last time he’d smiled at a society event, even before he’d had this face of his to bear stoically and pretend didn’t bother him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled at all, come to that. But something closer to a smile than he’d felt in ages threatened the corners of his mouth, and more surprising than that, for a moment he considered giving in to it.
“I was in the army,” he said. He watched her absorb that with a small nod and a narrowing of her lovely eyes, as if she was fitting him into some category in her head. He wondered which one. Then he wondered why on earth he should care. “There was an ambush and an explosion.”
He hated himself for that—for such a stripped-down description of something that should never be explained away in an easy little sentence. As if two throwaway words did any justice to the horror, the pain. The sudden bright light, the deafening noise. His friends, gone in an instant if they had been lucky. Others, much less lucky. And Rafe, the least lucky of all, with his long, nightmare-ridden, scarred agony of survival.
It was no wonder he never looked in the mirror anymore. There were too many ghosts.
He didn’t intend to give her any further details, so he should not have felt slightly disappointed that she didn’t ask. But she also hadn’t turned away, and he found that contrary to all of his usual instincts where beautiful women at tedious, drink-sodden society events were concerned, however few he’d attended in recent years, he didn’t want her to.
“I’m Angel Tilson,” she said, and offered him her hand, still smiling, as easily as if she spoke to monsters every day and found it—him—completely unremarkable. But then, he reminded himself sharply, she could only see the surface. She had no idea what lurked beneath. “Stepsister to Allegra, the beautiful bride-to-be.”
Angel, he repeated in his head, in a manner he might have found appallingly close to sentimental had she not been standing there in front of him, that teasing smile still crooking her lips, her blue eyes daring him. Daring him.
He had the strangest sensation then—as if, despite everything, he might just be alive after all, just like everybody else. And that same intense desire seemed to move through him then, setting him on fire.
“Rafe McFarland,” he said, and then, more formally, “Lord Pembroke. Distant cousin to the Santinas, through some exalted ancestor or another.”
He took her hand and, obeying an urge he did not care to examine and could not quite understand, lifted it to his lips. Something arced between them when their skin met, his mouth against the soft back of her hand, something white-hot and wild, and for a moment it was as if the Palazzo Santina fell away, as if there was no well-blooded crowd playing the usual drunken games all around them, no strains of soothing music wafting through the air, nothing at all but this.
Heat. Light. Sex.
Impossible, Rafe thought abruptly.
He let go, because that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. Her smile seemed brighter than the gleaming chandeliers high above them, and he couldn’t seem to look away. She was much too pretty to be looking at him like this, as if he was the man he should have been. The man he’d pretended to be, before the accident.
As if he wasn’t ruined.
Perhaps, he thought darkly, she was blind.
“Lord Pembroke,” she repeated, as if she was tasting the title with her lush little mouth. He felt a flash of appreciation for the earldom in an area he had never before associated with it. “What does that mean, exactly? Besides the fancy title and all the forelock tugging I assume goes with it? A stately home and an Oxbridge education, with guest appearances in Tatler to whet the appetite of the commoners from time to time?”
He liked her. It was revolutionary, but there it was. He hardly knew what to make of it.
“It means I am an earl,” he said, with rather too much pompous emphasis, he thought, suddenly deeply tired of himself. But it was who he was. It had been all that he was for longer than he cared to admit, even to himself, even before he’d inherited the title—when he’d had only the sense of its import and the abiding respect for it that his wretched older brother had sorely lacked. He shook off the ghost of Oliver, Seventh Earl of Pembroke and drunken disgrace to the title. He wished he could shake off Oliver’s legacy of debts and disasters, cruelty and sheer viciousness, as easily. “I have responsibilities, and little time for the tabloids, I’m afraid.”
“That would be a yes then, on the grand old estate and Oxbridge and all the rest,” Angel said, still teasing him, not appearing in the least bit cowed by his dark tone. “And I suppose you’re also filthy rich. Doesn’t that usually go hand in hand with nobility? A bit of compensation for the heavy load of the peerage and generations of privilege and so on?”
He didn’t deny it, and she laughed as if he’d said something delightful. He almost felt as if he had.
“I don’t know about filthy rich.” He considered. He wondered why he didn’t find this entire topic distasteful, as he should. As he imagined he would under any other circumstances. But he didn’t, and he knew the reason he didn’t was looking at him with far too blue and direct a gaze. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to see if she was real. Among, he admitted in some grudging surprise, other things. “But there are several centuries’ worth of grime, I’d say. Certainly dirty enough for anyone.”
She laughed again, and he became a stranger to himself in that moment, as he actually contemplated joining in. Impossible, he thought again.
“It’s your lucky day, Lord Pembroke,” she confided, leaning in closer and tapping her champagne flute against his chest. He felt it like a caress. She looked at him, and something dark moved across her pretty face, something too like grief there and then gone in her expressive eyes. “I happen to be interviewing candidates for the position of wealthy husband, and you fit the bill.”
And suddenly it all made sense.
This, Rafe thought, everything going very still inside of him, he understood perfectly.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU want to marry into money,” he said, his voice cold, as if she had confirmed something he’d already suspected about her.
Angel wished she could tell what he thought of that—or even of her unapologetic way of presenting it. But his dark expression was impossible to read, and she wondered if her stomach could twist any further, and harder, and if it did … would she simply be sick? Right here?
She couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. So baldly. So brashly.
But this was the plan. The only one she had, and so what if it had sounded much better in her head? She had no choice but to follow it—because no matter how humiliating this moment was and no matter how much she hated herself and would, she thought, loathe herself forevermore, she could not currently pay her mother’s debts. There was no way. So this was what she’d come to. This terrible game while this affecting, compelling man only looked at her, his gray eyes cold and stern, and she wanted to be someone else—anyone else—more than she’d ever wanted anything.
Good luck with that, she thought darkly, and kept going.
“I do,” she said, and shoved aside the part of her that wanted to drown in the shame, the tidal wave of embarrassment. That kind of second-guessing was for
