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СКАЧАТЬ slap him, to wipe the smug look from his face.

      “You might as well give up, Angela,” Cam replied, in an almost bored voice guaranteed to raise the level of her fury. “I have become accustomed to getting what I want. This time it is you.”

      “Well, you are not getting me! I’ll be damned if I will marry a man like you. You have no conscience, no principles. I hate you! There must be ice water in your veins, not blood! How could you have changed so? How could you have turned into this … this vile creature?”

      His eyes narrowed. “Your family had a little to do with it, my lady.”

      “Oh, no, don’t blame us for what you are. Your soul must always have been black for you to have turned out as cruel a man as you are.”

      “An odd thing for you to say, a woman who married a man she did not love for the money he could give her. A woman who was divorced by him because she slept with three of his friends—or, I should say, three that are known. For three of them to testify, there must have been others who would not. How many men did you sleep with altogether, Angela?”

      Angela trembled, aflame with anger and hurt, hating him, and yet cut to her heart by his obvious disgust of her. “What does it matter to you?” she hissed. “If nothing else, the price you want to pay for me should be less, shouldn’t it, since I am damaged goods?”

      His mouth twisted, and his eyes lit dangerously. It galled him that she would not deny the charges, would not explain why she had done what she had or express even the slightest regret. Yet, at the same time, he could not look at her snapping eyes and flushed face, her breasts heaving with the rapid rush of fury, and not feel a stab of desire pierce his loins. She was beautiful and wild, enticing in her rage. He wanted suddenly to touch her, to pull her to him and feel her lips beneath his again. He wanted to blot out the memory of her husband and all the others from her mind with his kisses, his caresses. He took a step toward her, his hand going out to touch her cheek.

      Angela gasped, ice-cold fear rushing through her and dousing the fury that had propelled her. She took a quick step backward, flinching away. He stopped, his hand in midair, and his brows rushed together in a scowl.

      “My, God, Angela, do you despise me that much?” he growled. “Have you become so aristocratic that my mere touch would debase you?”

      She braced herself, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she was here, of Cam’s power and her lack of it. The old familiar fear gripped her, turning her bowels to ice. She loathed herself for that fear, for the desire to turn and run, to give in to whatever he demanded. She could not back down, could not let her fear show.

      “You debase yourself. What you do to people, the cold, selfish calculation in you—that is what I despise.”

      “I see.” Cam crossed his arms over his chest, watching the color disappear from her face and the light from her eyes, replaced by the ice that had been there this morning. He regretted the transformation. “Well, that is what I am now.” He turned away and strolled back to the desk, saying casually, “Tell me, do you plan to despise me as a stranger or as my wife?”

      His words surprised a brief burst of laughter from her. “God, can you really be this callous? Do you not even care that you marry a woman who hates you?”

      He shrugged as he sat back down in his chair. He gestured with his hand toward another chair, but Angela shook her head, remaining where she was. The moment of fear had pierced the hot bubble of her anger, letting it drain away and leaving her feeling sick and wrung out. She wanted to get away, to go back to her bed and pull the covers over her head like a child. Yet something in her made her stay.

      Cam looked at her, steepling his fingers together. “A willing wife is certainly easier,” he said, as unconcerned as if they were talking about the weather. “However, it is not one of my conditions.”

      “What are your conditions?”

      “Then you are ready to negotiate?”

      “I did not say that,” she replied carefully.

      “You have let me know what a low and filthy soul I am, and I have acknowledged it. Now we can get down to bargaining. My condition is that you marry me as soon as possible. In return, I will tear up your brother’s personal notes. I will invest money in the mines and the land so that both can be restored to their former profitability. I will take over their running—only in actuality, of course, not in title. For the time being, we will live here, as I will have some work to do to bring the mine and lands back into shape. The castle will need restoring, as well. There is dry rot in the Elizabethan gallery, I understand.”

      “And what about the report on my brother? What about the threat you hold over his head?”

      “I would have little reason to besmirch the reputation of my own brother-in-law, now, would I? I will toss the report on the fire, and I have paid the investigators enough to ensure their silence. No one will know of it.” He paused, then added, “You shall have your own fund, of course, for your pocket money. Jeremy should be all right without the interest of all his debts weighing him down and without the expenses of this house. But if it’s necessary, I shall give him an allowance until the farm and mines start to yield better profits.”

      “So … on the one hand, destruction—on the other, beneficence. How easily you play God.”

      “Not God. Merely a man who knows what he wants.”

      “I see. And what other people want does not matter.”

      He shrugged. “We are negotiating, are we not? If you want something, say so.”

      Angela started to remind him that she was not negotiating terms with him, that she had no intention of accepting his offer, but it seemed too much effort at the moment.

      “Come, come, Angela, surely there is something you want from me.”

      “All I want is my freedom.”

      “You shall have plenty of freedom—more freedom than you have now, in fact, since you will be a married woman, and one with money. Money creates a great deal of freedom. I have proven that.”

      “No wife is free,” Angela replied flatly. “She is always subject to her husband’s whims.”

      “I am a man of few whims.” The faint smile on his face goaded her.

      “I do not wish to share your bed,” she told him bluntly.

      Her words seemed to hang in the air. Angela flushed. Suddenly she was very aware of the fact that she wore only a nightgown and robe and that Cam was very casually dressed, his coat and tie off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, exposing a vee of browned chest, lightly dotted with black hairs. Angela swallowed and looked away. There was a strange sensation in her stomach, the flicker of some long-ago feeling. She remembered how it had been when she and Cam were in love, the way they had rushed together at every opportunity. They would ride out behind the ruins of an old shepherd’s hut, to a copse of trees there, and she would dismount, sliding down into Cam’s arms.

      Angela knew that she would never forget the look in his eyes, so dark they were almost black, yet leaping with a flame, or the way his mouth widened sensually as he smiled up at her. He would let her slide slowly down through his strong hands, and then he would pull her to him and kiss СКАЧАТЬ