The Man Behind the Scars

Something moved in the air between them, heavy and bright. Rafe felt his need for her like a pulse, coursing through him like blood. Only thicker. Sweeter. Hotter.

“Did your mother burn your house to the ground?” he asked. He didn’t entirely understand the rueful expression that crossed her face then, much less the flash of something far sharper than amusement in her gaze.

“In a manner of speaking,” she said, her lips moving into something a shade too serious to be a smile. “But there is no scaffolding to repair the sort of damage my mother can do, I’m afraid. She defies any attempt to rebuild.”

“While the scaffolding cannot do a thing to keep the ghosts of Pembroke Manor at bay,” he replied, something very near wry. “They merely wait their turn.”

“The ghosts will always lie in wait, won’t they?” Angel asked softly, her blue eyes dark on his. “We are all haunted in one way or another. This house. You. Me.”

He did not want her wisdom, he realized then. Nor her understanding. It cut too deep. Whatever it was that arced between them pulled taut, clawing into him, making him completely unable to do anything but focus on her mouth. That wicked, taunting mouth. He welcomed it.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but her voice was no more than the faintest whisper of sound. She stood again, as if to put distance between them, as if she meant to move to safer ground—but she didn’t go anywhere. And now they were both standing, so close—so close—that he could easily reach over and—

“You know very well what I’m doing,” he said, his voice far more of a growl than it should have been. Want and need pounded in him, making him so hard it bordered on pain. But he didn’t touch her. He had promised her he would wait, hadn’t he? And there was very little left of the man he should have been, he knew that. But he still had his word. There were times he thought it was all he had.

“Rafe…”

Again, that hard swallow, as if she was fighting the same demons and desires that he was, and with as much success.

“You have been hiding in this library for two weeks,” he said, managing to keep his voice even, though he felt nothing at all but heat. “And I’ve let you. I wanted your transition to Pembroke Manor—to Scotland—to be as easy as possible.” She only watched him, eyes wide and wary. And that shimmer of heat beneath, that called to him in ways he refused to explore. Not here. Not yet. “I have very few requirements, Angel,” he continued. “But I would like you to have dinner with me in the evenings. Do you think you can do that?”

He was sure she could tell how much he wanted it—how he wanted her—and he wasn’t sure who he hated more in that moment. Her, for being such a temptation that he made himself into a fool for her? Or himself, for being that fool? He did not know what he would do if he saw pity in her eyes, or worse, some kind of understanding—but that was not the expression that dawned there, and gleamed softly.

“Do we dress for dinner here?” she asked in her easy, offhanded way, as if she hadn’t noticed all these currents swimming around them, all the tension simmering in

the air.

“If you like.” He shrugged, arousal making his voice as hard as the rest of him. “I cannot be bothered.”

“I expected the role of countess to require far more gowns,” she said, her tone reproving, as if she believed the matter of her wardrobe to be of paramount importance here, where there were only the two of them and a staff well paid to notice nothing at all. “If I may lodge a complaint.”

“You may wear whatever you please,” he said.

Maybe his voice was too rough. Maybe that was why she seemed to stiffen—but no, she only nodded, and he had the frustrating realization that she was hiding her true feelings, whatever they were, behind that amiable surface.

Again.

As usual.

He hated that too.

“Except,” he said, and there was no doubting his voice was too rough now, too rough and too hard, like the monster she kept making him forget he was, forcing him to wonder if she considered that service simply part of the bargain—part of the price he’d paid. “That mask you wear all the time. I’d prefer you leave that in your room. If at all possible.”

* * *

His words hung in her mind as Angel swept into the small, intimate dining room later that same evening, dressed in the finest gown she’d been able to find among her belongings—all of it carefully unpacked and painstakingly hung in the extensive closets in her rooms by unseen if capable hands. It was a deliberately extravagant dress of deepest crimson that flowed over her body from a bold, asymmetrical neckline to pool at her feet like a living, breathing flame. She knew it made her look as if she were planning to make herself the main course—to incinerate them both with the force of her brightness.