Ginny, above everyone else, still had the power to seduce him into forgiving her transgressions, however unwillingly. He hoped that, this time, she did what he told her and went home with Renaldo and Missie.

The back of the Majestic smelled like new paint and grease, with stale odors he’d just as soon not identify. Steve slipped inside, finding the dressing rooms by instinct more than memory.

He heard her before he reached the closed door, and grinned to himself. The long-suffering Costanza was the recipient of one of Francesca’s famous tirades, her Italian temper flaring into heated invectives, the gutter speech of her youth more familiar despite her outward elegance.

He opened the door slightly, leaned his shoulder against the frame and waited.

“Am I to wear a gown without a sleeve?” Francesca was demanding shrilly. “It is too much, this! I am not some simple actress who does not care how she looks. Bah! I do not know why I bother! This town has never appreciated my talent, and is full of crude men who leer at me as if they have never seen a woman before!”

“They have never seen a woman like you, carissima.” Costanza’s answer was mechanical and dutiful as she bent to pick up the sleeve her precious bambina had carelessly discarded on the floor. “I will sew it back on. Take off the gown now, before you rip the other sleeve.”

“Oh, it is not the sleeve! It is this town! I do not think I can bear it here.” Pacing, her dark hair loose and held from her face by a glittering diamond comb, she swept regally across the carpet, angrily snatching up a glass of champagne and downing it in a single gulp.

“It is not the town you hate,” Costanza observed with a sniff. “It is a man.”

“No! I never think of him anymore. I am happy with Lord Lindhaven, you know I am.”

“So? You do not seem to miss him when we are away.” Costanza’s sturdy body quivered with indignation, and when she looked up, her dark eyes widened with incredulity and then dismay. “Ah, it is the banditti!”

“I told you no,” Francesca said irritably, flouncing around to glare at her companion, but as she caught sight of him in the doorway, the words died in her throat and the empty champagne glass dropped to the floor with a tinkling crash.

“Stefano! Oh, it is you!”

“Still making poor Costanza’s life miserable, I see. Don’t you ever get tired of being angry?”

His lazy stance in the doorway, and the slow drift of his gaze over her, made her laugh throatily, her dark head tilting back so that her long dark hair swung seductively.

“I never tire of being angry at you, my banditti. What are you doing here, in this hellish town?”

“I could ask you that.”