Or so she had believed, she amended grimly as she took another sip at the brandy. It burned as it went down, and the taste was gross, but it did at least put some warmth back inside her.

‘What happened to everything in here?’

Rafe glanced around the pristine, tidy room. ‘Your aunt and your friend cleared it all out while you were busy in the bathroom,’ he explained. ‘They—needed to feel useful.’

‘I’m surprised Jemma didn’t throw you out,’ she murmured.

‘Not your aunt?’ he queried curiously.

‘No.’ Shaan shook the thick, wet pelt of black hair. ‘My aunt has never been rude to anyone in her home in her life.’

‘Unlike me.’

‘Unlike you,’ she agreed, not even trying to work out why they were sitting here having this stupid conversation in her bedroom of all places—he being who he was and she…

‘Jemma tried throwing me out,’ he admitted, taking a quick sip at his drink. ‘But I— convinced her that you would handle all this better with me here rather than anyone else.’

‘Because you don’t care.’ She nodded understandingly. She knew exactly why she had clung to Rafe rather than anyone else.

‘That isn’t entirely true, Shaan.’ He sounded gruff all of a sudden. ‘I know you won’t believe this, but I knew from the beginning that Piers was not the man for you. All right,’ he conceded at her deriding glance, ‘I’m relieved he came to his senses before it was too late. But I am not proud of the time he took to do it. Nor will I forgive him easily for the way he’s hurt you today. No one,’ he finished roughly, ‘has the right to wound another human being like he has done…If it gives you any satisfaction at all to know it, I can tell you that he and Madeleine are not proud of themselves for—’

‘It doesn’t,’ she cut in, rising abruptly to her feet. ‘And I really don’t want to hear it.’

Lifting the glass to her mouth, she tossed the full contents to the back of her throat, then stood, back arched, eyes closed, breath held, while she absorbed the lick of liquid heat and waited for it to begin numbing her again.

She didn’t want to feel anything yet. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t even want to think—not about herself, not about Rafe, and especially not about Piers and Madeleine.

‘All right, Rafe.’ Putting down the glass, she turned suddenly on him. Her eyes were still too big in her pale face, but her mouth was steadier, the colour beginning to ease back into her shock-whitened lips. ‘I know this has all been an ordeal for you, and I thank you for the bother you’ve taken with me, but I’m going to be all right, and I would like you to leave now.’ Now, before it all came hurtling on top of her, before the real hurting began, before…

But he gave a grim shake of his dark head, not even attempting to get up, and Shaan jumped in alarm when his hand snaked out to close around her wrist, the sudden tingle of her defences warning her that she wasn’t completely numb as he pulled her back down to sit beside him.

‘I’m not going yet,’ he informed her bluntly. ‘I have a proposition to put to you first. And I want you to hear me out before you say anything. I know you’re in shock, and I know you can’t possibly be capable of making decisions of any kind. But I’m going to force this one on you for the simple reason that I think, if you agree, we can at least save your pride if nothing else from this mess.’

He paused, then turned to look directly at her, those grey eyes of his very guarded but unwavering as they caught and held onto her own gaze.

‘Will you marry me instead of my brother, Shaan?’ he requested gravely.

FOR a single, short, breath-locking moment Shaan experienced a complete mind black-out. Then, ‘—Have you gone mad—?’ she choked. ‘Why, you despise the very sight of me!’

‘That isn’t true, Shaan,’ Rafe denied.

Not listening, she tried to get up, but found her legs wouldn’t let her. Her whole body had turned to crumbling stone, the shock waves of the past couple of devastating hours beginning to crack her wide open inside.

His hands came out to capture her own, closing all four of them tightly together on her lap and compelling her to turn around and face him. He looked tense, as white as she felt, but determined. She was trembling so badly now that even her head shook, quivering on the slender curve of her neck, her breathing gone haywire because of the tight contraction of her lungs.

‘I know I’m not Piers,’ he grimly conceded. ‘Nor ever will be for that matter. He’s my half-brother, and as different from me as—as Madeleine is from you. But—’

Madeleine! The name was beginning to haunt her, like the face—that sweet, gentle face, with its big blue vulnerable eyes surrounded by a cloud of soft golden hair. Madeleine was the archetypal pocket Venus, the fine porcelain doll. While Shaan—she was the—

‘She’s right for Piers, Shaan!’ Rafe said fiercely, as though her thoughts were so open to him that he could easily make them his own. ‘She always was! They were childhood sweethearts, young lovers before a stupid misunderstanding had Madeleine flying off to live with her mother in America last year…’

‘I told you I didn’t want to hear any of this!’ she cried, trying desperately to struggle against the black cloud threatening to completely overtake her.

‘All right!’ he rasped, sucking in a tense breath, then letting it out again. ‘Listen to this instead,’ he insisted. ‘In three days’ time, your aunt and uncle should be leaving on a three-month long world cruise. Do you think they’ll even consider going now, after what’s happened to you today?’

She stared at him, having forgotten all about her aunt and uncle’s delighted plans to take their dream cruise now the niece they had taken care of so lovingly for the past nine years was leaving the fold, so to speak.

‘They don’t have to worry about me,’ she said shakily. ‘I’ll tell them—’

‘Tell them what?’ he challenged when she fell silent, her mouth moving soundlessly. ‘That you’ll be fine sitting here all on your own for the next three months grieving?’

‘I don’t intend to grieve,’ she denied, stiffening in affront.

‘Good.’ He nodded his dark head in approval. ‘I’m glad to hear you’ve got more spirit than to do that. But would you leave them on their own if something as devastating as this had happened to them? Of course you wouldn’t.’ He answered for her. ‘And if you did manage to convince them to go, do you think they’d enjoy themselves, knowing how they’d left you behind?’

‘I’ll go and stay with Jemma…’

‘Jemma is getting married herself in a few months,’ he reminded her.

‘How did you know that?’ she gasped in shaken amazement.

He shook his head, dismissing that question as insignificant. ‘Let’s just leave it that I do know. To inflict yourself on Jemma now would spoil the excitement for her, because your own ruined wedding day will sit over you all like a thick black cloud.’

‘Which doesn’t mean I need to inflict myself on you instead!’ she cried, hurt by the cruelly blunt way he had made her face that fact.

‘Why not?’ he demanded, grimly determined grey eyes boring straight into her wounded brown ones. ‘If anyone deserves it, then I do. You said yourself that this was all my fault, and I damned well know it!’ he admitted roughly. ‘It was me who called Madeleine to warn her about you and Piers. It was me who advised her to get back here if she still felt anything for my brother. And it was me who encouraged them to see each other at every possible moment I could arrange, to make Piers see what a dreadful mistake he was making by marrying you!’

‘God, I hate you so!’ she choked, turning to fling herself face-down on the bed, her poor body hurting in so many different places that she actually shook with it.

‘Listen to me!’ To her surprise he lay back too, stretching out beside her as though he had every given right to be this close to her, when only yesterday he had shied away from even looking at her! ‘Shaan…’ His hand came out to stroke down the silky wet pelt of her hair, his fingers trembling slightly. ‘I admit it. I feel lousy about it all. Guilty, if you want to call it that. I owe you. Let me help you get through this with at least some dignity.’