The Man Behind the Scars(23)

She wanted too much, for one thing. She wanted Rafe to talk to her, to  smile at her. Why did she want that so badly-so very badly that it was  rapidly becoming an obsession? She wanted him to think well of her, to  share all those murky secrets she could sense swirling around inside of  him like dark shadows. She wanted him to like her-how crazy was that?  She wanted, and she did not need to consult the international handbook  of appropriate behavior for trophy wives, should such a thing exist  outside of certain deeply appalling American television programs, to  understand that that was only likely to get her into trouble. To muddy  things and confuse the issue.

What was wrong with maintaining a healthy, polite distance in her marriage of convenience? Why wasn't that enough for her?

And that, of course, was all completely apart from the real issue, which  was this deadly, sensual fascination with her husband, the man.  This … driving need for him that she could hardly understand. Even now,  hours later, she had only to think of him and her body shivered into  readiness. Into sensual urgency. Her core melted. Her breasts grew  heavy. And the impossible heat that swirled through her, coiling between  her legs, made her want to scream. Cry. Something.

No, she ordered herself, horrified at how close she'd come to losing herself here. Already. No tears.

This was all a mistake. All of it. She should have listened to her own  gut when she'd had the chance. Now she was embroiled in something she  couldn't understand, that made her feel the kinds of things she'd always  vowed to herself she'd never be so foolish as to feel-out of control,  off-balance, half-mad over some man. Over her husband.

She simply couldn't take it.

It was easy enough to pull on her clothes-her favorite pair of jeans, a  long-sleeved T-shirt and a heavy jumper to ward off the cold, damp  morning. She pulled on a pair of low-heeled boots, wrapped a bright  scarf around her neck and stuck her wallet in her back pocket-more for  identification purposes than any kind of access to funds. She didn't  need anything else. She didn't need anything she'd had before, or  anything that was his. What she needed most of all was to escape-to find  something, somewhere, that could be hers and hers alone. As usual. As  ever.

She crept out of the countess's ornate chamber that felt no more like  hers than it had when she'd arrived and headed for the front door, aware  for the first time how the fine old manor creaked and settled around  her, as if it really did house a fleet of madwomen-turned-ghosts in its  drafty halls. She had no trouble believing it. It wasn't even  particularly difficult to imagine herself turning into one of them,  creeping about in the shadows of Rafe's manor, a phantom even to  herself. The image made her shudder.

It was lighter outside when she stepped out into the cold morning, the  sky a gunmetal gray that lightened almost imperceptibly by the moment,  heralding the approach of the sun.

And she walked. And walked, taking deep breaths in the chilly dawn,  pulling the sharp, cold air as far into her as it could go before  blowing it out in big clouds.                       
       
           



       

She was not running away, she told herself as her feet crunched through  the glittering frost that spread across the long, winding, picturesque  drive that she knew led to a road that in turn led to a  village … eventually. She was regrouping. Rethinking.

Because the only thing she could think of that was worse than being  forever in Chantelle's clutches, subject to her whims and schemes,  was … this. This hollow, desperate feeling. This impossible, driving need.  This wild, chaotic, out of control madness that she was entirely too  afraid would take over her life, if she let it.

She worried it already had.

She knew where this kind of thing led. She was the walking, talking  result of it, wasn't she? Chantelle had never let Angel forget that in  her long career of finding the right men to take her all the places she  wanted to go, simply because she asked them to, Chantelle had truly  fallen for one of them exactly once.

"Lose your head, love, and you lose control," her mother had told her  more times than she could count, usually to the accompaniment of sloppy  cigarette smoke circles blown in the air. "And then you lose everything,  don't you?"

"I will never be you," Angel had told her mother once, very seriously,  when she couldn't have been more than nine years old and Chantelle had  been beating that familiar drum, as she liked to do when feeling  maudlin-usually brought on by being a bit too far into her cups.

Chantelle had only laughed that time. "That's what they all say," she'd  retorted. "But none of us are so high and mighty that love can't cut us  down to size, Angel. Even me." Angel could remember her derisive snort  with perfect clarity. "Even you."

But Angel had been deadly serious.

She'd never met her father. She never wanted to meet him. Any married  man who got a teenaged girl pregnant and then promptly abandoned her was  no one Angel needed to know, thank you very much. But it was the fact  that Chantelle-street-smart and canny Chantelle, who had never met a man  she couldn't sweet talk into doing things her way-had lost her head  over him in the first place that had truly scared her. She'd fallen hard  for him, Chantelle had told Angel ruefully every time the subject had  come up, and then he'd been the one calling all the shots. For the first  and last time.

If that was what that kind of heady, all-consuming passion did to  you-made you that foolish, that gullible, that easily manipulated-then  Angel wanted nothing to do with it. A personal mantra that had always  served her well.

Until Rafe.

She was afraid of him, she realized as she made her lonely way down the  long, rambling drive, dipping in and out of the dark woods and catching  glimpses even she could admit were breathtaking of the loch with its  glassy, still waters and the looming mountains beyond. She was afraid  that this kind of shattering passion would ruin her, as surely as it had  ruined her mother before her. She was afraid that if she truly  succumbed to it, if she surrendered, she would never really be herself  again.

And she had no one but herself. She was the one person she couldn't let herself lose.

She didn't know why she stopped walking. The drive had brought her  almost to the banks of the loch, and she stared out moodily over the  clear water. The mountains rose inexorably in the distance, blue and  purple, and even though she knew better, even though she told herself it  was silly and sentimental, she turned to look back the way she'd come,  toward Pembroke Manor, which she could see perched there at the top of  the hill she'd been slowly making her way down all this time.

She told herself she had no idea why that view, pretty though it might  be, should make her whole body ache as if she'd suddenly caught some  kind of virus. Bones, muscles, skin. It all hurt in a low, deep throb  that she was afraid would never end.

Or was she more afraid that it would?

And now what? she asked herself, her eyes still fixed on the half-ruined  manor, much like its master in that its ravaged wing in no way took  away from its grace and beauty. The morning sun was just starting to  shine upon it, making it glow slightly. Where will you go? What will you  do?

She had no friends, not really, because she never let anyone close.  Ever. She hardly thought her actual family members-silly, self-involved  Izzy and their mercenary mother-qualified for the term, and the  non – blood relations who did, like Allegra and Ben, she would never dream  of disturbing with her real troubles. She'd already told Allegra more  than she'd told Ben, and what had she really told either of them?  Nothing that mattered. She admitted to herself that she didn't know how.  Beyond that, she had no money-and would have even less should she once  again owe that fifty thousand pounds. She had no useful qualifications,  and was on the wrong end of her twenties to think that modeling gigs  could continue to pay her rent. And thanks to Rafe and his efficient  staff, she had no flat to return to anyway.                       
       
           



       

And the truth was, she accepted reluctantly as the cold morning sun  shone above her, making all the turmoil rolling around inside of her  seem simple, finally-none of that would have mattered if she'd really  wanted to leave. She didn't. And that was the most terrifying part of it  all.

She heard movement behind her and, when she turned, it was to see Rafe  stepping out from the woods. She should have been surprised by that, but  she wasn't. She doubted there was very much that slipped by this man in  his own house, now that she considered it. Just as she wasn't surprised  by the way her heart leaped in her chest, and started to beat just that  little bit too fast as she let her gaze move over his guarded  expression, his long, rangy body.