The Man Behind the Scars

She was hoping it would distract Rafe from this talk of masks. After all, the mask she wore—the easy, happy mask she had to wear with him—was the only thing she had that was hers. The only thing she had left.

The only thing she hadn’t signed away.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said with greatly exaggerated courtesy, and had to fight to restrain herself from sketching a theatrical curtsy in his direction.

“My lady,” he murmured in cool reply, in a manner that made Angel question her own sanity—and her seeming need to poke at this man as if he were a tiger locked up in a cage. She had no trouble imagining him in the role of a big cat, all sinew and grace, danger in every solid inch of his sleekly muscled body. But she’d do well to remember the only one in any sort of cage around here, gilded or not, was her.

He loomed there beside the long, narrow table against the far wall, much too dark and menacing for what was meant to be a cozier dining room than the formal hall in this great house, and what was frightening wasn’t that she found him scary—but that she did not. Quite the opposite. She had thought him far too compelling, far too much, in his fine Italian suits, all elegant lines and inspired tailoring—none of which he wore tonight. As he had promised, he did not dress for dinner.

He didn’t have to.

Rafe in a simple pair of denim jeans and a sleek dark navy jumper almost did her in. His hair was too long, and bore the marks of impatient hands run through the thick, dark locks. He was too grim, too hard, too impossibly male. When he wore a suit, he was so obviously the earl—distant and dangerous, but quite clearly out of reach in every way that mattered. Here, now, dressed so casually, he was only a man. But what a man! It was as if she could see all that power and shattering sensuality coiled and ready in his distractingly masculine form. Waiting. It made her throat go dry, even as the rest of her softened, melted, ached.

Her reaction to him terrified her far more than he did.

“You are staring,” he pointed out, and there was something in his voice that seemed to skitter over her skin like a kind of touch. She had to force herself to breathe.

“I am trying to find the earl in this particular costume,” she said, sweeping her gaze over him from his carelessly tousled head to the feet he’d encased in hard black boots. He should have looked far less magnificent than he did. He should have faded into mediocrity without the fine clothes that marked him as the wealthy, powerful man he was. But Angel looked at the way he stood there, so easy and confident, and knew that whatever this man was, he didn’t need clothes to broadcast it. He simply exuded it from his very pores.

That should have made her nervous, surely. She told herself it did, that nerves explained the jumpy, achy feeling low in her belly.

“I was the earl long before I had any hope of the title,” he said, in a voice that hinted at secrets and stories she doubted he would share. “I suspect it is in me whether I like it or not, clothes be damned. It is like the family curse.”

He was so dark, so serious, with his soldier’s stance and his ravaged face, and yet she had the nearly overwhelming urge to close the distance between them and see if she could taste the white-hot heat of him on his tongue. He was magnetic and fascinating, and how, she wondered with something like despair, could she handle this marriage of hers if she was no better than a moth to the nearest bright light? If she had the suicidal urge to simply throw herself at him and see what became of her?

He studied her for a moment, his gray eyes cold, and she had the sinking sensation that he could read every single thought that crossed her mind. As if he knew exactly what effect he had on her. As if he was luring her in with every breath, every near-smile. Don’t be ridiculous, she chided herself. He is only a man. Two weeks in Scotland and she’d gone over all gothic, apparently. Next thing she knew she’d be waxing rhapsodic about the joys of sheep.

She accepted the glass of wine he handed her, and their fingers brushed as she took it. Such a small, silly thing, hardly worth noticing—and yet her heart stuttered, then began to beat harder, like a drum.

“You spoke of requirements earlier,” she said, determined that her voice should not sound as breathless as she felt. She forced some facsimile of her usual easy smile, unable to control herself as she should. “Perhaps you should list them all for me, so there is no further confusion.”

“I am not in the least confused,” he replied smoothly, a small quirk in the corner of his mouth that she took to be his version of a smile. “But then, I am not the one who worried that the countryside would affect her sanity.”