The Scandalous Collection

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 stiff and ready, that cold bleakness in his gaze. It was the same way he’d looked at her as she’d approached him in the Palazzo Santina.

Waiting, she realized in dawning understanding, and something else that made her chest feel dangerously hollowed out from the inside. He was waiting. For the harsh rejection he must have learned to expect. For her to prove to him once again that he was the monster he believed himself to be—that he’d told her he was.

You will soon be trapped with little hope of escape, he’d said, because he thought that he was the thing that went bump in the night. That he was what she feared, instead of the trappings of this bargain they’d made, and what she knew it made her that she’d suggested it in the first place. And then taken it. And then, worse by far, gone and started to feel things she never should have let herself feel.

And Angel could not bear it. She could not add to this man’s pain. They were only scars, she thought, and yet he’d clearly been treated terribly because of them. And whatever else he was, or would be to her—and her mind skittered away from examining that too closely—she simply couldn’t be part of the great weight he carried around and wore like a badge of fierce pride, as if he expected nothing less.

She simply could not bear it, no matter the cost to herself.

So she smiled, and it was easy this time. Easy and bright, and she reached over and took his hand again, as if she had every right—which, she supposed, she did now. And would, for as long as this devil’s pact between them lasted. She ignored the darkness in his gaze. She ignored the rush of panic that threatened to tip her over where she stood, because none of this was what she’d wanted once, and she knew that what she did now would seal this marriage—would trap her just as he’d warned—more surely than any kiss ever could.

Even a kiss like his.

Beneath the panic there was something else, something hot and dark and his, and while she had no idea what would become of her, that part didn’t care. It only wanted more.

She smiled down at their signatures, then at him. And she laughed.

“Well, look at that,” she said, and she found she was carried away in her own merriment, suddenly. As if she’d made it real. As if it was true, this sudden light feeling that could, in other circumstances, have been some distant cousin to joy. Or perhaps not so distant after all. “I’m a bloody countess.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“YOUR belongings have been packed up and moved out of your flat,” Rafe said in his gruff way, breaking the silence that had grown thick between them. “As planned.”

The wide and plush back of the sleek silver sedan seemed significantly less roomy with Rafe in it. He sprawled on his side of the seat, his long legs eating up the space before them, the heft of his big body—that wide, hard chest and those strong arms—seeming to encroach upon her when Angel knew, rationally, that he wasn’t moving. He didn’t have to move to take up all the space, all the air. He simply did. As if he exuded too much power to be contained in his own body.

He watched her, those dark eyes moving over her face like a touch. Like the touch she could still feel, that set her heart racing and made her breath shorten in her throat.

The truth she didn’t want to face seemed to expand inside of her, making her feel as if she might explode.

“Wonderful,” she replied, forcing the appropriate smile, hoping it looked duly appreciative.

She made herself relax against the seat, then made herself look at him too—as if nothing irrevocable had happened, as if nothing was sealed or set in stone or any of the other overly dramatic and frightening things she’d told herself during the actual ceremony. Anyone might get carried away during a wedding. She wasn’t a machine, after all. Of course she had feelings—she’d married this man! She could wish that things were different between them—that they were different people, who had gone about this in a very different way—without acting upon that wish. Who knew what she would actually feel, once the wedding day itself was over? Once they made it through whatever their wedding night might hold? The intensity of the occasion had simply got into her head, she reasoned. That and the seriousness of it all, of what she’d agreed to as she’d said those words. Understandable, really, that the enormity of this—of the huge, extraordinary step she’d taken with this man—would take a bit of processing. With or without her inconvenient desire for him.

Her smile felt less forced, suddenly. “I’ve never moved anywhere without having to spend day and night packing up boxes and making endless arrangements,” she said then, her voice deliberately light to dispel the tension in the very air between them, thick and treacherous. “It never occurred to me that it could simply happen while I was off doing other things. Wealth really does make everything so very convenient, doesn’t it?”

That ghost of something not quite a smile played with his hard mouth, and seemed to call out shadows in the cold gray of his gaze.

“It has its uses,” he agreed in that low voice that vibrated along the length of her spine. That single brow of his rose, dark and aristocratic. Demanding. “It has brought me you, has it not?”

“My goodness, Lord Pembroke,” she said softly, keeping that easy flirtatious tone in her voice. She found that she did not have to force herself to relax against the seat then—that she did it without thought. “Has the ceremony gone to your head? Do you think this is a romance?”

She took entirely too much pleasure in throwing his own words right back to him. Especially given what she’d been feeling all morning.

His dark eyes lit with something appreciative and purely male, and the way they met hers, so bold and knowing, made Angel’s heart stutter in her chest. She was sure he moved closer then, she was sure of it, and she leaned toward him as if drawn by some dark compulsion she couldn’t even see—but then he turned away, dropping the dizzying force of his attention to the mobile buzzing in his pocket.

Angel told herself she was relieved. She was. She wanted no part of this … mad whirl of sensation she couldn’t even name, much less begin to understand. It all felt too big, too impossible. It was too dangerous by far.

Liar, that little voice whispered. What was dangerous was her reaction to him. What was impossible was this overwhelming urge to simply sink into him and disappear. But this wasn’t a romance. There would be no happily ever after, not in the classic sense. If they were lucky, they would manage this union well, and get along with each other. Maybe even become friendly. That was all she should hope for.

That was all she could allow herself to hope for.

Rafe spoke into his phone, his voice clipped and sure, and she tuned him out, looking out at the passing London streets. Everything was going to be fine. Of course it would.

Today, it was all real—that desperate scheme she’d cooked up in her wildly uncomfortable coach class seat, on her way to see her favorite stepsister become a real, live princess. Her wildest imaginings had come true. She was married to an earl. She was a countess. She remembered Rafe’s dire warnings as they’d danced in the Palazzo Santina, Allegra’s engagement ball and the usual Jackson family antics no more than a blur to her. That he was not modern. Or fashionable. Or, if she recalled correctly, open-minded.

But what did that matter, really? He was an important man. A busy one, if his current conversation was any indication. She could soon be busy too, putting the generous monthly allowance he’d placed into an account with her name on it to excellent use around London. No more waiting around, cobbling together what paying gigs she could find, hoping she made the rent this month. Those days were over. That life was finished.

She could make herself over completely into one of those Sloane Rangers she’d never quite had the money to wholly emulate, flinging herself in and out of Harvey Nicks with a charge card in her hand and nothing more important on her mind than her next lunch date. She could even become one of those fixtures on the London charity circuit, forever attending this or that ball, draped in fabulous gowns and envy-inducing jewels, mouthing platitudes to every reporter she encountered about the great philanthropic work she was doing in all her couture. She was newly rich, and had married a pedigree. She could choose any life she wanted, surely. She could buy it, come to that.

And only contend with her husband—she still wasn’t used to that word, and wondered if she’d ever be, if it would ever simply be a term she used instead of something more like a bomb—on the odd occasions they crossed paths. Which, if she knew anything about busy men with great amounts of wealth, a subject she had studied in some detail for some time, as it happened, would be increasingly rare as time wore on. That was how these marriages worked, no matter what claims Rafe might have made about how unmodern he planned to be.

She folded her hands together in her lap, and only then remembered that she now wore a ring on her formerly bare finger. Once she noticed it, it was impossible to ignore the alien feeling of metal and stone on her hand, digging into her flesh. For the first time, she looked down at her hand and really took a close look at the ring he’d put there.

It was stunning. As was, she reflected, every single thing of his she’d seen, from his suits to his car to his lovely town house. Of course the ring was gorgeous. The man, clearly, had exquisite taste. He was far too good for the likes of her, Angel knew, and the truth of that seemed to twist inside of her in a new, unpleasant way. She concentrated on the ring instead.

A large dark blue, square-cut sapphire rose above a bed of gleaming diamonds and platinum. One ring of diamonds circled the blue stone, while two other rings of diamonds sat on either side, though lower, each circling another, bigger diamond. The dark blue center stone glittered softly as Angel turned her hand this way and that, and something about it seemed to echo deep inside of her, hitting hard at that same well of sensation Rafe seemed to arouse in her so easily.

“It suits you,” Rafe said, breaking into another surge of panic—surely it was panic this time, and none of that far more dangerous desire—that was rushing through Angel, making it hard to breathe. She was almost grateful.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, unable to look at him. Too afraid of what he might see if she did.

“It was my grandmother’s.” There was something in his voice then, some kind of emotion. She didn’t know how to respond to it. She didn’t know why she wanted to, with an intense and sudden surge of that same protectiveness as before. “I’m glad it will finally be worn again.”

“Do you have your mother’s ring as well?” Angel asked.

She didn’t realize that was, possibly, an impertinent question—impolite, at the very least, when she’d only meant to make a bit of conversation—until his silence made her glance over at him. His face was shadowed. Dark.

“Sorry—” she began, but he shook his head.

“My mother gave her wedding rings to my older brother,” he said after a moment, his voice entirely too calm. And distant. “They had a similar aesthetic, while my sensibilities were always more closely aligned with my grandmother’s—my father’s side of the family.”

Angel had the sense he was choosing his words carefully. Then she focused on the most important word.

“Had?” she echoed hesitantly. She was conscious, suddenly, of that same urge she’d felt in the registry office. She did not want to cause this man pain. Even with an innocent question.

“They both died some time ago,” Rafe said matter-of-factly, any emotion she might have sensed gone as if it had never been, hidden away beneath his scars. He shifted slightly in his seat, turning to better face her, the stern set to his mouth discouraging any further comment. “Is it really the time to discuss our pasts, Angel? We are already married. Perhaps it would be better to let them lie.”

There was a kind of menace in the air then, simmering in the close confines of the backseat. Or was it simply a kind of warning? Either way, Angel ignored it.

“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.

“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.