acknowledging how hard it was going to be for her to leave the vicarage, the only home she’d ever had, he had, instead, congratulated Clement on his foresight in arranging for her removal so swiftly, so that the curate, a man who had a wife and a baby on the way, could move out of the cramped cottage where he’d been living before. He’d even gone so far as to shake Reverend Cobbet by the hand and say how pleased he was for him to finally be moving into a house where he and his family would be comfortable.
It had felt as though he’d stabbed her in the back.
At which point in her bitter ruminations she heard the sound of wheels rattling across the cobbles.
‘Oh, the coach, the coach!’ Finally she did what she should have done in the first place—she made an attempt to get off his lap. But he tightened his hold, keeping her firmly in place.
‘Too late,’ he said smugly. ‘It has gone without you.’
‘But my luggage! Everything I own is in my trunk...’
‘Which has been conveyed to my chaise.’
‘What? How can you know that?’
‘Because I told the landlord to have it done when I ordered the tea and ice. Did you not hear?’ He widened his eyes as though in innocence, when he must know very well she had heard no such thing. That he must have mumbled it while she’d been busy getting the table in between them. Which had worked really well, hadn’t it? Since she’d somehow ended up not just in his arms, but also on his lap just the same.
‘Well, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Of course I should,’ he said with a touch of impatience. ‘If I hadn’t had the foresight to do so, you would have just lost everything you own.’
‘Instead of which, I have fallen into the hands of a...a... Why, you are so high-handed, ordering people about and...and forcing people into fake betrothals that you... Why, you are little better than a kidnapper!’
Rawcliffe drew in a deep breath and started counting to ten.
Just as he got to two, he realised he wasn’t angry enough to need to resort to his usual method of dealing with Clare. He was still far too pleased with the ease with which he’d finally got her on to his lap, and into his arms, to care very much about what she had to say about it.
He smiled down into her furious little face.
‘Far from kidnapping you,’ he pointed out, ‘I have rescued you from the consequences of your own folly. However,’ he interjected swiftly when she drew a breath to object, ‘I concede you must have been at the end of your tether, to hit me when all I did was tease you the way I have always done.’
And it hadn’t hurt that much. Not as much as discovering she thought him capable of such casual cruelty that she’d ended up being evicted from her home before her father was even cold in his grave. When she’d said he’d gone, he’d just assumed she meant that he’d managed to get on to a coach when she wasn’t watching and that she was searching for him. Reverend Cottam’s behaviour had been getting increasingly erratic of late after all. And his sarcasm had been mainly aimed at her brothers, who’d left her with a burden she should no longer have to shoulder all on her own. He’d never dreamed the irascible old preacher could actually have died.
‘But you cannot deny,’ he continued when she drew her ginger brows together into a thwarted little frown, ‘that had I not announced you were my fiancée, you would have been ruined.’
‘I don’t see that it would have been as bad as that,’ she said, defiant to the last.
‘Johnny Bruton, the man who is a member of my club, is a dedicated gossip. He would have left no stone unturned in his quest to discover your name and station in life.’
She shifted on his lap, giving him a delicious experience of her softly rounded bottom.
‘That was why I instructed the landlord to have your belongings placed in my own chaise. So that he would not be able to read your luggage label with, no doubt, its destination thereon. Not for any nefarious notion of abduction.’
‘Well, if you’ve prevented him from discovering my name, there is no need to carry on with this deception, is there?’
Need? No, it wasn’t a question of need. But it was so deliciously satisfying to have the proud, pious little madam so completely at his mercy for once. True, she was still spitting insults at him, but they lacked the conviction they might have had if she wasn’t sitting on his lap. If she hadn’t put her arms round his neck instead of slapping his face when he’d kissed her.
Not only that, but she’d actually apologised to him. And thanked him, though the words had very nearly choked her as she’d forced them through her teeth.
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
