Whitney, My Love (2 page)

Whitney heard the smattering of giggles as the group
quickly disbanded, and she felt her face grow hot with shame. "How do you
do, Aunt Gilbert? Uncle Gilbert?" With one eye on Paul's broad-shouldered,
retreating form, Whitney reached mechanically for her nonexistent skirt,
realized it was missing, and executed a comical curtsy without it. She saw
the frown on her aunt's face and put her chin up defensively. "You may be
sure that for the week you are here, I shall endeavor not to make a freak of
myself again, Aunt."

"For the week that we are here?" her aunt gasped, but
Whitney was preoccupied watching Paul help Elizabeth into his curricle and
didn't notice the surprise in her aunt's voice.

"Goodbye, Paul," she called, waving madly. He turned and
raised his arm in silent farewell.

Laughter drifted back as the curricles bowled down the
drive, carrying their occupants off to a picnic or some other gay and
wonderful activity, to which Whitney was never invited because she was too
young.

Following Whitney toward the house, Anne was a mass of
conflicting emotions. She was embarrassed for Whitney, furious with Martin
Stone for humiliating the girl in front of the other young people, somewhat
dazed by the sight of her own niece cavorting on the back of a horse,
wearing men's britches . . . and utterly astonished to discover that
Whitney, whose mother had been only passably pretty, showed promise of
becoming a genuine beauty.

She was too thin right now, but even in disgrace
Whitney's shoulders were straight, her walk naturally graceful and faintly
provocative. Anne smiled to herself at the gently rounded hips displayed to
almost immoral advantage by the coarse brown trousers, the slender waist
that would require no subterfuge to make it appear smaller, eyes that seemed
to change from sea-green to deep jade beneath their fringe of long, sooty
lashes. And that hair-piles and piles of rich mahogany brown! All it needed
was a good trimming and brushing until it shone; Anne's fingers positively
itched to go to work on it. Mentally she was already styling it in ways to
highlight Whitney's striking eyes and high cheekbones. Off her face, Anne
decided, piled at the crown with tendrils at the ears, or pulled straight
back off the forehead to fall in gentle waves down her back.

As soon as they entered the house, Whitney mumbled an
excuse and fled to her room where she flopped dejectedly into a chair and
morosely contemplated the humiliating scene Paul had just witnessed, with
her father jerking her ignominiously off her horse and then shouting at her.
No doubt her aunt and uncle were as horrified and revolted by her behavior
as her father had been, and her cheeks, burned with shame just thinking of
how they must despise her already.

"Whitney?" Emily whispered, creeping into the bedroom
and cautiously closing the door behind her. "I came up the back way. Is your
father angry?"

"Cross as crabs," Whitney confirmed, staring down at her
trousered legs. "I suppose I ruined everything today, didn't I? Everyone was
laughing at me, and Paul heard them. Now that Elizabeth is seventeen, he's
bound to offer for her before he ever has a chance to realize that he loves
me."

"You?" Emily repeated dazedly. "Whitney Stone, Paul
avoids you like the plague, and well you know it! And who could blame him,
after the mishaps you've treated him to in the last year?"

"There haven't been so many as all that," Whitney
protested, but she squirmed in her chair.

"No? What about that trick you played on him on All
Soul's-darting out in front of his carriage, shrieking like a banshee, and
pretending to be a ghost, terrifying his horses."

Whitney flushed. "He wasn't so very angry. And it isn't
as if the carriage was destroyed. It only broke a shaft when it overturned."

"And Paul's leg," Emily pointed out.

"But that mended perfectly," Whitney persisted, her mind
already leaping from past debacles to future possibilities. She surged to
her feet and began to pace slowly back and forth. "There has to be a way-but
short of abducting him, I-" A mischievous smile lit up her dust-streaked
face as she swung around so quickly that Emily pressed back into her chair.
"Emily, one thing is infinitely clear: Paul does not yet know that he cares
for me. Correct?"

"He doesn't care a snap for you is more like it," Emily
replied warily.

"Therefore, it would be safe to say that he is unlikely
to offer for me without some sort of added incentive. Correct?"

"You couldn't make him offer for you at the point of a
gun, and you know it. Besides, you aren't old enough to be betrothed, even
if-"

"Under what circumstances," Whitney interrupted
triumphantly, "is a gentleman obliged to offer for a lady?"

"I can't think of any. Except of course, if he has
compromised her-absolutely not! Whitney, whatever you're planning now, I
won't help."

Sighing, Whitney flopped back into her chair, stretching
her legs out in front of her. An irreverent giggle escaped her as she
considered the sheer audacity of her last idea. "If only I could have pulled
it off... you know, loosened the wheel on Paul's carriage so that it would
fall off later, and then asked him to drive me somewhere. Then, by the time
we walked back, or help arrived, it would be late at night, and he would
have to offer for me." Oblivious to Emily's scandalized expression, Whitney
continued, "Just think what a wonderful turnabout that would have been on a
tired old theme: Young Lady abducts Gentleman and ruins his reputation so
that she is forced to marry him to set things aright! What a novel that
could have made," she added, rather impressed with her own ingenuity.

"I'm leaving," Emily said. She marched to the door, then
she hesitated and turned back to Whitney. "Your aunt and uncle saw
everything. What are you going to say to them about those trousers and the
horse?"

Whitney's face clouded. "I'm not going to say anything,
it wouldn't help-but for the rest of the time they are here, I'm going to be
the most demure, refined, delicate female you've ever seen." She saw Emily's
dubious look and added, "Also I intend to stay out of sight except at
mealtimes. I think I'U be able to act like Elizabeth for three hours a day."

Whitney kept her promise. At dinner that night, after
her uncle's hair-raising tale of their life in Beirut where he was attached
to the British Consulate, she murmured only, "How very informative, Uncle,"
even though she was positively burning to ply him with questions. At the end
of her aunt's description of Paris and the thrill of its gay social life,
Whitney murmured, "How very informative, Aunt." The moment the meal was
finished, she excused herself and vanished.

After three days, Whitney's efforts to be either demure
or absent had, in fact, been so successful that Anne was beginning to wonder
whether she had only imagined the spark of fire she'd glimpsed the day of
their arrival, or if the girl had some aversion to Edward and herself.

On the fourth day, when Whitney breakfasted before the
rest of the household was up, and then vanished, Anne set out to discover
the truth. She searched the house, but Whitney was not indoors. She was not
in the garden, nor had she taken a horse from the stable, Anne was informed
by a groom. Squinting into the sunlight, Anne looked around her, trying to
imagine where a fifteen-year-old would go to spend all day.

Off on the crest of a hill overlooking the estate, she
spied a patch of bright yellow. "There you are!" she breathed, opening her
parasol and striking out across the lawn.

Whitney didn't see her aunt coming until it was too late
to escape. Wishing she had found a better place to hide, she tried to think
of some innocuous subject on which she could converse without appearing
ignorant. Clothes? Personally, she knew nothing of fashions and cared even
less; she looked hopeless no matter what she wore. After all, what could
clothes do to improve the looks of a female who had cat's eyes, mud-colored
hair, and freckles on the bridge of her nose? Besides that, she was too
tall, too thin, and if the good Lord intended for her ever to have a bosom,
it was very late in making its appearance.

Weak-kneed, her chest heaving with each labored breath,
Anne topped the steep rise and collapsed unceremoniously onto the blanket
beside Whitney. "I-I thought I'd take ... a nice stroll," Anne lied. When
she caught her breath, she noticed the leather-bound book lying face down on
the blanket and, seizing on books as a topic of conversation, she said, "Is
that a romantic novel?"

"No, Aunt," Whitney demurely uttered, carefully placing
her hand over the title of the book to conceal it from her aunt's eyes.

"I'm told most young ladies adore romantic novels," Anne
tried again.

"Yes; Aunt," Whitney agreed politely.

"I read one once but I didn't like it," Anne remarked,
her mind groping for some other topic that might draw Whitney into
conversation. "I cannot abide a heroine who is too perfect, nor one who is
forever swooning."

Whitney was so astonished to discover that she wasn't
the only female in all of England who didn't devour the insipid things, that
she instantly forgot her resolution to speak only in monosyllables. "And
when the heroines aren't swooning," she added, her entire face lighting up
with laughter, "they are lying about with hartshorn bottles up their
nostrils, moping and pining away for some faint-hearted gentleman who hasn't
the gumption to offer for them, or else has already offered for some other,
unworthy female. / could never just lie there doing nothing, knowing the man
I loved was falling in love with a horrid person." Whitney darted a glance
at her aunt to see if she was shocked, but her aunt was regarding her with
an unexplainable smile lurking at the corners of her eyes. "Aunt Anne, could
you actually care for a man who dropped to his knees and said, 'Oh Clarabel,
your lips are the petals of a red rose and your eyes are two stars from the
heavens'?" With a derisive snort, Whitney finished, "That is where I would
have leapt for the hartshorn!"

"And so would I," Anne said, laughing. "What do you read
then, if not atrocious romantic novels?" She pried the book from beneath
Whitney's flattened hand and stared at the gold-embossed title. "The Iliad?"
she asked in astonished disbelief. The breeze ruffled the pages, and Anne's
amazed gaze ricocheted from the print to Whitney's tense face. "But this is
in Greek! Surely you don't read Greek?"

Whitney nodded, her face flushed with mortification. Now
her aunt would think her a bluestocking-another black mark against her.
"Also Latin, Italian, French, and even some German," she confessed.

"Good God," Anne breathed. "How did you ever learn all
that?"

"Despite what Father thinks, Aunt Anne, I am only
foolish, not stupid, and I plagued him to death until he allowed me tutors
in languages and history." Whitney fell silent, remembering how she'd once
believed that if she applied herself to her studies, if she could become
more like a son, her father might love her.

"You sound ashamed of your accomplishments, when you
should be proud."

Whitney gazed out at her home, nestled in the valley
below. "I'm sure you know everyone thinks it's a waste of time to educate a
female in these things. And anyway, I haven't a feminine accomplishment to
my name. I can't sew a stitch that doesn't look as if it were done
blindfolded, and when I sing, the dogs down at the stable begin to howl. Mr.
Twittsworthy, our local music instructor, told my father that my playing of
the pianoforte gives him hives. I can't do a thing that girls ought to do,
and what's worse, I particularly detest doing them."

Whitney knew her aunt would now take her in complete
dislike, just as everyone else always did, but it was better this way
because at least she could stop dreading the inevitable. She looked at Lady
Anne, her green eyes wide and vulnerable. "I'm certain Papa has told you all
about me. Fm a terrible disappointment to him. He wants me to be dainty and
demure and quiet, like Elizabeth Ashton. I try to be, but I can't seem to do
it."

Anne's heart melted for the lovely, spirited, bewildered
child her sister had borne. Laying her hand against Whitney's cheek, she
said tenderly, "Your father wants a daughter who is like a cameo-delicate,
pale, and easily shaped. Instead, he has a daughter who is a diamond, full
of sparkle and life, and he doesn't know what to do with her. Instead of
appreciating the value and rarity of his jewel-instead of polishing her a
bit and then letting her shine-he persists in trying to shape her into a
common cameo."

Whitney was more inclined to think of herself as a chunk
of coal, but rather than disillusion her aunt, she kept silent. After her
aunt left, Whitney picked up her book, but soon her mind wandered from the
printed page to dreamy thoughts of Paul.

That night when she came down to the dining room, the
atmosphere in the room was strangely charged, and no one noticed her
sauntering toward the table. "When do you plan to tell her she's coming back
to France with us, Martin?" her uncle demanded angrily. "Or is it your
intention to wait until the day we leave and then just toss the child into
the coach with us?"

The world tilted crazily, and for one horrible moment,
Whitney thought she was going to be sick. She stopped, trying to steady her
shaking limbs, and swallowed back the aching lump in her throat. "Am I going
somewhere, Father?" she asked, trying to sound calm and indifferent.

They all turned and stared, and her father's face
tightened into lines of impatience and annoyance. "To France," he replied
abruptly. "To live with your aunt and uncle, who are going to try to make a
lady out of you."

Carefully avoiding meeting anyone's eyes, lest she break
down then and there, Whitney slid into her chair at the table. "Have you
informed my aunt and uncle of the risk they are taking?" she asked,
concentrating all her strength on preventing her father from seeing what he
had just done to her heart. She looked coldly at her aunt and uncle's
guilty, embarrassed faces. "Father may have neglected to mention you're
risking disgrace by welcoming me into your home. As he will tell you, I've a
hideous disposition, I'm rag-mannered, and I haven't a trace of polite
conversation."