Chapter Four

At five that morning, before a single paper had landed on a single doormat in London, Rafe had been in Paris again.

It was always the same. The bass of the club fading behind them. Cobblestones still wet from a rain that had stopped an hour before. A taxi ride spent not touching, which had somehow been worse than touching. The lift at the Hôtel Marivaux, and the way she'd laughed into his mouth when the doors closed, as if kissing a stranger were the funniest, bravest thing she had ever done.

"Belle," he'd called her, because she'd refused to give him her name. He remembered how her laugh had changed when he said it.

He remembered the rest, too. He'd spent four years trying not to.

What came back most clearly was the end: her head on his chest, one fingertip drawing lazy circles over his heart, her voice already slurring towards sleep. "Let's keep it anonymous," she'd murmured again, as if he might have forgotten.

"Bien sûr," he'd said. Of course.

He had lied. He'd meant to ask her name in the morning. Instead he'd woken to a stranger rummaging near his wallet, and every honey trap he had ever been sent had answered for him.

What else do you want? A tip?

Rafe jolted awake in the grey light of his penthouse, the sheets cold on the other side of the bed. He lay still, letting the dream drain out of him. Then he sat up and dragged a hand through his hair.

Four years, and his body still hadn't got the message.

"Get it together," he muttered.

It didn't matter what Paris had been. What mattered was what she was now: Orla Vauclair's daughter, and the only piece on the board his stepmother could not afford to lose.

Six years ago, his mother had been dying slowly of a bad heart, and his father had hired the best private nurse in London to sit with her: a soft-spoken Irishwoman called Orla Dunne. Seven months later, Annabel Ashcombe Vauclair died in her sleep. Heart failure, the doctors said, and nobody argued.

Nobody but Rafe, who had heard his mother laughing over lunch the day before. Who had watched the nurse at the funeral and seen that she wasn't grieving. She was taking inventory.

Eighteen months after the funeral, his father married her.

Rafe had spent six years trying to prove what he knew, and failing. Orla was careful. Worse, she was patient. And she had all the time in the world, because of a clause his grandfather had written before Rafe was old enough to shave.

Henri Vauclair had distrusted two things: love, and people who married for money. His will left fifty-one per cent of the Vauclair Group in trust for his only grandson, on two conditions. Rafe had to marry before his thirtieth birthday, and the marriage had to last three years. Henri, who had never once been accused of romance, had added one more word: the marriage had to be genuine.

If Rafe failed, the shares went to Antoine outright. And Antoine's new will, as Rafe had learned at considerable expense, left everything to his beloved wife.

For two years, Orla had been steering Cressida Vane back into his life — at dinners, at galas, in the society pages. A bride Orla had bought and paid for, who would walk out at two years and eleven months and take his inheritance with her.

Four months ago, his investigator had brought him the other plan.

Orla had quietly bought a debt: forty thousand pounds her ex-husband owed a loan shark called Vince Draper. On paper, it was now worth one and a half million. Paper-clipped to the file was a photograph of the ex-husband's daughter.

Rafe had stared at it for an hour.

Belle. Belle was Orla's daughter.

He'd understood the plan at once, because it was the plan he would have made. Squeeze the father until the daughter came begging. Give her a room in Hampstead, with the debt hanging over her head. Then hand her to Rafe with a bow on: a pretty, desperate, obedient bride, chosen by Orla, controlled by Orla, ready to leave him the moment her mother said so.

He could have warned her. He could have paid Draper off anonymously and ended it in an afternoon. Instead he'd told himself that men like Draper made threats, not house calls, and he hadn't checked. He had waited for the night Orla sprang her trap, and he'd made sure his car was at the bottom of those steps when Furina came running down them.

He hadn't just stolen Orla's Plan B. He had married it.

She's a means to an end, he reminded himself. Nothing more.

His phone buzzed on the bedside table. Callum. Rafe answered without a greeting.

"It's done," Callum said. "Every front page."

Cold satisfaction settled in Rafe's chest. "Très bien."

He ended the call, swung his legs out of bed, and walked past the wallet on the dresser without looking at it. He didn't need to. He knew exactly what was folded inside.

By noon, he was standing in the drawing room in Hampstead.

The chandelier threw gold across the marble floor. His stepmother sat on the edge of the sofa in a sapphire cocktail dress, every hair in place, every diamond chosen. Orla never did anything by halves, and it showed from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Through the double doors, the dining table was laid for eight. Nobody was sitting at it.

"You really thought," Rafe said, "you could walk into my father's house and take everything he had?"

Orla's eyes narrowed. "Whatever grievances you have with me, Rafe, this is neither the time nor the place."

"You had two plans. Cressida was the first. Your daughter was the second." He let it land. "Your daughter is my wife."

For the first time in six years, he watched her composure slip — a hairline crack, there and gone.

"You think you've hurt me?" she said. "I don't care what happens to that girl."

"I know. You care about the trust." He glanced through the doors at the empty table. "And about the ladies who cancelled lunch this morning. Was it all seven?"

Her hand closed on the arm of the sofa until her knuckles went white. "I loved your father. I married him for the right reasons."

"Don't." His voice dropped. "I know what you did in my mother's room. One day I'll prove it."

"And until then?"

"Until then, I watch you lose. Slowly. Every day for three years."

"Your father—"

"My father thinks I fell in love in Paris." Rafe turned for the door. "Let him."

He left her there in her perfect room, beside her perfect table, set for nobody.

---

Across London, Furina was carrying three plates of risotto through the restaurant in Covent Garden when the front door crashed open.

The photographers came in like a weather front, all elbows and flashes.

"Furina! Over here! How does it feel to be Mrs Vauclair?"

"Is it true about you and your stepbrother?"

"How does it feel shagging someone you're meant to call brother, love?"

She froze. The questions hit like thrown stones, each one landing somewhere new. Somehow she got the plates onto the nearest table, then turned and bolted through the swing doors into the kitchen. She slumped against the cold-store door and tried to remember how breathing worked.

Owen looked up from his station. "You all right?"

"Just needed a minute."

He studied her, then set down his knife, took a ramekin from the fridge, and turned it out onto a plate: a panna cotta, trembling, with a spoonful of raspberries on top. He slid it across with a spoon. "Here. Always helps me."

The first mouthful was cold and sweet, and a little of the tightness went out of her shoulders. "Thanks, Owen."

Her phone rang. Tiffany.

"F*e! Lizzy told me. Are you okay?"

"I'm hiding in the kitchen."

"Right. Come to mine tonight. Stay as long as you like. Those vultures don't know where I live."

Furina closed her eyes. "That sounds wonderful."

"Then it's settled. See you later, babe."

She finished the panna cotta and took a breath, ready to face the dining room again.

She didn't get the chance. The manager, Gavin, shoved through the swing doors, his face blotchy with anger. "Furina! What the hell is going on? I can't run a restaurant with paparazzi swarming the place like flies!"

"I'm so sorry. It's not my fault—"

"I don't care whose fault it is. I've had two tables walk out." He jabbed a finger at the door. "You're causing too much trouble."

"Please. I need this job. I'll handle it, I promise."

He shook his head, and his face closed like a shop shutter. "No. You're done. Go home."

The floor seemed to tilt. "Please. I really need the money."

"Out," Gavin said. "Now."

She left by the back door. The alley smelled of bins and rain, and the grey afternoon pressed down on her. She made it to the end of the alley before the tears came, blurring the wet cobbles, and she let them, because there was no one there to see.

Then she wiped her face on her sleeve and rang Tiffany again.

"It's me. Sorry. Can I still come over? I really need to get out of here."

"Of course you can," Tiffany said, warm and fierce. "I'm home. Just get here safe."

Callum rang again at seven that evening. Rafe was standing at the window of his office, watching the city turn gold below him.

"One more thing, sir. She lost her job this afternoon. The restaurant. The photographers."

Rafe went very still. "That wasn't the plan."

"No, sir."

"Does she have other work?"

"Bar shifts at a club in Soho. Tonight, nine till three."

"Put someone on her."

There was a pause on the line. "For the plan, sir?"

"For the plan," Rafe said, and hung up before Callum could hear that he didn't believe it.