“I insist that you tell me about your former lovers,” she said expansively. She felt that she had to dispel the strange tension that seemed to hover between them, as dark as the day outside the car, or sink into it without a trace. “All of them. I want to know everything, so if we run into any of them at any point in time, I will have access to all their salacious details while I am pretending to be polite.”
“I am fascinated that you assume my former lovers are the sort of people we will be running into at all,” Rafe said in a dry voice. “I don’t know whether to be complimented or insulted.”
“And yet you show no interest in mine?” Angel shook her head. “That is certainly no compliment.”
That brow arched high. “My interest in your former lovers is directly related to your medical records,” he said. “Had they been anything less than pristine, we would have had a very different discussion.”
In a different marriage, Angel thought, eyeing him, she might have been tempted to loathe him for that remark. But he was only being practical. Depressingly, insultingly practical.
“I am most definitely insulted,” she said. “And not about medical records.” She waved a hand in the air. “It’s about the appropriate level of flattering jealousy, Rafe. I do require a little bit of it. It’s only polite.”
He gazed at her until her smile faded slightly. Then his hand moved, slow yet sure, and he reached up to brush a thumb across the curve of her jaw, the swell of her lips, sending a slow, sweet burn spiraling through her.
“You work so hard to be provocative,” he murmured, his eyes so dark, his ruined face so intent. “What if I were to take the bait, Angel?”
She pulled in a ragged breath, finding it harder to gather herself than it should have been, and still his hand traced patterns against her skin, dousing her in his particular brand of fire.
“I would wonder why you were so easily provoked,” she replied, her voice as uneven as her breath. His dark gaze was consuming, connecting hard and hot to something deep inside of her, making her feel as if she was melting. She could feel him—as if they were already naked, as if he was already inside of her, that powerful body moving over hers, driving her right over the edge—
“I will assume, as any gentleman would, that you are entirely untouched,” he said. He dropped his hand back to his hard thigh. His dark brow rose again, mocking her. “To be polite, of course.”
“Gentlemen and their virgins,” Angel said, as if the topic were one she had discussed endlessly and been bored by years ago. “What vivid fantasy lives you men have.”
“It is less the fantasy life and more the fragile ego,” Rafe replied, amusement gleaming in his dark gaze. “I think you will find the history of the world far easier to comprehend when viewed through the filter of male insecurity.”
“That is certainly true of my personal history,” Angel said dryly.
“You are a virgin bride,” he reminded her in that silky tone of his. “You have no personal history. Do try to keep up.”
Her lips twitched, and Angel looked away from him, fighting the urge to laugh in a decidedly indecorous, un-countess-like manner. She looked out of the windows again instead, a certain warmth moving through her that had nothing to do with desire. In its way, it was far more dangerous. It promised too many things Angel knew she’d be better off banishing from the lexicon of possibility in this marriage. It was better not to hope, she told herself again, more fiercely this time. It was better to keep her expectations as low as possible. She knew that.
It took a moment or two of watching the world slip by on the other side of the rain-splattered window for Angel to make sense of what she was seeing. She blinked. The congested city streets had given way to the smooth expanse of the M4, headed in very much the opposite direction from the Pembroke town house in its graceful, historic square in central London.
“Why are we on the motorway?” she asked, bewildered.
Rafe only looked at her when she turned back to him, his expression unreadable, his mouth again in that impossible line. A trickle of something too much like foreboding, and far icier, began to work its way down the nape of her neck. She fought off a shiver.
“The London town house is not my primary residence,” he said, with no particular inflection. His voice was still like silk, wrapping its spell around her, tempting her to simply sink into it. But she couldn’t process what she was hearing. She couldn’t take in what it must mean. “I spend the majority of my time at Pembroke Manor. We’re flying to Scotland today.”
“Pembroke Manor,” Angel repeated dully as her mind raced.
Dimly, she remembered fiddling with her tea and trying to remain alert while one of the solicitors had droned on about “the Scottish estate.” But had he said where it was located? Scotland was a rather large and varied place, which she knew primarily from the telly and that one ill-advised trip with her debaucherous friends to Aberdeen in her wild youth, best left forgotten.
There was all that … empty land, she thought with a shudder, just stretched out there at the top of the map of the United Kingdom, all icy lochs, impenetrable accents and ancient ruins scattered about the desolate landscape. On the other hand, there was also the beautiful, graceful city of Edinburgh, or the bustle and life in vibrant Glasgow. Neither city could compete with all of London’s attractions, of course, but Angel was sure she could learn to make do. Somehow.
Even so, “Scotland?” she queried, just to make certain that was what he’d said. As if perhaps there’d been some mistake.
“The Scottish Highlands,” Rafe corrected her, dashing her hopes of anything resembling a decent nightlife. Or shops worthy of her new rank and net worth. Or entertainment of any sort at all, aside from all those caterwauling bagpipes and the odd kilt. “Lovely place.”
“Remote,” Angel choked out, visions of barren mountainsides, isolated lochs, endless fields of heather and precious little else dancing in her head. “Extremely and famously remote.”
He only watched her, entirely still save for that wicked left brow, which rose inexorably as he gazed at her. It occurred to her, as it should have from the start, that he had done this deliberately. He had waited until it was already happening before he’d even told her it was a possibility. She couldn’t think about that—about what it meant. For her and for her future. For her life. Not now. Not while her head was still spinning.
“Rafe,” she gasped out, the panic taking hold now and making her stomach clench as surely as it made her flush in distress. “I can’t live in the Scottish Highlands! It might as well be the surface of the moon!”
The part of her that wasn’t swept away in the horror of the very idea of a city creature like herself condemned to some forced commune with the natural world that had never held the slightest appeal to her noticed that Rafe seemed to grow even more still, even more quiet.
“It is the ancestral seat,” he said softly. Dangerously, that distant part of her noted, but it was thrust aside. “It is home.”
“You must be mad!” she breathed. She waved a hand, indicating herself. She even let out a short laugh, trying to picture herself, all ruddy cheeks and jolly hockey sticks, milking a cow or shearing a sheep or whatever it was you did while slowly dying of boredom on an earl’s rural estate. She couldn’t manage it. She couldn’t even come close. “I am not at all suited to rustication. Clearly. I’ve never lived outside the city in all my life, and I have no intention of starting now—especially not when you have that lovely town house sitting idly by!”
“Unfortunately,” Rafe said in a tone that indicated it was unfortunate only for Angel, “this is not negotiable.”
He might as well have slapped her. Hard.
Angel felt herself go white, as reality asserted itself yet again. And it was harsh.