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He wasted no time in doing so. ‘I suppose you’d best come in,’ the woman said grudgingly. ‘The reverend is in his study.’ She turned on her heel and Clare stepped up into the hall, then into the room to the right. A room which had a very clear view all the way round the quayside and right down the inlet. There was a telescope on the windowsill, she noted. A telescope through which Clement could easily keep an eye on everything that happened in his little kingdom.
And there, sitting behind a desk piled high with books and papers, sat her brother. Who nodded at his dragon of a housekeeper, dismissing her.
‘Clement,’ said Clare, stepping into the room. ‘I do hope—’
He held up his hand to silence her. ‘Before you go any further, Clare, let me just inform you that there is no need to beg for my forgiveness,’ he said graciously. ‘It would not be Christian of me to withhold it.’
‘Well, thank you, Clement,’ she said, lowering her head as though concentrating on tugging off her gloves while she strove to keep her temper reined in. How did Clement always manage to make it sound as if he thought she was very much in the wrong and didn’t deserve his forgiveness, even as he was bestowing it? Besides which, was there anything more provoking than having someone assume he knew what you were about to say and making his answer before you’d even realised you’d been about to say exactly that?
‘I know how annoyed you must have been when I didn’t reach the employer you found for me,’ she conceded, ‘after all the trouble you went to, in order to secure my future,’ she finished, quoting as far as she was able to recall, the exact words he’d used on her at Father’s funeral.
‘Oh, I soon found another girl, a girl who was genuinely grateful for the chance to better herself, by doing honest work. The cities of England are full of the unfortunate wretches.’
‘Yes, I’m sure they are, but—’
‘And I was not annoyed with you. I was disappointed. Very disappointed,’ he added with a doleful shake of his head.
‘Yes, me, too…’ If only she’d been able to control her wretched temper. But no amount of scolding or preaching from either Father or any of her brothers, or forming resolutions to do better, had ever had any effect.
‘I simply cannot understand how you managed to fall into that man’s clutches.’
‘Clutches? I am not in his clutches. And as to how I came to marry him, I explained it all. In my letter.’
‘Oh, this,’ he said, pulling a sheet of paper from one of the piles on his desk. ‘Yes, you say he planned to get up some sort of ceremony, to persuade you that you are married, but let me tell you—’
‘No. We are married!’
The look in his eyes was full of sympathy. ‘I am sure you believe that. I know that you would never succumb to his charms, the way so many other women have, unless you truly believed he had married you. But, Clare, don’t you see? He knows that, too. Which is why he wants you to believe you are his wife, since it is the only way he could ever persuade you into his bed. But—’
Everything in her recoiled at Clement’s foul suggestion. ‘But nothing. We are married!’
‘You are living in sin.’
‘Clement, you are being ridiculous. Why ever do you think that my marriage is not legal?’
‘There was no notice in the papers. Which shows that this was a deliberate attempt to conceal his misdeed from the eyes of your family. If you had not written to inform me of the event, not one of us would have known of it.’
‘That’s… I… No, it isn’t like that. Rawcliffe is the kind of man who simply doesn’t care what people think.’ And men of his rank rarely bothered to send notices of their marriage to the papers. They didn’t think it was anyone else’s business.
Clement gave a disapproving snort. ‘Which we all know, to our cost.’
‘Our cost? What do you mean? Honestly, Clement, I cannot think why you hold him in such dislike.’
‘He may have been able to charm you into believing his smooth lies…’
Charm? The last thing Rawcliffe had been was charming, to begin with. And far from being smooth with her, at times he’d been brutally honest.
