifted his arms in triumph.

  Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

  Grumbles rippled through the crowd as men exchanged money.

  Hartley groaned, peeled a ten-pound note off his roll of money and handed it to Rafe. ‘I should have known better.’

  ‘And next time you will.’ Rafe tucked the note into his pocket.

  He thought of Cornelia and his determination swelled with the crowd’s excitement as the next pair of fighters took to the ring. Rafe might be short his entrance fee, but he’d be damned if he’d let Cornelia knock him out of the game. Gaining access to the register wouldn’t be as easy as walking into Mrs Ross’s house and purchasing it, but he’d find a way to slip between Cornelia’s covers, so to speak, make her see how much she owed him for everything he’d done for her and overcome whatever grudge she’d developed against him in France.

  As a newly minted Comtesse, she was sure to be at the Dowager Countess of Daltmouth’s salon tonight, worming her way into society. Rafe would be there, too, to remind her of her debt to him. Whatever her plans for the register, she owed him at least the safety of removing his father’s name from the book and it was time to call in her vowel.