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She flung her arms round his waist again and hugged him hard.
He hugged her back. Rested his cheek on the crown of her head and rocked her.
After a short while, she looked up at him, her forehead creased in anguish. ‘Then he has won.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said grimly. ‘I cannot be the man to pursue him any longer, but I shall make damn sure the investigation continues. I shall pass on everything I’ve learned to…’ No, not Lord Becconsall. Not now he had a wife. A married man couldn’t risk the welfare of the one he loved. And Cottam was just the sort of adversary to defend himself by attacking the weak and vulnerable. ‘Someone else.’ He’d find someone. Someone tough and fearless, and clever. Someone who wouldn’t be fooled by Cottam’s cunning, nor vulnerable to any threat he might try to make.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she said on a sigh of relief. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I thought he’d got away with whatever it is he’s done, because of your scruples on my account.’
‘But it will be far easier on you if another person handles his arrest.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, since we have accomplished all we are likely to do, down here, I suggest we return to London—’
‘Before Clement can put any plan he might be hatching against us into action…’
‘That had crossed my mind. And compile all the information we have gleaned, between us,’ he said, squeezing her hand.
‘It isn’t going to be easy, is it, to prove he’s guilty of Mr Kellet’s murder?’
‘No. But Ulysses…that is, Lord Becconsall, is bound to be able to come up with a plan to expose him. In the meantime…how about if we let Clement think that he has won?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if he thinks I am so worried about losing your regard that I will do nothing against him, he might…’
‘Lower his guard! That would be brilliant.’
‘How much did he see, I wonder? And what might he have made of it?’
Rawcliffe swiftly went over the last few minutes, considering how they might have looked to an outsider.
‘If he really couldn’t hear anything we said to one another, he would have seen your devastation when you overheard me speaking crudely about our relationship…’
‘Then running straight for the edge of the cliffs…’
‘And me running after you, reaching you only just in time to stop you throwing yourself off…’
‘As if I’d do anything so melodramatic,’ she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘But, yes, for the purposes of hoodwinking Clement, I am willing to go along with the fabrication.’
‘Would he swallow it, do you think?’
‘Oh, yes. He doesn’t have a very high opinion of women.’
‘Very well, then. And once I’d pulled you back from the edge, he would have seen me kissing you, desperately…promising you anything?’
‘Ah,’ she said, catching on. ‘And then he would have seen me kissing you, for promising me that anything.’
‘So. All we have to do is…’
‘Oh!’ She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘He told me that if ever I needed to write to him, I should do so, care of Lady Buntingford, because he handled all her correspondence, because she doesn’t see as well as she used to.’
‘So that is how he did it. He wrote all those fake references and just got her to put her signature at the bottom.’
‘References?’
‘We started becoming suspicious when each family that had jewels taken, and substituted with fakes, also took into their employ a girl who had impeccable references from Lady Buntingford. That was the angle Archie was looking into. Whether she was developing some kind of mania for rubies.’
‘Oh,’ said Clare, a touch wide-eyed. ‘Yes, that makes sense. But actually, what just occurred to me was that the reason he told me about Lady Buntingford’s being a safe address to write to was so that I could write and warn him, if you were about to make a move against him. It wasn’t for my benefit at all,’ she said indignantly, ‘but his. That is why he made as if he was only letting me return to you against his better judgement—so that I’d be in a position to be able to warn him if you found some solid evidence against him.
