He fired the question at her like a bullet and she winced as she felt it hit home.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was low and despondent, the slow nod of her head a sign of surrender.
‘Your father has let the stud go to rack and ruin.’
His mouth twisted on the repetition of that emotive word.
‘He’s never been able to resist a bet—and when he had the knowledge and the brain power to pick a winner that wasn’t always a bad thing. But then he started pickling what brain cells he had in whisky and any trace of expertise he had went out the window.’
It was like hearing the words inside her own thoughts being spoken aloud, but in Raoul’s deep, accented voice they sounded so much worse, so much more appalling that way.
But she hadn’t spoken those words. Raoul himself had supplied them to fill the silence. There had been no surprise in his voice; he’d just listed every detail. He had known without being told. He had known everything before he had even arrived here.
So was that why he had come? He’d said there was a scheme that he’d agreed on with her father—to breed horses from his precious stallion. But to do that he would have had to co-operate with Adnan who after their marriage would have been the owner of Blacklands as well as his own grandfather’s stud. And who would have owned the magnificent Blackjack.
If the marriage had taken place.
Was that what Raoul had planned? To make sure Adnan didn’t marry her and then take over Blacklands?
Shifting awkwardly on the bed, she turned so she could look into the room. The beautiful white lace dress she was supposed to have worn today still hung from the edge of the wardrobe. In the gathering dusk of the evening it looked like a long white shroud, a ghost of what might have been.
‘So Adnan was going to come to your rescue—financially?’
She’d heard that cruel note in his voice before. When he’d turned on her, accusing her of being nothing but a gold-digger, only wanting him for his money. That was why she knew what was going through his head now. He was seeing her following the same path with Adnan, marrying the other man only for what he brought to her. In a way it was true, and the only thing she could do was to nod in silent agreement.
She couldn’t see Raoul’s face but she heard the swift, roughly indrawn breath that revealed his response to her answer. Disgust? Or dark fury? Or just the fact that, deep down, he had always believed this would be the case? To one side, she could see the way his long, powerful fingers clenched over the bedcovers, his bronzed tan dark against the gold and white cotton. The way the material crumpled and bunched damagingly made her stomach clench in instinctive response.
‘What I don’t understand was what Al Makthabi got out of this.’
Adnan had come to her rescue, put forward the plan of the marriage of convenience, but she had known there had been nothing of the heart in their arrangement. He had promised his grandfather two things—a Derby winner and an heir, and she would help him provide both. The big, black stallion that was the one thing the stud had left of any value was to have been her wedding gift to her new husband, and the heir…
‘What did you offer him?’ Raoul flung the question at her, cold and sharp.
He was going to hate her answer; hate her. Flinching inside at the thought, Imogen pulled the sheets up around her.
‘A marriage.’
‘Hell, yes, I know there was to be a marriage but—did you sleep with Adnan before you were to take your vows?’
The question burned on his tongue. Of course she had been to bed with Adnan. How could any man have a relationship—an engagement—with Imogen and not want—need—to take her to bed?
He couldn’t imagine it could be any other way. But, after the heat and passion they had just shared, he could barely control the internal fury and disbelief that raged through him at the thought of her with another man.
‘None of your business.’
She was absolutely right. It was none of his business. Or, rather, it had been none of his business. It shouldn’t have mattered. But right now it mattered like hell.
‘And if you want to know what I…what Adnan was going to get out of this bargain…’