And if she believed him…
‘I am so sorry,’ said Clare, turning to him and placing one little hand upon his forearm. ‘I cannot think what has induced Clement to be so rude. You would think—’
‘It does not matter,’ he assured her, though a great weight seemed to be pressing on his chest. ‘You cannot think I actually wish to see him myself?’ He gave a theatrical shudder. ‘This entire trip is entirely for your benefit, my dear.’ My darling. My love, he wanted to say, but didn’t. Because this wasn’t the time.
‘Well, perhaps it is as well. You don’t look at all the thing.’ She stepped closer, stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. Sending a pang of…something, something he couldn’t recognise but suspected was a noxious cocktail of regret and guilt, and despair, searing through him. ‘I will try not to be long.’
However long she was away it would feel like an eternity. While he sat, powerless to defend himself against whatever lies Cottam chose to tell her.
He had never felt so helpless in his life.
‘Make sure you don’t, miss,’ said the captain. ‘We’ll need to depart with the tide. You take too long and we’ll never make it through the eye,’ he said, waving to the narrow entrance to the inlet.
‘Oh. Well, perhaps somebody could send me word before then?’ She turned and smiled hopefully round the semi-circle of ‘gentlemen’, who either stared stonily back, or looked to their spokesman for guidance.
‘But what,’ said Clare with concern, ‘will you do while I am gone?’
He would curse himself for being seven kinds of a fool. For not realising, until he was faced with losing her regard, how very much it meant to him. For not treating her like the treasure she was, but instead taunting her, abducting her, forcing her into marriage and then treating her like a whore, night after night. And most of all, for using her like a jemmy to prise open Cottam’s fortress.
He made a languid gesture to the pile of wicker hampers stowed at the front of the boat. ‘Oh, I shall make inroads into the picnic and admire the scenery,’ he said with a bland smile at the group of surly men on the quayside.
‘Really? Your stomach has recovered that quickly?’
‘There has never been anything the matter with my stomach. I do not suffer from seasickness.’
A frown flitted across her face. ‘But then, what—’
‘Go,’ he said, giving her a little push. ‘Go and make your peace with your brother.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
No. He wasn’t sure of anything. Except that somehow, Clement would use this meeting to sow discord between him and Clare. And that the worst of it was that all he’d have to do, to achieve his aim, would be to tell her some cold, hard facts.
But Clare was giving him one last tremulous, grateful smile, and turning to follow the spokesman.
The rest of the smuggling gang stood still, glowering at him. Even when he got back into the ketch, sat down on his pile of cushions and ordered his captain to open the first of the picnic hampers.
Lord, but he hoped Ponsonby had provided something decent to drink. He could do with a bottle of brandy. Or two.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Clare followed the burly giant of a man who appeared to be the head man of Clement’s latest gang.
Typical. Wherever he went he managed to surround himself with the roughest, meanest boys and make himself their leader.
And would spout scripture at her whenever she, or anyone else, tried to remonstrate with him about the importance of ‘being all things to all men’, or ‘seeking after that which was lost’. Which sounded incredibly evangelical, if you didn’t happen to know that he’d never, to her knowledge, ever managed to save the soul of any single one of the miscreants with whom he enjoyed consorting.
The burly man stopped outside the largest house in the village. He knocked on the door, whipped off his cap and smoothed down his hair.
‘The reverend’s sister,’ he said to the tough-looking, swarthy woman who opened the door.
‘Indeed,’ said the woman, eyeing them both, but particularly Clare’s red hair. ‘Yes, I can see why you might think so,’ she said to the burly man. ‘Very well, you may go.’