Lucien had captured her hand. He raised it to his lips. “I find myself a slave to your eyes, fair lady.”

“God save you, then, because I won’t,” Sophie said impishly.

“No one but you can save me…. You are a goddess!”

“Then I order you to return to your own seat.”

“Alack, I cannot.” Lucien thumped his chest theatrically. “I am an apostle to your beauty, Lady Sophie. I fear for my life if I stray from the source of my bliss.”

“Fustian!” Sophie giggled. “You lie!”

“I would you did, within my bedcurtains.” Lucien laughed back.

Sophie involuntarily glanced at Patrick, who was frowning at his program. She was not yet accustomed to the level of suggestiveness common in conversation with married women. It was disconcerting to find herself embarrassed. Before she married Patrick, she had a reputation for racy language. But that was when she was a mere girl and didn’t, she realized now, have any real idea what she was talking about most of the time.

And, to be honest, she wasn’t concentrating on Lucien’s flirtation. Every particle of her being was focused on her husband—although Patrick seemed not even to notice the way other men looked at her with desire.

Lucien gently took her wrist in his hand. “I spoke only in jest, Lady Sophie.” His eyes met hers. “I flatter and flirt because it is the mode. But I do not wish to shock your sensibilities.”

Sophie smiled. “You are saying that you would show this kindness to any lady, are you?”

“Precisely,” Lucien confirmed. “I like you too much to offer you Spanish coin, my lady. And your blush reveals that you are still new to this kind of game.”

Sophie’s blush deepened.

Patrick happened to look up just then. He scowled. Knowing what he did about Sophie’s predilection for being seduced in French, he didn’t trust Lucien. Bloody hell, he groaned inside. If I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up like Sophie’s mother, allowing only elderly and decrepit Frenchmen in the house.

Sophie was whispering sweetly with Lucien. Just stay sensible, Patrick thought to himself. Everyone knows that Lucien is faithful to his dead wife, so he is only amusing Sophie with a flirtation.

Irritably Patrick got up and strode out of the box. Why should I sit around and watch other men make love to my wife? I am possessed, he thought, walking quickly down the theater corridor … possessed by irrationality and jealousy. For example, where did Sophie go yesterday afternoon? Braddon had picked her up at precisely two o’clock and hadn’t returned her to the house until seven o’clock, barely in time to dress for the musicale they attended together. And the same thing had happened on Friday of the week before.