The Marquess Tames His Bride

Clare got a sinking feeling. It was the bag of puppies all over again. He’d used almost the exact same words to deny having anything to do with it when she’d burst into the house, dripping wet, holding that gruesome bundle in her arms. And he’d said them in the exact same tone of voice he was using on her now. He’d sounded so convincing, that day, that, had she not seen him, with her own eyes, tossing the bag off the bridge into the pond, she would have believed him.

She clenched her fists. The fact that he was denying something, so vehemently, was the clearest sign she could possibly have that it was exactly what he was doing.

‘He is the villain of the piece, Clare, not I.’

She hadn’t been looking for a villain. She’d come here to try to apologise for embarrassing him in regard to the position she was supposed to have taken with that elderly invalid. To express her hope that the lady had found another, more suitable companion—because frankly she didn’t think she had been right for that kind of job at all.

But now, with all his talk of villains and philandering, and lying, she couldn’t help wondering why Rawcliffe had really brought her here.

From what Clement was saying, he must believe her brother was up to no good. Which wouldn’t surprise her. Not one bit.

She gazed across the desk at Clement with sadness and a sort of sick, disappointed feeling. At both of them. Clement for being up to his neck in some sort of mischief, by the sound of it. And Rawcliffe for not warning her about his suspicions. What had he thought she’d do if he’d told her? She got a fleeting image of her shying all the breakables at his head on their wedding night. And her spirit sank still further.

‘Ah,’ said Clement, leaning back in his chair with a look of mock concern. ‘I see that you are starting to believe me, at last. The scales are falling from your eyes.’

They certainly were. But not in the way he thought.

‘Look…’ She squirmed in her chair. What kind of man could sit there, lying to his own sister so brazenly? As though she was some kind of idiot, who would swallow whatever he said. Although Rawcliffe hadn’t been exactly honest with her, either, had he?

‘You need not be afraid,’ he said with that sickly smile he wielded whenever he was trying to convince her he was full of brotherly love. The one he’d worn when he’d told her he’d taken care of her future and pressed a letter of introduction and a ticket on the stage into her hands.

‘I can help you to escape his clutches. I can make you disappear so completely that he will never be able to find you. Should he bother to look, that is,’ he finished on a nasty laugh.

She shook her head. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

He looked down his nose at her. ‘What can you possibly think I mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘You are not making any sense.’

‘That is because he has completely addled your brains with all his smooth talk,’ he sneered. ‘By now, I suppose you even think you are in love with him.’

‘I… I…’ Well, that was the first thing Clement had said that was completely true. She did love Rawcliffe. She couldn’t help it. Even though he didn’t trust her enough to share his suspicions about Clement with her, let alone love her back.

Something must have shown in her face, because Clement got up and came round the desk, his face creased into a careful expression of unctuous sympathy.

‘You poor girl. I should reprimand you, for being so foolish, but I know how cunning he is. He caught you when you were at your lowest, did he not? When you were alone and far from home, and probably fearing the change in your circumstances. He made you think you would be safe with him, didn’t he? That you would always wear fine clothes, and jewels.’

She couldn’t help wincing at just how inaccurate that statement was. Far from catching her at a weak moment, she’d punched Rawcliffe. And the only time he’d threatened her with jewels of any kind, it had been by way of an insult.

And because that argument had taken place in her bedroom, when she was naked, and because it surged to the front of her memory in vivid detail, she found herself blushing and lowering her head, completely unable to look her brother in the eye.