The Man Behind the Scars Read online

  “You appear to be making the choice yourself, rather than waiting for it to be presented to you,” Rafe said in that dry way of his that seemed to move through her like heat. “Very enterprising.”

  “I’m extremely practical,” she told him, as if confiding in him. As if his words had been in any way approving.

  “You’d have to be,” he agreed, “if you mean to choose a spouse in so cold and calculating a manner.”

  “Is that meant to chastise me?” she asked lightly, as if she hardly noticed one way or the other. As if it would be nothing to her if, in fact, he did mean to do exactly that. A lie, she realized in some surprise—but she shrugged carelessly anyway. “I know what I want and am prepared to go after it. I believe that when a man exhibits this kind of single-minded determination, whole nations rise up and applaud his focus and drive. Sometimes grateful kings bestow earldoms upon such men, if I remember my history.” She smiled, though it was a bit more pointed than was strictly necessary. “Though it’s been a while.”

  His grim, hard mouth entertained the faintest ghost of what she told herself was a smile. Or could have been, had he allowed it. His dark eyes gleamed. In appreciation, she was sure of it.

  “You are a very beautiful woman,” he said, and the way he said it, so matter-of-factly and without the slightest whiff of flattery, prevented her from the folly of imagining it was a compliment. “You are obviously well aware of it, as you’ve dressed to showcase and emphasize your many charms. A man would have to be dead to fail to notice that you are quite spectacular.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her own voice dry this time. “This must be what it feels like to be a show horse. Or so I assume. There weren’t too many thoroughbreds littered about the streets of Brixton the last time I left my flat.”

  Her flat was smack in a scruffy bit of Brixton, south London, that was considered edgy and unpretentious, she knew, having read that exact claim in the guidebooks—which she imagined was another way of saying a bit dodgy. Still, it was the home she’d carved out for herself—the only one that had ever really been hers.

  “It seems to me you could simply captivate the man of your choosing in the usual way, without having to make crass pronouncements about marrying for money.” His dark eyebrow rose then, challenging and faintly wicked. It was the left one, sliced through with a scar, making him seem vaguely menacing, and entirely too lofty, all at once. But not, she noted after a moment, menacing in a way that actually frightened her, as perhaps it should have done. “I think you’ll find that your sort of beauty, used with a certain clarity of purpose, is the currency upon which many marriages rest—though the participants do not generally speak of it.”

  This time, there was no pretending he wasn’t chastising her. He was—in that excruciatingly polite, excessively wordy aristocratic way, complete with the expected backhanded compliment to remind her of her place. Her sort of beauty. How patronizing. Angel rolled her eyes.

  “I am many things, my lord,” she said, unable to keep the faint note of mockery from her voice as she addressed him formally, but equally unable to keep that smile from her face, as if she was, somehow, enjoying this. Was she? Surely not. “Crass, for example. As common as muck, certainly. But never a liar.”

  She didn’t understand why she couldn’t seem to look away from this man, and his ravaged, ruined face. Why she kept forgetting to look at the scars and found herself lost in the remote coldness of his gaze instead. Why the ballroom around them seemed like a bright blur, and he was the only thing in focus. The only thing at all.

  “So what are your specifications then?” he asked after a stretch of time, highly charged and breathless, that could have been a moment or an hour. “For the perfect husband?”

  “He must be very, very wealthy, and happy to share it,” Angel said at once. “That’s the main thing, and is, of course, nonnegotiable.” She bit her lip as if ticking off items in a list in her head. “And it would be lovely if he were good-looking, too.”

  “A pity,” he said softly, that menace in his tone again, and written across his destroyed face, though his eyes seemed darker then, and his gaze sharper. Her stomach clenched in reaction. “You’re wasting your time with me. Or have you blocked out my scars from the sheer horror of looking at them too long?”

  “It was the talk of your grimy, dirty money, of course,” she replied at once, finding her way back into the light, teasing tone she’d been using so carelessly before. Because she had the sudden sense that what she said now could make all the difference, somehow. That it mattered. She felt it deep in her gut. “I haven’t seen straight since you mentioned it. And depending on how much we’re talking about, I may never see straight again.”

  “I am remarkably rich,” he said, that deep, aristocratic voice a posh drawl now, pure male confidence in every syllable. It was a dare, she thought, though she could not have said, looking at that deliberately expressionless, dangerous face of his, why she thought so.

  “Is that an offer?” she asked, flirting with him. With this whole crazy idea that seemed less and less impossible by the second. A fairy tale by design, on demand. Why not? She was already standing in a palace, wasn’t she?

  Again, that suggestion of a smile that, still, was not one.

  “Why do you need money so badly that you would marry a stranger for it rather than simply finding yourself a well-paying career?” His eyes moved over her face as if searching for her intentions. As if he could read them there, if he looked hard enough. She feared he could. That he could see her cobbled-together history of temporary gigs that led nowhere, built nothing and depended entirely on her looks. What career was there for the likes of her? “What do you imagine you’ll do with it?”

  “Count the great big piles of it,” she retorted easily, flippantly, as if she hadn’t a single serious thought in her head. “Naturally. Isn’t that what rich people do?”

  “Only part of the time,” he said. Was that a joke? It was interesting how very much she wanted it to be. “But it is a finite exercise.”

  “How finite?” she asked, a smile tugging at her lips. She tilted her head slightly to one side. “Five years? Ten?”

  “Thirty at most,” he said gravely, but she saw the gleam in those gunmetal-gray depths, and imagined this was his version of laughing. She felt an answering sort of tightness in her chest. As if they were connected, or ought to be. “What will you do with the rest of your time?”

  She considered him for a moment, and then decided she might as well go for it. No false advertising, she reminded herself. Bold as brass. Start as you mean to go on.

  “As a matter of fact,” she confessed, leaning in closer as if what she had to say was salacious gossip instead of simply embarrassing. And of course he would draw the worst conclusions—who wouldn’t? “I am in some debt.”

  “Some?” His brow arched again, while his gaze seemed to pry into her. Any further, she thought in a mixture of that same dizziness and something far darker and more dangerous, and he’d be able to see the number itself like a tattoo inside her head.

  “A great deal of debt,” she amended. He only looked at her, and she smiled, though it felt strained. “A vast, impossible sum, as a matter of fact. Do they still have debtor’s prison in England?”

  “Not since the nineteenth century,” Rafe said in that dry, not-quite-amused voice. “I think you’re safe.”

  “From debtor’s prison, perhaps,” Angel said sadly. She was only partially faking the sadness. “But not from the appalling interest rates.”

  His gaze moved over her again, testing. Measuring. Once again, she felt like a show horse. She had the insane urge to show him her teeth, as must surely be expected in cases like these, but refrained at the last second.

  “How do you imagine a marriage based on a transaction like this would work?” he asked then, as if, she thought in a potent mix of excitement and terror, he was actually considering it. Was he considering it? “For e
xample, what do you have to bring to the table?”

  “My spectacular beauty, of course,” she said in very nearly the same matter-of-fact tone he’d used before. She might have been discussing show horses herself, she thought. Teeth to hooves. “I’d be an excellent trophy. And as we all know, rich men do love their trophies.”

  “Indeed.” Again, that wicked brow. Arrogant. Powerful. He was not, she thought belatedly, a man to be trifled with. “But as we all also know, even the greatest beauty fades in time while wise investments only multiply and grow. What then?”

  Angel had not anticipated actually having this conversation, she realized then. She certainly had not imagined being quizzed on her potential contribution to the marriage of convenience that was meant to save her. Possibly because she hadn’t really expected that her brilliant plan, dreamed up in coach class over an insipid plastic cup of vodka orange, would go this far, she admitted to herself. Had she been kidding herself all along?

  But no, she thought firmly. What, exactly, were her options? She might be enjoying this conversation with Rafe McFarland, Lord Pembroke, Earl of Great Wealth, far more than she’d imagined she might when she’d first seen him—but whatever the outcome, she was fifty thousand pounds in debt. And while her unreliable mother was the one who had got her into this, Chantelle was unlikely to be any help in getting her out. Sadly, she knew Chantelle entirely too well.

  This was up to her to solve. On her own. Like everything else in her life.

  “I am delightful company,” she continued then, emboldened by her own panic.

  She forced herself to smile as if she was perfectly at ease—as if she routinely rattled off her résumé to strange men as if she was up for auction. Which she supposed she was, actually. Not a cheering thought.

  “I’m very open-minded and won’t care at all if you have a sea of mistresses,” she told him.

  She meant it. She’d seen that in action with Bobby and her own mother, hadn’t she? And it certainly seemed to work for them, as they’d been married for years now. Who was Angel to judge the way they conducted themselves and that marriage if they themselves professed to be happy?

  “In fact,” she continued, trying to pretend her mother’s marriage didn’t make her feel dirty by association, somehow, “I’d expect it. Rich man’s prerogative and all that. I have very little family, so there will be no tedious holiday functions to suffer through and you won’t have to lay eyes on them at all, should that be your preference.”

  She thought of the great, raucous Christmases with loving if careless Bobby and all the Jacksons with a sharp twinge of guilt. She thought of her stepbrother Ben’s quiet concern and determination to be there for her whether she liked it or not, just as a brother would, she imagined, with another searing pang. Allegra’s unobtrusive but steadfast support. Even Izzy. But she cast it all aside.

  “I have a great many opinions and enjoy a good debate,” she said, trying to think of the things an earl might want in a wife, and able only to picture those endless period dramas on the BBC, all petticoats and bodices and everyone falling all over their titles in and out of horse-drawn carriages, none of which seemed to apply to this situation. “But I’m also perfectly happy to keep my own counsel if that’s what you’d like. I can be endlessly agreeable.”

  “You make yourself sound like some kind of marionette,” Rafe observed. Not particularly kindly.

  “If by that you mean the perfect companion and wife,” Angel replied sweetly, “then I agree. I am.”

  She searched his face again, but saw nothing new. Nothing that told her if she was swaying him one way or another. Nothing that explained why she was suddenly so very determined that she should succeed in this. Only that strange, curiously him mixture of violent ruin and male beauty, so striking and imposing and impossible to look away from. Only that cool, measuring gleam in his dark gray eyes. She pulled in a breath, prepared to launch into another list of all she had to offer, whatever that might be, but he reached over and put a finger on her lips.

  Bold. Hot. Shocking.

  Something kicked deep inside of her, hot and low. She felt his touch like flame. Like a blazing light that seared through the darkness and made her shine too. Her head spun around and around, even after he dropped his hand back to his side.

  “You can stop,” he said mildly. Almost casually. “I’ll marry you.”

  He didn’t know what he expected her to do. Squeal with joy? Weep with gratitude? Naturally, Angel did neither. She only watched him for a beat, then another, and he had the distinct impression that she was shocked. Stunned?

  While he simply wanted her. Any way he could have her. If it would take a healthy application of his money, well, he had plenty of it, and he needed a wife besides. He told himself it was purely practical. And yet that want pulsed in him.

  Still she gazed at him, as if trying to work something out.

  Perhaps, he thought darkly, his money was not quite dirty enough to ensure her blindness to his scars after all. It hadn’t yet prevented him from seeing the truth of himself either, and he knew more of that truth than she ever would. He could hardly blame her.

  “Come,” she said then, surrendering her empty champagne glass to a passing waiter and then holding out her hands. She did not smile, though her too-blue eyes began to gleam. “Dance with me.”

  Rafe did not dance. But then, he also did not propose marriage, however offhandedly, in crowded ballrooms to perfect strangers, much less those who had just shamelessly announced they were in the market for a rich husband—any rich husband, presumably. When he thought about it in those terms, he couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t sweep this odd, arresting woman into his arms as if they were lovers and perform the steps to a waltz he hadn’t executed since the lessons his mother had insisted upon a lifetime ago.

  But he would take any excuse he could get to touch her, wouldn’t he? What, he wondered, did that make him?

  She was graceful, warm and deliciously curvy in his arms. The small of her back curved enticingly beneath his palm, the fingers of her other hand were delicate in his, and she smelled of fresh flowers with a kick of spices he couldn’t identify. She tilted back her head to look at him, and for a moment he only gazed at her. So pretty, he thought. And so surprising, when nothing had surprised him in far too long. It made her dangerous, he knew, dangerous to him, but he shoved the thought away with his customary ruthlessness.

  “Out of curiosity,” he asked, need and desire making him hard, making him fierce, “how many other men have you asked to marry you tonight?” He studied her face as he guided them across the floor. “I only ask in case there is some kind of battle for your affections I should prepare myself to fight.”

  “Not at all.” Her expression was very nearly demure—and therefore wicked by implication. He felt the impact of it move through him, making him burn. Want. “You are my one and only.” He was fascinated by her. And by his reaction to her. “But aside from my obvious charms, which, let’s face it, no man could possibly resist, why do you want to do this?”

  He let himself look at her for a long moment. The sharp blue eyes. The pretty face. The lush mouth so at odds with the quick, disarmingly honest words that came out of it. And her short, choppy blonde hair that, he realized, he wanted to drag his hands through as he angled that mouth of hers to fit his. He wanted that with an intensity that surprised him anew. He wanted it all.

  He hadn’t let himself want anything in years. But he wanted her.

  And best of all, there was nothing hidden. No artifice. No murky agenda. No great pretense. She was in debt. She needed money and, he suspected, the security of knowing that there would always be more. Meanwhile, he needed a wife he did not have to woo. A wife who would not want things from him that he was unable to give—things that most wives would expect from a husband, but not this one, not if he bought her. She might see the monster in him, over the course of their time together, but she would
be paid well to ignore it.

  It was anything but romantic—and that was precisely why he liked it. And her.

  He told himself it was just that simple.

  “You are the first woman in years who has approached me as a man, instead of a desperate charity case before whom they might martyr themselves for an evening,” he said quietly. He might know there was no man beneath his monstrous face, but she did not. And still she treated him like one. How could he resist it? “More often, they do not approach me at all. And I must marry after all. It might as well be a woman with no expectations.”

  She cleared her throat. “Oh, I have expectations,” she said, and he wondered if it cost her to keep her voice so even, her gaze so light on his that he felt an echoing brightness inside of him. “But I feel certain you can meet them. You need do nothing more than sign the cheques to win my eternal devotion.”

  In Rafe’s experience, few things were ever so easy.

  “Since you have been so forthright, let me share my expectations with you,” he replied then. He held her close, so close she could do nothing but stare directly at the scars that told the world who he was—the scars she would spend a lifetime staring at, should this odd, very nearly absurd conversation turn into some kind of reality. “You understand that I must have heirs.”

  “You great men always do,” she said knowledgeably, her eyes bright with some kind of amusement. Then she laughed. “Or so I’ve heard. And seen in films.”

  He pulled the hand of hers he held to his chest, and understood, in that moment, how much he wanted this. Wanted her. More than he could remember wanting anything—anyone—ever. Because this is so convenient, he told himself. I need do nothing at all but accept. He told himself he believed it.

  But he knew the truth. It beat in him like a drum, thick like desire and as damaging, making him think he could have a woman like this, that what lived in him would not destroy her as it had destroyed everyone else he’d ever loved or wanted to love. That her need for his money would protect her, somehow, from his need for her.