The Man Behind the Scars

He refused to allow himself to dwell on that. Or even to examine it in any detail.

The working men knew better than to ogle the countess in front of the earl, for which, today, Rafe felt some sympathy. She had yet to get the message that women of her new rank, in the country no less, did not dress as if they were taking a stroll through the high-end shops in some desperately fashionable part of London. Angel wore a pair of jeans that looked as if she’d glued them to her tight curves, a pair of completely unsuitable shoes and one of those immensely complicated, profoundly feminine tops that looked fussy and strappy and yet made him want nothing more than to take the whole thing off with his teeth. The high shoes made her hips sway invitingly—a sweet rhythm that made him even harder than he usually was, just at the thought of her—and there was something about her oversize sunglasses and deliberately mussed and choppy blonde hair that made him want to use his teeth in other places too.

She was driving him slowly insane. And the worst part was, on some level, he was actually enjoying it.

“I see you dressed to lend your hand to the ongoing construction,” he drawled when she drew near. “How thoughtful.”

“There are very few mirrors in this house,” she replied, seemingly unbothered by his ironic tone. “I am forced to toss things together and hope for the best. You have only yourself to blame if you do not care for the result.”

He had forgotten about the mirrors, he thought. He had the urge to look in one so rarely, he’d forgotten that he’d removed almost every last one of them from the house. Too many ghosts in the damned things, he’d found. He saw only the explosion and the terrible aftermath. He heard only the screams, not all of them his own.

“I hate mirrors,” he said, realizing only after he spoke that his tone was clipped and dark.

“This outfit is meant to be my form of encouragement and support,” Angel replied at once, merrily, smiling brightly at the building supervisor who reddened under the force of all that shine. As well he should, Rafe thought when she turned that same smile on him. It banished the dark, the ghosts. It made him want to lick her all over, as if she was made entirely of the sweetest, richest cream. “Are your spirits not lifted?”

“My spirits, certainly,” he murmured in a low voice when the supervisor stepped away, out of earshot. “And many other parts of me.”

“I’m sure I don’t understand your meaning,” she said demurely, with a quirk of her wicked mouth that indicated that, again, she was playing with him. Playing. With him. No matter how often she did it, it never failed to surprise him. He wondered why he found her so entertaining. He, who never found anything in the least bit entertaining, and hadn’t, really, since he’d left Pembroke Manor as a broken, unwanted boy of sixteen to join the military academy that had made him a man.

“Put your hands on me the way we both know you want to,” he suggested, not caring that he was standing out in public. That he was no doubt being watched, even now. She made him cease to care about everything except her—which should have given him pause. But it didn’t. “The meaning will come to you, I’m sure.”

But she only aimed that maddening smile at him, and then turned her attention to the clatter of the reconstruction going on in front of them. Rafe ordered himself to calm down, though he was starting to think that was well nigh impossible when in her presence. She slid her hands into the back pockets of those skintight jeans, which thrust her breasts forward against the delicate material of her top, and very nearly made him groan aloud.

“Is it going well?” she asked, utterly oblivious to the torture he was in. Or, perhaps, not quite as oblivious as she seemed, he thought, when she slid him a sideways look. He felt it like electricity, shuddering through him. Heaven help him, how he wanted her. “I’m afraid I can’t tell. All I see is the scaffolding, and a whole host of tired-looking men stamping to and fro with very loud tools.”

He bit back a smile, amazed, as usual, that one even attempted to appear.

“It is going well,” he told her. “The loud tools are a good sign. You’ll want to worry when it’s silent out here.”

He followed her gaze to the skeletal beginnings of the new east wing, the physical manifestation, he often thought, of his new beginning here. Of this new chapter in the history of the earldom and his dysfunctional family. One that might erase what had gone before—all those dark years he’d survived somehow while watching the rest of his family succumb to their demons, one after the other. One that had more to do with protecting and caring for the estates and all those who worked them, and less to do with bleeding those same estates for every penny, as Oliver had done with so much reckless entitlement. If it had not been for Rafe’s stern discipline and careful stewardship of the relatively small inheritance he’d received from his father, and the personal holdings from his grandmother that she’d signed over to him before her death, Pembroke Manor might well have had to have been sold off. Chopped up into pieces, no doubt, and ruthlessly developed, like everything else in the whole of the United Kingdom these days.