‘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 predicted?’ Lady Harriet wrung her hands. ‘Oh, this is dreadful. Dreadful. You see—’