The Man Behind the Scars(5)

"I thought about simply asking for charitable donations," Angel said  with a little smirk. He waited. She shrugged expansively. "A better  question is, who doesn't need a wealthy husband? Given the choice."

"You appear to be making the choice yourself, rather than waiting for it  to be presented to you," Rafe said in that dry way of his that seemed  to move through her like heat. "Very enterprising."

"I'm extremely practical," she told him, as if confiding in him. As if his words had been in any way approving.

"You'd have to be," he agreed, "if you mean to choose a spouse in so cold and calculating a manner."

"Is that meant to chastise me?" she asked lightly, as if she hardly  noticed one way or the other. As if it would be nothing to her if, in  fact, he did mean to do exactly that. A lie, she realized in some  surprise-but she shrugged carelessly anyway. "I know what I want and am  prepared to go after it. I believe that when a man exhibits this kind of  single-minded determination, whole nations rise up and applaud his  focus and drive. Sometimes grateful kings bestow earldoms upon such men,  if I remember my history." She smiled, though it was a bit more pointed  than was strictly necessary. "Though it's been a while."

His grim, hard mouth entertained the faintest ghost of what she told  herself was a smile. Or could have been, had he allowed it. His dark  eyes gleamed. In appreciation, she was sure of it.

"You are a very beautiful woman," he said, and the way he said it, so  matter-of-factly and without the slightest whiff of flattery, prevented  her from the folly of imagining it was a compliment. "You are obviously  well aware of it, as you've dressed to showcase and emphasize your many  charms. A man would have to be dead to fail to notice that you are quite  spectacular."

"Thank you," she said, her own voice dry this time. "This must be what  it feels like to be a show horse. Or so I assume. There weren't too many  thoroughbreds littered about the streets of Brixton the last time I  left my flat."

Her flat was smack in a scruffy bit of Brixton, south London, that was  considered edgy and unpretentious, she knew, having read that exact  claim in the guidebooks-which she imagined was another way of saying a  bit dodgy. Still, it was the home she'd carved out for herself-the only  one that had ever really been hers.

"It seems to me you could simply captivate the man of your choosing in  the usual way, without having to make crass pronouncements about  marrying for money." His dark eyebrow rose then, challenging and faintly  wicked. It was the left one, sliced through with a scar, making him  seem vaguely menacing, and entirely too lofty, all at once. But not, she  noted after a moment, menacing in a way that actually frightened her,  as perhaps it should have done. "I think you'll find that your sort of  beauty, used with a certain clarity of purpose, is the currency upon  which many marriages rest-though the participants do not generally speak  of it."

This time, there was no pretending he wasn't chastising her. He was-in  that excruciatingly polite, excessively wordy aristocratic way, complete  with the expected backhanded compliment to remind her of her place. Her  sort of beauty. How patronizing. Angel rolled her eyes.

"I am many things, my lord," she said, unable to keep the faint note of  mockery from her voice as she addressed him formally, but equally unable  to keep that smile from her face, as if she was, somehow, enjoying  this. Was she? Surely not. "Crass, for example. As common as muck,  certainly. But never a liar."                       
       
           



       

She didn't understand why she couldn't seem to look away from this man,  and his ravaged, ruined face. Why she kept forgetting to look at the  scars and found herself lost in the remote coldness of his gaze instead.  Why the ballroom around them seemed like a bright blur, and he was the  only thing in focus. The only thing at all.

"So what are your specifications then?" he asked after a stretch of  time, highly charged and breathless, that could have been a moment or an  hour. "For the perfect husband?"

"He must be very, very wealthy, and happy to share it," Angel said at  once. "That's the main thing, and is, of course, nonnegotiable." She bit  her lip as if ticking off items in a list in her head. "And it would be  lovely if he were good-looking, too."

"A pity," he said softly, that menace in his tone again, and written  across his destroyed face, though his eyes seemed darker then, and his  gaze sharper. Her stomach clenched in reaction. "You're wasting your  time with me. Or have you blocked out my scars from the sheer horror of  looking at them too long?"

"It was the talk of your grimy, dirty money, of course," she replied at  once, finding her way back into the light, teasing tone she'd been using  so carelessly before. Because she had the sudden sense that what she  said now could make all the difference, somehow. That it mattered. She  felt it deep in her gut. "I haven't seen straight since you mentioned  it. And depending on how much we're talking about, I may never see  straight again."

"I am remarkably rich," he said, that deep, aristocratic voice a posh  drawl now, pure male confidence in every syllable. It was a dare, she  thought, though she could not have said, looking at that deliberately  expressionless, dangerous face of his, why she thought so.

"Is that an offer?" she asked, flirting with him. With this whole crazy  idea that seemed less and less impossible by the second. A fairy tale by  design, on demand. Why not? She was already standing in a palace,  wasn't she?

Again, that suggestion of a smile that, still, was not one.

"Why do you need money so badly that you would marry a stranger for it  rather than simply finding yourself a well-paying career?" His eyes  moved over her face as if searching for her intentions. As if he could  read them there, if he looked hard enough. She feared he could. That he  could see her cobbled-together history of temporary gigs that led  nowhere, built nothing and depended entirely on her looks. What career  was there for the likes of her? "What do you imagine you'll do with it?"

"Count the great big piles of it," she retorted easily, flippantly, as  if she hadn't a single serious thought in her head. "Naturally. Isn't  that what rich people do?"

"Only part of the time," he said. Was that a joke? It was interesting  how very much she wanted it to be. "But it is a finite exercise."

"How finite?" she asked, a smile tugging at her lips. She tilted her head slightly to one side. "Five years? Ten?"

"Thirty at most," he said gravely, but she saw the gleam in those  gunmetal-gray depths, and imagined this was his version of laughing. She  felt an answering sort of tightness in her chest. As if they were  connected, or ought to be. "What will you do with the rest of your  time?"

She considered him for a moment, and then decided she might as well go  for it. No false advertising, she reminded herself. Bold as brass. Start  as you mean to go on.

"As a matter of fact," she confessed, leaning in closer as if what she  had to say was salacious gossip instead of simply embarrassing. And of  course he would draw the worst conclusions-who wouldn't? "I am in some  debt."

"Some?" His brow arched again, while his gaze seemed to pry into her.  Any further, she thought in a mixture of that same dizziness and  something far darker and more dangerous, and he'd be able to see the  number itself like a tattoo inside her head.

"A great deal of debt," she amended. He only looked at her, and she  smiled, though it felt strained. "A vast, impossible sum, as a matter of  fact. Do they still have debtor's prison in England?"

"Not since the nineteenth century," Rafe said in that dry, not-quite-amused voice. "I think you're safe."

"From debtor's prison, perhaps," Angel said sadly. She was only  partially faking the sadness. "But not from the appalling interest  rates."

His gaze moved over her again, testing. Measuring. Once again, she felt  like a show horse. She had the insane urge to show him her teeth, as  must surely be expected in cases like these, but refrained at the last  second.                       
       
           



       

"How do you imagine a marriage based on a transaction like this would  work?" he asked then, as if, she thought in a potent mix of excitement  and terror, he was actually considering it. Was he considering it? "For  example, what do you have to bring to the table?"