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the hero of her earliest fantasies. He used to flirt with her shamelessly. And she had thoroughly enjoyed every teasing glance and clever compliment.
    Edward...
    Maybe what they needed, she and Rafe, was to talk about the hardest things—like Edward’s death, which he seemed to have a real aversion to discussing. Two months ago, at Villa Santorno, when she’d tried repeatedly to bring it up, he’d only refused over and over to go into it.
    She went for it. “Is this about Edward somehow?”
    “Go to sleep, Gen.”
    “I touched the scar on your cheek...and it all went bad.”
    “No.”
    “Rafe, I think we really need to talk about it.”
    “Leave it alone.”
    “No. No, I’m not going to do that. I know what happened that night, the facts of the situation. Eloise told me. She said that you were driving home from a party at Fiona’s.” Fiona Bryce-Pemberton was a longtime friend of Brooke’s; they’d met as children, Brooke and Fiona, at St Anselm’s prep school in nearby Bakewell. At the age of nineteen, Fiona had married a wealthy banker. The banker had bought her Tillworth, a country house not far from Hartmore. “I know that it was two in the morning and Edward was driving. Brooke had stayed the night at Fiona’s. There was only you and Edward in the car when he drove off the road and into an oak tree. Eloise said that the investigation absolved you of any wrongdoing, that it was simply an accident, one of those terrible things that can happen now and then.”
    Rafe lay very still. At first. And then, with slow, deliberate care, he eased away from her. They still lay side by side, but their bodies were no longer touching. “So, then. You know what happened. There’s nothing to talk about.”
    She sat up, switched on the lamp by her side of the bed and turned back to look in his hooded black eyes. “There’s everything to talk about. There’s how you feel about what happened. How you’re...holding up. And there’s the question of why you won’t let a good plastic surgeon have a look at that scar.”
    His eyes flashed dark fire. “I feel like bloody hell about what happened, thank you. I’m in one piece, in good health and I’m now the earl of Hartmore, so I would say that I’m holding up just fine. As to my face, it may not be pretty, but I really don’t give a damn. If you don’t want to look at me, then simply look away.”
    “Oh, Rafe, that’s not fair. You can’t just—”
    He cut her off by reaching for her, yanking her close and smashing his lips down on hers in a hard, angry kiss.
    She shoved at his shoulders until he let her go. “What is the matter with you?”
    “Leave. It. Alone.” Each word came out as hard and cold as a stone.
    Her lips still tingled from the force of his kiss. She pressed her fingertips to them, soothing them. “This isn’t like you.”
    “I mean it, Gen. Edward is dead. There’s nothing more to say on the subject.”
    “Of course there is. There’s
everything
to say. I know you loved him, as he loved you. I know it has to be killing you, that he’s gone, that—”
    “Enough.” He threw back the covers and got up. “Good night.” And then he left her, just like that.
    She watched him stride through the door that led to the other bedroom, pausing only to close it behind him so carefully, hardly making a sound.
    She longed to jump up and go after him.
    But no.
    She’d tried. It hadn’t gone well. She needed to let it be, at least for now. She settled back against the pillows, sliding her hand under the blankets, resting her palm on her belly where their baby slept.
    It will get better.
    They would somehow work through all the awfulness. Somehow they would find each other, as friends. As lovers. As husband and wife.
    She absolutely refused to admit that she might have made a terrible mistake, that she’d married a man she no longer even knew.
    * * *
    It was after three in the morning when she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
    She woke at a