“I have just announced our betrothal.”

A Brides for Bachelors story

The Marquess of Rawcliffe has always found his feisty childhood friend Clare Cottam enthralling. Forbidden by her strict father to pursue a relationship, he’s kept his distance. But the couple is embroiled in a heated argument that puts Clare’s reputation in danger, and Rawcliffe is forced to declare her his fiancée! It will be his pleasure to tame his independent, innocent bride...

ANNIE BURROWS has been writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon since 2007. Her books have charmed readers worldwide, having been translated into nineteen different languages, and some have gone on to win the coveted Reviewers’ Choice award from Cataromance. For more information, or to contact the author, please visit annie-burrows.co.uk, or you can find her on Facebook at facebook.com/AnnieBurrowsUK.

Also by Annie Burrows

An Escapade and an Engagement

Never Trust a Rake

Reforming the Viscount

Portrait of a Scandal

Lord Havelock’s List

The Captain’s Christmas Bride

In Bed with the Duke

Once Upon a Regency Christmas

The Debutante’s Daring Proposal

Brides for Bachelors miniseries

The Major Meets His Match

The Marquess Tames His Bride

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Marquess Tames His Bride

Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07338-7

THE MARQUESS TAMES HIS BRIDE

© 2018 Annie Burrows

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Extract

Chapter One

‘Well, well...what have we here?’

Clare’s heart sank. It was just typical of Lord Rawcliffe to take it into his head to travel through Bedfordshire on the very same day as her. Trust him to stroll in through the back door of the inn where she was changing stages, looking so expensive and elegant, at the very moment she was on her way out to visit the necessary, wearing a coat she’d dyed very inexpertly in the scullery. How did he do it? How was it that whenever she was at her lowest, or caught in some humiliating predicament, he always managed to be there to witness it?

And laugh at her.

‘No, don’t tell me,’ he drawled, taking off his gloves with provokingly deliberate slowness. ‘A missionary visit to the raff and scaff of Biggleswade.’

And this was the way he always spoke to her. Every time their paths crossed, he would mock her beliefs and she would retaliate by denouncing his morals and informing him that just because he had a worldly title higher than most, and was rolling in filthy lucre, it did not give him the right to assume he was better than everyone else.

But today, she had no time for his games. Nor was she in the mood.

‘Don’t be ridiculous’ was therefore all she said, lifting her chin and attempting to dodge past him.

She might have known he wouldn’t permit her to do so. Instead of stepping aside politely, the way any other man would have done, he raised his arm, creating a barrier across the narrow passage, under which she’d have to duck to get past him.

In years past she might have attempted it. But she wasn’t a child any longer. And she’d learned the folly of trying to dodge him when he didn’t wish to be dodged.

‘Will you excuse me?’ she said in her most frigidly polite, grown-up voice.

‘Not until you tell me what you are doing here,’ he said, curving his thin lips into a mocking smile. ‘Preaching sobriety to the parishioners of Watling Minor lost its appeal, has it? Need to spread your gospel farther afield?’

She winced. Why did he always have to make her sound as though she was some sort of religious maniac?

‘Surely you, of all people, must know why I have so much sympathy for the message preached by the Methodists,’ she retorted, reacting the way she invariably did when he addressed her in that sarcastic tone. ‘Not,’ she added hastily, when his smile hardened, presaging an escalation in hostilities, ‘that I am here to preach at anybody for any reason.’

‘Joan,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You cannot help yourself. Your whole life is one long sermon. You even manage to preach hell and damnation by the very way you look down that sanctimonious little nose of yours at the entire human race.’

She knew she shouldn’t have mentioned his mother’s fatal weakness for alcohol. Not even indirectly. It was the equivalent of poking him in the eye.

But when it came to the Marquess of Rawcliffe, she just couldn’t help herself. He was so infuriating that no matter how sternly she lectured herself about keeping her tongue between her teeth, he only had to half-lower those lazy lids of his over his ice-cold eyes and utter some puerile taunt, and reason flew out of the window.

‘You should know,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Since you look down your own, arrogant, big nose at the whole world and everything in it.’ Blast it. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. And now she was even thinking in profanities. ‘And how many times do I have to tell you not to call me Joan?’

‘As many times as you like and I shall still do so, since it is what your father should have called you.’

‘No, he shouldn’t.’

‘Yes, he should. Since he named all your brothers after popes, then he should have done the same for you. But then consistency,’ he said with a curl to his upper lip, ‘has never been his strongest suit, has it?’

‘There was no such person as Pope Joan, as you very well know,’ she snapped, falling into the same argument they’d had countless times over the years. ‘She was a myth. And would you please just leave my father out of it for once?’ Did he have no compassion? At all?

‘Absolutely not,’ he said, his eyes hardening to chips of ice. ‘For one thing, I cannot believe even he would approve of you frequenting places of this sort. If he were any longer in a fit state to know where you were or what you were about.’

The beast! How could he rub her nose in it like this? Oh! She’d always known he was the hardest-hearted person she’d ever met, but this? This was too much.

All the frustrations and hurts of recent weeks played through her mind in rapid succession and crystallised in the mocking smile on the handsome face of the last man she wished to witness her degradation.

There was nothing she could do about her brothers. Nothing she could do about her father, or her future. But right now, there was one thing she could do.

She could knock that sneering, cruel, infuriating smile off the Marquess of Rawcliffe’s face.

Before she had time to weigh up the consequences, her fingers had curled into a fist. And all her grief, and anger, and confusion, and sense of betrayal hurled along her arm and exploded into movement.

She’d meant to punch him on the jaw. But just as she was letting fly, he moved and somehow her fist caught him right on the nose.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

If she hadn’t seen his head snap back, she wouldn’t have known she’d had any effect upon him at all.

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.

Chapter Two

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 mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘You flew here on angel’s wings, did you?’

‘Of course not. I came on the stage.’

‘Precisely. A stagecoach, crammed, if I know anything about it, with plenty of other passengers.’

‘Yes, but none of them took much notice of me...’

‘That was before you indulged in a bout of fisticuffs with a peer of the realm. Now they will all want to know who you are. And it won’t take them long to find out.’

She thought of her trunk, sitting out in the yard awaiting her connecting coach. The label, bearing her name, tied to the handle. And then, with a sinking heart, the ostler who’d wrested it from the luggage rack and the withering look he’d given her after she’d dropped her tip into his hand. A tip so meagre he’d clearly regarded it in the nature of an insult.

She swallowed.

‘It...it cannot really matter though, can it? At least, it wouldn’t have,’ she added resentfully, ‘if you had not claimed I was your fiancée.’

‘You think people would have been less interested in a random woman assaulting me in a public inn? Do you have any idea of the story they would have concocted had I not given them a far better one? You would have been a cast-off mistress, at the very least. Or possibly the mother of a brood of my illegitimate offspring. Or perhaps even a secret wife.’

‘Well, I don’t see how any of that would have been any worse than for them now to believe you have a fiancée nobody knew anything about.’

‘You cannot just say thank you, can you? For rescuing you from the consequences of your own folly?’

She lowered her gaze. Studied her scuffed boots for a moment or two, weighing his words. She supposed she did ought to thank him. After all, she’d hit him and he hadn’t done anything in retaliation. On the contrary, he’d covered for her behaviour by making up a story about her being an insanely jealous fiancée, so that everyone would believe she was perfectly entitled to waylay him in a corridor and bloody his nose.

‘Very well.’ She sighed. ‘Thank you for attempting to rescue me from myself. And now—’

He let out a bark of laughter. ‘Good God! An apology and an acknowledgement that I have actually managed to do something decent, in your opinion, in the space of five minutes. From you, that is nothing short of a miracle. If you continue at this rate you will become a model wife. Within about fifty years,’ he finished on a sneer.

‘You and I both know I am never going to be your wife—’

‘But I have just announced our betrothal.’

‘Yes, well, I know you didn’t mean anything by that.’ Just as he hadn’t meant anything by it the last time he’d spoken to her of marriage. She gave an involuntary shiver as that particular episode came to remembrance, since it was not exactly her finest hour. She’d been emerging from the duck pond, covered in slime and with ribbons of weed tangled in her hair. And with the sack full of drowned puppies clutched to her chest. She’d been distraught, because she’d taken far too long to find them. Only later did she discover that the reason the sack into which they’d been tied had sunk deep into the mud was because it was weighted down with rocks. She’d been horrified by the cruelty of the wretch who’d thrown those poor innocent little creatures into the pond and there he’d been, bowed over with laughter, holding himself up by propping his hands on his knees at the sight of her. And then to make matters worse, she’d lost her footing as she’d been clambering out and fallen back into the water. To set the seal on her humiliation, her sense of failure, he’d extended his hand and laughingly said something to the effect of having to marry her if this was what she sank to the moment he took his eyes off her.

And her heart had fluttered. Even though she should have known better, should have known that a man as handsome, and wealthy, and elevated in rank as him could never seriously consider marrying a diminutive, red-haired, penniless vicar’s daughter, some pathetic, lovesick part of her had dared to hope. For a moment or two. Which had been the height of absurdity. Because, deep down, she couldn’t imagine any man losing his heart to her, let alone the one man in the county who could have any woman he wanted for the clicking of his fingers—and very probably had.

Which had, thankfully, prevented her from making any sort of reply apart from a haughty toss of her head—which had made him laugh all over again since in doing so it had dislodged a clump of weed—and stalking off with her nose in the air. Leaving her with at least one tiny shred of pride still intact. Because of course it turned out he had merely been teasing her. For if he’d been in earnest, he would have come calling on Father to make a formal offer. Or at least ask if he could start to pay his addresses, until such time as she was old enough to consider marriage.

But he hadn’t.

Because he hadn’t meant a word of it.

Any more than he meant what he’d just said about her becoming a model wife, even if he had put in the bit about it taking fifty years. Men like him didn’t marry girls like her.

It was ridiculous.

‘Did you indeed?’ He pushed himself off the door, and sort of loomed over her. ‘Then why did I say it? Why tell the world you are my fiancée?’

‘I don’t know!’ She backed away. There was something so overwhelming about him. So dangerous. And now that he’d kissed her, she knew what that danger was. A danger to her self-respect which would shrivel away to nothing should she permit the attraction she felt for him to govern her actions. And right now, self-respect was all she had left.

But, oh, how tempting it was to latch on to his carelessly spoken words and make him stick to them, for once. It would serve him right...

But, no. Though the temptation surged swift and strong, she must thrust it aside. She couldn’t marry a man simply to get revenge on him for all the hurts he’d inadvertently caused her over the years. What sort of marriage would that be? Not the kind she read about in the bible...not that she’d ever actually seen anyone in real life attain the state of being an image of Christ and his church. But if she ever did marry, she would at least hope the man would regard the estate as holy and make an effort to be faithful, if not actually be ready to lay down his life for her.

Oh, but she might as well wish for a castle and a chest full of jewels and an army of servants to see to her slightest whim while she was at it.

‘Why do you ever say anything? And anyway, it’s not as if it was to anyone who matters, is it? They didn’t look to me like anybody you knew.’

‘One of those bucks is a member of one of my clubs. The news of my betrothal to a short, red-haired shrew will be all over town within hours.’

‘I am not a shrew!’ He just brought out the worst in her. Deliberately.

‘Only a shrew would have punched me in a public inn, when all I’d done was tease you, the way I have always teased you.’

‘Not the way you have always teased me,’ she seethed. ‘What you said was unforgivable!’

A frown flickered across his brow. ‘I said nothing that I have not said before.’

‘Only now, to say such things about Father, when he is gone, that, that, that...’ She shuddered to a halt as her emotions almost got the better of her.

‘Gone? What do you mean, gone?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know!’

‘I am not pretending,’ he said, taking her by both shoulders and looking into her eyes as though searching for the truth. ‘Where has he gone?’

She swatted his hands from the patchily dyed shoulders of her coat and took a step back, before she gave in to the temptation to lean into him and sob her heart out.

‘I was not surprised that you did not attend his funeral. I know you are far too busy and important to bother with—’

‘Funeral? He died? When? Good God, Clare,’ he said, advancing and taking hold of her shoulders once again. ‘You cannot think that I knew? Would have spoken of him in that way if I...’ His fingers tightened almost painfully on her before he abruptly released her with a bitter laugh. ‘You did, in fact, believe that I knew. And, knowing, that I would be cruel enough to taunt you...’ He whirled away from her, strode across to the rather grubby window and stood gazing out.

Now that he wasn’t trying to prevent her from leaving, Clare found herself strangely reluctant to walk through the unguarded door. There was something about the set of his back that, in any other man, would have looked...almost defeated. Weary.

‘If you really did not know...’

His back stiffened.

‘Then I am sorry for thinking that you would deliberately taunt me with...with...well...’ She faltered. He’d never been cruel. Not deliberately cruel. Oh, he might have hurt her time after time, but he’d never been aware, not really, how much power he had to hurt her. He just thought she was funny. A joke. Because, although she tried her hardest to live up to the precepts set down in the gospels, her temper kept on overruling her better judgement. Time after time she fell into scrapes. And somehow he always heard about them and mocked her for them when next he crossed her path.

Unless he actually happened to be present when she was in one, when the chances were he was at the root of it, like today.

‘I suppose...’ she began, on a flood of remorse. But was prevented from making another apology by the return to the room of the landlord and a waiter. Between them they’d brought all the items Lord Rawcliffe had requested. Not that he acknowledged them. He just stood there, with his back to the room, in stony silence while the men set everything on the table.

While she stood by the door, shifting from one foot to the other.

Why were they taking so long to set out a few dishes? Why couldn’t they take the hint that both she and Lord Rawcliffe wanted them to go away?

Because, even though it was highly improper to remain in the room with only Lord Rawcliffe for company, she had too much pride to make her apology to him in front of witnesses.

And too highly developed a conscience to leave without making it.

Chapter Three

‘You had better remove your gloves,’ he said, once the landlord and the waiter had bowed their way backward out of the room.

‘My gloves? Why? I am not staying. My coach is due in any moment and I—’

With an expression of impatience he strode across the room and seized her wrist. ‘You need to get some ice on your hand,’ he said, wrenching the buttons undone and tugging at her fingers.

Oh, good heavens. He was removing an item of her clothing. True, it was only a glove and he was doing it as though she were a naughty child, but still it was making her insides go all gooey.

Until something he said jolted her out of that pathetic state.

‘Ice?’ The bowl of ice he’d ordered, while he was standing there staunching the blood flowing from his nose, was for her hand? She’d assumed it was for his nose.

‘Yes, ice,’ he repeated, drawing her over to the table. ‘It is the best thing for injuries sustained when boxing,’ he said, thrusting her on to a chair. ‘I know how painful it must be.’ He took some chunks of ice and wrapped them in one of the cloths the waiter had brought. ‘It is just fortunate that your hand connected with my nose, rather than my jaw, at which,’ he said as he placed the cloth over her knuckles and held it there, ‘I believe you were aiming.’

‘Are you saying you deliberately moved your face so that it was your nose I struck, rather than your jaw?’

He shrugged one shoulder. ‘You don’t seriously think you could have landed a blow unless I permitted it, do you?’

‘Well, now you come to mention it, I was a bit surprised you didn’t try to block me.’

He gave her one of those withering looks that made people say he was insufferably arrogant.

‘There are a lot of little bones in the hand,’ he said, looking at hers as he dabbed at it with the napkin full of ice. ‘And not one of them, as you should know, as strong as the jawbone.’

‘What do you mean, as I should know?’ Did he think she went round punching people on a regular basis? And had he really, deliberately, put his nose in the way of her fist, rather than letting her injure herself on him?

‘Judges 15, of course,’ he replied scathingly. ‘How do you think Samuel managed to slay all those Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, if it wasn’t harder than all their skulls?’

Oh, that was more like him. To quote scripture at her in order to make her feel stupid. And yet...he was taking care of her. Tending so gently to her hand, which did hurt rather a lot. When never, as far back as she could recall, had anyone ever tended to any of her hurts.

She had always been the one tending to others. She’d started learning to care for her brothers, and her father, well before Mama had died and left the task of running the bustling vicarage entirely in her ten-year-old hands.

‘There,’ he said, giving her hand one last gentle pat. ‘Does that feel better?’

She nodded. Because she couldn’t have spoken even if she’d been able to think of the right words to describe how she felt. The ice did indeed feel soothing. But the fact that he’d sent for it, that he’d made it into a compress, that he was applying it...that was what was bringing a lump to her throat.

Oh, this was why Lord Rawcliffe was so dangerous. Why she’d always stayed well away from him. Because he made her want things she had no right to want. Feel things she had no right to feel.

Eventually she pulled herself together sufficiently to lift her chin and look straight into his face, and even give him a tremulous smile.

‘Thank you for tending to my hand. And accepting my apology. And...and even for dodging so that I got your nose rather than your jaw.’ She got to her feet. ‘But I really must be going now. My coach is due in any minute and—’

His face hardened.

‘I have not accepted your apology.’

‘What? But—’

‘Sit down,’ he said sternly. ‘You are not going anywhere until you have given me a full explanation. Besides, have you forgotten?’ He gave her a cold smile. ‘You are my fiancée. Do you really think I am going to permit you to go jauntering off all over the countryside, on your own?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am not your fiancée. And I don’t need your permission to do anything or go anywhere!’

‘That’s better,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, an infuriatingly satisfied smile playing about the lips that had so recently kissed her. ‘You were beginning to droop. Now you are on fighting form again, we can have a proper discussion.’

‘I don’t want to have a discussion with you,’ she said, barely managing to prevent herself from stamping her foot. ‘Besides, oh, listen, can’t you hear it?’ It was the sound of a guard blowing on his horn to announce the arrival of the stage. The stage she needed to get on. ‘I have a seat booked on that coach.’

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, striding over to the door and blocking her exit once again, ‘you will not be getting on it.’

‘Don’t be absurd. Of course I am going to get on it.’

‘You are mistaken. And if you don’t acquiesce to your fate, quietly, then I am going to have to take desperate measures.’

‘Oh, yes? And just what sort of measures,’ she said, marching up to him and planting her hands on her hips, ‘do you intend to take?’

He smiled. That wicked, knowing smile of his. Took her face in both hands. And kissed her.

‘Mmph,’ she protested, raising her hands to his chest to ward him off. He paid no attention. He just wrapped his arms round her and kept right on kissing her.

‘Mbrrrhgh!’ She wriggled in his hold. To no avail. His arms were like bars of iron. Besides, she wasn’t only fighting him. She was also having to fight the stupid, crazy urge to push herself up against him, to open her mouth and kiss him back.

And just as she was starting to forget exactly why she ought to be fighting him at all, he gentled the kiss. Gentled his hold. Changed the nature of his kiss from hard and masterful, to coaxing and...oh, his clever mouth. It knew just how to translate her fury into a sort of wild, pulsing ache. She ached all over. She began to tremble with what he was making her feel. Grew weaker by the second.

As if he knew her legs were on the verge of giving way, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her over to one of the upholstered chairs by the fire. Sat down without breaking his hold, so that she landed on his lap.

And instead of struggling to break free, she subsided on to his chest, burying her face in his neck. Because she could see absolutely no point in struggling to escape from the one place she’d always wanted to be: in his arms, the focus of his whole attention.

‘Now,’ he growled into the crown of her bonnet, ‘you will tell me why you are in this godforsaken spot, trying to get on a coach, when you should be snug and safe at home in the vicarage.’

‘The vicarage is not my home anymore, as you very well know,’ she said, jerking upright under the impact of a dose of that bleak truth. ‘Now that Father has died.’

‘The vicarage is your home,’ he said. ‘Even,’ he laid one finger to her lips when she took a breath to protest, ‘even when the vicar is no longer living. There was no need for you to leave, the moment you buried him.’

‘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!’

Chapter Four

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.

Oh, no, he wasn’t finished with Clare just yet. There were just too many intriguing possibilities left to explore.

‘That depends,’ he said, as though considering her point of view.

‘On what?’

Hmmm. She’d stopped scowling. It was worth noting that pretending to be taking her opinion into account made her sheathe her claws. He would have to bear that in mind.

‘On where you were planning to go. I presume, to the home of your new employer?’

‘Yes, I told you, Clement arranged for me to begin work as a companion to an elderly lady.’

‘No, you didn’t tell me that.’

‘Oh. Well, he did. You see, he is involved in all sorts of charitable work. And one of his causes is to find honest work for...er...fallen women.’

Something like an alarm went off inside him. Because he’d just spent the better part of a month searching for a girl who might have criminal connections. A girl who’d disappeared after the elderly, vulnerable woman she’d been working for had been robbed. And Clement’s name had come up then, as well.

‘He finds work for fallen women, does he?’ He only just prevented himself from asking if he also found work for professional thieves. Just because he was on the trail of a group of criminals who’d been systematically robbing elderly ladies, it did not necessarily mean that Clare’s brother was behind it. It could be just a coincidence that one of the people he’d questioned had mentioned Clement Cottam’s name.

‘What sort of work? And, more to the point, how does this affect you?’ Because he couldn’t see Clement being fool enough to ask Clare to rob an elderly lady she was supposed to be looking after, even if he was involved in the crimes Rawcliffe was currently investigating. She was too conscientious. ‘Are you not insulted?’

‘No, no, he... It is just that he has a sort of network, I suppose, of elderly ladies with charitable dispositions, who are willing to give that sort of woman a chance to reform. At least, that is how he explained it to me when I couldn’t credit how swiftly he’d managed to find me a post.’

‘That does sound hard to credit,’ he agreed. So, Clement had a network of elderly ladies who would agree to take in servants with a shady past, on his recommendation, did he? Even though that could be a coincidence as well, two coincidences regarding a man he already suspected of being up to no good, coming in such rapid succession, were hard to ignore.

‘You had better explain how it came about.’

‘Well, I wrote to him, naturally, to inform him of Father’s passing.’

‘Naturally.’ And somebody must have written to him, as well. What a time for him to be trying to stay beyond the reach of anyone who might have been able to reveal his identity.

‘And within two days he was back, helping to arrange the funeral. And, say what you like about him, I cannot deny that I was very grateful for his help. He is very, very good at organising things. Keeps a cool head, you know, when I...’

He reached up and tapped the end of her nose with the tip of his forefinger. ‘You feel things too deeply. You don’t need to explain it to me.’

She jerked her head back, out of his reach. And he let her do so.

For now.

‘No, and you don’t need to bring up the curse of my red hair, either,’ she said mutinously.

‘It would, patently, be absurd to do so, when Clement has hair of almost exactly the same shade as yours.’ His features were similar, too, so that nobody looking at the pair of them together could doubt they were siblings. Yet Clare’s sharp little features and pale gold eyes made her look like some kind of sprite, or a woodland nymph, whereas Clement’s face just reminded him of a fox. A fox that was contemplating a raid on the nearest hen coop.

‘But do, pray, continue to explain how the saintly Clement provided you with employment.’

‘Oh, well, as I said, he has this network of elderly ladies willing to employ girls on his recommendation. So he just sent a letter to one of them recommending me as her companion. And she accepted me by return of post. So, you see, before the funeral was over, I had work and somewhere to live, whereas before that I...’

She didn’t need to say more. She’d had nothing. Believed she had no options. As she bit down on her lower lip, which had started to tremble, a strange feeling came over him. A feeling compounded of admiration for her bravery in the face of such adversity, coupled with a very strong urge to protect her from ever having to go through anything like it again.

Who would have thought he’d ever consider that the crusading Clare needed anyone to protect her from anything? But then who would have thought she could ever look so vulnerable as she did, sitting there trying not to give way to tears? Having just spoken of what must have been a horribly lonely experience in such a matter-of-fact way?

It made him want to hold her tighter. Tell her she was not alone anymore. That he would look after her...

‘And I am sure,’ she said, removing her arms from about his neck, reminding him that he was the last person she’d willingly accept help from, ‘she will still take me, if only you will arrange for me to get on the next coach.’

‘I am sure she will not,’ he said, tightening his own hold round her waist in instinctive reaction to her attempt to escape him. She was going nowhere until he was ready to let her go. Until he’d wrung every last drop of satisfaction from this encounter. She hadn’t anything like begun to repay him for the insults she’d heaped on him over the years. If he couldn’t make her eat her words, precisely, then he could at least rub her nose in the fact that she was where she was because she’d fallen so very far short of the exacting standards she’d always been waving under his nose. ‘Nobody wants to employ the kind of girl who gets into fist fights in public inns.’

‘I didn’t!’ She glanced guiltily at his nose. ‘That is, she isn’t likely to find out about it.’

‘Oh, but she is. Things like this get out. People like Johnny Bruton make sure of it.’

‘But she lives so far away from London...’

‘If she is part of a network of elderly women, who have little better to do with their time than write letters, somebody is bound to write and inform her of your part in this fracas.’

Clare’s mouth turned down at the corners as the truth of his observation struck home. Oh, but revenge could be sweet.

‘Even if she does not know anything about it to start with,’ he persisted, ‘the fear of discovery will hang over your head from the moment you inveigle your way into her household.’

‘I would not be inveigling my way anywhere!’

‘Oh, but you would. No doubt Clement promised her, and her family, the companionship of a gently reared, caring, competent young lady. Once they hear about this little escapade, they will think you have deliberately deceived them. That your brother deliberately deceived them.’

‘No, no. You are making it sound far worse than it was!’

‘And how do you think the likes of Johnny Bruton will make it sound? And how much do you think the tale will be embellished every time it is repeated? Why, the gossips will probably have the pair of us repairing to one of the bedrooms in this establishment and making up our quarrel in the most uninhibited fashion.’ Which would, now he came to mention it, be the way he’d rather like this interlude to progress. The taste of her lips had been every bit as sweet as he’d once dreamed it would. And, though she’d fought her response, there was no hiding the fact that she had responded to him. If this were any other woman, they’d be negotiating terms by now.

But Clare, being Clare, was looking wildly round the perfectly respectable coffee room, then wrinkling her nose in disgust.

‘You are probably right,’ she said gloomily. ‘Particularly given your reputation.’

And even though he’d been thinking along the very same lines, to hear her estimation of his character come out of her lips in such a disdainful manner was like a slap to the face.

He tried not to tense. He was not a rake or a libertine, but Clare had never managed to comprehend that a young man, with tolerable looks and plenty of money, was bound to make the most of the opportunities that came his way. In her opinion, men and women should never yield to the temptations of the flesh, outside the marriage bed.

‘Exactly,’ he purred, injecting every ounce of lasciviousness into his voice that he could muster. Living right down to her low expectations of him, the way he always did.

‘Nobody will ever believe that I could take a young woman into a private room, particularly not one to whom I have declared myself to be betrothed, and allow her to walk away with her virtue unsullied.’

‘Oh, dear.’ She buried her face in her hands and bowed over as though trying to curl up into a ball.

And hang it if another surge of protectiveness didn’t choose that very moment to sweep away his urge to needle her. Causing him to start rubbing his hands up and down the curve of her back.

‘Never mind,’ he said, wondering why humbling Clare wasn’t making him feel like the victor. ‘I am sure there are worse fates than marrying a marquess.’

She made a strangled little squeal as if of half-swallowed outrage. Bringing any inclination to show mercy grinding to a juddering halt.

Last time she’d acted as though his proposal was an insult, he’d had to walk away, licking his wounds. He’d been smarting under the insulting manner of that rejection ever since. So that every time their paths had crossed, he’d felt he had to make a point of demonstrating that he was over it. Over her. That he didn’t give a rap what she thought of him. In fact, on occasion, he’d gone so far out of his way to show her how unimportant she was that he’d even disgusted himself.

Yet she could still wound him by shuddering in genuine horror at the prospect of marrying him.

And suddenly, he couldn’t think of any sweeter form of revenge than actually doing it.

Marrying her.

Because, for the rest of their lives, if ever she felt inclined to look down her nose at him, or complain about his lax morals, or...anything...he’d be able to point out that it was entirely her own fault she was shackled to such a reprobate.

His lips quirked. He couldn’t help it. She could be his, now. For as long as they both would live, if he dug in his heels. And she would have nobody to blame but herself.

Because she’d lost her temper and swung that punch a split second before he’d made his own move. Since, he’d reasoned, she couldn’t think any less of him than she clearly did, since he hadn’t thought he had anything to lose, he’d decided he might as well kiss her. It would, he’d thought, have taken the wind out of her sails. Taken her down a peg or two.

Thank God for her temper. Because now she was the instigator of the scene which had fatally compromised her and he was the magnanimous one, stepping in to save the day. Rather than playing the role of villain for the rest of their lives, the villain who’d ruined her reputation by kissing her in the corridor of a public inn, he would always be able to claim the moral high ground.

He could hardly wait.

Chapter Five

‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’ She lifted a tragic face to his.

He hadn’t. Not to begin with. Announcing she was his fiancée had simply been the only thing he could think of, on the spur of the moment, that would both extricate her from her immediate difficulty and thoroughly annoy her at one and the same time. But now that he’d considered carrying through on his threat, the advantages were becoming clearer by the second.

Especially since he’d kissed her.

Because he’d been longing to get her into his bed for years. Even after she’d rejected him, she’d continued to fascinate him. He’d watched, with mounting frustration, as she’d blossomed from captivating girl to alluring woman. Always dancing just beyond his reach.

But now she was sitting on his lap. And once he got that ring on her finger, she’d have no excuse for refusing him. Not considering the vows she was going to make, in church. Vows which she, with her heightened religious conscience, would consider binding.

‘Don’t I?’

She peered at him as though trying to understand him. Really understand him, rather than jumping to conclusions based on the lies and half-truths fed to her by the likes of Clement.

‘Well, I rather thought,’ she said, ‘that you only said it because it was the one thing that would guarantee getting me out of hot water. And while I appreciate the, um, brilliance of your quick thinking—’

‘Trying to turn me up sweet?’

‘No,’ she said with exasperation. ‘I was trying to give credit where it is due. But since I know you cannot really wish to marry me—’

‘Can’t I? And just why would that be?’

‘You are going to make me spell it out?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Very well, then. Since you seem determined to amuse yourself at my expense today, then I will freely admit that you ought to marry someone who is all the things I am not. Someone beautiful, for a start.’

And Clare was not beautiful, not in the conventional sense.

‘Someone with all the social graces.’

She certainly didn’t have any of those.

‘Someone with a title and money, and, oh, all the things I haven’t got. But because of my temper, my awful temper, you have told people you are going to marry me.’ Her eyes swam with regret and penitence. ‘But I’m sure, if we put our heads together, we can come up with another plan, an even better plan, to stop you from having to go through with it. We could perhaps tell everyone that we discovered we do not suit, for example, or—’

‘Put our heads together?’ Everything in him rose up in revolt. If he thought she could wriggle out of this, she had another think coming. There was only one way he wanted their heads close together. ‘Do you mean, like this?’ he said, before closing the gap between their mouths and stopping her foolish objections with a kiss.

She made a wholly feminine sound of surrender and fell into his kiss as though she was starving for the taste of his lips. With a sort of desperation that made him suspect she intended it as a farewell. As though she was giving in to the temptation to sample what she considered forbidden fruit just one last time.

At length, she pulled away and turned her face into his neck. She was panting. Her cheeks were flushed.

But when she eventually sat up, her face wore an expression of resolve.

‘That was not what I had in mind,’ she said, unnecessarily. Though it was pretty much all that was in his mind and had been from the moment he’d pulled her onto his lap.

‘Poor Clare,’ he murmured, without a shred of sympathy. ‘So determined to escape my evil clutches...’

She went rigid, as though his words reminded her she’d been making precious little attempt to escape him from the moment he’d taken her in his arms. And bit down on her lower lip, the lip he’d been enjoying kissing so much not a moment before. And with which she’d kissed him back.

Her expression of chagrin made him want to laugh.

She nearly always made him want to laugh.

It was a large part of why he’d proposed to her that first time. He’d just endured one of those days that were such a factor of life in Kelsham Park. His mother barricaded in her room. His father out shooting. The staff tiptoeing around as though scared of rousing a sleeping beast. Life had seemed so bleak. And then there she’d been, so full of life, and zeal, and all the things that were lacking in his. And she’d made him laugh. When he’d thought there was nothing of joy to be found anywhere in his life.

And he’d wanted to capture it. Capture her. So that he could...warm himself at the flame that was her spirit.

The proposal had burst from his lips before he’d thought it through. But then, as now, the moment he’d spoken he’d wanted it to become real. Wanted her by his side. In his life. Keeping the chill of Kelsham Park at bay.

He cleared away the lump that came to his throat, so that his voice would not betray the swell of emotion which had just taken him unawares.

‘So determined to escape me. Yet you are the only woman to whom I have ever made an honourable proposal.’

‘What?’ She looked completely flummoxed by that.

‘Yes. All the others,’ he put in swiftly, before the conversation could turn to that first proposal and all the hurt that had ensued, ‘were quite happy to receive dishonourable ones.’

Her puzzled frown turned to a veritable scowl. And she made her first real attempt to get off his lap.

Since he’d already decided they’d been starting to venture rather too close to territory he would rather not revisit, he let her go. All the way to the table where she seized the teapot with what looked like relief.

But the expression faded as she set the pot down after pouring herself a cup of tea, as if she’d realised that, although she’d scored one point in escaping his lap, there was still a major battle to fight. And the look she darted him as he got to his feet and followed her to the table was one of outright desperation.

‘I, um, should thank you, then, for doing me the honour of...though actually, you didn’t propose, did you? You just informed the world that I was your fiancée.’

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of ale, ‘you will become my wife.’

‘I—’

‘And you will make the best of it. In public, at least,’ he added grimly. Even his own parents had managed that. ‘In private—’

‘There isn’t going to be any in private.’

‘You mean, you wish me to make love to you in public?’

‘Don’t be...oh! You provoking man! You know very well what I mean. That there isn’t going to be any making love, anywhere, since we are not getting married. You know we are not.’

‘But, Clare, what will become of you if I don’t make an honest woman of you?’

She flung up her chin. ‘I will be fine. I will...well... I will work something out.’

He couldn’t help admiring her stance, even though he still felt rather insulted by her determination to survive without his help. She was so brave. So determined to stand on her own two feet. No matter what life flung at her.

‘There is no need to work anything out. This solution will do as well as any other either of us could come up with. And it saves us the bother of racking our brains for an alternative.’

‘But—’

‘Really, Clare, this is getting tiresome. I am offering you a position amongst the highest in the land. Wealth you have never been able to imagine.’

‘I don’t care about your money, or your position,’ she retorted. ‘Worldly vanity, that is all you have to offer me—’

‘Have you never considered how much good you could do, as a marchioness? You will be mixing with the people responsible for making the law. You will be able to preach your beliefs to their faces, whenever they eat at our table. You will be able to use your wealth to make a difference to the lives of very many of the poorest and most deserving, should you care to do so.’

She froze. Like a hound scenting prey. ‘You would let me spend your money however I wish?’

‘I will give you a generous allowance,’ he corrected her, ‘which you may spend however you wish.’

Her eyes went round and she stared right through him, as though she was imagining all the ways she could spend that allowance. For a moment or two. Before she lowered them to the table and bit down on her lower lip, as though chastising herself for indulging in some extremely mercenary daydreams.

Time to put some steel in her spine again.

‘However,’ he said sternly, ‘I shall expect you to look the part whenever you appear at my side in public. I most certainly do not wish to see you out and about wearing garments that make you look like a bedraggled crow.’

Which served to put the mutinous look back on her face.

‘How dare you! I am in mourning for my father—’

‘Which is no excuse for looking shabby.’

Her eyes flashed. She took a deep breath. He cut in, swiftly.

‘I can see I shall have to engage one of those abigails who do nothing but take care of clothes. A top-notch one,’ he said, running a deliberately disparaging look over her complete outfit.

‘You don’t need to—’

‘I always expected whomever I married to cost me a pretty penny,’ he cut in again, deliberately misconstruing whatever objection she’d been about to make. ‘Though unlike most husbands, instead of dreading the bills flooding in from the modistes, I may have to curb your enthusiasm for supporting beggars and cripples.’

‘Now, look here...’ she began, indignantly. And then petered out. Lowered her head again. Fiddled with her teacup.

‘Damn me for being right?’

She nodded. ‘It’s terrible of me, isn’t it? But, the thought of being able to do some good, real good, for once. It is so terribly tempting...’

Clare Cottam must be the only woman alive who would regard the opportunity to do good in the world as a temptation. It was all he could do to keep a straight face.

‘Then let it be a consolation to you. For the terrible fate,’ he said drily, ‘of having to marry me in order to be able to do so.’

‘Look, I never said it would be a terrible fate to marry you. You mustn’t think that. It’s just...it doesn’t seem fair you have to marry the likes of me just because I...’

‘Struck me?’

She hunched her shoulders. Lifted her teacup and took a large gulp, as though hoping it could wash away a nasty taste.

‘It is true,’ he said, provocatively, ‘that you are obliging me to enter a state I would not willingly have walked into for some considerable time—’

‘I am not! I am trying to think of a way out for you. While all you are doing is—’

He cut through her latest objection. ‘But I would have had to marry somebody, some day. Because I must produce an heir.’

For a moment it looked as though Clare’s tea was in danger of going down the wrong way.

‘Yes,’ he drawled. ‘That is one very real function you could fulfil just as well as a titled, wealthy, beautiful woman.’ He reached across the table and stroked the back of her wrist, where it lay beside the plate of bread and butter.

‘Oh!’ She snatched her hand away.

‘Yes, Clare, you could be the mother of my child.’ And what a mother she would be. He couldn’t see her taking to drink when she didn’t get her own way. Nor taking lovers, nor only visiting the nursery when she wanted to complain about his behaviour and telling her child that he was the spawn of his father and that the sight of his face made her sick to her stomach.

‘Oh,’ she said again in a rather softer voice, her eyes taking on a faraway look as though she, too, was imaging a child they could create together.

And then her face turned an even deeper shade of red and she began squirming so much he decided it was time to give her thoughts another direction.

‘Possibly, I should have looked for a woman with all the qualities you listed. And a very tedious business,’ he said, with a grimace of genuine distaste, ‘it would have been making my choice from all the many candidates for the privilege.’

She gasped. ‘How can you be so arrogant?’

He raised one eyebrow at her. ‘You yourself have already pointed out that I could have had my pick of society’s finest specimens of feminine perfection. I was only agreeing with you.’

‘You—how typical of you to turn my own words against me like that.’

‘Indeed,’ he said affably. ‘And you should have expected it, knowing me as well as you do. I have no shame, have I?’ He’d added that last when she opened her mouth as if to say it. ‘But never mind. There is no point in us quarrelling over this. Just accept that I am relieved that you have saved me a great deal of bother.’

‘You...you...’

‘Yes, and now I come to think of it,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and looking her up and down speculatively, ‘I may as well tell you that I don’t mind having to marry you as much as you seem to think.’ Not at all, to be truthful. But whenever had being truthful got him anywhere with Clare?

‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘I know full well that I am not fit to become your marchioness.’

‘Why not? You are the daughter of a gentleman. Besides, I have known you all my life.’

‘Exactly! You know we are not at all suited.’

That was only her opinion. ‘On the contrary. With you there will be no surprises. You could never fool me into thinking you would be a compliant wife by being all sweet and syrupy whenever we meet, then turning into a shrew the minute I got the ring on your finger. Which could happen with any woman I got to know during a London Season. No,’ he said, smiling at her in a challenging way as her little mouth pursed up in the way it always did when she was attempting to hold back a scathing retort. ‘I already know that you are a shrew. That the last thing anyone could accuse you of being is compliant.’

Her hand tightened on the handle of her teacup.

‘Are you planning on throwing that at my head?’

She deliberately unclenched her fingers and tucked her hands into her lap.

‘Good, then, if we are finished here, may I suggest we get on our way?’

‘Our...our way?’ Once again, she looked slightly lost and bewildered. ‘Where to?’

‘London, of course. It is where I was going when I stopped here for a change of horses. I have pressing business there.’ He had to report back to his friends on the progress he’d made so far with investigating the disappearance of some jewellery from not only Lady Harriet Inskip’s aunt, but also from the family of his chaplain, Thomas Kellet.

‘Oh, but...’ She twisted her hands in her lap. ‘I thought you were trying to avoid scandal. If you take me to London and parade me about the streets...’

‘I have no intention of doing anything so fat-headed,’ he said, ‘since I know full well that nobody could parade you anywhere you did not wish to go.’

She shot him a narrow-eyed look, one with which he was all too familiar when attempting to pay her a compliment. As though she suspected him of concealing an insult behind his comment, one that she hadn’t immediately perceived, but would discover on further reflection.

‘I shall, instead, take you directly to the house of a respectable female, where you will stay while I arrange our wedding.’

She frowned. ‘A respectable female?’

‘Yes. A lady who has recently become...a friend.’

‘I see,’ she said, glowering at him. And bristling all over.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was jealous. The irony was, that Lady Harriet, the lady to whom he was referring, would probably have applauded if she’d seen Clare punch him on the nose, since she’d often shown signs she’d like to do something very similar.

They would, when Clare had climbed down off her high horse and realised Lady Harriet was indeed respectable, get on like a house on fire.

Chapter Six

Clare couldn’t believe she was getting into Lord Rawcliffe’s luxurious chaise to travel to London, when not half an hour since she’d been planning to get on to the public stage and head in the opposite direction.

She couldn’t believe she’d let him sweet-talk her into going along with his ridiculous proposition, either.

He couldn’t possibly really want to marry her.

In spite of the outrageous claims he’d made about saving him the bother of choosing one from among the hordes of females who practically swooned whenever he walked into the room.

They were too far apart. Socially, to begin with. And morally, which was more important. He was a rake and a libertine, and a...well, no, she could not accuse him of being a drunkard.

Nor, if she was being completely honest, did he deserve the label of rake. He had never littered the countryside with his by-blows, nor taken any woman against her will.

No, because he didn’t need to. Women had been throwing themselves at him since he’d first started sprouting whiskers on his arrogant chin and he hadn’t thought twice about enjoying what they had to offer. He only had to smile at them, in that certain sort of melting way he had, and they’d...well, melted.

All except her. On the contrary, she’d lifted her chin and told him exactly what she thought of his promiscuity whenever he’d smiled at her in that lascivious way. Had kept all the melting she’d done hidden, deep down. Concealed it behind a smokescreen of invective. Told him he should be ashamed of attempting to corrupt a vicar’s daughter. Informed him she would never become yet another victim of his dubious charms. And when all else failed, simply hidden if she’d seen him coming.

Not that she’d had to resort to such measures all that often. Thankfully. She cringed as her mind flew back, for about the third or fourth time that day, to the time she’d almost fallen out of the tree into the field where Farmer Westthorpe kept his bull. She’d climbed the dratted tree in the first place because she’d seen him coming down the lane. Shinned up it fast, so that she wouldn’t have to bid him good day, or face the sniggers of Betsy Woodly, who was clinging on to his arm. And the innkeeper’s daughter would have sniggered, because there could only be one reason why she was strolling along the lane on Lord Rawcliffe’s arm. Which was that they were looking for a convenient place to...urgh.

Unfortunately, it was directly after they’d passed the tree whose leafy branches were doing such an admirable job of concealing her that Betsy had pulled him behind a hedge and flung her arms round his neck. Clare had squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to witness the unspeakable things they proceeded to do to each other. Which was why she’d lost her footing and almost tumbled to her doom.

Of course Lord Rawcliffe had found it hilarious. Had taunted her with getting her just deserts for spying on him. And she’d been too mortified to offer a coherent explanation as to what, precisely, she had been doing up that particular tree at that precise moment. So that every time their paths crossed, for several months after that, he’d smile at her in a knowing way and offer to satisfy her curiosity.

She’d always managed to escape with her dignity intact. Until today, when he had proved that he was every bit as devastating as she’d always feared. His skilful kisses had not only melted her, it was as if they’d lit a fire in her blood and scrambled her brains. How else to account for the fact she’d ceased trying to find a way out of their predicament and agreed to marry him, instead? Yes, now she looked back over the past hour or so, it seemed to her that every time she’d almost come up with a rational alternative, he’d kissed her again and reduced her to a quivering heap of jelly on his lap.

On his lap!

She shifted on the seat.

‘Trying to keep your face averted from my corrupting presence is clearly giving you a crick in your neck,’ he said provokingly. ‘Why don’t you just turn your head and stare out of the other window? Pretend you cannot see me.’

She didn’t need to see him to be aware that he was sitting right next to her. Even though he didn’t allow a single part of his body to touch any part of hers. He was so...there. So vital and male, and sure of himself. Dominating the whole carriage just by the act of sitting in it.

How did he do that? Dominate whatever place he happened to be, just by breathing in and out?

‘Have you ever been to London? I am not aware that you have done so, but you might have sneaked up to town in secret, on some mission you wished to conceal from me.’

She gritted her teeth. How could he accuse her of being sneaky, when she could not tell a lie to save her life? Everything she thought was always written on her face, or so he kept telling her.

Although—she darted a sideways glance at him under her lids—he’d never discerned the one secret she would die rather than have him discover. Which was the way she felt about him, in spite of herself. The way her heart pounded and her insides melted when he turned that lazy smile of his in her direction. The way her insides knotted with feelings she couldn’t name or even fully understand whenever she’d heard about his latest conquest.

‘You mean you don’t know?’ she said with mock astonishment. ‘I thought you were infallible.’

His face hardened. ‘No. As we have both discovered today, I do not know everything that occurs even within my own sphere of influence. Clare, you still cannot think that I would have stayed away had I known of your father’s death?’

‘Yes, I can think that,’ she retorted. There had been no love lost between the two men she cared about the most and she could easily believe he would prefer not to attend the funeral. ‘But,’ she put in hastily when his lips thinned and his eyes hardened to chips of ice, ‘I do acquit you of deliberately hurting me earlier. I do believe, now, that you just fell into the way you always have of teasing me.’

‘How magnanimous of you,’ he drawled, looking far from pleased.

They fell into an uneasy silence for some considerable time. Such a long time that she began to wonder if he was ever going to speak to her again. How could he think a marriage would work between two people who couldn’t even conduct a civil conversation?

Perhaps, she reflected darkly, he didn’t consider conversation important. His own mother and father never seemed to speak to each other. Whenever they were out in public, it was as if there was a wall of frost separating them. She almost shivered at the memory. Surely he wouldn’t be as cold a husband as his father had been to his mother? Although...they’d still managed to produce him, hadn’t they?

A strange feeling twisted her insides at the thought of conceiving his child. Under such circumstances. Though a pang of yearning swiftly swept it aside. That had been what had silenced her very last objection, the prospect of becoming a mother. To his child. She’d have had to be an idiot to carry on insisting she’d rather spend the rest of her life tending to an unfamiliar and probably cantankerous old lady.

She’d actually seen it. The child. Seen herself rocking it in her arms, holding it to her breast. Imagined what it would feel like to belong to someone. And have someone belong to her in a way she’d never truly known.

‘We are now crossing the section of the Heath,’ he suddenly said, jolting her out of her daydream which now featured not just one baby but three little boys of varying ages, ‘where once a serving girl, armed only with a hammer, fought off a highwayman with such vigour she left him dying in the road.’

‘Why on earth,’ she said, half-turning in her seat to gape at him, ‘would you think I would be interested in hearing that?’

He gave a half-shrug. ‘I thought you would find her behaviour admirable.’

‘What, clubbing a man to death? With a hammer?’ She caught a glint in his eye. ‘Do you take me for a complete idiot?’

‘I do not take you for any kind of idiot.’

‘Then kindly cease making up such outrageous tales. As if a maidservant would have been wandering around with a hammer in her hand, indeed. Let alone have the strength to fell a fully grown man with it.’

His lips twitched. ‘I beg your pardon. No more tales of grisly crimes.’

He fell silent for only a few moments, before pointing out a ditch into which he claimed an eloping couple had met their grisly end when the gig in which they’d been fleeing to Gretna had overturned.

‘I thought you were not going to regale me with tales of grisly crimes.’

‘It was not a crime. It was an accident,’ he pointed out pedantically.

‘Well, I don’t want to hear about grisly accidents, either.’

‘No? What, then, shall we discuss?’

He was asking her? She swallowed. Then noted what looked like a mischievous glint in his eye.

He was trying, in his own inimitable fashion, to break through the wall of silence that she’d thrown up between them by being so ungracious. It made her want to reach out and take hold of his hand.

Rather than do anything so spineless, she said, instead, ‘You could...point out the landmarks as we pass them. Explain what they are.’

‘I could,’ he said. And proceeded to do so. So that the ensuing miles passed in a far more pleasant manner. Especially once they reached streets thronged with traffic and bounded on either side by tall buildings. She was actually sorry when, at length, the chaise drew up outside a white house with at least three storeys that she could make out, in the corner of a very grand square.

‘Is this your house?’

‘No. This is not Grosvenor, but St James’s Square. This is the home of that friend I was telling you about. The one who will be looking after you until we can be married.’

‘If you can make her,’ Clare mumbled as one of the postilions came to open the door.

He shot her one of his impenetrable looks. ‘She will be an ally for you, in society, if she takes to you, so I hope you will make an effort to be agreeable to her.’

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.

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