A phone call from Ben, her would-be big brother, only made it worse. Her steps slowed as she answered, and she forced herself to adopt her usual flippant tone. It was harder to do than it should have been, and she didn’t want to think about why that was.
“What are you doing with the Earl of Pembroke?” Ben asked directly, in that way of his that reminded Angel that he did, in fact, worry about her. And about all of the many Jacksons, as if worrying was his foremost occupation, in place of his usual world-conquering.
It made her stomach clench in shame, around another bitter surge of panic. What would she tell him? How could she face him again if she did this crazy thing? Ben had never wanted anything but the best for Angel, however unlikely that seemed, given the cards she’d been dealt and the choices she’d made. This would disappoint him, deeply, as he was one of the few people who Angel had ever let get somewhat close to her. Because he had, despite her best efforts, she opened her mouth to tell him what was really happening.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, to tell him the truth. She realized she couldn’t quite bear to say it out loud. Not to Ben. Not to someone who would care, and would be so very sad for her. That made it all so squalid. So desperate and pathetic, somehow.
She mouthed something careless and shallow instead, hardly aware of what she was saying. What did it matter? When she got home, she would call Rafe and end this madness, and none of this would signify.
“Be careful, Angel,” Ben said. It made her throat feel tight. As if he could see. As if he knew. But he didn’t, she reminded herself. He couldn’t. He’d only seen that terrible photograph, which didn’t even show Rafe’s scars, and certainly didn’t show Angel’s true, mercenary colors. It was, in all the ways that mattered, a lie.
“I always am,” she replied lightly, and while that certainly wasn’t true, what was true was that she survived. She always, always survived. So what else really mattered, in the long run? It was better than the alternative. “He’s rich and titled, Ben,” she said then, interrupting him as he tried, yet again, to step up and fix things in a life that, she was afraid, could never be fixed, not really. And certainly not by Ben, dear though he was to her. It meant more to her than she could say that he still tried. “What more could I want?”
That question rang in her head after they’d talked for a few more moments, after she’d evaded his questions and waved away his concern, and after she’d slipped her mobile back into her pocket for the remainder of her walk home. The April day was cold and gray, with a blustery sort of wind that made Angel feel empty inside. Spring seemed like a fairy tale itself on the chilly London street, an unlikely story at best. She tucked her chin into her warm wool scarf, and had her head bent against the relentless slap of the cold, and that was why she didn’t see the slender, tousled-blonde-headed figure standing at the door to her building with a cigarette in one hand and a newspaper in the other until she was very nearly on top of her. When she did, her breath left her in a great whoosh, as surely as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Hard.
Chantelle.
Of course.
“Aren’t you the dark horse,” Chantelle said in her insinuating, insulting way, lounging in one of the chairs in Angel’s tiny kitchen as if she was perfectly comfortable there, which, Angel reflected balefully, she undoubtedly was. Having no shame at all removed all manner of discomforts that others might feel in similar circumstances, she imagined. Chantelle had not bothered to put out her cigarette outside, and so still smoked it, even as she tapped the tabloid that she’d flung on the table between them with the restless, manicured fingers of her other hand. “An earl, no less! You’ve learned a little something from your mother after all.”
“Do you have a cheque for me, Chantelle?” Angel asked pointedly, unwinding her scarf and tossing it with far more force than necessary toward the empty chair. “Because I know this can’t be a social call. Not when you owe me fifty thousand quid with interest mounting by the day.”
Chantelle blew a stream of smoke into the air. “No wonder I didn’t lay eyes on you once in Santina,” she said, as if Angel hadn’t spoken. As if what she’d done wasn’t hanging between them like an ugly screen. “I thought you were avoiding me, but the whole time you were holed up with his lordship playing—”
“How could you?” Angel said tightly, cutting her off. “Fifty thousand pounds? What could you possibly have been thinking?”
She told herself that her mother looked abashed then, but she knew that was wishful thinking at best. Chantelle didn’t know the meaning of the word. Angel had learned the truth about her mother over the years, whether she’d wanted to or not. Over and over again.
“It was an accident,” Chantelle said now. Just as she always did, her voice slightly husky as if she was in the grip of strong emotions. Which, Angel reminded herself angrily, she was not. She had no emotions—only the ability to feign them. “You know I’ll pay you back, love. It was just a little bit of help to tide me over.”
“You won’t pay me back,” Angel said flatly. As much to herself as to her mother. “You never do.”
“It won’t matter, will it?” Chantelle replied without missing a beat. “You could be a countess soon enough, if you play this right, and what will you care about money then? You’ll have pots of it.”
She made no effort to disguise the tinge of bitterness in her tone, much less the avaricious gleam in her eyes—bright blue eyes that were identical to Angel’s. Angel hated the fact that she so greatly resembled this woman. It horrified her that anyone believed she was anything at all like her—and she knew they did. The whole wide world did.
Even she did, if she was honest. And hadn’t she walked up to Rafe at that party and proved it? Like mother, like daughter. It made her throat burn with something like acid.
“You can’t possibly imagine that after stealing my identity and sticking me with a huge bill, I’d be likely to give you any money should I marry into it, can you?” Angel made her voice incredulous when, really, she wasn’t at all surprised. Chantelle twitched herself up from the chair opposite and moved toward the sink to toss her cigarette butt away. Leaving a soggy mess for Angel to clean up, no doubt. Like everything else she ever touched.
“I raised you all on my own, Angel,” Chantelle said without turning back around. Her voice was wistful. Something like nostalgic. And was, Angel knew, no matter how much she wished otherwise, entirely fake. “I was only eighteen when I had you, and it wasn’t easy.”
She wished, for only a moment, that her mother was someone, anyone, else. Someone who might say the things Chantelle did and mean them. Even once.
“Does it count as ‘on your own’ when there was a parade of men in and out of the door at all times?” Angel asked musingly. “Some were simply your lovers, I suppose, but others were honest to goodness sugar daddies. Which I suspect is just another way of saying married, isn’t it? Just like my father?”
“Some daughters in your position would be a little bit more grateful,” Chantelle continued, only the hardening of her voice any indication that she’d heard Angel at all. “I made the best choices I could for you, when I was barely more than a child myself.”
“Chantelle, please.” Angel laughed, entirely without humor. “You were never a child.”
“Because I had no choice,” she retorted. “I had to make do, didn’t I? How else would you have been fed?”
Chantelle twisted around then, and Angel met her mother’s gaze. So blue, so bright, and so endlessly conniving.
“Why are you here?” she asked quietly. “I know you’re not going to pay me back. I even know you’re not going to apologize. So what can you possibly want?”
“Can’t a mother drop in to see her own daughter?” Chantelle