Whitney, My Love (47 page)

"Not necessary to marry you?" Clayton interrupted with a
short, bitter laugh. "So I have heard. However, I have no desire to elope,
nor have I any intention of pushing my horses much further. They've already
chased across half of England today in pursuit of you."

Abruptly, the coach turned west onto a smooth, but less
traveled road, at the same moment the full import of his words slammed into
her. If he'd been on the road all day "in pursuit" of her, then he must have
returned to the village today and heard the gossip about her betrothal to
Paul. Pleadingly, Whitney laid her hand on his arm. "I can explain about
Paul. You see-"

His fingers clamped down on her slim hand, wringing a
gasp of pain from her. "I'm delighted that you're so eager to touch me," he
drawled sarcastically, "because in a short while, you are going to have an
opportunity to do exactly that." Distastefully he removed her hand from his
arm and dropped it into her lap. "However, since this is not the place for
you to demonstrate your affection, you will have to control your passions
until then."

"Control my-?" Whitney gasped, and then hopefully she
blurted, "Are you foxed?"

His lips twisted with cynical amusement "I am not drunk,
so you needn't worry that I will be unable to perform ..." He emphasized the
last word, making it sound ominous. Then almost pleasantly he added, "You
should sleep now. You've a long and exhausting night ahead of you."

Frightened by his taunting and hurt by the disgusted
revulsion in his eyes whenever he looked at her, Whitney tore her gaze from
his. She had no idea what he was talking about. She was on the verge of
hysterical terror, and he was sitting here telling her to control her
passions, assuring her that he would be able to "perform." In the darkness
of the coach, the vulgar crudity of his remark finally penetrated the
turbulent agitation of her mind, and her eyes grew huge with fear. Now she
understood his plans!

Whitney searched the starlit night for sign of a
village, a house, anywhere she could seek refuge. There were a few lights up
ahead on her side of the road-a posting house or an inn, she thought. She
didn't know what kind of injury she would sustain by jumping from the coach
and she didn't care, so long as she would be able to get up and run . . .
run to the lights beside the road.

Biting her trembling lower lip, Whitney inched her hand
cautiously along her skirts toward the handle that would open the door. She
stole a final, parting look at the granite profile of the man beside her and
felt as if something were dying within her.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to clear them of
the burning tears that would blind her when she hurtled from the coach. She
edged her fingertips along the padded leather of the door until they closed
around the hard, cold metal of the handle. A few more seconds until they
were even with the open gates of the inn yard, and the horses slowed against
the strain of the incline. Whitney's fingers tightened . . . She screamed as
Clayton's hand clamped around her arm, jerking her away from the door.

"Don't be so impatient, my sweet. A common roadside inn
is hardly the proper setting for our first coupling. Or do you prefer inns
for your little trysts?" With a sharp twist of his arm, he flung her onto
the seat across from him. "Do you?" he repeated savagely.

With pounding heart, Whitney watched the distance widen
between the coach and the inn, and with it went her hope of escape. She
couldn't possibly take him by surprise again, nor could she overpower him.

"Personally," Clayton continued almost sociably, "I have
always preferred the comforts of my 'dingy' home to the questionable
cleanliness and worn bed linen one usually finds in these places."

His cool mockery finally snapped her fragile
self-control. "You-you are a bastard!" she burst out.

"If you say so," he agreed indifferently. "And if I am,
that makes me eminently well suited to spend the night in bed with a bitch!"

Whitney squeezed her eyes closed and leaned her head
back against the seat, trying desperately to bring her emotions under
control. Clayton was infuriated about Paul, and somehow she had to explain.
Swallowing convulsively, she whispered into the darkness, "Mrs. Sevarin is
to blame for the gossip you heard. Despite what you think, as soon as Paul
came home, I told him that I couldn't marry him. I couldn't stop the gossip
at home, so I went to London-"

"The gossip followed you there, my sweet," he informed
her in a silky tone. "Now stop boring me with your explanations."

"But-"

"Shut up," Clayton warned with deadly calm, "or I will
change my mind about waiting until we nave a comfortable bed, and I'll take
you right here."

Tendrils of fresh terror wrapped themselves around
Whitney's heart.

They had been travelling for nearly two hours when the
coach slowed and passed through gates of some sort. The dazed exhaustion
which had blessedly numbed her mind vanished, and Whitney stiffened, staring
out the window at the lights of a large house looming in the far distance.

By the time they pulled up before the house, her heart
was hammering so wildly she could scarcely breathe. Clayton climbed down,
then reached in and dragged her from the coach.

"I am not going into that house," she cried, writhing
and twisting in his grasp.

"It's a little late for you to start trying to protect
your virtue," he jeered, swinging her up into his arms. His hands bit into
her thigh and waist as he carried her into the dimly lit house and up the
endless, curving staircase.

A red-haired maid rushed out onto the balcony and
Whitney opened her mouth to cry out, then choked on the cry as Clayton's
fingers dug agonizingly into her flesh.

"Go to bed!" he snapped at the woman who watched them
pass with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"Please, please stop this!" Whitney begged frantically
as he kicked open the door to a bedroom and strode inside. Her mind dimly
registered the splendid furnishings and a fire burning in the grate of an
enormous fireplace across the room, but the object that claimed all her
wild-eyed attention was the large four-poster bed on a dais to which Clayton
was carrying her.

He dumped her unceremoniously in the center of the bed,
then turned on his heel and headed across the room toward the door. For one
relieved moment, Whitney thought he intended to leave. Instead he reached
out and rammed the bolt into place with the finality of a death blow.

In a frozen paralysis, she watched him stride past the
bed toward the fireplace across the room. He flung himself into one of the
sofas at right angles to the fireplace, and minutes passed while he sat
there, looking at her as if she were some strange, captive animal, a
curiosity, deformed and loathsome to his sight.

The silence was finally shattered by his order rapped
out in a cold, unfamiliar voice. "Come here, Whitney."

Whitney's whole body jerked. She shook her head and
inched backward along the bed toward the pillows, her gaze flying to the
windows, then the other doors. Could she possibly reach one of them before
he could stop her?

"You can try," Clayton commented. "But I promise you'll
never make it."

Swallowing a panicked sob, Whitney sat straighter,
struggling against the hysteria welling up in her throat. "About Paul-"

"Say his name one more time," Clayton lashed out
furiously, "and I'll kill you, so help me God!" And then he became
frighteningly polite. "You may have Sevarin if he still wants you. But we
can discuss all that later. Now, my love, are you going to walk over here to
me unaided, or must I come and assist you?"

He lifted a dark brow at her, permitting her a moment to
think it over. "Well?" he threatened, half rising from his chair.

Refusing to beg, or to give him the added satisfaction
of subduing her, Whitney rose from the bed. She tried to hold her head high,
to look scornful and proud, but her knees felt like water. Two paces away
from him, her shaking legs refused to move again. She stood there, staring
at him with tear-brightened eyes.

He surged to his feet. "Turn around!" he snapped. Before
Whitney could utter a protest, he caught her by the shoulders and whipped
her around. With one vicious jerk, he ripped her dress down the back and the
sound of tearing fabric screamed

in Whitney's ears, while satin-covered buttons scattered
across the carpet to shine in the firelight, He turned her back toward him
and smiled malevolently. "I own the dress too," he reminded her. He settled
back in his chair, stretched his long legs out, and for several moments
watched Whitney's clumsy attempts to keep the slippery satin bodice clutched
to her breasts. "Drop it!" he ordered.

The satin bodice slid from her fingers and he watched
impassively as yards of fine ivory satin swooshed down her hips and slender
legs, landing in a heap at her feet.

"The rest?" he said blandly.

Choking on her humiliation, Whitney hesitated, then
stepped woodenly out of the stiff petticoats, standing before him clad only
in her thin chemise. He was waiting for her to remove the chemise, Whitney
knew-because he intended total nakedness to be her final humiliation. He
meant to punish her for the gossip about Paul by terrifying her like this.
Well, she was terrified and degraded enough already, punished for whatever
she'd done or thought of doing. In mute rebellion, she started to back away.

Clayton was on his feet before she could take the second
step. His hand shot out and twisted tightly in the thin fabric at the
neckline of her chemise, drawing it taut over her thrusting breasts. Her
chest rising and tailing in rapid, harsh breaths, she stared down at the
strong, well-manicured hand at her breasts, the same hand that had once
caressed her with gentle passion. Abruptly the hand tightened and with one
sharp jerk he split the thin garment in two, flinging it away from her body.
"Get into the bed," he ordered coldly.

Desperate to hide her nakedness, Whitney fled to the big
four-poster and quickly pulled the sheets up to her chin, as if they could
protect her from him. In a blur of unreality, she saw Clayton strip off his
jacket. He unbuttoned his shut and pulled it off, and she stared blindly at
the rippling muscles of his powerful shoulders and arms. When his hands went
to the waistband of his pants, Whitney twisted her head to the wall and
squeezed her eyes closed. His footsteps bore down on the bed, and she opened
her eyes to see him towering menacingly above her.

"Don't cover yourself from me!" He caught the sheets and
tore them from her clenched fists. "I want to see what I paid so handsomely
for." Pain slashed across his features as his gaze swept over her naked
body, then his jaw hardened.

In a shivering trance of fear, Whitney stared at his
hard, ruthless face while her tortured mind superimposed other, gentle
memories of him. She saw him bending over her the day she fell from her
horse, his face white with alarm. She saw him gazing tenderly into her eyes
the day she had kissed him near the stream-"My God you are sweet" he had
whispered. She thought of the night he had taught her to gamble with cards
and chips. She remembered the way he had stood beside her only a few nights
ago at the Rutherfords' and proudly introduced her as his fiancee.

Aunt Anne had been right; Clayton did love her. Love and
possessiveness were driving him to do this terrible thing to her-she had
driven him to it, by denying her feelings for him for so long, by her blind
determination to marry Paul, He was deliberately compromising her so that
she would have no choice except to marry him and not Paul. He loved her, and
in return she had caused this proud man to become an object of public
ridicule.

The bed shifted beneath his weight as he stretched out
beside her, and Whitney's fear gave way to a deep, shattering remorse. Her
eyes aching with unshed tears, she turned her face to his and hesitantly
laid her trembling fingers against his rigid jaw. "I-I'm sorry," she
whispered chokily. "I'm so sorry."

His eyes narrowed, then he leaned toward her, his weight
supported on an elbow, his free hand gliding over her bare arm to boldly cup
her breast. "Show me," he invited, teasing her nipple with his thumb. "Show
me how sorry you are."

Overriding the shrieking protest of her conscience,
Whitney complied, letting his fingers send shooting sensations from her
breast to the pit of her stomach. She didn't struggle She was prepared to
show him she was sorry-she was prepared to let him do this to her.

His mouth came down on hers, parting her lips in a deep,
languorous kiss, and Whitney tried to kiss him back with all the love and
contrition in her aching heart. "You're very lovely, my sweet," he murmured
as his hands began boldly to explore her body. "But then I suppose you've
heard that before." His mouth burned a hot trail down her throat to the pink
tips of her full breasts, his tongue teasing, flicking and then circling.
Suddenly his lips closed tightly around her nipple, drawing hard, and
Whitney gasped with startled pleasure. Instantly his hand moved down her
thighs, then up between them to cover the soft mound of hair and she gave a
leap of instinctive shock. He ignored her, his questing fingers parting her
and then intimately exploring her, sending melting, tingling sensations
racing along her raw nerve endings.

Nuzzling her neck, he continued the arousing movement of
his hand against her most sensitive place, his skillful fingers moving with
unerring certainty to linger and teasingly caress the precise places where
his touch could send shock waves of desire shooting through her.

Whitney yielded helplessly to the hot, searing need he
was expertly building within her, while a nameless panic slowly began to
grip her. Something was different, wrong, in the way he was kissing her,
touching her! For a man driven by possessive, unrequited love, his kisses
lacked his usual smoldering ardor, his caresses were without tender urgency
. . .