He really was the most provoking man alive, taunting her this way, Whitney thought with a smile. Determined to brazen it out for as long as possible, she sniffed the pungent odor emanating from her glass. Uncle Edward’s favorite drink. “Brandy,” she said, favoring Clayton with a bland smile. “Perfect with a good cigar, is it not?”
“Most assuredly,” he agreed straight-faced. Reaching out, he lifted an enameled metal box from the table beside them and snapped the lid open with his thumb. Holding the box toward her, he offered Whitney her choice of the cigars within it.
He was so supremely blasé about it that Whitney’s composure slipped another notch closer to laughter. Catching her lower lip between her teeth to still its treacherous trembling, she studied the cigars as if trying to decide which she preferred. What would he do if she actually selected one from the box? Light it, no doubt! she thought with a silent giggle.
“May I suggest the longer one to your left?” he murmured courteously.
Whitney crumpled back into her chair, convulsed with silent mirth.
“A pinch of snuff perhaps?” he urged solicitously, sending Whitney into gales of musical laughter. “I keep it on hand for particularly discriminating guests such as yourself.”
“You are impossible!” she laughed. When she finally caught her breath, she lifted her glass and, under his amused gaze, gingerly sampled her brandy. It burned a path straight down to her stomach. The second and third sips were not quite so awful, and after a few more, she categorized brandy as one of those things for which one must acquire a taste. Very soon after, she became aware of an unaccustomed, delicious warmth seeping through her, and she firmly put the glass aside, wondering just how potent a few sips of brandy could be.
“Who taught you to play?” Clayton asked.
“My uncle,” Whitney replied. Leaning forward, she picked up her king and held it to the light to admire the splendid craftsmanship. “If one didn’t know better, one would think these pieces were actually cast in gold and silver.”
“If one didn’t know better,” Clayton said blandly, removing the solid gold king from her graceful fingers to prevent her from inspecting it any closer, “one would think you were trying to extricate yourself from my clever trap by contriving to place him in a safer position on the board.”
Whitney was instantly alert. “Extricate myself? A safer position? Whatever are you talking about? My king isn’t in jeopardy!”
A slow, roguish grin dawned across his features. Reaching out, he moved his bishop into position. “Check,” he said.
“Check?” Whitney repeated in disbelief, staring at the board, trying to reassess her vulnerability. She was in check! And no matter which of the available moves she made, one of his men was poised to attack.
Slowly she raised her eyes to his, and Clayton basked in the unconcealed admiration lighting her beautiful face. When she spoke her voice was soft and filled with awe. “You black-hearted, treacherous, conniving scoundrel.”
Clayton threw back his head and laughed at the contrast between her tone and her words. “Your flattery warms my heart,” he chuckled.
“You have no heart,” Whitney quipped, smiling dazzlingly at him. “If you did, you’d never abuse a helpless female by luring her into a game at which you are obviously a master.”
“You lured me,” he reminded her, grinning. “Now, shall we finish the game, or do you plan to deny me my triumph by claiming the game was incomplete?”
“No,” Whitney said good-naturedly. “I surrender completely.”
Her words seemed to hang portentously in the silence that followed. “I was hoping you would,” he said quietly.
He unbuttoned his dark blue jacket, leaned back in his chair, and stretched his long legs out beside the table. Relaxed and comfortable, he turned his head slightly and gazed into the fire.
Whitney studied him surreptitiously as she sipped from her brandy. Sitting like that, he looked like an artist’s portrait of the “gentleman of leisure.” And yet, she had the inexplicable feeling that beneath his relaxed exterior there was a forcefulness, a power, carefully restrained now, but gathered. Waiting. And if she made a wrong move, a mistake, he would unleash that force, that power on her. Mentally, she gave herself a hard shake. She was being foolish and fanciful. “I can’t make out the time,” she said softly, a while later, “but it’s surely long past the hour for me to leave.”
His gaze shifted from the fire to her. “Not until I hear you laugh that way again.”
Whitney shook her head. “I haven’t laughed that hard since the day of our spring musicale when I was twelve years old.”
When he realized that she had no intention of elaborating, Clayton said, “Since you’re obviously reluctant to share it with me, I claim the retelling of that story as my victory prize.”
“First you lure me into a chess game,” Whitney berated him, smiling. “Then you outwit me, and now you want to claim a reward from me for doing it. Have you no mercy?”
“None. Now go on.”
“Very well,” she sighed. “But only because I refuse to further flatter your vanity by pleading to be let off.” Her voice softened as she looked back into the past. “It was a long time ago, yet it seems like yesterday. Mr. Twittsworthy, our local music instructor, decided that the village should have a spring musicale. All the females whose musical education was entrusted to his tutelage were to display their accomplishments by playing or singing a short piece. There were about fifteen of us, but Elizabeth Ashton was the most gifted performer, so Mr. Twittsworthy bestowed the honor of hosting the musicale on her mama and papa. I didn’t even want to go, but . . .”
“But Twittsworthy insisted that you must, or the musicale would be a dismal failure?” Clayton speculated.
“Good heavens, no! Mr. Twittsworthy would have been delighted if I’d stayed away. You see, whenever he came to the house to listen to me play the pianoforte, his eyes began to burn and water. He complained to everyone that my playing was so offensive to his ears that it actually made him weep.”
Clayton felt an unexplainable surge of anger at the music instructor. “The man must have been a fool.”
“Indeed he was,” Whitney agreed with a breezy smile. “Otherwise, he would have realized that I was sprinkling pepper in his snuffbox whenever he came to give me lessons. Anyway, the morning of the musicale, I pleaded and argued with my father that I shouldn’t have to go, but he would have it to the very last hour that I absolutely must!
“Looking back, I think Father would have relented if I hadn’t been seized with the unfortunate inspiration of sending Clarissa, my maid, down with a note for him.”
Clayton grinned at her over the rim of his glass. “What did you say in the note?”
“I said,” Whitney confessed with twinkling eyes, “that I had taken to my bed with a case of cholera, but that he should go to the musicale without me and ask everyone to pray for my recovery.”
Clayton’s shoulders began to lurch and Whitney said severely, “I’ve not yet come to the humorous part of the story, Mr. Westland.” He smoothed the laughter from his face and Whitney continued, “Father gave poor Clarissa a thundering scold for having failed to instill in me a grain of respect for truth. The very next thing I knew, Clarissa was thrusting me into my best dress which was much too short, because I’d told her I wasn’t going and she didn’t need to let the hem down, and Father was marching me into the carriage. Of course, I hadn’t learned my piece for the musicale, which was nothing out of the ordinary, since I never had the patience to plink and plank my life away at the pianoforte, and I pleaded with Father to let me go back into the house and get my music, but he was too angry with me to listen.
“Every neighbor for miles was gathered in the music room at Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth played like an angel, which was always the way, and Margaret Merryton’s piece was judged quite agreeable. I was saved for last.” Whitney lapsed into pensive silence. For one brief moment, she was again sitting
in the third row of the crowded music room, just behind Paul, whose eyes were riveted on Elizabeth’s dainty, angelic profile as she played the pianoforte. Paul had leapt to his feet, with everyone else, to applaud Elizabeth’s performance while Whitney stood behind him, tugging at her short, unbecoming pink dress and hating her own awkward body which was all arms and legs and knees and elbows.
“You were the last to play,” Clayton prodded, his teasing voice rousing Whitney from her unhappy recollections. “And even without your music, you played so well that they all cheered and called for an encore?”
“I would say,” Whitney corrected him with a tinkling laugh, “that their reaction was more one of dazed silence.”
Despite Whitney’s offhand manner of telling the story, Clayton found it more poignant than funny. At that moment, he could have cheerfully strangled every one of these small-minded country bumpkins who had ever embarrassed her, beginning with her music instructor and ending with her stupid father. Deep inside, he felt a stirring tenderness, a protectiveness toward her, that surprised and disturbed him, and he lifted his glass, drinking from it to cover his own bewildering emotions.
Afraid that he might somehow feel sorry for her, Whitney smiled and waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve only told you this to give you the background. The reason for my hilarity occurred later, while everyone was enjoying a light luncheon out on the lawn. You see, a prize was to be awarded after lunch for the best performance, and Elizabeth Ashton was to receive it. Unfortunately, the prize vanished, and a rumor was circulated that it had been hidden up in the largest tree on the lawn.”
Clayton studied her, and his gray eyes lit with amused speculation. “Did you put it there?”
Whitney pinkened. “No, but I started the rumor that it was up in the tree. Anyway, everyone had just begun to eat when suddenly Elizabeth came tumbling from the tree, crashing like a rock onto the table. I thought she made a very fetching centerpiece, reclining amidst the sandwiches and pudding in her pink and white ruffles, and I started to laugh.” Whitney smiled as she recalled the scene, then she remembered the way Paul had run to Elizabeth’s rescue, drying her tears with his handkerchief, while he glared furiously at Whitney.
“I assume that when the adults saw you laughing, they blamed you for hiding the prize in the tree?”
“Oh, no, the adults were much too busy trying to remove Elizabeth from their lunch to notice that I was laughing myself into fits. Peter Redfern did notice, though, and he assumed I was guilty, particularly since he knew I could climb a tree faster than even he could. He threatened to box my ears then and there, but Margaret Merryton told him I deserved a whipping from my father instead.”
“Which was your fate?” Clayton asked.
“Neither one,” Whitney said, and her laughter reminded Clayton of wind chimes. “You see, Peter was too angry to listen to Margaret, and I was so positive that he wouldn’t dare to hit me, that I didn’t think to duck until the very last moment. He hit Margaret instead,” Whitney finished merrily. “Oh lord! I shall never forget the look on poor Peter’s face when Margaret rolled over in the grass and sat up. She had the most heavenly purple eye you could imagine.”
Across the chess table, their laughing gazes held, the happy silence punctuated by the cheery crackling of the logs burning on the grate. Clayton put his glass down, and Whitney’s smile began to fade as he purposefully came to his feet. Darting a glance toward the door where the servant had been standing earlier, Whitney realized that he was no longer there. “It’s dreadfully late,” she said, hastily standing up as Clayton came toward her. “I should be leaving at once.”
He stopped an inch from her and said in a deep, velvety voice, “Thank you for the most delightful evening of my life.”
She saw the look in his eyes, and her heart began to hammer uncontrollably while a warning screamed along her nerves. “Please don’t stand so close,” she whispered desperately. “It makes me feel like a rabbit about to be pounced upon by a—a ferret!”
His eyes smiled, but his voice was quiet, seductive. “I can hardly kiss you if I’m standing across the room, little one.”
“Don’t call me that, and don’t kiss me! I’ve just barely forgiven you for the last time at the stream.”
“Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to forgive me again.”
“I warn you, I won’t,” Whitney whispered, as he drew her into his arms. “This time, I’ll never forgive you.”
“A terrifying possibility, but I’ll risk it,” he murmured huskily, and his mouth opened hungrily over hers. The shock of the contact was electrifying. His hands moved down her shoulders and back, molding her tighter and tighter to the hard length of his body. He kissed her thoroughly, insistently, endlessly, and when her quivering lips parted for his probing tongue, he crushed her into himself. His tongue plunged into her mouth, then slowly retreated to plunge again and again, in some unknown, wildly exciting rhythm that produced a knot of pure sensation in the pit of Whitney’s stomach.
The provocative caresses of his hands, the feel of his mouth sensuously joined with hers, the hard strength of his legs pressing intimately against her, brought Whitney’s body to vibrant life in his arms. She surrendered helplessly to the inflaming demands of his hands and mouth, and as she did, her mind went numb. Dead. The longer the kisses continued, the more splintered apart she became. It was as if she were two people, one warm and yielding, the other paralyzed with alarm.
When he finally drew back, Whitney let her forehead fall against his chest, her hands flattened against the crisp, starched whiteness of his shirt. She stood there in a kind of disoriented, bewildered rebellion, furious with herself and with him.
“Shall I implore your forgiveness now, little one?” he teased lightly, tipping her chin up. “Or should I wait?” Whitney lifted her mutinous green eyes to his. “I think I’d better wait,” he said with a rueful chuckle. Pressing a brief kiss on her forehead, he turned and strode from the room, returning a moment later with her satin cape. He put it around her shoulders, and she shivered when his hand touched her skin. “Are you cold?” he murmured, folding his arms around her from behind and drawing her back against his chest.
Whitney could not drag a sound through her constricted throat. She was a roiling mass of shame, bewilderment, anger, and self-loathing.
“Surely I cannot have rendered you speechless,” he whispered teasingly, his breath touching her hair.
She spoke, but her voice was a strangled whisper. “Please let go of me.”
He did not attempt to talk to her again until they drew up beneath the arched carriage entrance at the side of her house. “Whitney,” he said impatiently, grasping her arm when she opened the door and started to go inside. “I want to talk to you. There are some things that should be understood between us.”
“Not now,” Whitney said tonelessly. “Another time perhaps, but not tonight.”
Whitney lay awake until dawn, trying to understand the turbulent, consuming emotions Clayton was able to arouse in her; how he managed to take her in his arms and sweep away her plans and dreams of Paul, her sense of decency and honor.
She rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. From this night forward, she would scrupulously avoid being alone with him again. Any future contact with him would have to be brief, impersonal, and public. Her mistake—and she would never, never make it again—was that she’d enjoyed his company so much tonight, been so disarmed by his relaxed charm, that she had started thinking of him as her friend.
Friend! she thought bitterly, rolling over onto her back and staring up at the canopy. A boa constrictor would make a more trustworthy friend than that man! Why, that lecherous libertine would try to seduce a saint in church. He would go to any lengths to make another conquest. The harder he had to try, the more difficult his prey made it for him, the better he seemed to enjoy it. And Whitney knew now, beyond a doubt, that she was his prey. He intended to seduce her, to dishonor her, and nothing was going to det
er him from trying.
For her sake, and for Paul’s, the sooner their betrothal was announced, the better, because even Clayton Westland wouldn’t dare to pursue a woman who was promised to another man. A man who happened to be an outstanding shot!
14
* * *
Whitney smoothed her hair, cast a last critical appraisal over her soft green wool dress with white ruffles at the throat and wrists, then straightened the velvet bow which held her dark hair demurely caught at the nape of her neck. Her sleepless night had left shadows beneath her eyes, but otherwise she looked pretty and young and girlish. Not at all the sort, Whitney thought wryly as she turned away from the mirror, to plan to entrap a man with a falsehood designed to force him into declaring himself. Now—today.
Mentally she rehearsed her strategy as she walked downstairs to the drawing room where Paul was waiting for her. She would make him think she was returning to Paris with Aunt Anne when Uncle Edward came for her. If that didn’t prod Paul into offering for her, then nothing ever would.
In the doorway of the drawing room she hesitated. Paul looked so wonderful, so handsome, that she was sorely tempted to throw propriety to the winds and offer for him. Instead she said brightly, “It’s a lovely afternoon. Shall we walk in the garden?”
The moment they were within the sheltered seclusion of the high, clipped hedges that surrounded the last of the blooming roses, Paul took her in his arms and kissed her. “I’m trying to atone for all my years of neglecting you,” he teased.
It was exactly the sort of opening she needed. Stepping back, she smiled gaily and said, “Then you’ll have to hurry, because you have a great many years to atone for and only a few weeks left in which to do it.”
“What do you mean, ‘only a few weeks left?’ ”
“Before I go back to France with my aunt and uncle,” Whitney explained, almost sagging with relief at the swift scowl that darkened his face.
“Before you go back to France? I thought you were home to stay.”
Whitney, My Love Page 17