‘But the curate—’
‘The curate should have damn well contacted me before evicting you and presuming to move in, which is what I have to assume he did?’
‘Well, yes, but he did contact you. At least, I mean, he tried to. And when you didn’t respond, he—’ Well, everyone in Watling Minor believed that Lord Rawcliffe knew everything. Which meant that if he hadn’t responded in the negative, then he simply didn’t care what arrangements had been made for the late vicar’s daughter.
‘Assumed I would be happy to have you evicted?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I shall have to have words with the Reverend Cobbet.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t like that.’ She laid one hand on his chest. ‘It wasn’t him. I just... There didn’t seem any point in me hanging on there. Not when Clement had arranged everything for me so...so...kindly.’
‘Clement? Kind?’
‘Yes, well, it was kind of him to go to so much trouble on my behalf.’ He’d told her so. ‘He didn’t have to make any arrangements.’ As Lord Rawcliffe raised one cynical eyebrow, Clare hastened to add, ‘I mean, I would have thought if anyone had the duty to provide for me it would have been Constantine.’
He made a scoffing noise, expressing his opinion of her oldest brother. Since it pretty much coincided with her own, after the way he’d behaved lately, she made no objection.
‘And what form did this kindness of Clement’s take, dare I ask?’
‘He found me work. A good, honest job. One I am well qualified to take up.’
‘You are going to be housekeeper for another family of ungrateful, lazy, hypocritical, sanctimonious prigs, are you?’
‘Don’t speak of my brothers like that.’
He closed his mouth. Gave her a look.
Which somehow had the effect of reminding her that she was still sitting on his lap, with her arms about his neck, though she couldn’t recall the moment she’d put them there. And that he was running his big hands up and down her back, as though to soothe her. And that, although she had just, out of habit, leapt to defend her brothers, right at this moment she couldn’t help agreeing with him. For she’d spent years keeping house for them. Then nursing their father, while they’d all left and got on with their own lives. But when she’d needed them, all they’d had to offer her were excuses. Constantine’s wife was due to give birth to their third child at any moment, he’d written, and couldn’t be expected to house an indigent sister. It was asking too much.
Cornelius had no room for her, either. Though, since he lived in bachelor quarters in the bishop’s palace she hadn’t really hoped for anything from him apart from sympathy. But even that had been in short supply. Instead of acknowledging how hard it was going to be for her to leave the vicarage, the only home she’d ever had, he had, instead, congratulated Clement on his foresight in arranging for her removal so swiftly, so that the curate, a man who had a wife and a baby on the way, could move out of the cramped cottage where he’d been living before. He’d even gone so far as to shake Reverend Cobbet by the hand and say how pleased he was for him to finally be moving into a house where he and his family would be comfortable.
It had felt as though he’d stabbed her in the back.
At which point in her bitter ruminations she heard the sound of wheels rattling across the cobbles.
‘Oh, the coach, the coach!’ Finally she did what she should have done in the first place—she made an attempt to get off his lap. But he tightened his hold, keeping her firmly in place.
‘Too late,’ he said smugly. ‘It has gone without you.’
‘But my luggage! Everything I own is in my trunk...’
‘Which has been conveyed to my chaise.’
‘What? How can you know that?’
‘Because I told the landlord to have it done when I ordered the tea and ice. Did you not hear?’ He widened his eyes as though in innocence, when he must know very well she had heard no such thing. That he must have mumbled it while she’d been busy getting the table in between them. Which had worked really well, hadn’t it? Since she’d somehow ended up not just in his arms, but also on his lap just the same.
‘Well, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Of course I should,’ he said with a touch of impatience. ‘If I hadn’t had the foresight to do so, you would have just lost everything you own.’
‘Instead of which, I have fallen into the hands of a...a... Why, you are so high-handed, ordering people about and...and forcing people into fake betrothals that you... Why, you are little better than a kidnapper!’
Rawcliffe drew in a deep breath and started counting to ten.
Just as he got to two, he realised he wasn’t angry enough to need to resort to his usual method of dealing with Clare. He was still far too pleased with the ease with which he’d finally got her on to his lap, and into his arms, to care very much about what she had to say about it.
He smiled down into her furious little face.
‘Far from kidnapping you,’ he pointed out, ‘I have rescued you from the consequences of your own folly. However,’ he interjected swiftly when she drew a breath to object, ‘I concede you must have been at the end of your tether, to hit me when all I did was tease you the way I have always done.’
And it hadn’t hurt that much. Not as much as discovering she thought him capable of such casual cruelty that she’d ended up being evicted from her home before her father was even cold in his grave. When she’d said he’d gone, he’d just assumed she meant that he’d managed to get on to a coach when she wasn’t watching and that she was searching for him. Reverend Cottam’s behaviour had been getting increasingly erratic of late after all. And his sarcasm had been mainly aimed at her brothers, who’d left her with a burden she should no longer have to shoulder all on her own. He’d never dreamed the irascible old preacher could actually have died.
‘But you cannot deny,’ he continued when she drew her ginger brows together into a thwarted little frown, ‘that had I not announced you were my fiancée, you would have been ruined.’
‘I don’t see that it would have been as bad as that,’ she said, defiant to the last.
‘Johnny Bruton, the man who is a member of my club, is a dedicated gossip. He would have left no stone unturned in his quest to discover your name and station in life.’
She shifted on his lap, giving him a delicious experience of her softly rounded bottom.
‘That was why I instructed the landlord to have your belongings placed in my own chaise. So that he would not be able to read your luggage label with, no doubt, its destination thereon. Not for any nefarious notion of abduction.’
‘Well, if you’ve prevented him from discovering my name, there is no need to carry on with this deception, is there?’
Need? No, it wasn’t a question of need. But it was so deliciously satisfying to have the proud, pious little madam so completely at his mercy for once. True, she was still spitting insults at him, but they lacked the conviction they might have had if she wasn’t sitting on his lap. If she hadn’t put her arms round his neck instead of slapping his face when he’d kissed her.
Not only that, but she’d actually apologised to him. And thanked him, though the words had very nearly choked her as she’d forced them through her teeth.