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