Whitney, My Love (31 page)

He let go of her so abruptly that Whitney staggered back
a step. "Had I any intention of 'dragging you to the altar,'" he said
tersely, "you would have been ordered home from France to be, fitted for
your wedding gown. However, the simple fact is that I don't want a cold,
unwilling wife in my bed."

Whitney was so relieved and overjoyed that she
completely forgave his suggestive reference to his bed. She threw up her
hands. "Good heavens, why didn't you tell me that before? Since that's the
way you feel, there's no need for you to trouble yourself with me any
longer."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that I would make you the coldest, most
unwilling wife imaginable."

One dark eyebrow flicked upward in a measuring look.
"Are you threatening me?"

Whitney hastily shook her head, smiling. "No, of course
not. I'm only trying to explain that my feelings toward you won't change."

"You're quite certain?"

"Absolutely positive," Whitney said brightly.

"In that case, there's very little point in delaying the
wedding any longer, is there?"

"What?" Whitney gasped. "But you said you wouldn't marry
me if I was cold and unwilling."

"I said that I didn't want to do so. I did not say that
I wouldn't, if that's the way it has to be." With that he nodded curtly
toward the horses and started to turn, leaving Whitney petrified that he
intended to go straight back to the house and summon a cleric to officiate
at their wedding. No doubt he already had a special license! Her mind sought
frantically for some way to save herself. If she fled, he'd overtake her; if
she threatened him, he'd ignore her; if she refused, he'd make her.

She chose the only solution open to her, humiliating
though it was to have to plead and wheedle. Reaching out, she laid her hand
upon his sleeve. "I have a favor to ask of you, and you did say that you
would give me anything within your power-?"

"Within my power," he stated coolly, "and within
reason."

"Then will you give me time? I need time to get over
this awful feeling I have of being a helpless pawn in a chess game

being played by you and my father, and I need time to
become adjusted to the idea of our marriage."

"I will give you tune," he agreed evenly, "provided that
yon use ft with discretion."

"I will," Whitney assured him, lying more easily now.
"Oh, and there's one more thing: I'd like to keep both your identity and our
betrothal a secret between us for a white."

His expression turned coolly speculative. "Why?"

Because when she eloped with Paul next week, Clayton was
going to be furious. But if she made a complete fool of him by publicly
scorning him in front of villagers who knew of their betrothal, God alone
knew what form his vengeance might take.

"Because," she said cautiously, "if everyone knows about
you-us-they'll want to talk about who you are and how we met and when we're
getting married, and I'll feel more pressed than I already do."

"Very well, we'll keep it a secret for now." He walked
her to her horse and lifted her effortlessly into the saddle. Thinking the
subject was closed and their meeting at an end, Whitney gathered up Khan's
reins, eager to get away. But he wasn't finished yet, and her entire body
tensed at the threat disguised beneath the smooth politeness of his tone.
"I've granted you the time you asked for because you said you want to become
accustomed to the idea of our marriage. If I ever have reason to think you
want the time for some other purpose, you will not like the consequences."

"Are you through?" Whitney asked, hiding her fright
behind hauteur.

"For now," he sighed. "We'll talk more tomorrow."

Whitney spent the rest of the day with her relatives.
With her entire future hanging by a thread, it took a supreme effort to
smile and converse with these cheerful, well-meaning people, and to ignore
her father's apprehensive glances. The moment the evening meal was over, she
excused herself and escaped to the quiet of her room.

Late that evening, Anne came up to see her. Whitney, who
had been dying to confide in her all day, jumped up from the settee,
wringing her hands in pent-up frustration. "Aunt Anne, that arrogant,
ruthless tyrant actually intends to force me to marry him. He said as much
this morning."

Settling herself on the settee, Anne drew Whitney down
beside her, "Darling, he can't force you to marry him. I'm certain England
has laws which would prevent him from doing so. As I see it, your problem is
not whether he can force you to marry nun, but rather, what will happen to
your father if you don't."

"My father didn't consider the consequences to me when
he agreed to the betrothal, so I don't feel the slightest need to consider
the consequences to him, if I don't agree to the marriage. He has never
loved me, and I no longer love him."

"I see," Anne said, watching her closely. "Then it's
probably best that you feel that way."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because your father has already spent the money
Claymore gave him. If you refuse to honor the betrothal agreement, his grace
will naturally demand the return of his money. Since your father can't give
it back, he will very likely spend his declining years in a rat-infested
cell in debtors' prison. If you had any love left for him, it might be very
difficult for you to be happy with Paul, knowing that you were responsible
for your father's plight. But so long as you're completely certain that
you'd feel no guilt, we really needn't concern ourselves one way or another
with your father, need we?"

The door closed behind her aunt, leaving Whitney haunted
with gruesome images of her father, ragged and filthy, rotting away in a
wretched, dank cell.

There had to be some way to repay Clayton Westmoreland
the money he had settled on her father. Perhaps if she and Paul lived very
carefully, they could repay the debt on her father's behalf over a period of
years. Or better yet, there might be some way to goad the duke into crying
off from the engagement himself, so that the money wouldn't have to be
returned. Or would it? How had the preliminary marriage contract been
worded? Whitney wondered.

"Uncle Edward!" she breathed suddenly. Uncle Edward
would never stand idly by, knowing Whitney was being forced to exchange her
life for her father's debts. Perhaps Uncle Edward could advance her father
the funds to repay Clayton -a purely business arrangement, of course. She
herself would see that the estate was put up as collateral.

But did Uncle Edward have sufficient capital to repay
Clayton? If only she knew how much money had changed hands. It must have
been a great deal, because it had paid for all the extensive repairs to the
house, two dozen new horses, a dozen servants, and her father's debts, too.
�25,000? �30,000? Whitney's heart sank; Uncle Edward wouldn't have so much
as that.

When Clarissa came in to awaken Whitney the next
morning, she found her seated at her writing desk, thoughtfully nibbling on
the end of a quill.

After a minute's deliberation, Whitney began to write.
Her eyes sparkled with triumphant satisfaction as she politely explained to
Clayton that she had wrenched her knee and had to remain abed. She ended
with a sugary statement that she would look forward to seeing him on the
morrow-if her pain lessened. She signed it simply, "Whitney," then sat back,
congratulating herself.

The idea of an injured knee was an absolute inspiration,
for such injuries were not only painful, but unpredictably long in mending.
Tomorrow she could send him another sorrowful note, and add a few convincing
details about how the imaginary injury had occurred. With any sort of luck,
she might be able to avoid seeing him until after Paul returned!

"What would you like to wear when you see the duke
today?" Clarissa asked.

A beaming smile dawned across Whitney's features. "Fm
not going to see him today, Clarissa. Or tomorrow, or the day after. Listen
to this," Whitney said, and quickly read the note to her.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, folding it and
sealing it with a few drops of wax.

Clarissa's voice was tight with alarm. "I think he'll
realize what you're up to, and he'll bring the house down around our ears, I
don't want any part of it. You should ask Lady Anne before you send it."

"I can't wait for my aunt to arise, and you have to take
part in it," Whitney explained patiently. "You must bring the note to him."

Clarissa paled. "Me? Why do I have to do it?"

"Because I need to know exactly how he reacts to it, and
I can't depend upon anyone else to tell me."

"I get palpitations of the heart just thinking of what
could go wrong," Clarissa complained, but she took the note for delivery.
"What if he asks me questions about the injury?"

"Just make up answers," Whitney advised cheerfully.
"Only remember to tell me what you say to him so that I don't accidentally
contradict you."

When Clarissa left, Whitney felt as if an enormous
weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Humming gaily, she went over to
the wardrobes to select a gown to wear.

Clarissa returned twenty minutes later, and Whitney
rushed out of the dressing room. "What did he say?" she asked eagerly. "How
did he look? Tell me everything."

"Well, his grace was at breakfast when I arrived,"
Clarissa said, nervously fingering the starched collar of her dress. "But
the butler showed me directly to him as soon as I said who I was. Then I
gave his grace the note and he read it."

"He wasn't angry, was he?" Whitney prompted, when
Clarissa fell silent.

"Not that I could tell, but I don't think he was pleased
either."

"Clarissa, for heavens sake! What did he say?"

"He thanked me for bringing the note, then he nodded
toward one of those uppity servants of his, and I was shown out."

Whitney wasn't certain whether she should feel relieved
or apprehensive about his reaction, and as the day wore on, she discovered
that her respite was not so blissful as she'd expected it to be.

By noon, she jumped every time she heard footsteps in
the hall, thinking that she was going to be informed that Clayton had come
to call. It would be just like the man to insist that her aunt accompany him
to her bedchambers, even though mat would be an unforgivable breach of
propriety.

Dinner was brought up to her on a tray, and Whitney ate
in bored solitude. For the first time all day, her thoughts drifted to Paul.
Poor Paul, she thought contritely. She'd been 90 caught up in this web of
intrigue, trying to outmaneuver and second-guess Clayton Westmoreland, that
she hadn't devoted any thought at all to the man she loved.

Chapter Nineteen

THE NEXT MORNING, WHITNEY DASHED OFF A SECOND NOTE TO
her betrothed, going into more detail about the agonizing pain she was
suffering from her clumsy tumble down the staircase, and begging rather
prettily to be excused from seeing him today. Although it meant having to
spend another long day alone in her room because she couldn't risk being
caught downstairs with her relatives should Clayton decide to inquire
personally about her ankle, Whitney felt the enforced solitude was more than
worth it-not only because she could avoid Clayton, but because she had the
equally great satisfaction of outwitting him!

"Do you really think this is wise, darling?" Anne
frowned, reading Whitney's clever note. "If you anger him needlessly, I
can't think what he'll do."

"There's nothing he can do, Aunt Anne," Whitney
reassured, sealing the note and handing it to Clarissa to deliver. "You've
already written to Uncle Edward asking him to come quickly. When he arrives,
he'd help me think of some way out of this. In the meantime, I'll continue
with this farce about my knee for as long as I can, then I'll think of
something else. Maybe I can bore his grace into going away," Whitney
laughed.

Clarissa returned to report in a harassed voice that the
duke had scanned the note, and looked at her in an exceedingly odd way.

"Clarissa, please, can't you be more specific than
that?" Whitney begged impatiently. "What sort of 'odd' way?"

"Well, he read it," Clarissa recounted. "Then he looked
as if he were about to smile. But he didn't exactly smile, and he asked
another one of his high-and-mighty servants to show me out."

Whitney bit her lip as she puzzled over Clayton's
baffling reaction, then with a smiling shrug, she dismissed the entire
matter. "The three of us really should stop worrying about his every word
and gesture. After all," she said breezily, flopping down on the settee,
"whether he thinks I'm lying or not, what can he possibly do about it?"

The answer to that question arrived shortly after
luncheon in a sleek, black-lacquered Westmoreland travelling coach drawn by
four prancing black horses in silver harnesses. A somberly garbed, portly
gentleman alighted from the conveyance and proceeded briskly toward the
house. In his left hand he carried a large black leather bag; in his right a
small engraved card which he handed to Sewell. "I am Dr. Whitticomb," he
said to the butler. "I have been brought here from London and instructed to
ask for Lady Gilbert."

When Anne greeted him in the salon, Dr. Whitticomb
smiled politely into her puzzled eyes and explained, "His grace, the Duke of
Claymore, has sent me to examine Miss Stone's knee."

Lady Gilbert turned so white that Dr. Whitticomb feared
she might be ill, but after bidding him to wait, she left the room, snatched
up her skirts, sprinted down the hallway, and vaulted up the staircase with
a speed and agility that would have been remarkable in a healthy female half
her years.

"He's done what?" Whitney shrieked, jumping to her feet
and sending the volume of Pride and Prejudice in her lap thudding to the
floor. "Why that low, vile . . ."