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Which set her back up all over again. How dared he assume she would be anything but agreeable to a woman who was going to be her hostess?
She avoided taking his hand as they alighted and even managed to evade the hand he would have put to the small of her back as he ushered her into the portico that sheltered the front door.
A smart butler admitted them and took Lord Rawcliffe’s coat and hat as a matter of course.
‘Lady Harriet is in the drawing room, my lord, Miss...’
‘Miss Clare Cottam,’ said Lord Rawcliffe in answer to the butler’s unspoken question.
For some reason, the butler’s demeanour squashed any lingering suspicion that Lord Rawcliffe might be bringing her to the home of his mistress. Which made her slightly less annoyed with him. Which, she decided the moment they entered the most opulent drawing room she’d ever seen, was probably a mistake. Because it was only her anger which was shoring her up. Without it, she felt rather insecure and out of her depth. And had to fight the temptation to grab his hand and cling to it. Or the sleeve of his coat.
‘Oh, Zeus, thank heavens,’ said a young woman getting to her feet and coming over to them, rather than staying in her chair by the fire. She had nondescript hair and a rather square face. Not a bit like the kind of woman she could see Lord Rawcliffe taking for a mistress. At all.
‘I am so glad to see you. Is this Jenny?’
Jenny? She looked up at Lord Rawcliffe’s impassive profile. Why on earth would this woman think he was going to bring someone called Jenny into her front parlour?
‘Ah, no, I am afraid not. Allow me to intro—’
‘Then it was a wild goose chase? Just as you predicted?’ Lady Harriet wrung her hands. ‘Oh, this is dreadful. Dreadful. You see—’
‘This is neither the time nor the place,’ began Lord Rawcliffe, only to be interrupted almost at once.
‘It most certainly is the time,’ said Lady Harriet indignantly. ‘Past time, you see, Archie—’
‘We will not discuss that matter now, if you please,’ he said sternly, jerking his head slightly in Clare’s direction.
‘You mean...you don’t wish this person to know?’
‘Astute of you,’ he said sarcastically.
‘Oh, well, then, perhaps we can leave her here and go into the kitchen to—’
‘We are not leaving her here alone while we go off to discuss anything,’ he bit out. ‘And will you stop referring to her as this person. Clare is my fiancée!’
‘Your fiancée?’ Lady Harriet stared at her with all the shock Clare had felt last time he’d announced their betrothal. ‘Good heavens. But she looks...’
‘Be careful, very careful, what you say next,’ he growled.
‘I was only going to say she looks quite sensible. Whatever came over her to agree to marry you?’
‘She has been recently bereaved. She was distraught. She had nowhere else to go—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Clare, goaded beyond patience by being talked about as though she wasn’t there. ‘But I had a very good place to go. And I was not distraught until you decided to taunt me with my misfortunes.’
‘I thought we had already agreed that was an oversight.’
‘Yes, we had. Which is why I cannot permit you to go about telling people it was anything other than it was. I think we’ve had quite enough economies with the truth for one day.’
Lady Harriet turned to gape at her. ‘If what he said wasn’t true, then how come you are going to marry him?’
‘She hit me,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, ‘if you must know. In front of several witnesses who would have torn her reputation to shreds had I not made them believe it was a...lovers’ tiff. She would not have been able to gain respectable employment, if word got out, which it was bound to do. Which left us with no alternative.’
‘You hit him,’ said Lady Harriet, ignoring all the rest.
‘Well, yes, but—’ Clare meant to explain that he could have blocked her, easily, if he’d been in the mood to do so. She didn’t want this lady, in whose home she was going to have to stay until she could come up with a better plan, to think she was violent.
But Lady Harriet was smiling. ‘I know, you don’t have to explain how it was. I have very often wanted to hit him myself.’
‘I am so glad,’ Lord Rawcliffe interjected sarcastically, ‘that you are hitting it off...’
‘Nice pun,’ said Lady Harriet.
‘Since,’ he continued as though she’d said nothing, ‘I am going to have to leave her in your care while I go and procure a marriage licence.’
‘Oh! Yes, of course. Only, well, you won’t mind, will you,’ said Lady Harriet turning to Clare, ‘that this household is a little, um, disorganised at present? You see, I am getting married in a day or so myself and you wouldn’t believe the amount of work and upheaval it creates.’
Clare turned to Lord Rawcliffe. ‘It clearly isn’t going to be convenient for me to stay here. Can’t you take me to a hotel, or something?’
‘My wife does not stay in hotels,’ he said implacably.
‘I am not your wife. Yet.’
He waved his hand as though dismissing her remark as irrelevant. ‘I can see no difficulty about your staying here. You are a most capable woman. I am sure that you will be able to help Lady Harriet with whatever tasks she,’ he said with a distinct sneer, ‘is finding so onerous.’
Oh. Had he just intimated that he thought she was better, in some respects, than Lady Harriet? He’d called her capable. Had suggested that Lady Harriet wasn’t coping as well as she ought.
And Lady Harriet was wearing the exact expression on her face that Clare was sure she’d worn on many occasions, when crossing swords with his lordship.
‘I am not finding arranging my own wedding onerous in the slightest,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I was just explaining that I might not have time to...to entertain in the manner to which she might be accustomed.’
‘Please,’ said Clare, stepping forward and laying a hand on Lady Harriet’s arm. ‘Do not let him annoy you. I am perfectly happy to give you any help I may, since you are being so kind as to have me stay with you at what anyone with a modicum of sensitivity—’ she shot Lord Rawcliffe a look loaded with reproach ‘—would know is a very difficult time to entertain strangers.’
‘Besides, Clare isn’t used to being entertained in any manner whatever,’ he said coldly. ‘She is far more used to being a drudge. Put her to work and she will immediately feel at home.’
She whirled on him. ‘What a beastly thing to say!’
He shrugged. ‘The truth? I thought you had been exhorting me to tell the truth. And not to be economical with it.’
‘Yes, but that is quite different from wielding it like a weapon!’
‘I think I’d better ring for some tea,’ said Lady Harriet, darting across the room to a bell pull and yanking on it with a slight air of desperation.
‘You have somebody to bring it now, do you? When last I came here,’ he said to Clare, as though they had not just been on the verge of yet another quarrel, ‘I had to come in by the back door because she had neither butler nor footmen to answer the front.’
‘Clearly, I have rectified my lack of staff,’ said Lady Harriet, ‘since Stobbins let you in and announced you. Oh,’ she said, clasping her hands together in agitation. ‘What kind of hostess am I? Please, Miss... I forget your name, but it is Clare something, isn’t it?’
‘Cottam,’ supplied Lord Rawcliffe.
‘Please, won’t you sit down? You must be exhausted if you’ve travelled up to town today.’
‘And it was such a long way,’ said Lord Rawcliffe sarcastically.
‘I am sure it felt like it, if she was shut up in a coach with you the entire time,’ shot back Lady Harriet.
‘Fortunately,’ said Lord Rawcliffe, turning to subject her to one of his lazy-lidded, stomach-melting smiles, ‘Clare is not you. Clare and I have known each other practically all our lives, you see. And we...understand each other.’
He took her hand. Kissed it.
And her heart soared.
Because he’d declared he preferred her to another woman. True, he’d only implied he thought she was more capable that Lady Harriet and that he was glad she’d been the one in the coach with him, but for the first time, he’d made it sound as though she wasn’t a total disaster.
And he wasn’t laughing at her. Or mocking her. Or provoking her into an argument.
Suddenly she had to sit down. Because her knees were buckling. Oh, dear, whatever was she going to do? She was used to sparring with him. But if he started paying her compliments and kissing her whenever he felt like it, however was she going to resist him?
Because she had to.
Or he would, one day, casually break her heart without even noticing.
Chapter Seven (#ub35c94aa-1c44-506f-963e-9e8d40b169c0)
‘Well, this is all very romantic, I’m sure,’ said Lady Harriet tartly, eyeing the way Clare had just practically swooned on to the nearest chair just because Lord Rawcliffe had kissed her hand. ‘But I need to tell you what happened to Archie. Because I cannot believe even you could indulge in some sort of elopement, or abduction, or whatever this is—’ she waved her hand indiscriminately between them both ‘—if you knew.’
‘Knew what?’ Lord Rawcliffe dropped her hand and turned his head to fix Lady Harriet with one of his chillier looks. ‘What has happened to Archie?’
‘He...oh, dear, there is no easy way to break it to you. I’m so sorry, Zeus,’ she said, going over to him and laying one hand on his arm. ‘He’s...he’s dead.’
Zeus? Why was she addressing him by that name? Last time she’d thought it was some fashionable sort of oath she’d uttered.
He flinched and drew back a step, effectively shaking Lady Harriet’s hand from his arm.
‘Dead?’ He was looking at Lady Harriet as though she’d been personally responsible for it. If he’d looked at her that way, Clare thought she would be begging his forgiveness, even if she was completely innocent. Of anything.
‘How? When?’
‘He...he drowned.’
Lord Rawcliffe went white.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Lady Harriet clasped her hands together at her waist. ‘It was only a day or so after you went to—’ she darted a glance in Clare’s direction ‘—to Thetford Forest.’
‘He’s been dead all this time.’ Lord Rawcliffe stood as though rooted to the spot. ‘While I have been pursuing a woman who doesn’t exist...’ His hand curled into a fist.
‘We tried to reach you, but nobody could find you...’
He flinched. ‘The one time I abandon my responsibilities and travel incognito, everything goes to hell in a handcart.’
Clare had never seen him look so utterly devastated. Her heart went out to him.
‘I’m sure there was nothing you could have done,’ Clare began.
His head whipped in her direction, his pain so intense she could almost feel it like a physical blow.
‘That is your considered opinion,’ he snarled, ‘is it?’
‘Well,’ she said, determined not to quail just because he was lashing out at her. It was what people did when they were grieving. She’d had enough experience visiting the recently bereaved to know that it was best to just absorb their hurt, rather than react as though they were angry with her, personally. ‘There was certainly nothing you could have done to prevent Father dying. When it is time for someone to...to go...’
‘Archie was not an old man. He was young. And talented, dammit. He had a brilliant future ahead of him. And I should not have let him out of my sight. He wasn’t equipped to deal with the likes of—’ He broke off, his jaw working.
‘Death always comes as a shock, no matter what age the person was. And those left behind often feel guilty, but...’
‘But nothing! I am guilty. I might as well have—’ He stopped short again, this time with a shudder of what looked like self-loathing.
Lady Harriet stepped forward. ‘Jack and Atlas reacted in pretty much the same way when they heard, Zeus. They both feel responsible, too. But, the thing is, none of us could have foreseen—’ She was the one to stop mid-sentence this time, with the addition of a guilty glance in Clare’s direction that made her feel as though she was the one who ought to go to the kitchen and give them the privacy to speak to each other freely.
‘Would you like me to leave you alone? I can see you are both terribly upset and—’
‘No!’ Lord Rawcliffe seized her hand as she made for the door. ‘No. It is...’ He looked down at her hand with a touch of bewilderment. Then he let it go. As he did so, she could see him pulling himself together. ‘I am the one who should go,’ he said in a voice that was far more like the Lord Rawcliffe she knew. Cool. Slightly disdainful.
‘Do you happen to know,’ he said, turning to Lady Harriet, ‘where I might find Ulysses and Atlas?’
The transformation was astonishing. He sounded as though he was merely asking the time of day. If she hadn’t seen how upset he really was, she would never have guessed it from his demeanour now.
Lady Harriet glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf. ‘Probably at Jack’s town house. Atlas has moved in there with him for now.’
He gave one brief nod. ‘More discreet. Using the excuse that he is acting as groomsman?’
Clare was becoming increasingly bewildered by the rapid-fire questions and answers, but decided that to interrupt and demand an explanation, when both of them were so upset, would be highly insensitive.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Harriet.
‘Then that is where I shall go. Clare,’ he said, turning to her, though it didn’t look as though he was really seeing her. ‘Clare, I will bid you goodnight. I have much to attend to, as you can probably gather.’ Even so, he had collected himself enough to remember his manners. ‘I shall call tomorrow.’
‘Very well. And, oh—’ she took his hand and pressed it ‘—I am so sorry for your loss. And that I expressed my condolences so clumsily.’ No wonder he was always accusing her of being sanctimonious and preachy. Instead of just offering him the sympathy he’d so clearly needed, she’d, well, preached at him.
He blinked. ‘Another apology? My goodness,’ he said in the sarcastic tone with which he usually addressed her. ‘At this rate you will make a decent wife in merely a decade or so.’
He lifted her hand to his lips. Bestowed a brief kiss upon it, then set it firmly aside. Effectively dismissing her.
‘We shall be married the day after tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ said Lady Harriet. ‘But that is the day I am to marry Jack. He will want you to be there.’
‘And I shall be,’ he said over his shoulder as he made for the door. ‘We will make it a double wedding.’
‘Oh, how lovely,’ cried Lady Harriet.
