Until last night, Whitney had merely been the delightful object of his lustful thoughts, and the future mother of his needed heir. But last night, that had changed. Last night, she had touched a tenderness, a protectiveness, within him that he never knew existed.
He had listened to her laughingly telling a story that seemed more sad than funny to him, a story about a motherless young girl who was made to play at a stupid musicale in front of a roomful of thoughtless people and, for the first time, he had realized the pain and frustration, the angry humiliation, she must have felt as a girl.
He didn't like most of her neighbors; they struck him as small-minded, gossipy country bumpkins, and from the moment word had reached them that Whitney was returning from France, they had regaled each other-and him-with endless tales of her girlish antics and her youthful pursuit of Paul Sevarin.
If showing them all that she could bewitch Sevarin was the only way Whitney could regain her pride, then Clayton was wiling to allow her to do it. Let her show the villagers she had captivated Sevarin for a few days more. Clayton could wait that long . . . provided that Sevarin didn't actually screw up the courage to ask her father for her hand. Clayton's leniency toward Whitney did not extend to allowing her actually to betroth herself to another man. That he would not tolerate.
His mind made up, Clayton went back to the table. Martin was going to be gone for five days, and that was too long to wait to see Whitney again. He needed some excuse to see her in the meantime, some ploy to make her agree to see him. He considered the possibilities and, with a satisfied grin, remembered she had challenged him to a race in which she would ride Dangerous Crossing against him.
He picked up a sheet of plain stationery, then deliberated over the correct phrasing; it had to be worded as a challenge, not an invitation which she would only turn down.
"Dear Miss Stone," he wrote quickly. "I believe you indicated a desire to test your skill with the stallion. I can be available Wednesday morning for a race over any course you choose. If, however, you regret your hasty challenge, be assured I shall attribute your change of heart not to cowardice, but to a justifiable fear that the horse is too much for you to handle. Yours, etc." He sprinkled fine sand over it and sealed it with wax. With an elated sense of accomplishment, he gave instructions to have it brought round to Miss Stone and to await a reply.
His footman returned a quarter hour later with Whitney's response, written in the beautiful, curving hand of a scholarly monk, not the illegible scrawl typical of so many well-bred but under-educated females. There was no salutation. "Wednesday is perfectly agreeable," she wrote. "I shall meet you at 10:00 in the morning at the northwestern edge of Mr. Sevarin's property near the grove." That was all. But it was enough to make Clayton grin as he got up and stretched. Whistling, he strolled through the quiet house and went upstairs to change into riding breeches.
Chapter Fifteen
THE SPECTACLE THAT GREETED CLAYTON ON WEDNESDAY morning when he crested the hill overlooking Sevarin's grove made him rein his horse in sharply. Curricles were scattered everywhere below, occupied by women holding brightly colored parasols and men in their Sunday best. Those less affluent spectators who had no curricle were either mounted on horseback, standing atop wagons, or milling about on foot.
All the scene below lacked to make it appear a full-fledged country fair were a few acrobats in bright silk tunics, and a juggler or two. Even as he thought it, someone raised a trumpet and blew two long blasts, and the crowd turned in unison to watch him descend the slope.
Beneath carefully lowered lids, Whitney slanted a long, considering look at Clayton's horse as he approached. She saw four finely conformed legs and the muscled chest and rump of a strong hunter but, since her view from this angle was restricted, the only other information she could gamer was that the rider of the horse was wearing gleaming brown leather riding boots and a pair of buckskin riding breeches which fit him to perfection.
"Are you wishing this was pistols at twenty paces, Miss Stone?" Clayton teased as he moved his horse into position at the starting line beside her.
Whitney lifted her head, intending to treat him with cool formality, but his grin was so boyishly disarming that she nearly smiled. Two of the neighborhood men rushed up to offer him good wishes, distracting his attention from her.
Whitney watched him as he talked and joked with them. He looked so relaxed atop his great, powerful horse, and he spoke to the men with such lazy good humor that she could hardly believe he was the same relentless, predatory seducer who had stalked her at his house, who had held her clasped to him while his hungry mouth devoured hers. It was as if he were two people, one she could like very much, and one she feared and mistrusted--with excellent reason.
Elizabeth's father blew another blast on the trumpet and beneath her, Dangerous Crossing gave a frantic lurch. "Are you ready?" Paul called to Whitney and Clayton. As he raised his pistol in the air, Whitney leaned toward Clayton, smiled warmly into his surprised gray eyes, and said very gently, "If you would care to follow me, sir, I shall be happy to show you the way/'
Clayton gave a shout of laughter, the pistol fired, and his horse bolted. He had to swoop down to recover the rein he had dropped in his surprised mirth and, by the time he had brought his bolting animal around, Whitney had gained a considerable lead on him.
His horse's hooves thundered over the hard green turf as Warrior fought to close the gap, but Clayton held him slightly back, biding his time as they turned west, galloping alongside the stream. "Easy now," Clayton soothed his lunging mount. "Let's see what she can do before we make our move."
Ahead of them, Dangerous Crossing vaulted over a low stone wall in perfect stride, and Clayton grinned approvingly. Whitney was tight and lovely in the saddle, managing her novice hunter with expert skill.
By the time they made the turn for the last leg of the race, Clayton could tell that Dangerous Crossing was beginning to tire. Deciding to overtake Whitney when he rounded the next sharp bend of the woods, Clayton eased up and forward in the saddle, relaxing all tension on the reins. Instantly, Warrior shot forward in long, ground-devouring strides.
They galloped wide around the next curve-and Clayton's breath froze in his chest. The black stallion was veering across his path . . . without a rider. Hauling back viciously on Warrior's reins, Clayton looked for her, his heart thundering in alarm.
And then he saw her. She was lying in a crumpled heap beneath a large oak at the perimeter of the woods. Above her was a thick, jutting limb which must have unseated her when she took the corner too sharply.
Vaulting down from the saddle, he ran to her, more frightened than he had ever been in his life. Frantically, he felt for a pulse and found it throbbing steadily in her slim throat, then he began searching her scalp for sign of a head wound. Panic shot through him as he recalled stories of people who had suffered blows to the head, never to regain consciousness.
When he found no cut or bump on her head, he ran his hands over her arms and legs, looking for broken bones. Nothing seemed to be broken, so he jerked off his jacket and placed it beneath her head. Sitting back on his heels, he began chafing her wrists.
Her eyelids fluttered, and Clayton almost groaned with relief. Gently smoothing the heavy, rumpled hair away from her forehead, he leaned close to her. "It's all right now, little one. Where are you hurt? Can you speak?"
Sea-green eyes opened, regarding him calmly and steadily. She had such beautiful eyes, he thought as she gave him a shaky, reassuring little smile. But her first words banished all tenderness from his mind. "You will recall," she whispered, "that at the time of the mishap, / was in the lead."
Clayton could hardly believe his ears. He stood up on unsteady legs and leaned against the trunk of the tree, staring at her in amazed silence.
"Will you help me up?" she asked, after a minute.
"No," he said implacably, crossing his arms over his chest. "I will not."
"Very well," she sighed, rising som
ewhat stiffly to a standing position and straightening her skirts, "but it's most ungracious of you."
"No more ungracious than it was of you to fake a fall when you realized you couldn't hold the lead."
Giving him a queer look, she reached down and plucked his jacket from the leaves, then she brushed it off and handed it to him. Remorsefully, she shook her head, but Clayton saw the tiny smile that touched her lips. "It has always been one of my most tiresome faults," she admitted with an exaggerated sigh. "And it has caused me a deal of regret, I assure you."
"What has?" Clayton asked, stifling a grin at the complete absence of contrition on her lovely, upturned face.
"Cheating," she solemnly replied. "I do it when I cannot win." She raked her fingers through her hair, grimacing at the leaves that fell from the tousled tresses, and Clayton chuckled to himself. She could turn her faults into virtues and her virtues into faults with a shrug of her shoulders or a shake of her pretty head.
While Whitney searched amidst the leaves for her riding crop, Clayton stalked over to his horse and swung up into the saddle. Trotting over to Dangerous Crossing, he caught the stallion's reins and led him back to Whitney, but when she reached for Crossing's reins, Clayton deliberately led the horse a pace forward, out of her reach. "I am so impressed by your honest confession, young lady," he explained when she dropped her arms and frowned at him, "that I feel I ought to make a confession of my own. You see, I am one of those perverse people who will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent a cheater from winning. In fact, I myself will cheat, to prevent it from happening."
Leading her horse, he trotted a few paces away, then he turned and looked at her over his shoulder. Whitney was staring at him in speechless indignation. "It isn't a long walk back," Clayton reminded her in a laughing voice. "However, if you prefer to ride, someone is bound to come along any moment now to see what has delayed us. But either way, you are not going to remount your rested horse and attempt to finish the race."
Whitney watched through narrowed eyes as he trotted away, leading her horse. In frustrated dismay, she slapped her leg with the crop, then yelped at the sting she received. She sank dejectedly to the ground to await rescue, but the longer she sat there, the funnier it all seemed. She hadn't purposely fallen from her horse at all. If she was guilty of anything, it was of foolishly looking over her shoulder to determine how long it would be before Clayton overtook her tiring mount. When she turned back around, a low limb was jutting out in front of her chest.
Whitney tried to stay angry with Clayton for leaving her so ignominiously behind, but she couldn't sustain her ire. She kept remembering how deeply alarmed he'd seemed as he bent over her. His voice had been hoarse with concern, and his face ravaged with worry as he whispered, "It's all right now, little one."
Whitney pulled out a fistful of grass and tossed it away with a sigh. How she wished Clayton would settle for just being her friend. He would make such a wonderful friend, she thought. He could be so charming and entertaining, and he made her laugh. Perhaps when she was a married woman, Clayton would stop looking at her as a possible conquest and then they could be friends. Perhaps-
Whitney forgot about Clayton as Paul came galloping around the bend and reined to a sharp halt beside her. When he saw her sitting there, his expression changed from worry to annoyance. "Do you suppose you could explain to me why it is that every time you and Westland are together, the pair of you seem to vanish?" he demanded irritably.
The moment Clayton trotted into the grove leading Dangerous Crossing, a cry of alarm went up from the spectators. They surged forward with Lady Gilbert in the lead. "What happened?" Whitney's aunt cried. "Where is Whitney?"
"She'll be along," Clayton called to her. Turning in his saddle, Clayton watched Whitney coming into the grove, mounted sideways in front of Sevarin. As he looked at her, he suddenly reversed his earlier opinion of how she had become separated from her horse during the race. However she'd come unhorsed, it hadn't been deliberate, he decided. It simply wasn't in Whitney to quit.
At the finish line, Whitney slid down from Paul's horse and glanced uncertainly at Clayton, wondering what he had told everyone. The spectators converged on her while those who had placed wagers on the outcome of the race shouted for her to give them the results.
Leaning over, Clayton caught her under the arms and swung her up onto his horse so that she was sitting sideways in front of him. "They are waiting for you to tell them who won the race," he pointed out, ignoring her indignant expression at being so familiarly handled.
"My horse was winded over a mile back," Whitney called out. "Mr. Westland won." She turned to Clayton and said under her breath, "Actually, there was no winner."
His brows lifted mockingly. "Your horse was tiring and you were going to lose," he told her. "And you are a fine enough rider to have realized that long before you fell."
"I'm delighted that you are at least willing to give me credit for taking an honest fall," Whitney retorted primly.
Clayton chuckled. "If you had the slightest notion of how much credit I do give you, it would astonish you."
Before Whitney could consider that staggering pronouncement, he lifted her effortlessly down from the saddle. Standing beside Paul, she watched Clayton turn his horse and gallop over the crest of the hill.
Thursday dragged by with little to occupy Whitney's time. Paul was busy with preparations for his trip, so she spent her day helping with the arrangements for her father's birthday party on Saturday and catching up on her correspondence with friends in Paris.
Friday morning, she wrote a long letter to Emily, who was back in London. The temptation to break her self-imposed, almost superstitious silence about Paul was nearly past bearing, so she hinted that she would soon have some very exciting news for her friend. She ended with a promise to visit Emily in London, a promise Whitney knew she would keep very soon, because she would need to go there in order to purchase her wedding gown and trousseau. When she was there, she would ask Emily to be matron of honor at the wedding, she decided happily.
She brought the letter downstairs to be sent off, and discovered that Clayton Westland had just arrived. He was chatting amiably with Anne in the rose salon, and he politely rose when Whitney joined them.
"I came to reassure myself that you've fully recovered from your accident the other day," he told her, and there was none of his usual mocking irony in his tone.
Whitney knew this was his way of apologizing for thinking she had faked her fall. "Completely recovered," she assured him.
"Excellent," he said. "Then you won't be able to claim fogged thinking or ill health if I beat you soundly at chess again. This afternoon?"
Whitney rose to his bait like a trout for a fly-which is why she ended up spending the better part of the day pleasurably engaged in battling and bantering with him across the chessboard, with her aunt ensconced on the settee, acting as smiling chaperone while her fingers flew nimbly over her embroidery.
Lying in bed that night, Whitney courted sleep, but it refused to come. She lifted her left hand and looked at her long fingers in the darkness. Would there be a betrothal ring there tomorrow? It was possible, if only her father would return early enough tomorrow afternoon for Paul to speak to him. And then they could announce their engagement at the party tomorrow night.
Whitney was not the only one unable to sleep. With his hands linked behind his head, Clayton stared at the ceiling above his bed, pleasurably contemplating their wedding night. His blood stirred hotly as he imagined Whitney's silken, long-limbed body beneath his, her hips rising to meet his thrusts. She was a virgin, and he would take care to arouse her gently until she was moaning with rapture in his arms.
With that delightful thought in mind, he rolled over onto his side and finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
LADY ANNE WAS AWAKENED BY THE BABBLE OF VAGUELY familiar voices calling cheerful greetings to one another in the halls. She blinked at the dazzling su
nlight and realized her head was pounding, while a feeling of foreboding crept over her.
Martin's surprise birthday party had been Whitney's idea and, at the time, Anne had immediately supported it, hoping it might help bring, Martin closer to his daughter. But she hadn't known then of Whitney's betrothal to the Duke of Claymore. Now, she worried that one of the thirty visiting guests might recognize the duke, and then God knew what would happen to all the careful plans hatched by Martin and the duke.
Reaching behind her, she tugged on the bellpull to summon her maid and reluctantly climbed out of bed, unable to shake the feeling of impending doom.
Dusk had fallen when Sewell finally tapped at Whitney's bedroom door and informed her that her father had returned.
"Thank you, Sewell," Whitney called dejectedly. Tonight would have been such a perfect occasion for announcing her betrothal; the Ashtons and the Merrytons and everyone else of any consequence in the neighborhood would be at the party. How she wanted to see their collective reaction to the news that Paul and she were going to be married.
Still, she reasoned hopefully as she lathered herself with carnation-scented soap, there was a chance that Paul might find an opportunity to draw her father aside during the party. Then they could still announce their betrothal tonight.
Three quarters of an hour later, her maid, Clarissa, stood back to survey Whitney's appearance while Whitney dutifully turned around for her inspection.
Whitney's elegant ivory satin gown shimmered in the candlelight, and its low, square-cut bodice molded itself to her breasts, displaying a tantalising glimpse of the shadowy hollow between them. The wide bell sleeves were trimmed with rich topaz satin from her elbows to her wrists, and a matching band of topaz adorned the hemline. From the front, the gown fell in straight toes, widening slightly at the hem, but viewed from the back, it flared out into a graceful, flowing half train. Topaz and diamonds glittered at her throat and ears, adding their fire to the matching strand of jewels twined in and out among the thick, shining curls of her elaborately coiffed hair.
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