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‘Ah, you have seen the wisdom of thinking twice,’ said Clement, since Rawcliffe had made no reply to his last threat.
‘If you are responsible for the death of my friend, Mr Kellet, I shall have no hesitation in having you sent to the gallows,’ he breathed between clenched teeth.
‘Ah, but how will you prove it?’ Cottam smiled with evil glee. ‘So hard to find reliable witnesses, in these parts. So hard, once a man has been buried, to prove what happened to him, one way or another.’
Rawcliffe had never felt closer to throttling someone.
‘Besides, how do you think Clare would look at the man who attempted to send her favourite brother to the gallows? Do you think your marriage would succeed, under those circumstances?’
Cottam was a weasel. He’d thought it before and he thought it still. He had the uncanny knack of sending a direct hit to his victim’s weakest point. And Clare’s regard for him was it.
‘I know you don’t want her to find out what you are about, otherwise you would have been frank with her from the beginning. I have to say, as a man of the cloth, that lying to your bride is not the best foundation to a marriage.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Rawcliffe, ‘I cannot let you get away with it.’
‘Dear, dear how very melodramatic you sound. Get away with what, exactly? Do you even have any idea?’ Cottam laughed then. And never had Rawcliffe been so sure that a sound was evil.
‘You never do have, do you? You look down your aristocratic nose at the rest of the world, believing yourself so superior, assuming you are in control of everyone and everything around you, but you are not. I have thwarted you once and I shall do it again.’
‘Thwarted me? I very much doubt it.’
‘You do not even know, do you? How I managed to foil your plans for Clare when she was still a sweet innocent.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cottam turned to him, an evilly triumphant smile on his face. ‘That day when she came home, dripping wet after her venture into the village pond, she told me what you had said. How you made a mocking proposal to her. She was so visibly upset that I had no trouble persuading Father that was at the root of her distress, rather than the fate of those stupid dogs. Because he never would listen to her once she’d reached the stage of screaming like a fishwife. He sent her to her room to calm down and put on clean, dry clothing, leaving me to relate what happened. So that by the time you came to call on Father to ask his permission to pay your addresses, he was so sure he needed to shield Clare from you, that she detested you, that nothing on earth would have persuaded him to listen to your proposal. Yes,’ he breathed as Rawcliffe reeled. ‘I made sure you couldn’t get your hands on her then and, though I wasn’t able to stop you bedding her this time round, I can make sure that any affection she might have started to feel for you will start curdling with distrust until eventually it turns into a festering mass of resentment.’
‘What?’ Clement had been the one who’d come between him and Clare all those years ago? And now he was going to try to do the same thing again?
No. Not while he had breath in his body.
Rawcliffe flung his cane aside before he succumbed to the urge to brain Cottam with it and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket.
‘I don’t care,’ he growled. Because persuading the rest of the world he didn’t care about anything very much was the position he always adopted when he was hurting the most. And then, because he had to conceal his weakness from Cottam, or who knew what advantage he would try to take, he took the only course guaranteed to stop him interfering in his marriage any further.
‘Do you think I care what she thinks of me? Do I look like a man who needs a woman to love him? All I need is for her to open her legs. The rest can—’
He heard a cry of distress. From behind a group of rocks, just up ahead of them, he saw Clare emerge. A devastated look on her face.
He let go of Cottam so abruptly that the cleric staggered and almost fell.
‘Clare,’ said Rawcliffe, taking a step in her direction. ‘Clare, it isn’t what you think…’
She backed away, shaking her head, her mouth quivering as she strove not to weep.
