Until You

49

Blind to everything but her intention, Sheridan located the drawing room with the help of a footman, and there she confronted yet another servant who was stationed in front of the drawing room's closed door.

"I wish to see the Duchess of Claymore at once," she informed him, fully expecting to be informed that was impossible-and fully prepared to force her way inside if necessary. "My name is Sheridan Bromleigh."

To her shock, the footman bowed at once and said, as he opened the door, "Her grace has been expecting you."

That announcement removed for Sheridan any question that this party might have been organized for some purpose other than to punish her. "I'll wager she has been!" Sheridan said scornfully. Feminine laughter stopped and conversations broke off the instant she swept into the immense room. Ignoring Victoria Seaton and Alexandra Townsende, Sherry walked past the dowager duchess and Miss Charity without a nod and confronted the Duchess of Claymore.

Her eyes blazing, she looked down her nose at the composed brunette she had once thought of as a sister, and her voice shook with the violence of her outrage. "Are you so poor of entertainment that torturing a servant titillates you?" she demanded scathingly, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "How much amusement did you honestly expect me to provide for you, besides playing and singing? Did you hope I would dance for you as well? Why isn't Stephen here yet? He must be as eager as you to see it all begin." Her voice shook with wrath as she finished, "You have all wasted your time, because I am leaving! Do you understand? You have put the Skeffingtons to an expense they can ill afford and dragged them here with their hopes all built up, when all you wanted was vengeance on me! What sort of-of monsters are you, anyway? And don't you dare to pretend you haven't planned this entire weekend for the simple purpose of dragging me here!"

Whitney had expected this visit from Sheridan, but she hadn't expected it to begin with the angry aggression of a duel. Instead of gently explaining what she hoped to accomplish, as Whitney had intended to do, she entered the verbal swordplay with a thrust aimed straight at Sheridan Bromleigh's heart: "For some reason," she announced coolly, with a challenging lift of her brows, "I rather thought you might appreciate our efforts to bring you into Stephen's sphere."

"I have no desire to be in any such place," Sheridan fired back.

"Is that why you go to the opera every Thursday?"

"Anyone can go to the opera."

"You don't watch the performance. You watch Stephen."

Sheridan paled. "Does he know? Oh, please, do not say you've told him. Why would you be that cruel?"

"Why," Whitney said very, very carefully, sensing that she was a hair's breadth from finally hearing the truth about Sheridan's disappearance and that if she made one mistake, she wouldn't, "would it be a cruelty if he knew you went there to see him?"

"Does he know?" Sheridan countered stubbornly, and Whitney bit her lip to hide an admiring smile at the other woman's spirit. Sheridan Bromleigh might be a servant in a roomful of nobility, but she bowed to no one. On the other hand, her caution and spirit were creating a standoff. Whitney drew a breath, hating to resort to blackmail, but she did it anyway and without compunction. "He does not know, but he will know if you cannot make me understand why you go to the opera to look at him, after jilting him at the altar."

"You have no right to ask me that."

"I have every right."

"Who do you think you are?" Sheridan exploded. "The Queen of England?"

"I think I am the woman who appeared for your wedding. I think you are the woman who did not appear for it."

"For that, I would have expected you to thank me!"

"Thank you?" Whitney uttered, looking as stunned as she felt. "For what?"

"Why are you asking me all this! Why are we caviling over trifles?"

Whitney studied her manicure. "I do not consider my brother-in-law's heart and life a trifle. Perhaps that is where we differ?"

"I liked you much better when I didn't know who I was," Sheridan said in a voice so bewildered that it would have been comic in another context. She looked around the room as if she needed confirmation that the furnishings were firmly anchored to the floor and that the draperies hadn't become bed linens. "You didn't seem quite so… difficult and unreasonable. After Monsieur DuVille explained to me the day of the wedding why Stephen had suddenly decided to marry me, I did the only thing I possibly could. Poor Mr. Lancaster… dying without Charise there."

Mentally, Whitney consigned Nicki DuVille to perdition for his inadvertent part in this debacle, but she kept her mind focused on their plan.

"May I leave now?" Sheridan said stonily.

"Certainly," Whitney said as Victoria and Miss Charity looked at her in shock. "Miss Bromleigh," Whitney added as Sheridan reached for the door, but her voice was gentle now, "I believe my brother-in-law was in love with you."

"Don't tell me that!" Sherry exploded, her hand clenching the door handle, her back to them. "Don't do this to me. He never pretended to love me, never even bothered to lie about it when we discussed marriage."

"Perhaps he didn't acknowledge the feeling by name, even to himself, perhaps he still does not, but he has not been the same man since you left."

Sherry felt unbalanced by the explosion of hope and fear, of denial and joy, inside her brain. "Do not lie to me, for the love of God."

"Sherry?"

Sherry turned at the soft sound in her voice.

"On your wedding day, Stephen wouldn't believe you weren't coming back. Even after Miss Lancaster poured all her venom, he didn't believe her. He waited for you to come back and explain."

Sherry thought her heart would break and that was before the duchess added, "He kept the cleric there until late that night. He wouldn't let him leave. Does that sound like a man who didn't want you? Does that sound like a man who was only marrying you out of guilt and responsibility? Since he knew by then you weren't Charise Lancaster, why would he have felt any guilt or responsibility to you? Your head injury was healed and your memory was returned."

Sherry felt shattered at the thought of what she might have had… and what she had lost.

"He wouldn't believe you'd run away. He wouldn't let the cleric leave," Whitney emphasized. "The vicar was adamant that the wedding had to be performed in daylight, before noon, as is custom, but Stephen overrode him."

Sherry turned her head away because her eyes were glazing with tears. "I never thought… never imagined… He could not possibly have been thinking clearly," she said with more strength, turning to look at Whitney. "He would never have considered marrying a common governess."

"Oh, yes he would," Whitney said with a teary laugh. "I can tell you from personal experience-and from all I've read about the family's history-that Westmoreland men do exactly as they please, and they always have. May I remind you that when Stephen kept the vicar at his house, he was already aware of your former position as Charise Lancaster's paid companion. It didn't matter to him. He'd made up his mind to marry you, and nothing could have stopped him. Except you."

She paused, watching Sheridan's expressive face mirror joy and anguish… and then hope. Tentative, fragile, but there, and though that pleased Whitney immensely, she also felt obliged to issue a sobering warning. "Unfortunately," she said, "Westmoreland men are extremely difficult to manage when they have been provoked beyond what they deem reasonable, and I'm afraid Stephen is already far, far beyond that unlucky state."

"Provoked beyond reason?" Sheridan said cautiously.

Whitney nodded. "I'm afraid so." She waited, hoping for a sign of the courage Sheridan was going to need if things were to be set to rights. "If matters are to be set to rights between you, I very much fear the burden for it will fall completely to you. In fact, the best thing you can hope to receive from Stephen is opposition. Cold, unresponsive opposition. At worst, he'll unleash some of the rage he feels toward you."

"I see."

"He wants nothing to do with you, will not even allow the mention of your name by any of us."

"He… hates me?" Her voice faltered at the agonizing certainty he did-and the realization that she could have prevented all this.

"Thoroughly."

"But he-I mean you do think that he didn't hate me before?"

"I think he loved you. I told you once before I've never seen Stephen treat a woman quite the way he treated you. Among other things, he was possessive, which is not at all in his normal style."

Sheridan looked down at her hands, afraid to hope she could rekindle any of those feelings in him. Unable to stop herself from hoping. Raising her eyes to Whitney's, she said, "What can I do?"

"You can fight for him."

"But how?"

"That's the delicate part of the problem," Whitney said, biting her lip to hide a smile at Sheridan's alarmed expression.

"He will avoid you, of course. In fact, he would have left here the moment he realized you were here if it hadn't been Noel's birthday, and if leaving wouldn't cause him to lose all face."

"Then I suppose I should be grateful matters happened this way."

"Actually, they didn't 'happen this way.' You were quite right when you assumed all this was planned very carefully, but it was never intended to embarrass you, only to force Stephen to be in your company the maximum amount of time over the weekend. Also, the other two governesses will step in to look after the Skeffington boys while you're here. To that end, I've suggested to Lady Skeffington that you might better serve if you were to be where you could chaperone Julianna-from a distance, of course. That will allow you to wander about the grounds, ride if you wish, and generally be visible."

"I-I don't know how to thank you."

"You may not want to thank me," Whitney said with a nervous smile. And then because she desperately wanted to give the other woman enough reassurance to make her able to face up to whatever Stephen did to her, she confided something that only the family knew. "Several years ago, I was betrothed to my husband by my father without my knowledge. I-I had some foolish girlhood notion of marrying a local boy I thought I'd love forever, and I-I did several things to try to avoid this marriage that caused my husband to break the betrothal and withdraw his offer. Unfortunately, it wasn't until then that I realized I was long over my infatuation with the other man. By then, Clayton wouldn't even acknowledge that he knew me."

"Eventually, however, he obviously changed his mind."

"Not quite," Whitney admitted with a rosy blush, "I changed his mind. He was on the verge of marrying another, and I-I came here to see him, to try to dissuade him. Stephen stepped in and forced me to stay. Actually, I only conceived this party because a similar ploy worked with my husband and me."

"But everything came about as soon as he saw you?"

That evoked a musical laugh from the duchess and a firm shake of her head. "He seemed to hate the sight of me. It was the most mortifying night of my life. But when it was over, when I won-when we both won-I had no pride left. I had him."

"And you are warning me that my pride is going to suffer?"

"Terribly, unless I miss my guess."

"Thank you for confiding in me. In a way it helps to know another woman made an enormous mistake and had to rectify it herself."

"I didn't," Whitney said gently, "confide in you to share misery. I had a much more important reason, else I wouldn't have done it."

"I know."

Sheridan hesitated, then stood up, her smile wobbly but her voice strong. "What should I do?"

"First, you must be very visible, so that he cannot avoid noticing you. And very available, somehow."

"Available… to him, you mean?"

"Precisely. Having been jilted and deceived, Stephen won't want anything to do with you. It will take an invitation from you-unmistakable, and hopefully irresistible-to lure him to you again."

Sheridan nodded, her heart thundering with dread and hope and uncertainty, then she slowly turned to the other women, all of whom she'd insulted earlier, and all of whom were watching her with fond, gentle understanding. She looked at the dowager and Miss Charity first. "I was inexcusably rude," she began, but Stephen's mother shook her head to stop her and held out her hand.

"Under the circumstances, my dear, I'm sure I would have acted much as you did."

Taking the dowager's hand in both of hers, Sherry clasped it tightly. "I'm terribly, terribly sorry-"

Victoria Seaton stopped further outpourings of guilt by standing up and giving Sheridan a fierce hug, then she drew back and laughingly said, "We are all here to support you, and you may well need it when Stephen arrives."

"Don't frighten her," said Alexandra Townsende, laughing as she stood up and clasped Sheridan's hands. With an exaggerated shiver, she said, "Leave that to Stephen."

Sheridan's smile wavered a little. "Do your husbands know what all this is about?"

All three women nodded, and Sheridan found it very touching to know the husbands were also wishing her well.

The task that lay in front of her was daunting. The realization that Stephen had evidently cared enough for her to wait with the cleric for hours after she ran away was heartbreaking. Sherry had never been happier in her life.