Читать книгу The Scandalous Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 70

IT WAS the memory of that smile, so unexpected and curiously infectious, lighting up that scarred face and making it something new, that Angel found herself playing over and over in her head as she headed back home to London and reality.

That and the kiss that never failed, even in retrospect, to make her uncomfortably warm.

It was simple surprise, she told herself—at the depth of her own response. It was nothing more than surprise that he’d had so much passion in him, and that she’d met it. And how could it be anything else, when the only thing between them was money? His money. Her need of it.

And your body, a dark voice whispered inside of her. Isn’t that always the way this kind of arrangement goes?

“Here is my contact information,” Rafe had said, all distance and business, in the car he’d summoned to take them back to their respective hotels after Allegra’s engagement party had come to an end. He had jotted down a few quick lines on a card he’d pulled from somewhere. Angel had found herself admiring the bold, male handwriting, scrutinizing it as if it might give her some clue about the man. He’d handed the card to her when he was finished, his gaze once again dark and grim, no hint of that brief, flashing smile left anywhere on his ruthless face. As if she’d imagined it. She’d begun to wonder if she had.

He’d refused to take her details at all. Not even a mobile number.

“You may find that once you are back in London, and the royal Santina champagne has worn off, that you are less interested in going through with this after all.” His gaze had been level. Matter-of-fact. Somehow, that had made it worse.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she’d said, stung. More offended, perhaps, than the situation warranted. After all, he was just being appropriately cautious—which perhaps she should have been herself. But in the dark, close confines of his car, she’d felt nothing but that current of reckless determination, driving her on, making this happen. Because it had to. Surely that was the only reason. Surely it was reason enough. “But I’m not drunk.”

“We’ll see,” he’d said, and his expression had been very nearly bleak then, and had made something turn over inside of her. “I wouldn’t hold it against you if, upon reflection, you decide that you must have been.”

She’d flushed, with something she’d told herself was temper. Simple temper, nothing more. “I’m not drunk,” she’d said again, distinctly. “But you can pretend I am, if that gives you the escape clause you clearly want.”

“Ring me when you arrive in London,” he’d said softly as the car glided to a stop outside her hotel. His gaze had challenged her. Dared her. And made her, somehow, unutterably sad. “Or don’t.”

Angel, naturally, had rung immediately, still fueled by that same temper. When the plane had landed in Heathrow and again when she’d reached her flat. To prove the point, she’d assured herself expansively, but to herself or to him?

“Oh, dear,” she’d said into his voice mail the second time, when she was safely home and just as determined, filled with something perilously close to righteous indignation. “It appears that two days later and without the champagne, I still want the marriage, just as I suspected I would. But I should tell you, Rafe—” and she admitted to herself, sitting there in her dark flat where no one could see her, least of all him, that she liked the way his name felt in her mouth “—that unlike you, I will hold it against you if you change your mind. Just to be clear.”

And she did want this. Him. Of course she did. He was the answer to all of her prayers, she reminded herself fiercely and repeatedly. She would be rich and a countess to boot! All of her problems would be solved! Not bad for a wild fantasy on a plane ride and a single dance at an engagement party, she told herself. Not bad at all.

And if there’d been a gaping sort of hole inside of her, far too black and bitter for her to look at directly, she’d ignored it. Fiercely and repeatedly.

“I’m afraid I have urgent business I must attend to for the rest of the week,” Rafe told her in that stern, aristocratic voice when he finally returned her calls, right when she was starting to believe that perhaps she’d fantasized the whole thing after all. Just made it up to take away the pain of Chantelle’s latest and greatest betrayal, the way she had when she was a little girl—telling herself stories to make her nights alone less frightening while Chantelle was out with “friends”. “I’m afraid I did not factor the possibility of a fiancée into my schedule.”

That word. Fiancée. It made a chill sneak down her back and she wasn’t sure why. What she was sure about was that she didn’t want to know.

“Are you sure this isn’t simply a test?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

She knew it was. She knew he was still making certain. Making absolutely sure that she’d meant every single word she’d said in that ballroom. Making her question herself and decide if this was what she wanted. If he was what she wanted.

Not to mention, deciding such things for himself. After all, he was bringing far more to this devil’s bargain than she was. It was difficult to imagine, standing by herself in the middle of a flat in a neighborhood she doubted he’d ever visited or could locate on a map, why a man like him—an earl, of all things—would bother. There had to be any number of willing would-be countesses scattered about the country, no matter what he thought. Angel couldn’t possibly be his only option, the way he was hers.

She hated how that made her feel. So … needy. Desperate. Two things she’d never felt before, not about a man. There was nothing about the feeling—itchy and unpleasant—that she liked.

She moved restlessly around her small, serviceable flat, her gaze skipping over all the detritus of this life she’d been so desperate to call her own, that she was now equally desperate to get rid of. All the books she’d hoarded, kept away from Chantelle’s hoots of derision as she’d called Angel Lady Muck—each of them an escape, a fantasy, the education she’d denied herself. Surely wanting to leave the life she’d made, whatever might have become of it, spoke of deep deficiencies in her character. It had to. But then, what part of her behavior over the past few days did she think offered a counterargument?

“Not at all,” he replied coolly, snapping her back into the conversation. “But it is, of course, a period for reflection and research. I suggest you avail yourself of it.”

“Reflection and research?” she echoed, and then laughed. Keep this light, she reminded herself. Easy. She ran her fingers over the spine of one of her favorite books, an old classic involving titled gentlemen, intricate revenge plots and all manner of epic adventures. “I think you’ll find I’m an open book. Written in very simple and easy-to-read sentences.”

“But I am not,” he replied, with what might have been dark humor, had he been another man. There was a pause, and she wondered where he was. What he was doing. What sort of room he stood in, having this bizarre conversation with a woman he hardly knew. Did he regret this already? Did she? Why couldn’t she tell her own feelings where this man—this situation—was concerned? “You may live to wish you’d taken this more seriously, Angel.”

“Yes, yes,” she said dismissively, her voice far more blasé than she actually felt. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Etcetera. I promise to think hard and deep about the ways in which your money could alter my life for the better, for as long as you think it necessary.”

“You do that,” he told her in his serious way, his voice all cool command and dark authority over the phone. And, she thought, somewhat disapproving too. She didn’t like how much that bothered her. “I will send for you on Monday morning. We’ll discuss the ramifications of this arrangement then, in detail and with my solicitors.”

“And what if I want to speak to you before then?” she asked, more to see what he would say than from any current burning desire to have access to him. And in any case, it was only Tuesday morning now. Monday was a long way away. It was going to be difficult, she thought, to have a savior in hand yet still out of reach. To be still smack in the middle of her life, with her problems, while the new and far better, far easier life dangled just beyond her fingertips.

She might very well go mad.

“You seem remarkably adept at leaving extraordinarily long voice-mail messages,” he replied silkily, and she felt it like the sharp reprimand it was. “I imagine you will have no trouble whatsoever leaving more if you feel it necessary.”

She stood there near the front window of her flat, the phone in her hand, for a long time after he ended the call. She stared out toward the street, her heart beating hard and too fast, seeing nothing at all but the future she’d conjured up out of sheer bloody-mindedness, pure shamelessness … and her big mouth.

Maybe she’d taken this whole make-your-own-fairy-tale thing a bit too far.

She imagined that was a common enough reaction when you suddenly found yourself in an actual palace, stepsister to a real, live Cinderella. And when faced with Allegra’s happily ever after, complete with an island kingdom and a handsome Prince Charming, it was perhaps understandable that Angel had conjured up fantasies of modern-day princes who would dance off into bliss and happiness with a common girl like her, all choirs of tweeting budgies and swelling, rapturous soundtracks. But that was the shiny, happy Disney version, wasn’t it?

There was also the rather more dark and dangerous Grimm Brothers version, which she’d spent perhaps too much time reading as a lonely, largely ignored child. In that version of Cinderella, as she recalled, birds did not so much sing pleasing melodies as peck out the eyes of the nasty stepsisters. The famous glass slipper was filled with blood. The woods in the original fairy tales were always perilous, filled with wolves and menace, and she had no idea what on earth she was playing at with a man like Rafe.

“Oh, Angel,” she said out loud, her voice shaky in the quiet room, and as rough to her own ears as if it was a stranger’s. “What the hell are you doing?”

It was much too late at night, and yet Rafe was awake, staring at the sheaf of photographs spread out across the wide expanse of the platform bed he sprawled across. The pictures chronicled Angel’s entire sporadic modeling career, in glossy color and intense black and white—one pouty-mouthed, mysterious-eyed, loose-limbed shot after the next, helpfully supplied by his legal team for his review.

“Your future countess,” Alistair, the lead solicitor, had intoned in his habitually contemptuous way when he’d handed Rafe the folder. With a derisive flourish.

He shouldn’t have liked the way that sounded. He shouldn’t have felt that fierce need move through him again, wanting her in all the ways he could not let himself want anything.

She was so distractingly beautiful. But, of course, that was irrelevant here. He of all people should know how little outside beauty had to do with anything. He’d been aware of that stark truth from a very young age. The scars on his face now were incidental at best. They paled in comparison to the ravaged remains of the rest of him, and well did he know it. He had the ghosts to prove it. His entire army unit. His whole family. He never forgot a single one of them. He felt them all like deep, black holes where his heart should have been. He wore them like regret and recrimination where others wore only bone and skin.

He knew exactly what kind of monster he was.

He rose from his bed and moved restlessly to the tall windows that looked out over London, a city he loathed deeply but hardly saw tonight. He saw only her face. That insouciant smile. The sharp intelligence in her gaze. The heat of her touch. Her delectable mouth.

He knew better than to want her—to want anything—this much.

A good man would not have let this happen, no matter how tempting she was. A decent man would have ended it the moment they were back in London, back to reality. He might not have been either one of those things, but he knew there was still a part of him that longed to be what he should have been, what he’d never been. There was still a part of him that dreamed, sometimes, that he could be better.

If he was any kind of man at all, if there was any shred of humanity in him, he would not let her chain herself to a ruined creature like him. She didn’t know any better—but he did. She saw only bank balances and some kind of savior, but he knew that was only the tiniest part of what she’d get—of what she’d have to endure. He carried the weight of every single person who had ever been close to him. Surely Angel deserved better than that. Better than him.

But he couldn’t seem to make himself do what he knew he should.

He told himself that she knew what she was getting into, or near enough. She was marrying a perfect stranger, for money. He told himself that only a woman with extremely low expectations could possibly consider such a course of action. He told himself that theirs would be a practical business arrangement, with possible side benefits, perhaps, but one that would never, could never, involve feelings of any kind.

It was important to make all of that clear from the start. He wanted a marriage that was shot through with the cold light of reality. He wanted duty and obligation, responsibilities and rules. That would keep the monster in him at bay. That would curtail the inevitable damage.

He was doing this because it was more honest, he told himself. He was not promising her anything. She was not pretending to be in love with him. They would both get exactly what they wanted out of this, and nothing more. Surely that would keep her safe, if nothing else.

He put his hand against the windowpane then, letting the cold glass seep into his skin, reminding him. Who he was. What he could do. What, in fact, he’d done. The cold turned to a numbing kind of pain, of punishment and penance, and still he held his palm there, determined.

This was not about hope. It was about need.

All he had to do was remember that.

It was Friday when Angel saw an unexpected picture of herself in one of the horrible tabloids, tucked up next to Rafe as they’d headed toward his car after the engagement party on Santina. It crystallized her thus far shaky resolve to finish this thing before it really started. To call it off, as she’d been closer to doing every day. That was, she’d decided, the only sane thing to do.

She stood staring at the grainy photograph for far too long in the aisle of her local off-license, as if she expected it to divulge the secrets of her own heart right then and there. As if it could.

The girl in the picture had her head tilted invitingly as she gazed up at the dark, dangerous face of the man next to her. Even in a cheap and sleazy tabloid, Rafe was impressive—too much so—and Angel looked, she was embarrassed even to think, entirely too much like her money-grubbing, social-climbing mother, a connection the tabloid was quick to make itself. It made her cringe in shame, and then redden with deep embarrassment. And it brought home the unpleasant reality of what she’d set out to do.

What she was, in fact, doing.

The entire world would know that she was marrying Rafe for his money, just as Chantelle had married Bobby for his money before her. And they would be right. They would call her all those terrible names, like opportunist and the far nastier gold digger. And they would be right. She might as well simply give in now and accept that she was her mother, after all these years desperate to be anything but.

And the truth was, she didn’t think she could live with that. With herself, if that was who she became, no matter her reasons. She pushed her way out of the shop, making her way back down the street toward her flat, blinking back the emotion that rushed through her so unevenly and threatened to spill out from behind her eyes. She was a mess—she could feel it in every cell of her body—but she still refused to let herself cry. She refused. How many ways could she betray herself before there was none of her left?

A phone call from Ben, her would-be big brother, only made it worse. Her steps slowed as she answered, and she forced herself to adopt her usual flippant tone. It was harder to do than it should have been, and she didn’t want to think about why that was.

“What are you doing with the Earl of Pembroke?” Ben asked directly, in that way of his that reminded Angel that he did, in fact, worry about her. And about all of the many Jacksons, as if worrying was his foremost occupation, in place of his usual world-conquering.

It made her stomach clench in shame, around another bitter surge of panic. What would she tell him? How could she face him again if she did this crazy thing? Ben had never wanted anything but the best for Angel, however unlikely that seemed, given the cards she’d been dealt and the choices she’d made. This would disappoint him, deeply, as he was one of the few people who Angel had ever let get somewhat close to her. Because he had, despite her best efforts, she opened her mouth to tell him what was really happening.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, to tell him the truth. She realized she couldn’t quite bear to say it out loud. Not to Ben. Not to someone who would care, and would be so very sad for her. That made it all so squalid. So desperate and pathetic, somehow.

She mouthed something careless and shallow instead, hardly aware of what she was saying. What did it matter? When she got home, she would call Rafe and end this madness, and none of this would signify.

“Be careful, Angel,” Ben said. It made her throat feel tight. As if he could see. As if he knew. But he didn’t, she reminded herself. He couldn’t. He’d only seen that terrible photograph, which didn’t even show Rafe’s scars, and certainly didn’t show Angel’s true, mercenary colors. It was, in all the ways that mattered, a lie.

“I always am,” she replied lightly, and while that certainly wasn’t true, what was true was that she survived. She always, always survived. So what else really mattered, in the long run? It was better than the alternative. “He’s rich and titled, Ben,” she said then, interrupting him as he tried, yet again, to step up and fix things in a life that, she was afraid, could never be fixed, not really. And certainly not by Ben, dear though he was to her. It meant more to her than she could say that he still tried. “What more could I want?”

That question rang in her head after they’d talked for a few more moments, after she’d evaded his questions and waved away his concern, and after she’d slipped her mobile back into her pocket for the remainder of her walk home. The April day was cold and gray, with a blustery sort of wind that made Angel feel empty inside. Spring seemed like a fairy tale itself on the chilly London street, an unlikely story at best. She tucked her chin into her warm wool scarf, and had her head bent against the relentless slap of the cold, and that was why she didn’t see the slender, tousled-blonde-headed figure standing at the door to her building with a cigarette in one hand and a newspaper in the other until she was very nearly on top of her. When she did, her breath left her in a great whoosh, as surely as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Hard.

Chantelle.

Of course.

“Aren’t you the dark horse,” Chantelle said in her insinuating, insulting way, lounging in one of the chairs in Angel’s tiny kitchen as if she was perfectly comfortable there, which, Angel reflected balefully, she undoubtedly was. Having no shame at all removed all manner of discomforts that others might feel in similar circumstances, she imagined. Chantelle had not bothered to put out her cigarette outside, and so still smoked it, even as she tapped the tabloid that she’d flung on the table between them with the restless, manicured fingers of her other hand. “An earl, no less! You’ve learned a little something from your mother after all.”

“Do you have a cheque for me, Chantelle?” Angel asked pointedly, unwinding her scarf and tossing it with far more force than necessary toward the empty chair. “Because I know this can’t be a social call. Not when you owe me fifty thousand quid with interest mounting by the day.”

Chantelle blew a stream of smoke into the air. “No wonder I didn’t lay eyes on you once in Santina,” she said, as if Angel hadn’t spoken. As if what she’d done wasn’t hanging between them like an ugly screen. “I thought you were avoiding me, but the whole time you were holed up with his lordship playing—”

“How could you?” Angel said tightly, cutting her off. “Fifty thousand pounds? What could you possibly have been thinking?”

She told herself that her mother looked abashed then, but she knew that was wishful thinking at best. Chantelle didn’t know the meaning of the word. Angel had learned the truth about her mother over the years, whether she’d wanted to or not. Over and over again.

“It was an accident,” Chantelle said now. Just as she always did, her voice slightly husky as if she was in the grip of strong emotions. Which, Angel reminded herself angrily, she was not. She had no emotions—only the ability to feign them. “You know I’ll pay you back, love. It was just a little bit of help to tide me over.”

“You won’t pay me back,” Angel said flatly. As much to herself as to her mother. “You never do.”

“It won’t matter, will it?” Chantelle replied without missing a beat. “You could be a countess soon enough, if you play this right, and what will you care about money then? You’ll have pots of it.”

She made no effort to disguise the tinge of bitterness in her tone, much less the avaricious gleam in her eyes—bright blue eyes that were identical to Angel’s. Angel hated the fact that she so greatly resembled this woman. It horrified her that anyone believed she was anything at all like her—and she knew they did. The whole wide world did.

Even she did, if she was honest. And hadn’t she walked up to Rafe at that party and proved it? Like mother, like daughter. It made her throat burn with something like acid.

“You can’t possibly imagine that after stealing my identity and sticking me with a huge bill, I’d be likely to give you any money should I marry into it, can you?” Angel made her voice incredulous when, really, she wasn’t at all surprised. Chantelle twitched herself up from the chair opposite and moved toward the sink to toss her cigarette butt away. Leaving a soggy mess for Angel to clean up, no doubt. Like everything else she ever touched.

“I raised you all on my own, Angel,” Chantelle said without turning back around. Her voice was wistful. Something like nostalgic. And was, Angel knew, no matter how much she wished otherwise, entirely fake. “I was only eighteen when I had you, and it wasn’t easy.”

She wished, for only a moment, that her mother was someone, anyone, else. Someone who might say the things Chantelle did and mean them. Even once.

“Does it count as ‘on your own’ when there was a parade of men in and out of the door at all times?” Angel asked musingly. “Some were simply your lovers, I suppose, but others were honest to goodness sugar daddies. Which I suspect is just another way of saying married, isn’t it? Just like my father?”

“Some daughters in your position would be a little bit more grateful,” Chantelle continued, only the hardening of her voice any indication that she’d heard Angel at all. “I made the best choices I could for you, when I was barely more than a child myself.”

“Chantelle, please.” Angel laughed, entirely without humor. “You were never a child.”

“Because I had no choice,” she retorted. “I had to make do, didn’t I? How else would you have been fed?”

Chantelle twisted around then, and Angel met her mother’s gaze. So blue, so bright, and so endlessly conniving.

“Why are you here?” she asked quietly. “I know you’re not going to pay me back. I even know you’re not going to apologize. So what can you possibly want?”

“Can’t a mother drop in to see her own daughter?” Chantelle asked, her blue gaze guileless. Which meant she could be up to anything at all. Anything and everything. “Especially when you haven’t answered your mobile in days?”

“I know how this goes,” Angel said, too weary even for bitterness. Too numb, she thought, and was grateful for it. It made everything easier. What hurt the most was when she actually believed that Chantelle could change—that she even wanted to try. How many times would she fall for that? After all these years? “You’ll keep at it until you say something that makes me feel guilty. Then you’ll work that until I end up making you feel better for what you’ve done. Until I’ve apologized for what you did to me.” She shook her head. “You do it every time. It’s like clockwork.”

“Such airs you put on,” Chantelle said, her gaze as hard as her voice. “You might as well be a flipping countess already. Don’t forget, I know the truth about you, Angel.” She nodded toward the newspaper on the table. “We’re no different, you and me. I’m just a little bit more honest about it.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word honest,” Angel snapped. “You’ve never even brushed up against honesty in passing.”

Chantelle sniffed. “I can see you’re determined to make this hard,” she said loftily, as if she was rising above Angel’s childish behavior through sheer goodness, great martyr that she was. “I want you to remember this, Angel. You take such pleasure in making me the villain, but I’m the one who came round this time to sort things out, aren’t I? And you won’t even give me the time of day.”

“I gave you fifty thousand quid, Mum,” Angel retorted. “Without even knowing it. Without you even asking. I’m all out of things to give you, and I mean that literally. I have nothing left.”

She wasn’t surprised when Chantelle slammed out of the flat, but she was surprised that she didn’t find herself nearly as destroyed by one of her mother’s always upsetting and depressing little visits as she usually was. She pulled the newspaper toward her again, and stared down at that lie of a photo.

What wasn’t a lie was that Rafe was so solid, so surprisingly tough, and it was visible even in newsprint. That soldier’s way of holding himself, strong and unbendable, perhaps. She had the feeling that he was the kind of man—notably unlike her stepfather, Bobby, and most of the population of London, including some of her own early boyfriends back when she’d been foolish enough to bring them into Chantelle’s lascivious orbit—who would see a woman like Chantelle coming from miles off and be singularly unimpressed. It made her feel warm again, imagining his complete imperviousness to a woman like Chantelle.

It would be like Chantelle didn’t even exist.

He wasn’t promising her happiness. He was promising her financial security. And it dawned on Angel as she sat there, the smell of Chantelle’s cigarette smoke still heavy in the air, that the only kind of happiness she was likely to get in this life would involve protecting herself from Chantelle and her games. And the only thing that could guarantee her that kind of protection was money. Pots of it, as her mother had said. If she was really, truly rich, it wouldn’t matter what Chantelle did. She could protect herself, and pay it off without blinking if somehow that protection failed. Chantelle would never again be in a position to ruin her life—she wouldn’t even have access to it.

The very idea made her feel freer than she had in years.

Maybe it was better to be alone as she’d always been, but nevertheless financially safe with someone who accepted her on the level they would arrange together, than plain old alone and prey to her mother’s endless schemes. That was why she hadn’t let herself ask Ben—himself no slouch in the money department—for help, because he would have helped her, but Chantelle would only have done it again. And again. And how many times did she think her stepbrother could step in? He could only have been a temporary fix. Marrying Rafe was a long-term solution. He was signing up in advance to pay her bills. And, unlike Ben, at least he was getting something in return.

She wanted to be free of Chantelle, no matter how terrible a daughter that made her. For once in her life, she wanted Chantelle to have no reach, no influence. For once. For good.

She thought of Rafe’s ruined face, and the wild flare of passion that had made her shake. That demanding kiss, the one that still haunted her. That had kept her awake and panicked throughout the long week. That threatened her in ways she was afraid to contemplate too closely. She already knew it would not be easy with him. It might even be bad—there was every reason to think so. They were strangers. They had nothing in common as far as she could see. The potential for disaster was huge. Almost guaranteed, in fact.

But it would be different than this, and she would have some protection, at long last—and who cared what she had to barter to get it? She wasn’t unaware of the irony inherent in this choice she was making. It seemed to lick into her like some kind of terrible poison, making it hard to breathe: in order to escape her mother, she would have to become her. She would have to do the very thing she’d always sworn she’d never, ever do.

She knew she should come up with some other solution—any other solution—but the truth was, she was out of solutions. She felt flattened by this latest stunt of Chantelle’s, and some part of her was terrified to find out what lay on the other side of this feeling. If anything.

The truth was, Angel was so very tired of just surviving.

Of always having some new tragedy to get over. She was tired of living by her wits, of making do.

She was tired of digging herself out of messes she hadn’t even made.

She was tired.

And what did it matter what people thought of her? They already thought it. They had for years. Let them.

It had to be better with Rafe. She told herself it just had to be.

Because the truth was, she thought as she moved over to the sink to find her mother’s ashes and swollen cigarette end lying there in a wet, smelly mess across the bottom of the basin, like everything else Chantelle had ever touched, anything was better than this.