Until a thin stream of blood began to trickle from his left nostril.
For a moment they just stood there, staring at each other in stunned silence. As if neither of them could credit what she’d just done.
‘A fight, a fight!’
The excited voice came from somewhere behind her, reminding her that they were in a corridor of a public inn. And that other people travelling on the stage, or in their own vehicles, had a perfect right to be walking along this same corridor.
‘It’s a woman,’ came a second voice.
‘And stap me if it ain’t Lord Rawcliffe,’ said the first.
Lord Rawcliffe delved into a pocket and produced a handkerchief, which he balled up and pressed to his nose. But she could still see his eyes, boring into her with an expression that boded very ill. He was plotting his revenge. For he was not the sort of man to let anybody, but especially not a female, get away with striking him.
Her stomach plunged. The way it had when she’d almost fallen out of Farmer Westthorpe’s oak tree...and would have done if a strap of her pinafore hadn’t snagged on the branch she’d just been sitting on. And left her dangling, three feet from the ground, her dress rucked up round her neck. If Lord Rawcliffe—or rather Robert Walmer, as he’d been in those days—hadn’t found her, she might still be dangling there to this day. Only of course he had found her. And freed her.
Though not before he’d had a jolly good laugh at her expense.
He wasn’t laughing now. But she was as unable to move as she’d been that day. Unable to do anything but stare up at him helplessly, her stomach writhing with regret and humiliation and resentment.
She could hear the sound of tankards slamming down onto tables, chairs scraping across a stone floor and booted feet stampeding in their direction.
But she couldn’t drag her horrified eyes from Lord Rawcliffe’s face. Or at least his cold, vengeful grey eyes, which was all she could see from over the top of his handkerchief.
‘What do ye think he’ll do?’
Something terrible, she was sure.
‘Have her taken in charge? Should someone send for the constable?’
‘My lord,’ said someone right behind her, just as a meaty hand descended on her shoulder. ‘I do most humbly apologise. Such a thing has never happened in my establishment before. But the public stage, you know. Brings all sorts of people through the place.’ She finally managed to tear her gaze from Lord Rawcliffe, only to see the landlord, who’d not long since been standing behind a counter directing operations, scowling down at her as though she was some sort of criminal.
‘Remove your hand,’ said Lord Rawcliffe at his most freezing as he lowered his handkerchief, ‘from my fiancée’s shoulder.’
‘Fiancée?’ The word whooshed through the assembled throng like an autumn gale through a forest. But not one of the bystanders sounded more stunned by Lord Rawcliffe’s use of the word than she felt herself.
Fiancée?
‘No,’ she began, ‘I’m not—’
‘I know you are angry with me, sweetheart,’ he said, clenching his teeth in the most terrifying smile she’d ever seen. ‘But this is not the place to break off our betrothal.’
‘Betrothal? What do you—?’
But before she could say another word, he swooped.
Got one arm round her waist and one hand to the back of her bonnet to hold her in place.
And smashed his mouth down hard on her lips.
‘Whuh!’ It was all that she managed to say when, as abruptly as he’d started the kiss, he left off. Her mouth felt branded. Her legs were shaking. Her heart was pounding as though she was being chased by Farmer Westthorpe’s bull. Which would have been her fate if she’d fallen into the field, rather than become stuck on one of the lower branches.
‘The rumours,’ he said in a silky voice, ‘about my affair with...well, you know who...are exactly that. Merely rumours.’
‘Affair?’ What business did he have discussing his affairs with her?
‘It is over. Never started. Hang it, sweetheart,’ he growled. ‘How could I ever marry anyone but you? Landlord,’ he said, giving her waist an uncomfortably hard squeeze, which she took as a warning not to say another word, ‘my fiancée and I would like some privacy in which to continue our...discussion.’
And naturally, since he was the almighty Marquess of Rawcliffe, the landlord bowed deeply, and said that of course he had a private room, which he would be delighted to place entirely at their disposal. And then he waved his arm to indicate they should follow him.
Back into the interior of the building she’d just been about to vacate.
Lord Rawcliffe kept his arm round her waist, effectively clamping her to his side.
‘Not another word,’ he growled into her ear as he turned her to follow the landlord. ‘Not until there is no fear of us being overheard.’
She almost protested that she hadn’t been going to say anything. She had no wish to have their quarrel witnessed by the other passengers from her coach, or those two drunken bucks who’d staggered out of the tap at the exact moment she’d punched the Marquess on the nose, or even the landlord.
‘This will do,’ said Lord Rawcliffe to the very landlord she’d been thinking about, as they entered a small room containing a table with several plain chairs standing round it and a couple of upholstered ones drawn up before a grate in which a fire blazed even though it was a full week into June.
‘You will be wanting refreshments, my lord?’
‘Yes. A pot of tea for my fiancée,’ he said, giving her another warning squeeze. ‘Ale for me. And some bread and cheese, too. Oh,’ he said, dabbing at his bleeding nose, ‘and a bowl of ice, or, at least, very cold water and some clean cloths.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ said the landlord, shooting her a look loaded with censure as he bowed himself out of the door.
‘And one other thing,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, letting go of her in order to give the landlord his full attention. Clare didn’t bother to listen to what the one other thing might be. She was too busy getting to the far side of the room and putting the table between them for good measure.
‘Look,’ she said, as soon as the landlord had gone. ‘I know I shouldn’t have hit you and I—’ she drew a deep breath ‘—I apologise.’ She looked longingly at the door. Rawcliffe might have all the time in the world, but she had a stage to catch. ‘And thank you for the offer of tea, but I don’t have time to—’
He was nearer the door than she was, and, following the direction of her gaze, he promptly stepped in front of it, leaned his back against it and folded his arms across his chest.
‘What,’ she said, ‘do you think you are doing?’
‘Clearly, I am preventing you from leaving.’
‘Yes, I can see that, I’m not an idiot. But why?’
‘Because I am not going to permit you to walk into a scandal.’
‘I am not going to walk into a scandal.’
‘You think you can strike a marquess, in a public inn, and get away with it?’
‘I don’t see why not. You might be notorious, but nobody knows who I am.’
His