knew they were holding her steady, because she did not fall.
None of this should matter, these things she felt and the difficulty she seemed to have in pulling in a deep breath, but it did. It all mattered, suddenly. The deliberately blank expressions of the witnesses. The impartial and disinterested tone of the registrar’s voice. The bare room, really more of an office, empty of any bridesmaids, flowers, music, family. Anything that might make this wedding a joyous event instead of a dry business arrangement.
This was the very last thing I wanted, a voice cried out in the quiet of her mind, all of those vows she’d made to herself when she was younger cascading through her then, taunting her with how far she’d fallen and what she’d become, but it was too late for that. It was much too late. Fifty thousand pounds and twenty-eight years of Chantelle’s brand of mothering too late.
And then she was saying the rest of those words, those old, traditional words that so many brides had said before her, in cathedrals and in churches, in stately homes and in registry offices just like this one, so many of them filled with love and hope and a whole spectrum of emotions she did not expect she would ever feel. Some part of her grieved, even as another part was strangely exultant. She felt torn—ripped between parts of herself she didn’t even understand.
They joined hands. Angel felt the jolt of it, the pull. She worried that he could feel the way she shook, but when she looked at their hands clasped together like that, like a real couple’s, she couldn’t see the evidence of that shaking—she could only feel it on the inside, making her very bones seem to rattle in place.
Rafe spoke then. He said thee and then he said wife in that low, gruff voice, and then he slid a ring, the metal cold and heavy against her skin, onto her finger. She couldn’t even look at it. She could only look at him.
You will soon be trapped with little hope of escape, he’d told her in that same voice, and she could see, now, the doors of that trap shutting all around her. What it would mean, this loveless marriage. What she would give up.
She would be safe, she told herself, like some kind of chant. She would be free. There were better things, she thought, than love or hope or emotions that had no place in decidedly and deliberately practical arrangements like this one. More useful things, by far.
And still, she did not look away from him. Still, she gazed back at him, accepting his dare—throwing out one of her own. She knew she was doing it—she saw the awareness of it in his dark gaze—and she could neither stop herself nor seem to figure out what, exactly, she thought she was doing.
Marrying him, she thought, with something very like humor, dark and twisted though it seemed to her in that moment. I am actually marrying him.
“I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, Angel Louise, take thee,” she said then, as she was meant to do. And again, as she paused to breathe and then speak his name once more, there was nothing but Rafe and that cold, frozen sort of patience in his gaze. He made no move to coerce her, to convince her. His hands held hers easily, with that same stillness that made some kind of bell chime in her, deep and low. He only watched her, his ruined face carefully stiff as if he was ready for any outcome at all. She believed it. “To be my wedded husband,” she said, finishing that ancient phrase, and she was astonished to hear that she was whispering. That her voice was shaking as if she was timid. As if she was someone else.
It was that word, she thought in a dazed sort of amazement. Husband. She hadn’t been ready for that word.
She slid the ring they’d given her earlier onto his finger, felt him clench the hard muscles of his hand slightly as she did so, and then it was done.
It was done.
She jerked slightly when the registrar said “husband and wife”, as if she’d already forgotten that it was them, that it was her, that this was who they were now to each other. Husband and wife. She felt something very nearly like dizziness, as if she’d had too much champagne, when the truth was, she could hardly remember the last time she’d had a drink. Certainly not today. That might make it look as if there was something to celebrate.
“You may kiss the bride,” the registrar said then, jolting Angel back into the moment. Back into her wedding.
She smiled at Rafe, and it was harder than it should have been to make her mouth curve in that easy way that she knew she needed it to do. Much harder than she expected, but she did it. She had the insane notion that the only thing standing between her and some kind of desperate oblivion was that smile, however crazy that might sound even in her own head.
Rafe did not smile back. His gaze was hard, unflinching. Angel expected another brief, searing sort of kiss like the one in the palace. She felt that shivery heat move through her, heating her up from the inside out in anticipation, making a wicked flame bloom and pulse in all of her secret places.
She wanted that kiss. God help her, but she did.
He took one hand and slid it against her cheek, capturing her that easily. For a moment there was only that searching, somehow implacable look in his eyes, and then his mouth lowered to hers.
And there was nothing at all but fire.
That grim and perfect mouth was demanding against hers, forcing her to open to him, to submit to him, to throw herself heedlessly into this dance of flame and need between them.
By the time it occurred to her that she should not allow this—that she should try to save herself from this thing between them that she couldn’t seem to control or deny, that would, she knew on some level she could not understand, destroy her in some fundamental way—he was pulling back.
His hard palm still curved against her cheek, more brand than balm. And she loved it. The shock of that seared through her like that same, edgy need for him that still echoed in her, much as she told herself that it had to be something—anything—else.
But there was no denying that gleam in his gray eyes, that hint of silver that she recognized immediately. It was pure male satisfaction, and it hummed through her, making her breasts ache and her core melt. She let out a shaken sound she pretended was no more than a breath and his serious mouth curved.
They turned to sign the register, and Angel took it as an opportunity to pull herself together. She didn’t know why she was so fascinated by this man. Her husband. She didn’t know why he had such a powerful effect on her. But she did know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the papers she had signed did not allow for this. It was one thing to marry a man for his money. That was a cold, practical decision. It was another to want him like this. What would that make her, if she succumbed to it? What kind of fool married for mercenary reasons and then felt things for her husband? Worse, what would he say if she told him that she thought she’d made a mistake—that she wished she’d approached him another way? What would he do if she said she wished they’d got to know each other, done this properly? She nearly cringed, imagining the look on his serious face.
How would he look at her if she admitted that she wished that this was romantic after all?
She was such an idiot. She felt the truth of that snake through her, making her stomach clench. And then she looked at him, this husband who would never see anything when he looked at her save what she cost him.
His guard had dropped into place again, that quiet curve of his mouth no more than a memory—she could see it as plainly as if he’d pulled a helmet of hammered armor over his face. Once again, he stood
