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.
She should be so lucky, he thought grimly, but he did not let her go.
“You are a beautiful woman,