The Man Behind the Scars(18)

His gaze moved from the inky black woods around him and the night sky  crowded with stars above to the manor house below him. For a moment he  looked at the still-lit window of the countess's chamber, once occupied  by his own mother, as it had been by every Countess of Pembroke before  her, and the wives of the lesser lords the family had boasted before  they'd been elevated to the title. He wondered what she was doing, his  reluctant wife, in that room he'd avoided for years now, ever since his  mother had died. He wondered if Angel would ever forgive him for  dragging her, so urbane and sophisticated, to a place she must consider  the worst backwater imaginable. A thousand miles from nowhere.

He wondered why he cared. He had not married her to please her. Quite  the opposite, in fact-he'd married her to please himself. He was not at  all comfortable with the notion that one might be dependant upon the  other.

He shoved the uncomfortable thoughts aside and focused instead on the east wing of the manor. Or what was left of it.

"How amusing of you to fail to mention that when you spoke of your manor  house," Angel had said in that dry way of hers upon their arrival,  stepping from the car to frown up at the house before her, appearing  impervious to the Scottish chill with the force of her impertinence,  "what you really meant was part of a manor house. You may wish to  disclose that little tidbit to one of your future wives before you  present them with the great ruin they are meant to call home." Her smile  had been touched with the faintest hint of acid. "Just a thought."

"I'm glad to see you've regained your spirit," he'd replied in much the same tone. "And that sharp tongue along with it."

"I certainly hope the roof holds," Angel had continued in that  razor-sharp tone, magnificent in the cold light, her blue eyes piercing  and the prettiest he'd ever seen. "I neglected to pack my carpentry  kit."

It was not a ruin to him, he thought now as his mouth curved slightly at  the memory of her words, and would not be until the last stone crumbled  into dust. Nonetheless, he could not argue the point. Scaffolding had  just been raised, but it couldn't mask the fact that an entire wing of  the manor house was a burned-out husk of what it had once been. All of  those centuries, gone in an evening. Priceless art and objects, to say  nothing of some of Rafe's best memories-of lying in his father's study  on the thick rug near the fireplace, reading as his father worked at the  wide desk that had dominated the far wall. All of it so much ash,  scattered into the woods, the wind.

He would build it again, he vowed, not for the first time. He would make it right-he would make it what it should have been.

He supposed there was something wrong with him, that he could not mourn  what surely ought to be considered the greater loss in that fire-his  brother, Oliver. Perhaps he was more the monster than he'd imagined, but  he looked at the blackened remains of the manor and felt … nothing. His  brother had been drunk, as ever, and careless, as usual. The  investigators assured Rafe that he had felt no pain, that he had been  entirely insensate as the wing burned down around him, taking him with  it and making Rafe lord of what remained. Rafe supposed that was some  small mercy, but he could not seem to grieve over his brother's wasted  life as he thought he should.                       
       
           



       

Perhaps, he reflected as he looked at what was simply the most glaring  example of his brother's carelessness, it was because he'd been mourning  the waste of Oliver's life for as long as he could remember. He'd  watched it all-the gradual decline, the increasingly erratic behavior.  It had been like a particularly unpleasant echo of their mother's own  alcoholic spiral, which had ended in a similarly unnecessary fashion in  an alcohol-induced stroke which had been, by that point, a kind of  mercy. It was difficult to mourn at the end of that road when he'd  fought so hard to prevent it ever having been taken at all, to no avail.  When he had only ever been ignored-or jeered at-for his pains.

He thrust the unpleasant family memories aside, and pushed his hands  deep into the pockets of his heavy coat. He started walking again, this  time back toward the manor house and his own bed. His footsteps were  loud in the quiet of the night all around him. His breath made clouds  before his face, then disappeared.

Again, his gaze moved to that window, still lit against the dark.

Today, Angel had married him and then looked at him like he was the  monster he knew himself to be as he dashed her hopes of a London life in  that car. He found that, somehow, the former eased the blow of the  latter, and imagined that very thought made him that much more of a  bastard.

"I will go insane in the country," she had said to him when they were  aboard his private plane, winging their way toward the north. She had  been sitting there so primly, her entire body rigid, as if she was  holding back a tidal wave of reaction by sheer force of will. He had  been impressed despite himself.

"You said you've spent your whole life in the city," he'd replied, not  sparing more than a glance from his newspaper. "The charms of the  country may surprise you."

"I don't mean that in a conversational, descriptive sort of way," she  continued in that same very deliberate tone. "I don't mean I will feel  restless or bored, or cranky. I mean that all of that emptiness-broken  up only by the occasional flock of sheep-will drive me over the edge. I  mean I will literally descend into madness."

He'd supposed he would have no one to blame but himself if that were  true. But then, he had ample practice in that regard, didn't he?

"The manor house has extensive attics," he'd said instead, looking at  her over the edge of his paper. "Ample room for all manner of psychotic  breaks and raving madwomen, I should think. No need to worry."

She'd been quiet for a very long time. When she'd spoken again, her voice was smooth. He'd wondered what that had cost her.

"How delightful," she'd said, her voice arid. "You've truly thought of everything."

Heaven help him, he thought now, staring up at her window like some  moon-faced adolescent in one of those unbearable melodramas, but he  wanted her.

He supposed he would pay for that too.





CHAPTER SIX

HE FOUND her in the library, of all places, his brand-new wife who had  perhaps taken his talk of madwomen and attics far too much to heart.  She'd become like a ghost in his house in the two weeks they'd been  here-and Pembroke Manor already had more than its fair share. So did he.

She did not hear him enter. The library was a vast cavern, made bearable  in the depths of the long northern winters only by its dual fireplaces,  one at each end, and the bookshelves that lined the walls and seemed to  wrest warmth from the cold stone. Rafe had spent innumerable hours here  in his youth, lost in stories of lands far, far away from this  place-and far away from what remained of his family after his father's  death when he'd been only ten.

Angel sat near the far fire in the old leather armchair that had always  been Rafe's favorite, her legs curled up beneath her, all her attention  focused on the book she held open in her hands. Rafe took in the  haphazard pile of books at her feet, and another two balanced  precariously on the arm of the chair, with a feeling he could not quite  place washing over him. It looked as if she'd been here for the whole of  the two weeks they'd been in Scotland-two weeks in which he'd seen  remarkably little of her.

But it was the expression on her face that made him stand so still for a  moment, as if he had never seen her before. Perhaps he hadn't. She  looked so … rapt. Engrossed. Unguarded. Filled with something he might  have called wonder, if he still believed in such things. It made  something deep within him stir to life, as if in recognition.

It was as if, he thought, she was an entirely different person than the one she'd so far showed him.                       
       
           



       

But then she looked up, and in that moment, that quickly, the Angel he  knew slid into place across her face. That quick smile, those clever  eyes, sizing him up in the space of a single breath. Weighing,  measuring. She closed the book she was reading on a finger, and let that  hand hang over the side of the chair, the book dangling. She met his  gaze, her blue eyes clear. Open. He found he didn't believe it any  longer.

"Is this where you've been hiding then?" he asked, his voice not nearly  as calm as he would have preferred it. He expected her smile, but even  so, the power of it moved through him like the wind. "For two weeks?"