She wanted to be free of Chantelle, no matter how terrible a daughter that made her. For once in her life, she wanted Chantelle to have no reach, no influence. For once. For good.
She thought of Rafe’s ruined face, and the wild flare of passion that had made her shake. That demanding kiss, the one that still haunted her. That had kept her awake and panicked throughout the long week. That threatened her in ways she was afraid to contemplate too closely. She already knew it would not be easy with him. It might even be bad—there was every reason to think so. They were strangers. They had nothing in common as far as she could see. The potential for disaster was huge. Almost guaranteed, in fact.
But it would be different than this, and she would have some protection, at long last—and who cared what she had to barter to get it? She wasn’t unaware of the irony inherent in this choice she was making. It seemed to lick into her like some kind of terrible poison, making it hard to breathe: in order to escape her mother, she would have to become her. She would have to do the very thing she’d always sworn she’d never, ever do.
She knew she should come up with some other solution—any other solution—but the truth was, she was out of solutions. She felt flattened by this latest stunt of Chantelle’s, and some part of her was terrified to find out what lay on the other side of this feeling. If anything.
The truth was, Angel was so very tired of just surviving.
Of always having some new tragedy to get over.
She was tired of living by her wits, of making do.
She was tired of digging herself out of messes she hadn’t even made.
She was tired.
And what did it matter what people thought of her? They already thought it. They had for years. Let them.
It had to be better with Rafe. She told herself it just had to be.
Because the truth was, she thought as she moved over to the sink to find her mother’s ashes and swollen cigarette end lying there in a wet, smelly mess across the bottom of the basin, like everything else Chantelle had ever touched, anything was better than this.
CHAPTER FOUR
ONCE Rafe’s mandated week of reflection and research was over, and Angel’s decision made, everything seemed to pick up speed. Angel imagined that she would meet with Rafe himself to go over the details of their marriage that Monday morning, as arranged. She also imagined that there would be a few papers to sign and even fewer actual details to discuss. After all, they’d agreed to the marriage of convenience itself. The marriage made of money and future heirs, no romantic notions need apply. Surely that was the hard part?
She was wrong on all counts.
“No second thoughts then?” he asked her, his dark voice low and stirring even over the phone. Angel held her mobile too close to her ear and pretended that she felt as serene as the lushly appointed leather expanse of the backseat of this luxurious car should have made her feel, but, strangely, did not. “If you do not come to your senses now, Angel, you will soon be trapped with little hope of escape.”
“You should really consider going into some kind of marketing should the earl thing not work out for you,” she replied, summoning that light tone out of the ether. She even chuckled slightly. Warmly. “You do paint such a lovely picture.”
“I want you to remember that I warned you off,” he said, his voice a low growl.
But all she could think of was his cold gray gaze, and the shocking heat of his mouth against hers, the ache of it winding through her even now, in a different country and without him anywhere near her. What was the matter with her?
“I feel sufficiently warned,” she assured him. “If you turn out to be the Earl of Bluebeard, killer of wives who should have known better than to appease their curiosity, then I have only myself to blame.”
“Just so long as we’re clear on that point,” he said silkily, and disconnected the call.
Angel held the phone in her hand, the sleek mobile hot to the touch, and pretended her heart hammered against her ribs as it did because of the ghastly London traffic on the streets all around her. Because of the traffic, and not this mix of fear and expectation, anticipation and—she could scarcely admit it to herself, she could barely allow that it was true on any level—desire.
She thrust that from her mind. For the rest of the drive she braced herself for the impact of seeing him again—and was not at all prepared for the rush of disappointment she felt when she didn’t.
He wasn’t there to meet her. He wasn’t there at all.
That first day, and every day that week, she met with a team of solicitors. At least eight of them, gathered around the large, gleaming, probably ancient and frighteningly expensive table in the elegant dining room of Rafe’s extremely fashionable town house in a neighborhood of central London so impossibly wealthy that hereditary fortunes seemed to hang in the air, like ripe fruit on bountiful trees.
Angel had felt distinctly underdressed and unworthy simply exiting the sleek silver car when it rolled to a stop at the curb. As if the pavement itself rejected the likes of her. As if the neighborhood was judging her as she stood there, trying not to gape about her in awe and a kind of anticipatory wonder; as if the desperately lofty Georgian town houses that ringed the famous and well-photographed square, with their impressive facades and storied, monied histories, were looking down their figurative noses at her and her grand plans to rise so far above her station.
She knew that was all in her own head. She was equally certain, however, that the forbidding and encompassing censure of the assembled collection of solicitors was not.
“I thought I was meeting Rafe,” she said when she took the seat she was waved into with something just short of actual courtesy, and looked around at the blank wall of uniformly condemning male faces. She was only happy that her voice remained steady.
“We are the earl’s legal team,” the most visibly disapproving, most outwardly judgmental one said from his position at the head of the scrum. “We are here to represent the earl’s interests and, naturally, to protect yours.” His fine, patrician nose let out a single, pointed sniff, a veritable masterpiece of judgment swiftly and irrevocably rendered. “Miss Tilson.”
Angel smiled thinly, feeling far more raw and exposed than she should. More raw and exposed than she’d ever allow herself to show these haughty, self-important men.
“No need to say my name as if it hurts your mouth,” she said sweetly, leaning against the stiff back of the chair to brace herself, knowing full well it would look casual and assuming to the men frowning at her. “It will be Countess soon enough.”
Upon reflection, it did occur to her that a comment like that no doubt cemented the entire legal team’s already low opinion of her in one fell swoop. But there was no taking it back, and she told herself it was better to get on with the whole of the inevitable judgments and the snide glances from the start. The excruciatingly chilly reception of the solicitor brigade was, after all, a pale shadow of the reaction she could expect from the press. From the world. Like mother, like daughter, and so on.
So she simply accepted it. And signed.
And signed.
There were reams upon reams of documents. Towering stacks of them. Many, many duplicate copies. There were contracts to go over clause by mind-numbing clause, and then question and answer periods for each one of them. Yes, she understood the meaning of the word dependant. No, she did not foresee any issues arising from compliance with rider B, clause 8. And on. And on. There were a thousand little details before the Eighth Earl of Pembroke could marry that, apparently, had to be raised and then handled accordingly by a fleet of trained professionals assigned to each separate, extremely overanalyzed minor point in question. The definition of adultery. The consequences thereof. The schooling of any and all heirs. The discharge of debts.
Her debts, to be clear.
Cheques were written to Chantelle’s credit card company, and to the letting agency that rented Angel her flat
. Angel was required only to sign where bidden to sign, and to divulge all the information requested when asked for it. Her entire financial as well as personal history, for example, while the phalanx all around her took copious judgmental notes and requested additional documentation.
It was all so practical, so cold-blooded, Angel thought, on something like the eighth day, sipping at the tea that was perpetually at her elbow, always steaming hot, and always accompanied by a tempting array of small, perfectly formed pastries. The constant perfection of the tea and pastries reminded her why she was doing this, should the wall of dreary dark suits all about her tempt her to forget. The tea and pastries represented the perfect, carefree life she was about to start living, for which this purgatory of papers was no more than a necessary precursor.
And this approach to a marriage put everything on the table, didn’t it? Why suffer through the traditional trials of the first year of a marriage when it could all be dealt with so efficiently in advance? You only had to check your more tender feelings at the door, and every possible area of future contention between you and your spouse-of-convenience could be ironed out well before any vows were exchanged.
What could be better? she asked herself. What could be more rational, more reasonable? She was delighted with herself that she was approaching this new phase of her life in so pragmatic and thoughtful a fashion. She was.
“I was under the impression that British courts did not, historically, look kindly on prenuptial agreements,” she said at one point, as she eyed yet another stack of papers in front of her.
“There is significant debate on that issue in the legal community,” the nearest lawyer snapped.
Angel only smiled.
She told herself she didn’t mind when she was trotted off to Rafe’s personal physician and asked to subject herself to a comprehensive set of physical exams, including a great battery of blood tests and other more sensitive procedures. She didn’t ask what they were testing for, because, of course, she knew. How had it never occurred to her to wonder about how this side of things would work? She shouldn’t be at all surprised. Naturally, Rafe wanted to be sure that she was both fertile and disease-free. He wanted to get his money’s worth, didn’t he?
She had absolutely no reason at all to feel hollow inside, she told herself fiercely. Every night when she was home alone in the flat that looked dingier by the day, and every morning as she sat in the back of a car so expensive its price had made her gag slightly when she’d looked up similar models online. She had signed up for this. This was what this kind of arrangement looked like. It was all very thorough. It made sense.
This was, at the end of the day, exactly what she wanted.
Wasn’t it?
She saw him, finally, almost ten full days into the tests and contracts and explanation of clauses. Angel walked through the high-ceilinged foyer of the distractingly elegant town house, leaving for the day after having spent hours signing away her rights to any and all fortunes that Rafe might or might not settle upon the children they might or might not produce in the course of their marriage, which might or might not last any significant amount of time. Over and over again, on all the necessary copies. Just as she’d done every day so far, in one form or another.
He did not speak. He only stood in the arched doorway to what she’d been told was a reception room of some kind. She might not have seen him at all, so completely still was he, and so fully did he blend into the darkness of the unlit room behind him. But she felt an odd shiver skate down the back of her neck. She turned her head, and just like before in the ballroom of the Palazzo Santina, there was nothing at all but his cool gray gaze.
She stopped walking. She slowly pivoted. Without meaning to move, she took a step closer to him, then caught herself. He stood there in the doorway, watching her, more solid than she remembered, as if he stood firm and commanding on the ground. As if he demanded no less than that from the air he breathed. Ruthless, she thought, and had no idea where that word had come from. When had she ever seen him be anything but kind, if, perhaps, severe? No matter how he hinted he might be otherwise?
It was that pervasive sense that she was in danger, the frantic pulse in her veins, the low curl of adrenaline that set up a kind of humming beneath her skin, that made him seem so much larger than life. So much darker, so much bigger, as if he could dwarf the world with his cold gray eyes alone.
“I had started to wonder if you were a figment of my imagination,” she said, speaking before she knew she meant to, automatically adopting that airy tone, as if the very sternness of his ruined face demanded it. “It never really occurred to me that there were so many practical matters to attend to. You always imagine it’s just straight from the romantic dance to the happily ever after, don’t you? No ten days of contracts to sign, just a cheerful song as the credits roll.”
He didn’t appear to move so much as a muscle. And still it was as if he moved closer, towered over her. She swallowed, hard.
“Have you convinced yourself this is a romance, Angel?” he asked in that dark way of his, that seemed to settle into her bones and shift like some kind of flu through the rest of her. Hot. Cold. And back again. “I fear you have set yourself up for a grave disappointment.”
She smiled. She had the strangest feeling that if she didn’t, if she showed even the faintest hint of the confusion or panic inside of her, he would call this all off. And she didn’t want that. It was amazing how much—how strongly and how deeply—she didn’t want that. Far more in this moment, she realized in some surprise, than before.
“If I had,” she said, so casually, as if she felt nothing at all but a lazy sort of passing interest in this conversation, “the past ten days would certainly have cured me of it, wouldn’t they? I assume that was the point.”
Another long, dark pause. His brows lowered. That grim mouth was set in an implacable line. Angel could not seem to stop reliving the feel of it against her own. She thought, suddenly, with a flash of searing heat, of their wedding night. Would they have one, in the traditional sense? Did she want to? Would she feel this man against her so soon? In her? Why did the prospect make her feel short of breath?
“It may not seem so to you,” he said gruffly, “but I am seeking to protect you as much as me.”
“I am the woman who marched up to you at a ball and asked if you’d be so kind as to let me marry you for your money,” Angel replied, letting her smile deepen, shoving the lurid images of a possible wedding night aside. She let her smile grow infectious. Very nearly merry. She didn’t understand the part of her that longed—there was no other word for it, to her confusion—for him to return it. “I don’t think I really need protection from you. From myself and my insane little scheme? Very possibly—yet here you are going along with it against, I am sure, all legal advice.” She raised her brows. “Maybe I should ask your battalion of attorneys if you need protection from me. I suspect they think you do.”
Rafe had thought of very little but this woman.
He was a busy man. He came to London as seldom as possible—he hated this dirty, sprawling city as much as his disreputable brother had loved it, with all of its ceaseless noise and all of those pitying, prying eyes—which meant he had to cram as much business as he could into the short span of time he was actually in town.
But business was nearly impossible to conduct when all he could think about was Angel. That clever gleam in her too-blue eyes and the answering, knowing sort of curve to her wicked mouth. That perfectly curvy body that today made a pair of denim jeans into a blessing, clinging to her hips and outlining her beautifully shaped legs. It took him long moments to drag his attention to the drapey sort of black sweater she wore, the sort that usually seemed to require endless fiddling and arranging. Not that Angel was doing either. She merely watched him.
He worried that she saw far too much. Or not nearly enough. He couldn’t decide which was worse. She was marrying him for his money, and he was mar
rying her because she’d done such a good job of pretending he was not the monster he knew full well he was. And because he could not seem to help but want her—so much so it consumed him. It ate at him.
It made him wish that things were different—that he was different. It made him hope.
He’d expected her to back out of this, as any sane person would. And every day she did not—he hoped a little more. And that hope was more dangerous to him, more treacherous and insidious, than anything else could be. He knew it.
But he could not seem to stop it.
“I am more than adequately protected,” he said shortly. Far more shortly than was necessary. “As the number of attorneys present in your sessions should indicate, I have no intention of losing my family’s wealth and consequence. For any reason.”
“And certainly not to a gold-digging tart like me,” she said in that dry yet amused way, though her blue eyes were suddenly unreadable. “I hope you found the results of my physical examination to your liking.”
He knew there was a reprimand there. He could sense it, despite her light tone of voice and her easy, open expression.
“Do you expect an apology?” he asked softly.
“Not at all,” she said at once, though he didn’t quite believe her. But she smiled in that way of hers, that made him want to respond in kind, that made him feel things he was determined he could not feel. That he certainly shouldn’t allow himself to feel. “I was presented with your relevant medical records this morning. Allow me to congratulate you on your good health, Lord Pembroke. Long may it last.”
“If you want an apology,” he said evenly, feeling more solicitous of her than he should, than was wise, when he knew he had nothing inside of him, nothing to give, “you need only ask for it. I may or may not tender one upon demand, but you should know that I certainly don’t appreciate the passive-aggressive approach. Ever.”
The Man Behind the Scars Page 6