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.
“Part of what you signed was an agreement to live where I live until any heirs we produce are of school age,” Rafe said in that cool way of his, as if he did not care one way or the other, but was simply reciting the facts. “I promised you I won’t rush you into the physical part of our arrangement, and I’ll keep that promise.” She felt his voice like another slap, so cold and sure when she was coming apart, when she was fighting so hard to keep from falling to bits all over the floor of the car. “I have no problem maintaining separate addresses in future if that is what you want, but not until the question of heirs is settled. And I apologize if this distresses you, but until then we will live at Pembroke Manor, with only occasional forays into Glasgow and even fewer trips down to London.”
Too many thoughts whirled through Angel’s head then, making her feel slightly sick. There was a heat behind her eyes that she was desperately afraid might be tears, and she knew that if she unclenched her hands they would shake uncontrollably.
And none of that even touched the storm that raged inside of her. It didn’t come close.
How could she have forgotten the truth about this relationship? How could she have tried to protect this man, tried to shield him from hurt, when she should have known he would not do the same? Because why should he? This was a cold and calculated arrangement, not a love match. Not even a like match—as they’d hardly known each other long enough to tell! Why had she let herself lose sight of that for even a moment?
Why was there a part of her—even now—that wanted it to be different when it so very clearly wasn’t and would never, could never, be?
He did not want her by his side at all times because he was swept away in emotion, which might have been forgivable, no matter how confining. No, he demanded it for the oldest reason in the world—because he wanted to make sure that any heirs that might turn up were his, and he had no particular reason to take her word on that subject or any other subject, because they were total strangers to each other. And she had no right to complain about that, or even about the fact he was whisking them off to Scotland in the first place, because this was the deal. This was what she’d signed up for—literally. She got access to his money. He got to make the decisions.
She hadn’t imagined how difficult it was going to be to swallow those decisions when he handed them down. You fool, she chastised herself with no small amount of bitterness. You pathetic fool—what did you expect?
“And what if I can’t do it?” she asked, not surprised to hear that her voice sounded like a stranger’s. So far away. So thin. Desperate, she thought. She didn’t look at him, but then she didn’t have to. He still occupied twice the space that he should have done, all that power seeming now to pollute the air around them.
