He imagined he could hear her heart beat then, loud and fast in the hushed quiet of the hall, or possibly he only wanted to believe he affected her in such a way. That she reacted to him at all. He took far more satisfaction than any kind of good man would have in the faint color that stained her cheeks.
“I think this is our first argument as an engaged couple,” she breathed, and he had the sense that she was far angrier than she was letting on. That she was hiding all manner of things beneath that tough exterior of hers. It should have concerned him—but instead, he found he only wanted to see what was underneath. “A milestone.”
He wanted to see what was behind her breezy manner, her seemingly effortless confidence. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her in a way he’d never wanted anything, not in more years than he could recall. He hardly knew what to make of it. Maybe that was how he found himself moving from the doorway and into the hall, until he was standing much too close to her.
And it was still not enough.
“I told you how little interest I have in masks,” he heard himself say.
“We all wear masks, Rafe,” she replied. Was that temper in her breathless voice? Or was she warning him that she already saw through his mask of scars to the far uglier parts of him that lay beneath? “Some of us have better reasons for that than others, but the most you can expect is that people try to be honest with you despite whatever things they might need to hide behind. Or you might find you have to explain your own mask.”
He didn’t want to talk about masks, especially not his own. Her blue eyes seemed to darken the closer he stood to her, and once again he had the near-uncontrollable urge to bury his hands in her short, choppy blonde hair and drag that mouth of hers to his. He wanted to take and take. He wanted to glut himself on her.
Hell, he just wanted her. However he could get her.
He had been furious at himself for that since that night at the Palazzo Santina. He was no less furious now. He wondered what, exactly, showed on his face, because she swallowed then, and he had the sense she forced that cocky little smile of hers.
“I’m speaking figuratively, of course,” she said softly. Lying. He was sure of it, and he couldn’t seem to care as he should. He wanted her to participate in this dance, this delusion. He wanted her to be a part of it too. “The figurative you. Not the actual you.”
“What a great comfort,” he said, his own voice dry.
He wanted to reach over and pull her into his arms. He wanted to strip away her clothes and test the perfection of her curves with his palms. He wanted. He was all too aware that she was prepared to fulfill certain obligations in this cold-blooded marriage of theirs—and that none of those obligations had anything at all to do with this need that rolled through him, distracting him and infuriating him. He contented himself with the smallest touch, just the finger of one hand, tracing the bloom of color against her cheekbone. He felt her slight shiver, quickly checked, like a dark triumph deep inside of him.
“And is that what I can expect then, Angel?” he asked quietly, his voice a low rasp. “Your honesty?”
“Of course,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, her eyes wide and locked to his.
He wanted that to mean more than it did, more than it could. He wanted that faint shiver he felt to be all of the things it could never, would never, be. She treated him not like a monster, but as a man, and he found that was more dangerous, more potentially ruinous than all the other women who had recoiled in horror at the sight of him. They’d been fooled by the ugly surface into thinking that was what made him monstrous. But Angel ran the risk of learning the truth.
He should never have let this get so far. He should end it now.
But instead, he traced a pattern along her cheek, and pretended he was whole.
“I’m sure I signed something to that effect,” she said.
Those perfect brows arched high. Again, that easy, insouciant smile that captivated him far too easily. That made him believe in all manner of things he knew better than to trust. That made the little flare of hope light anew, small but sturdy. And brighter all the time, heaven help him.
She smirked. “In triplicate.”
Angel Tilson married Rafe McFarland, the Eighth Earl of Pembroke, a man she wondered if she knew less now than she had when she’d met him, if that was even possible, on a gray spring day that was wet and dark and the precise color of his cold eyes.
It was precisely three and a half weeks since the day she’d met him at Allegra’s engagement party in the Santina royal palace. She wore a dress of deep, midnight blue, like the summer night sky far in the north, far away from this quick, quiet ceremony in a London registry office. It was the least bridal, least gold-digging sort of garment she’d been able to come up with from her closet, having declined numerous offers from Rafe’s staff to find her something appropriate to the occasion. Angel had been determined to go to her wedding, at least, in a dress that was entirely hers. As nothing else would be when this day was over.
Rafe was dressed in another glorious, obviously hand-tailored suit, all somber colors to match the fierce expression he wore on his scarred face. The suit clung to the hard planes of his body and shouted to all and sundry that he was exactly who he was: the head of a great family, steeped in generations of wealth and privilege. More than that, there was a soldier’s hard steel beneath it all, that seemed stamped into his very bones. The way he stood, still and sure. The way his gaze met hers, demanding and challenging.
Angel didn’t look away. She hardly heard the words the registrar spoke; she barely registered the presence of the two members of Rafe’s legal team who stood by as their witnesses. But she was aware of him, of Rafe, as she’d never been aware of anyone else in her life. She saw every one of his scars, saw the flat line of his hard mouth, and understood with a deep certainty that this was an irrevocable act. That no matter what happened from this day forward, she would never be free of this hard, watchful man, not really.
She supposed that should have terrified her, but it didn’t.
That, in turn, did.
As if he could sense it, his mouth curved slightly in the corner as he spoke the necessary words.
“I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I …” and he intoned his full name then, with all his unnecessary middle names, the ones his solicitors had insisted she learn in their precise and proper order. His eyes never left hers. Daring her, Angel thought. Daring her to give in to her fears and end this right now.
Would she? For an impossible, breathless moment the panic surged through her and she almost turned and ran for the door.
But she didn’t. She only pulled in a breath as Rafe continued.
“May not be joined in matrimony to Angel Louise,” he said, finishing his part of the declaration. His dark eyes said something else entirely, something Angel was afraid to translate.
Angel repeated the words back to him, aware now of the heat in her, the flush across her cheeks and even lower, making her breasts feel heavy. Making her whole body feel hectic. Something like frantic. Her legs seemed to tremble beneath her even though she knew they were holding her steady, because she did not fall.
None of this should matter, these things she felt and the difficulty she seemed to have in pulling in a deep breath, but it did. It all mattered, suddenly. The deliberately blank expressions of the witnesses. The impartial and disinterested tone of the registrar’s voice. The bare room, really more of an office, empty of any bridesmaids, flowers, music, family. Anything that might make this wedding a joyous event instead of a dry business arrangement.
This was the very last thing I wanted, a voice cried out in the quiet of her mind, all of those vows she’d made to herself when she was younger cascading through her then, taunting her with how far she’d fallen and what she’d become, but it was too late for that. It was much too late. Fifty thousand pounds and twenty-eight years of Chantelle�
�s brand of mothering too late.
And then she was saying the rest of those words, those old, traditional words that so many brides had said before her, in cathedrals and in churches, in stately homes and in registry offices just like this one, so many of them filled with love and hope and a whole spectrum of emotions she did not expect she would ever feel. Some part of her grieved, even as another part was strangely exultant. She felt torn—ripped between parts of herself she didn’t even understand.
They joined hands. Angel felt the jolt of it, the pull. She worried that he could feel the way she shook, but when she looked at their hands clasped together like that, like a real couple’s, she couldn’t see the evidence of that shaking—she could only feel it on the inside, making her very bones seem to rattle in place.
Rafe spoke then. He said thee and then he said wife in that low, gruff voice, and then he slid a ring, the metal cold and heavy against her skin, onto her finger. She couldn’t even look at it. She could only look at him.
You will soon be trapped with little hope of escape, he’d told her in that same voice, and she could see, now, the doors of that trap shutting all around her. What it would mean, this loveless marriage. What she would give up.
She would be safe, she told herself, like some kind of chant. She would be free. There were better things, she thought, than love or hope or emotions that had no place in decidedly and deliberately practical arrangements like this one. More useful things, by far.
And still, she did not look away from him. Still, she gazed back at him, accepting his dare—throwing out one of her own. She knew she was doing it—she saw the awareness of it in his dark gaze—and she could neither stop herself nor seem to figure out what, exactly, she thought she was doing.
Marrying him, she thought, with something very like humor, dark and twisted though it seemed to her in that moment. I am actually marrying him.
“I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, Angel Louise, take thee,” she said then, as she was meant to do. And again, as she paused to breathe and then speak his name once more, there was nothing but Rafe and that cold, frozen sort of patience in his gaze. He made no move to coerce her, to convince her. His hands held hers easily, with that same stillness that made some kind of bell chime in her, deep and low. He only watched her, his ruined face carefully stiff as if he was ready for any outcome at all. She believed it. “To be my wedded husband,” she said, finishing that ancient phrase, and she was astonished to hear that she was whispering. That her voice was shaking as if she was timid. As if she was someone else.
It was that word, she thought in a dazed sort of amazement. Husband. She hadn’t been ready for that word.
She slid the ring they’d given her earlier onto his finger, felt him clench the hard muscles of his hand slightly as she did so, and then it was done.
It was done.
She jerked slightly when the registrar said “husband and wife”, as if she’d already forgotten that it was them, that it was her, that this was who they were now to each other. Husband and wife. She felt something very nearly like dizziness, as if she’d had too much champagne, when the truth was, she could hardly remember the last time she’d had a drink. Certainly not today. That might make it look as if there was something to celebrate.
“You may kiss the bride,” the registrar said then, jolting Angel back into the moment. Back into her wedding.
She smiled at Rafe, and it was harder than it should have been to make her mouth curve in that easy way that she knew she needed it to do. Much harder than she expected, but she did it. She had the insane notion that the only thing standing between her and some kind of desperate oblivion was that smile, however crazy that might sound even in her own head.
Rafe did not smile back. His gaze was hard, unflinching. Angel expected another brief, searing sort of kiss like the one in the palace. She felt that shivery heat move through her, heating her up from the inside out in anticipation, making a wicked flame bloom and pulse in all of her secret places.
She wanted that kiss. God help her, but she did.
He took one hand and slid it against her cheek, capturing her that easily. For a moment there was only that searching, somehow implacable look in his eyes, and then his mouth lowered to hers.
And there was nothing at all but fire.
That grim and perfect mouth was demanding against hers, forcing her to open to him, to submit to him, to throw herself heedlessly into this dance of flame and need between them.
By the time it occurred to her that she should not allow this—that she should try to save herself from this thing between them that she couldn’t seem to control or deny, that would, she knew on some level she could not understand, destroy her in some fundamental way—he was pulling back.
His hard palm still curved against her cheek, more brand than balm. And she loved it. The shock of that seared through her like that same, edgy need for him that still echoed in her, much as she told herself that it had to be something—anything—else.
But there was no denying that gleam in his gray eyes, that hint of silver that she recognized immediately. It was pure male satisfaction, and it hummed through her, making her breasts ache and her core melt. She let out a shaken sound she pretended was no more than a breath and his serious mouth curved.
They turned to sign the register, and Angel took it as an opportunity to pull herself together. She didn’t know why she was so fascinated by this man. Her husband. She didn’t know why he had such a powerful effect on her. But she did know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the papers she had signed did not allow for this. It was one thing to marry a man for his money. That was a cold, practical decision. It was another to want him like this. What would that make her, if she succumbed to it? What kind of fool married for mercenary reasons and then felt things for her husband? Worse, what would he say if she told him that she thought she’d made a mistake—that she wished she’d approached him another way? What would he do if she said she wished they’d got to know each other, done this properly? She nearly cringed, imagining the look on his serious face.
How would he look at her if she admitted that she wished that this was romantic after all?
She was such an idiot. She felt the truth of that snake through her, making her stomach clench. And then she looked at him, this husband who would never see anything when he looked at her save what she cost him.
His guard had dropped into place again, that quiet curve of his mouth no more than a memory—she could see it as plainly as if he’d pulled a helmet of hammered armor over his face. Once again, he stood stiff and ready, that cold bleakness in his gaze. It was the same way he’d looked at her as she’d approached him in the Palazzo Santina.
Waiting, she realized in dawning understanding, and something else that made her chest feel dangerously hollowed out from the inside. He was waiting. For the harsh rejection he must have learned to expect. For her to prove to him once again that he was the monster he believed himself to be—that he’d told her he was.
You will soon be trapped with little hope of escape, he’d said, because he thought that he was the thing that went bump in the night. That he was what she feared, instead of the trappings of this bargain they’d made, and what she knew it made her that she’d suggested it in the first place. And then taken it. And then, worse by far, gone and started to feel things she never should have let herself feel.
And Angel could not bear it. She could not add to this man’s pain. They were only scars, she thought, and yet he’d clearly been treated terribly because of them. And whatever else he was, or would be to her—and her mind skittered away from examining that too closely—she simply couldn’t be part of the great weight he carried around and wore like a badge of fierce pride, as if he expected nothing less.
She simply could not bear it, no matter the cost to herself.
So she smiled, and it was easy this time. Easy and bright, and she reached over and took his
hand again, as if she had every right—which, she supposed, she did now. And would, for as long as this devil’s pact between them lasted. She ignored the darkness in his gaze. She ignored the rush of panic that threatened to tip her over where she stood, because none of this was what she’d wanted once, and she knew that what she did now would seal this marriage—would trap her just as he’d warned—more surely than any kiss ever could.
Even a kiss like his.
Beneath the panic there was something else, something hot and dark and his, and while she had no idea what would become of her, that part didn’t care. It only wanted more.
She smiled down at their signatures, then at him. And she laughed.
“Well, look at that,” she said, and she found she was carried away in her own merriment, suddenly. As if she’d made it real. As if it was true, this sudden light feeling that could, in other circumstances, have been some distant cousin to joy. Or perhaps not so distant after all. “I’m a bloody countess.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“YOUR belongings have been packed up and moved out of your flat,” Rafe said in his gruff way, breaking the silence that had grown thick between them. “As planned.”
The wide and plush back of the sleek silver sedan seemed significantly less roomy with Rafe in it. He sprawled on his side of the seat, his long legs eating up the space before them, the heft of his big body—that wide, hard chest and those strong arms—seeming to encroach upon her when Angel knew, rationally, that he wasn’t moving. He didn’t have to move to take up all the space, all the air. He simply did. As if he exuded too much power to be contained in his own body.
He watched her, those dark eyes moving over her face like a touch. Like the touch she could still feel, that set her heart racing and made her breath shorten in her throat.
The truth she didn’t want to face seemed to expand inside of her, making her feel as if she might explode.
The Man Behind the Scars Page 7
