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‘The vicarage is not my home anymore, as you very well know,’ she said, jerking upright under the impact of a dose of that bleak truth. ‘Now that Father has died.’
‘The vicarage is your home,’ he said. ‘Even,’ he laid one finger to her lips when she took a breath to protest, ‘even when the vicar is no longer living. There was no need for you to leave, the moment you buried him.’
‘But the curate—’
‘The curate should have damn well contacted me before evicting you and presuming to move in, which is what I have to assume he did?’
‘Well, yes, but he did contact you. At least, I mean, he tried to. And when you didn’t respond, he—’ Well, everyone in Watling Minor believed that Lord Rawcliffe knew everything. Which meant that if he hadn’t responded in the negative, then he simply didn’t care what arrangements had been made for the late vicar’s daughter.
‘Assumed I would be happy to have you evicted?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I shall have to have words with the Reverend Cobbet.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t like that.’ She laid one hand on his chest. ‘It wasn’t him. I just… There didn’t seem any point in me hanging on there. Not when Clement had arranged everything for me so…so…kindly.’
‘Clement? Kind?’
‘Yes, well, it was kind of him to go to so much trouble on my behalf.’ He’d told her so. ‘He didn’t have to make any arrangements.’ As Lord Rawcliffe raised one cynical eyebrow, Clare hastened to add, ‘I mean, I would have thought if anyone had the duty to provide for me it would have been Constantine.’
He made a scoffing noise, expressing his opinion of her oldest brother. Since it pretty much coincided with her own, after the way he’d behaved lately, she made no objection.
‘And what form did this kindness of Clement’s take, dare I ask?’
‘He found me work. A good, honest job. One I am well qualified to take up.’
‘You are going to be housekeeper for another family of ungrateful, lazy, hypocritical, sanctimonious prigs, are you?’
‘Don’t speak of my brothers like that.’
He closed his mouth. Gave her a look.
Which somehow had the effect of reminding her that she was still sitting on his lap, with her arms about his neck, though she couldn’t recall the moment she’d put them there. And that he was running his big hands up and down her back, as though to soothe her. And that, although she had just, out of habit, leapt to defend her brothers, right at this moment she couldn’t help agreeing with him. For she’d spent years keeping house for them. Then nursing their father, while they’d all left and got on with their own lives. But when she’d needed them, all they’d had to offer her were excuses. Constantine’s wife was due to give birth to their third child at any moment, he’d written, and couldn’t be expected to house an indigent sister. It was asking too much.
Cornelius had no room for her, either. Though, since he lived in bachelor quarters in the bishop’s palace she hadn’t really hoped for anything from him apart from sympathy. But even that had been in short supply. Instead of 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…’
