“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” he said softly, searching her pretty face, marveling at the brightness there, and inside him, where nothing had been bright in a long, long time. “You don’t know what I might do.”
Because she looked at him with whole summers in her blue eyes, and her smile made him want to be the man she saw when she looked at him, whoever that might be. Whatever it took.
She reached over and pushed his hair back from his forehead with one hand. Her smile deepened, turned tender. She let out a sigh he couldn’t categorize, and when she met his eyes again, they were bright with more tears.
“You can do anything you like,” she said softly. “I love you.”
And everything inside of him went cold.
CHAPTER TEN
ANGEL felt the chill immediately. He might as well have thrown open the window and let the cold night air into the room. Without saying a word, he shifted in the leather armchair beneath her and then stood, taking her with him to stand her on the floor and put distance she didn’t want between them.
Angel only stood where he left her, numbly. She knew she shouldn’t have said it. She didn’t know why she had.
“What did you just say?” he asked, and she recognized that voice. It was so terribly remote. Distinctly unfriendly. It was the way he’d spoken to her when she’d first approached him in the Palazzo Santina. She looked, and his eyes were as frigid, as forbidding. He stood there like he was made of stone, dark and coldly furious, as inaccessible as if he wore a suit of armor instead of that old pair of jeans and long-sleeved shirt that clung to the hard planes of his beautiful chest like some kind of cruel taunt.
He was a stranger again. So quickly, so utterly changed. It made her heart hurt, and she wasn’t at all sure what she could do to make it stop. To make him stop. She was afraid that if she looked down, she would see that they’d somehow ended up standing on the edge of some dramatic precipice, with nothing to do but fall. And fall.
“You know exactly what I said,” she replied, unable to make her voice light, but somehow keeping it even. “I didn’t mean to say it, if that helps.” She shrugged, feeling helpless and powerless and not at all sure how to combat that. “It just slipped out.”
Like the tears. She wiped at her face, not knowing how to process the fact that she’d broken down like that, so completely, sobbing for the first time in all of her memory. So undone by the kindness in his gaze, the smile on his usually grim mouth, that she had only been able to weep in response. She didn’t know how to feel about any of this.
But it was painfully obvious that he did.
“We have a very clear agreement,” Rafe said, and something about his voice made her go very still. Too still. His eyes were frozen chips of gunmetal gray. His mouth was a flat line. “I am perfectly aware of what I purchased. You should be equally aware of what you sold.”
She felt as if he’d kicked her. Hard and directly in the stomach. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could speak through the impact of it. It seemed to flare out, stealing her breath. She noticed her hands were shaking slightly when she went to smooth her skirt and she hated, suddenly, the fact that she was wearing a formal gown tonight. That here she was, playing dress up. Believing in magic and miracles. Giving in to hope, of all things.
She was furious with herself. And beneath that, something darker and far closer to despair turned over inside of her and started to grow.
“If you are going to call me a prostitute, Rafe,” she said matter-of-factly, fighting to keep the pain from her voice, the shock and the fury, and all that swirling dark beneath, “just come out and say it. Don’t hide behind vague euphemisms.”
“You sold yourself for money,” he said in that silky, insulting way of his. That dark eyebrow of his winged high, aristocratic censure of the first degree. She swallowed, and pretended she wasn’t affected.
“Am I not allowed to love you?” she asked, her voice too quiet, but at least it did not quaver. At least, she thought, there were layers to this betrayal of herself. Degrees. “I don’t recall signing anything that forbade it.”
His face darkened and his eyes grew even colder. She wouldn’t have thought it possible. She was torn between the urge to go to him and hold him, as if that might warm him somehow, and the urge to hide from this. From him. From her own limitless stupidity where this man was concerned.
“Do you think I don’t know what’s happening here?” he demanded. “I don’t want this kind of act, Angel. I told you before.”
“What kind of act do you think this is?” she asked, not sure she understood him. And not at all sure she wanted to. “What do you think I’m pretending?”
“I know what I signed up for, and it does not involve pretty tears and declarations of love,” he said bluntly. Cruelly. “It won’t work. Do you understand me? You can’t manipulate me with emotional fantasies. I bought you. I never forget that and neither should you.”
Every word was like a blow, all the worse after the sensual spell they’d been living in these past weeks, and Angel was so dizzy with the pain of it that she wondered for a panicked moment if she would topple over from the force of it all.
But she didn’t.
One moment passed, then another, and still she stood there, reeling but upright. She didn’t know if that was a good thing. Perhaps it would be better to fold—to give in. To let this particular storm pass over them and start again in the morning, when she could summon her usual airy manners and handle him the way she usually did. When she could make it all okay with a laugh and a smile.
But she couldn’t seem to make herself look away. She couldn’t quite bring herself to surrender. Not anymore. Not when so much was at stake. She’d had a glimpse of what they could have been, she and Rafe—and she wanted it.
Heaven help her, but she wanted it. She wanted all of him.
“I must have misunderstood,” she said, still managing to keep her voice relatively even, as if what he’d said only rolled off her back. “I thought we entered into a mutually beneficial contract. A marriage.”
“Yes, a marriage,” he threw at her, his eyes so cold—the coldest she’d ever seen. She repressed a shiver. “And what a marriage it is. I am such a terrible creature that I was forced to buy myself a wife whose financial irresponsibility is what led her straight into my arms. What a joyous union indeed. How lucky we are.”
“All this because I said I loved you,” Angel said quietly. “It seems a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want your love.” His voice was like a lash. Angel had to fight to keep from flinching away from it.
He moved closer, so dark and big, looming there, and it crossed her mind that she should have been afraid of him—but she wasn’t. It was almost sad, how much she wanted that to mean things it couldn’t. It was even sadder how very much she wanted to simply reach over and wrap her arms around him. Even now.
“I want your compliance,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper that might as well have been a shout. “I want your body. I want heirs. You can keep what you call love to yourself.”
He turned then, and started across the sweep of Persian rug beneath their feet, as if for the door. As if, she realized in some mix of dawning horror and something else, something that rolled through her and made her stomach twist, he had said all he needed to say. And something in Angel snapped. She felt it break, hard, and then crumble into pieces.
She thought of his autocratic behavior the day of the wedding, and how hard she’d had to fight to keep from reacting as she’d wanted to react. She tried to imagine a lifetime of that—years upon years spent smiling when she wanted to scream. She wondered what it would be like when she was older, when she didn’t have this body any longer, when she’d lost it to babies and gravity—when she was rendered wholly worthless to him. She thought about what it would mean to love this man like this, desperately and foolishly, and know that he would never, ever return it. Not if
he could help it.
And she couldn’t do it. Not now that she knew him so much better, so much more intimately. Not now that she’d seen him smile, heard him laugh, seen that there was more to him than all his grim seriousness, all his cold menace. She knew too much now. She knew him.
“No,” she said. Her voice rang across the room, and she imagined she could feel it echo inside of her, like a church bell.
“This is not a debate,” Rafe snapped in his arrogant way, turning back to fix her with that intimidating scowl. “It is not even a discussion.”
“You can make all the pronouncements you want,” she retorted. “It’s not going to work.”
“Our agreement—”
“I don’t care.” She shrugged when he stopped talking and stared at her as if she’d startled him. She felt a new kind of heat move through her then. It warmed her cheeks and was like electricity in her veins, crackling and snapping. Temper. Finally. “I know you feel things for me too. You can’t just pretend it isn’t happening because it doesn’t fit into your narrow definition of what this is supposed to look like between us.”
“What I feel for you is no more and no less than the basest form of lust,” he threw at her with deadly accuracy. “And a great sense of relief that I was not required to waste my time pursuing you in the usual way, as I would have had to do if you were not so desperate nor so shameless. You are a convenience, Angel. Nothing more.”
She told herself it didn’t matter what he said now, that he was striking out deliberately. That it didn’t have to hurt unless she let it. But she felt dizzy and a little bit sick, and she knew that was cold comfort, at best.
“I know that’s not true.” She hoped it wasn’t true. She hoped. But she stood straight, though her hands were balled into fists at her sides, and looked him in the eye anyway. He stared back at her, so very grim, with that visible current of banked fury pulsing just beneath his cold surface. This, then, was that part of him he’d hinted at, that he’d indicated lived below his surface. But she didn’t think he was quite as contained as he wanted to be. As he usually was.
There was a part of her that took that as a triumph.
“What is it you love then, Angel?” he asked, and she couldn’t help but flinch slightly at the sound of his voice. It was like a blade. Whisper-soft and deadly, and it cut into her, deeper with every word. “Is it this face? I know exactly how beautiful it is—how entrancing. Or is it the monster beneath it, do you think? The one so terrible his own family loathed him since he was a child. Who somehow lived when all of his friends were blown to pieces all around him. Is it that you love? Or is it, instead, my endlessly attractive bank account?”
“Stop it,” she hissed at him, hurting for him in ways that made her hurt too. He moved toward her again, as if he couldn’t help himself, his gait lacking his customary grace.
“What do you think, realistically, a man in my position would feel for the woman he purchased? The one who introduced herself to him in the first place by announcing that she was looking for a wealthy man to marry?” He slashed a hand through the air, a greater show of temper than she had ever seen from this watchful, still man, and it made her breath catch. “It could have been anyone at all unlucky enough to be in that ballroom. It happened to be me. You’ll forgive me if love is not the word that springs to mind!”
She seemed to sway slightly on her feet, and there were bright spots of color high above her cheekbones, but she didn’t back down. She didn’t crumble. She squared her shoulders, drawing his attention, as ever, to her curvy little body displayed to such mouthwatering perfection in the wine-red gown.
But then, he thought cynically, that was her job, wasn’t it? To be a constant enticement? Always desirable?
Her chin rose as if she heard him. As if she was ready to fight him, with her hands if necessary. He couldn’t tell if he hated her for it or admired her misplaced courage. He only knew that he could not tolerate the din and clamor of the thunderstorm rolling around inside of him, and it was her fault. It was all her fault.
He’d known from the start that none of this was fair to her, but he’d wanted her. And now look what he’d done.
“You are such a coward, Rafe,” she said after a moment, biting out the words as if she could not keep them in, and the thunder inside him turned liquid, hot and dangerous, and he felt nothing for a long moment but pure, scorching fury.
“Say that again, please,” he invited her, not recognizing his own voice.
“A coward,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable, her chin titling up again in defiance. “I mean it.”
“Of course I am,” he retorted, letting out some harsh version of a laugh. That terrible heat pumped through him, making the control he had over his temper slip more than it should. He was too angry to yank it back again, and glared at her instead. “That is why I received the Victoria Cross. They hand out the highest medal in the land to the greatest coward, naturally.”
If his sarcastic tone got to her, she didn’t show it. If she was impressed at all by the great honor he’d so reluctantly received, she didn’t show that either. Her blue eyes were darker than he’d ever seen them, and even through his anger, there was a part of him that hated that. That wanted the brightness back. That knew he was the reason it had disappeared.
“You hide away in this remote place, stamping about with a chip on your shoulder the size of the mountains across the loch,” she said in a low, determined voice. “You want to be the monster in the room. You want to drown in your own self-pity. It lets you sit in your grand old house and brood about how miserable you are, without ever having to put that to the test.”
“Because you, of course, never saw these scars, much less what lurks beneath them,” he seethed at her, more sarcasm dripping from his frigid tone. “What a saint you must be, Angel, to be conveniently blind where so many others have been unable to see anything but. I’m sure that is a reflection of your goodness, and has nothing at all to do with how wealthy I am.”
“I don’t care about your money!” she cried, throwing her hands out. “I don’t care about any of this! I care about you—”
“Spare me the histrionics,” he snapped. He had no memory of moving, and yet here he was, towering over her, so close he could smell the faintest hint of her delicate scent, and could see each ragged breath she took. His body knew only that it wanted her. That he wanted her. Even now. He should hate himself for that weakness. He knew he should. “As if I am likely to believe anything that comes out of your mouth. You can either do as I say, Angel, or you can leave. Those are your choices. This is not a relationship. You are not my lover. At best you’re an employee.”
“I believe you mean I am a brood mare,” she supplied, her face gone white.
“So far, you are not even that,” he said viciously. “You have cost me a great deal of money while giving absolutely nothing in return. I should be so lucky as to have a brood mare.”
Her eyes darkened even further, and seemed to stand out much too starkly in her suddenly pale face, and Rafe knew he was the worst kind of bastard. But he couldn’t seem to stop. The rage in him grew with every breath. The words she should not have said, the words he could never believe and never accept, reverberated in his head—getting louder every time, making him colder and colder with each rendition.
I love you.
Like a curse, those terrible words.
Everyone he’d ever loved was dead. And he was the only living common denominator. He knew what that meant. He’d always known.
“You’re a liar,” she whispered. “I was the one looking at your face tonight as we danced. I saw what you felt. Why are you so afraid to admit it?”
But he wasn’t afraid, he thought, fighting back his anger, keeping all that ugliness inside. He was empty. Why couldn’t she see that? He had been nothing but empty the whole of his life. The scars were a perfect reflection of what he was already—what he had always been.
“Rafe,” she said urgently, making a crucial mistake and stepping closer to him, even putting her hand on his arm. He felt himself tense, but she didn’t let go. “We can make this marriage whatever we want it to be. We can—”
“You forget yourself, Angel,” he said coldly, bitterly, because she made him want to believe, damn her. Even now. “This is not an equal partnership. It is not a partnership at all.”
“But it could be!” she cried, and for a moment he saw only the passion on her face, the wild determination in her darkened eyes. For a moment, he was almost swayed. And he wanted to be—he wanted it with an intensity that very nearly floored him. But then he remembered himself.
“To what end?” he asked, moving back so she had to either let go of him or be dragged along. Her hand fell to her side. “I told you what I want from you, Angel. You signed your agreement a thousand times. I don’t know why we’re still discussing it.”
“Because I want more,” she said, her voice slightly scratchy now, and nothing but misery in her gaze. Misery and that small gleam of battered hope that he recognized and knew was the most destructive of all. He wished he couldn’t see it. It was too tempting. She was too tempting. “And I think you do too, somewhere in there. I know you do.”
“You know nothing about me,” he corrected her, softly, temper like a drumbeat in his head, his blood, beating out a harsh rhythm. “While I know entirely too much about you. What kind of partner do you think you could be, Angel? You mounted up fifty thousand pounds’ debt in all of two months’ time. You live a hand-to-mouth existence, at best. You have no education, no polish, nothing at all but bravado. What do you have to offer?”
The library was silent then. He could not even hear her breathe. One hand crept to her collarbone, as if she held her pulse inside her neck. Or as if it hurt. Her gaze was wet, though no tears spilled over, and in a lifetime of hating himself, Rafe could not think of a moment he had hated himself more than this.
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