Whitney, My Love

Chapter Twenty-five

TWO SLEEK, WELL-SPRUNG TRAVELLING CHAISES WAITED IN front of Claymore, the vast three-story stone structure that was Clayton's principal residence. The grandeur of the house and grounds was the result of loving restoration and extensive additions which had been carried out by Clayton, his father, his grandfather, and all of the Dukes of Claymore who had preceded them.

To visitors and guests, Claymore was a place in which to wander admiringly, from domed-glass rooms where one could see the sky, to rooms of breathtaking splendor where vaulted ceilings rose three stories in height, supported by graceful Gothic pillars. Looking up, one could behold the master genius of Rubens, who had lavishly embellished the ceilings with rich, exuberant scenes.

To Clayton, however, his house was a place of haunting memories where he could not sleep, and when he did, could not escape the recurring nightmare of what had happened there seven endless agonizing nights ago. It was a place from which he had to escape.

Seated at his desk in the spacious oak-panelled library, he listened impatiently to the solicitor who was repeating the instructions Clayton had just given him.

"Do I understand you correctly, your grace? You wish to withdraw your offer of marriage to Miss Stone? But make no attempt to recover any of the monies you expended to secure the agreement?"

"That is precisely what I just said," Clayton replied shortly. "I am leaving for Grand Oak today, and will return in a fortnight. Have the papers here for my signature the day after my return." With that he stood up, abruptly concluding the distasteful interview.

The dowager Duchess of Claymore glanced up eagerly as the butler appeared in the doorway. "His grace's coach is just pulling up the drive," the old family retainer announced, his dignified countenance lit with unabashed pleasure.

Smiling, the duchess walked over to the windows of the lovely manor which her husband had years ago set aside as her dower house. In comparison to the vastness of Claymore, Grand Oak was small, but she entertained frequently and lavishly in the spacious house which stood before five guest pavilions and was surrounded by glorious gardens and arbors.

She watched the two sleek travelling chaises draw up smartly before the front steps, then turned aside to check her appearance in the mirror. At five and fifty, Alicia, Dowager Duchess of Claymore, was still slim and gracefully erect. Her dark hair was threaded with silver strands, but they only added dignity to her abiding beauty. A worried shadow darkened her gray eyes as she patted her elegantly coiffed hair into place and thought about Clayton's strangely uninformative note which had arrived only three days ago, announcing his intention to pay her a two-week visit. Clayton's visits were infrequent and usually disappointingly brief; it seemed odd somehow that he had decided to come for such an extended time and on such short notice.

A controlled commotion in the entrance hall heralded Clayton's arrival, and with her face wreathed in a delighted smile, Lady Westmoreland turned to greet her eldest son.

Clayton strode swiftly across the pale blue carpet and, ignoring her outstretched hands, he caught her in a brief embrace and pressed an affectionate kiss on her smooth forehead. "You are more beautiful than ever," he said.

His mother leaned back, anxiously studying the deeply etched lines of strain and fatigue at his eyes and mouth. "Have you been ill, darling? You look terrible."

"Thank you, Mother," he said drily. "I am delighted to see you, too."

"Well, of course, I'm delighted to see you," she protested with a sighing laugh. "But I would like to see you looking better, which is what I meant." Dismissing the subject with a cheerful wave of her hand, she drew him down to sit beside her on the sofa, but her eyes still worriedly scanned his drawn face. "Stephen is in transports over being able to spend an entire fortnight here with you," she said. "He has planned parties and is even now en route here with a large group of people. I doubt you'll have a moment's peace and quiet, so if that's why you've come, I'm afraid you're in for a rude surprise."

"It doesn't matter," Clayton replied grimly. Getting up, he walked over to the side table and poured himself a liberal glass of whiskey.

"Where is that scoundrel who forced me to be a penniless younger son?" Stephen Westmoreland called from the hall way. He strode into the salon, winked at his mother, and warmly clasped Clayton's hand. Jokingly referring to the jumble of voices out in the hall he said, "I grew tired, brother dear, of having to make excuses for your absence to the London beauties, so I brought a few of them with me, as you will soon see."

"Fine." Clayton shrugged unenthusiastically.

Stephen's blue eyes narrowed into a slight frown, a pensive expression which heightened the similarity of features between the two brothers. Like Clayton, Stephen was dark-haired and tall. Although he lacked the aura of power and authority that seemed to surround his brother, Stephen was friendlier and easier to know, and as the ton often remarked, he possessed the legendary Westmoreland charm in good measure. He was, despite his earlier remark, very wealthy in his own right and perfectly content to have the ducal title- and the hundreds of responsibilities that went with it-rest on his brother's capable shoulders.

Subjecting Clayton to a brief scrutiny, he said, "You look like hell, Clay." Then with an apologetic grin at his mother, he added, "I beg your pardon, Mama."

"Well, he does," the duchess agreed. "I told him the same thing."

"You told him he looks like hell?" Stephen teased her, pressing a belated kiss of greeting on his mother's beringed fingers.

"It must be a family characteristic," Clayton observed sardonically, "to ignore the common civilities and make unsolicited observations instead. Hello, Stephen."

Shortly thereafter, Clayton pleaded fatigue from his four-hour trip and excused himself. As soon as he left the room, Lady Westmoreland turned determinedly to her youngest son. "Stephen, see if you can discover what's troubling nun."

Stephen firmly shook his head in the negative. "Clay won't tolerate anyone prying into his affairs, you know that as well as I, sweetheart. Besides, he is probably only tired, nothing more."

Despite his words, Stephen watched Clayton closely in the two weeks that followed. During the day, the members of the house party rode and hunted and jaunted off to a nearby village to explore and shop. But the only activity Clayton seemed to enjoy was riding-except that now he ruthlessly forced his mount over impossible obstacles and rode with a reckless, bruising violence that struck genuine alarm in Stephen's chest.

The evenings were filled with sumptuous feasts and brilliant conversation; games of whist and billiards; as well as the predictable flirtations one could always took forward to wherever seven lovely, well-born young women and seven eligible gentlemen were thrown into each other's constant company for nearly two weeks.

Clayton fulfilled his role as host to the group with his usual careless elegance, and Stephen sat through meal after meal watching in amusement as the women flirted shamelessly with him, doing everything within the limits of propriety (and frequently beyond) to hold his attention. Occasionally, a lazy grin would flash across Clayton's features as he listened to whatever woman was speaking to him, but the shuttered look never left his eyes.

Twelve of the fourteen days had passed and the guests were due to leave the following morning. They were gathered that evening in the drawing room and Stephen's watchful gaze slid with increasing, concerned frequency to his brother.

"I think your brother is bored with us," Janet Cambridge told Stephen, nodding playfully toward Clayton who was standing alone, his shoulder propped against the window frame, staring out into the darkness.

Clayton heard her, as she intended that he should, but he did not bother to gallantly reassure her that he wasn't bored, nor did he turn to pay her the flattering attention that Janet was seeking with her remark. Raising his glass, he took a long swallow of his drink, watching the tow-hanging mist swirling and advancing in the night. He yearned to have it close over him and blot out his thoughts, his memory, as it did everything else in its path.

He saw Janet Cambridge's reflection in the window glass and heard her low, throaty laugh behind him. Until a few months ago, he had enjoyed her sensuous beauty and seductive voice. But now she lacked something. Her eyes weren't the green of India jade; she didn't took at him with that teasing, appraising, impudent sidewise glance; she didn't tremble in his arms with shy, awakening emotions that she couldn't identify. She was too available, too eager to please him, but then other women always were. They didn't spar with him or stubbornly defy him. They weren't fresh and alive and witty and wonderful. They weren't. . . Whitney.

He took another long swallow of his drink to dull the ache that came with just her name. He wondered what she was doing. Was she planning to marry Sevarin? Or was she with DuVille instead? DuVille was in London; he would be able to comfort her and tease her, to help her forget. DuVille would suit her better, Clayton decided with a wrenching pain. Sevarin was dull and weak, but DuVille was sophisticated and urbane. Clayton hoped with all his heart that she would choose the Frenchman. Well, with half his heart; the other half twisted in agony at the image of Whitney as another man's wife.

He tortured himself by thinking of the way she had said, "I was going to tell you that I would marry you." And bastard that he was, he had mocked her! Viciously, deliberately, coldly stolen her innocence! And when he had finished, she had put her arms around him and cried. Oh Christ! he had all but raped her and she had cried in his arms.

Clayton dragged his thoughts from that night. He preferred the more refined torture of thinking about the joy of her: the jaunty way she had looked at him at the starting line of their race, just before the pistol fired. "If you would care to follow me, I shall be happy to show you the way."

He could still visualize her exactly as she was that night La the garden at the Armands' masquerade, her beautiful face aglow with irreverent merriment because he had told her he was a duke. "You are no duke," she had laughed. "You have no quizzing glass, you don't wheeze and snort, and I doubt you have even a mild case of gout. Tm afraid you'll have to aspire to some other title, my lord."

He thought of the way she had melted against nun and kissed him with sweet passion that day beside the pavilion. God, what a warm, fiery, loving creature she could be-when she wasn't being stubborn and rebellious . . . and wonderful.

Clayton closed his eyes, cursing himself for letting Whitney leave Claymore at all. He should have demanded that she marry him as soon as he could summon a cleric to the house. And when she put up a fight, he could have bluntly pointed out that since he had already taken her virginity, she had no choice in the matter. Then, in the months that followed, he could have found some way to make up for what happened.

Clayton slammed his glass down and strode past the guests and out of the room. There was nothing he could ever do to atone for the profane act he had committed against her. Nothing!

The guests departed early the following morning and the brothers celebrated their last evening together by getting purposely, thoroughly, blindly drunk. They reminisced about their boyhood misdemeanors and when they ran out of those, they began telling each other bawdy stories, laughing uproariously at the tavern jokes, and drinking all the while.

Clayton reached for the decanter of brandy and spilled the last drop of it into his empty glass. "Migawd!" Stephen rasped admiringly, watching him. "You drinked . . . drunked . . . finished the whole damned bottle." He grabbed another crystal decanter and pushed it across the table toward Clayton. "Here, see what you can do to the whiskey."

Clayton shrugged indifferently and pulled the top from the decanter.

Through slightly bleary eyes, Stephen watched him fill the glass to the brim. "What the hell are you trying to do, drown yerself?"

"I am trying," Clayton informed him in a proud, drunken tone, "to beat you to the finish line of oblivion."

"Probably you will, too." Stephen nodded jerkily. "But I was always the better man. It was unkind in you to be born, Big Brudder."

"Right. Never should've done it. Wisht I hadn't, but she's . . . she's paid me back for it tenfold."

Although the words were slurred, they were filled with such Weak pain and despair that Stephen snapped his head up and stared, as alert as his sodden wits would permit. "Who paid you back for being born?"

"She did."

Stephen shook his head, desperately trying to clear the alcohol euphoria from his hazy senses and concentrate. "Which . . . she?"

"The one with the green eyes," Clayton whispered in an agonized voice. "She's making me pay."

"Whad you do to make her want to pay you back?"

"Offered for her," Clayton announced thickly. "Gave her stupid father Ј100,000. Whitney wouldn't have me though." He grimaced, taking a long swallow of whiskey. "Betrothed herself to somebody else. Errybody's talking about it. No," he corrected himself, "she din't get betrothed. But I thought she had and I… and I…"

"And you . . . ?" Stephen rasped softly.

Clayton's features twisted into a mask of anguish. He lifted nis palm to Stephen as if asking nun to understand, then let it fall onto the table. "I didn't believe she was still a virgin," he grated. "Didn't know … till I took her … and .. ."

The tense silence that followed was suddenly shattered by a terrible sound that ripped from Clayton's chest. "Oh, God, I hurt her," he groaned agonizingly. "I hurt her so damned much!" He covered his face with his hands, his voice a hoarse, ravaged whisper. "I hurt her and she . . . she put her arms around me because . . . because she wanted me to hold her. Stephen," he choked brokenly, "she wanted me to hold her while she cried!"

He crossed his arms on the table and buried his face in them, finally sinking into the oblivion he'd been seeking all night. His raw voice was so low Stephen could hardly hear it. "I can still hear her crying," he whispered.

In dumbfounded amazement, Stephen stared at Clayton's bent head, trying to piece together the disjointed story. Apparently his self-confident, invulnerable, older brother had lost his heart to some girl with green eyes named Whitney.

There had been a wild rumor sweeping London this past week that Clayton was betrothed-or on the verge of it-to some female, but that was nothing out of the ordinary and Stephen had shrugged it off as being the usual idle speculation. But it must have been true, and this Whitney must have been the girl.

Stupefied, Stephen continued to gaze at his sleeping brother. It was unbelievable that Clayton, who had always treated women with a combination of amused tolerance and relaxed indulgence, could have been driven to rape. And why? Because the girl refused to marry him? Because he was jealous? Impossible! And yet the evidence was across from him; Clayton was tearing himself apart with remorse.

Stephen sighed. Clayton had always been surrounded by dazzling women; Whitney must have been very special to have meant so much to him, for it was perfectly obvious that he loved her desperately-and still did.

In fact, Stephen thought tiredly, if the girl had turned to Clayton for comfort after he had just forcibly deprived her of her virginity, she must have loved Clayton a little too. More than a little.

The following morning, the brothers shook hands on the front steps, neither able to look at the bright, sunlit day without flinching in pain. The duchess waved a cheerful goodbye to Clayton, then rounded on Stephen. "He looks awful!"

"He feels awful," Stephen assured her, gingerly rubbing his temples.

"Stephen," she said firmly, "there is something I wish to discuss with you." She swept into the salon, closed the door behind them, and sat down in the nearest chair. Then she took an extraordinarily long time arranging her skirts to her satisfaction. In a halting but determined voice, she said, "Last night I couldn't sleep, so I came downstairs, thinking I'd spend a little more time with the two of you. When I reached the library, I realized that both of you were shockingly in your cups, and I was about to say how stunned I was to discover that I had raised two drunken louts, when I… when I …"

Stephen's lips twitched with laughter at the "drunken louts" but otherwise he kept his face straight. "When you overheard what Clay was telling me?" he assisted her.

Miserably, she nodded. "How could he have done such a thing?"

"I'm not certain why he did it," Stephen began carefully. "Obviously he cared for the girl, and he's a man-"

"Don't treat me like an imbecile, Stephen," her ladyship interrupted hotly. "I am a grown woman. I've been married and I've borne two sons. I am perfectly aware that Clayton is a man and that, as such, he has certain … ah …"

"Certain urges?" Stephen provided when she began fanning her flushed face, looking agonizingly ill at ease. She nodded but Stephen said, "What I was trying to say is that Clay is a man who has always been sought after by women, yet he never cared for any of them enough to offer marriage.

Apparently, he finally found the woman he wanted. If he gave her father Ј100,000, I assume the girl is undowered and her family is poor, but even so, she refused him."

"She must have been seven kinds of fool to refuse your brother," Lady Westmoreland exclaimed. "She would have to be stupid not to want him."

Stephen grinned at her loyalty, but he shook his head. "It's unlikely the girl is stupid or foolish. Clay has never been interested in vapid, empty-headed misses."

"I suppose you're right," Lady Westmoreland sighed, coming to her feet. She stopped at the door and gave Stephen a sad look over her shoulder. "I think," she said quietly, "that he must have adored her."

"He did."

Clayton read the legal document dissolving the betrothal agreement, then signed it and quickly shoved it across the desk to the solicitor. He could barely stand the sight of it. "There's something more," he said when the solicitor began to rise. "See that this note and a bank draft for Ј10,000 are delivered along with the document to Miss Stone at her home."

Clayton pulled open one of the heavy, carved drawers of his desk and extracted a blank sheet of white parchment with his seal embossed in silver at the top.

He stared at the blank sheet, the moment freezing in time.

He couldn't believe it had truly come to this. How could it be ending like this, with this wrenching stab of pain and loss, when he'd been so confident only a few weeks ago that it would end with Whitney standing beside him as his bride, lying beside him as his wife?

He forced himself to pick up the quill and write the words, "Please accept my sincere wishes for your happiness and convey them to Paul. The enclosed bank draft is intended as a gift." Clayton hesitated, knowing that Whitney would fly into a rage over the money, but he couldn't bear to think of her having to pinch pennies for a new gown, which she would have to do as Sevarin's wife. If by some miracle she didn't marry Sevarin, then the money would be hers. At least her stupid father couldn't once more spend everything she had.

"Enclose the draft and this note in the same envelope as that." He jerked his head toward the hateful document dissolving their betrothal. Rising, he concluded the painful interview with a silent nod of dismissal.

When the solicitor left, Clayton sank back down in his chair, fighting against the impulse to have the man stopped at the gates and brought back, to snatch the envelope from him and tear it to pieces. Instead he leaned his head against the padded leather back of his chair and closed his eyes. "Oh little one," he breathed aloud, "why do I have to send you that damned envelope?"

He thought of the words he had really wanted to write to hen "Please come back to me. Just let me hold you and I swear I will make you forget. I'll fill your days with laughter and your nights with love. I'll give you a son. And if you still can't love me, then all I ask is that you give me a daughter. A daughter with your eyes, your smile, your-"

Swearing savagely, he lurched forward and grabbed the stack of correspondence that had accumulated in his absence.

With single-minded determination, Clayton threw himself into the task of forgetting her. He immersed himself in work, spending hours each day poring over reports on his present business investments and planning future ones. He drove his secretary, Mr. Hudgins, so hard that an assistant had to be hired for the man. He met with his business managers, his estate managers, his stewards, and his tenants. He worked until it was time to go out at night to attend a ball, the opera, the theatre.

Each evening he deliberately escorted a different woman, hoping each time that this woman would spark something within him-something that had died four weeks ago. But if she was blond, Clayton discovered that he had an aversion to pale hair. If she was brunette, her hair lacked the lustre of Whitney's. If she was vivacious, she grated on his nerves. If she was sultry, he found her distasteful. If she was quiet, he had a wild urge to shake her and say, "Dammit, say something!"

But slowly, very slowly, he found his balance again. He began to feel that if he continued to block a pair of laughing green eyes from his memory, he might actually forget her someday.

As the weeks passed, he smiled more easily, and, occasionally, he was even able to laugh.