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.
‘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
