‘That’s all very well and good, but you’re not a family man,’ Angelique pointed out. ‘You’re going to get lonely up here unless you regularly fly in some party girls to while away the long winter nights.’
He shrugged a shoulder and kicked at another piece of charcoal that had fallen out of the fire. ‘It may surprise you, but I don’t spend all of my time partying and gambling. That’s one of the reasons I love Dharbiri so much. It’s so different from the life I live in the city.’
‘It’s certainly different.’ Her tone was wry. ‘It’s not a place I’m going to forget in a hurry.’
He met her gaze across the glow of the firelight. ‘Apart from the sand and the heat it’s much the same as here. It has a bleak sort of raw beauty about it. You can hear the silence.’
She gave him a knowing look. ‘It might be isolated and a little bleak up here but no one’s going to come barging in threatening to flay you alive if you have an unchaperoned woman in your room.’
He acknowledged that with little incline of his head. ‘Perhaps not, but I bet there are quaint old ways and customs up here in the highlands and on some of the west coast islands.’
‘I still don’t think you’ll last a winter up here.’ Angelique sat down on the sofa and curled her legs underneath her body. ‘It can get snowbound for weeks and the wind can bore ice-pick holes in your chest. And don’t get me started about the rain in summer. It goes on for weeks at a time. Quite frankly, I don’t even know why they bother calling it summer. It should be called the wet season, like in the tropics.’ She flicked her hair back behind her shoulders. ‘Oh, and did I mention the midges and mosquitoes? They’re as big as Clydesdales.’
He crossed one ankle over the other as he leaned against the mantelpiece, a lazy smile curving his lips. ‘If it’s as bad as you say then why do you love it up here so much?’
She looked at the flickering flames before she answered. ‘I spent some of the happiest days of my life up here when I was a child.’
‘You came here with your parents?’
‘My mother,’ Angelique said. ‘It was her parents’, my grandparents’, home. My father never used to come because he was always too busy with work. I think the truth was he didn’t get on with my grandparents. They didn’t like him. I was too young to remember specific conversations but I got the impression they thought he was two-faced.’ She looked back at the fire again. ‘They were right. Everything changed when my nanna died. The grief hit my mother hard and then my granddad died less than a year later. It was devastating for my mother. That’s when things started to get a little crazy at home.’
Remy was frowning when she looked at him again. ‘That’s when she became depressed?’
Angelique nodded. ‘She must have felt so lonely once her parents were gone. She was shy and lacked confidence, which was probably why my father was attracted to her in the first place. He saw her as someone he could control.’
Remy’s frown was more of anger than anything. ‘I wish I’d flattened him when I had the chance. What a cowardly son of a bitch.’
‘You hurt him far more by taking Tarrantloch off him,’ Angelique said. ‘And of course by marrying me. That really stung. He won’t get over that in a hurry.’
His expression turned rueful. ‘Yes, well, my grandfather isn’t too happy about it either.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’
‘He called when I was bringing in the bags. And it wasn’t to congratulate me.’
‘No, I expect not.’ She hooked her hands around her knees. ‘I guess the congratulations will come in thick and fast once we divorce.’
The silence was broken only by the hiss and crackle of the flames in the fireplace.
Angelique chanced a glance at him but he was staring into the fire as if it were the most befuddling thing he’d ever seen. Was he worried about their lack of a pre-nup? It was certainly a worrying thing for a man with wealth—or a woman, for that matter—to be exposed to the possibility of a financial carve-up in the event of a divorce.
The only way to avoid it would be to stay married.
Which was not something Remy would be likely to suggest, even to keep control of his fortune. He didn’t do love and commitment. He was the epitome of the freedom-loving playboy. Tying him down would be like trying to tame a lion with a toothpick.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Remy turned from the fire. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you’re hungry?’