Whitney, My Love (50 page)

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 �100,000. 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 �100,000, 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 �10,000 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.

Chapter Twenty-six

WHTTNEY'S DAYS IN LONDON HAD ESTABLISHED A PATTERN. SHE
went shopping with Elizabeth and Emily, or for an occasional drive through
the park. Nicki called regularly at the house. Rarely did she let him escort
her anywhere, but at least he came, and he made her smile. And he never
asked her for more than she was able to give.

Elizabeth was a daily visitor. She was so caught up in
her wedding plans, so eager to discuss her gown, the flowers, the banquet
menu, and everything else that concerned the wedding which was only four
days away, that Whitney could hardly remain in the same room with her
exuberant joy, and even while she was frantically thinking up excuses to
leave, Whitney hated herself for not being better able to take pleasure in
Elizabeth's happiness.

She no longer lived in frantic expectation of seeing
Clayton, but neither was she able to relax. She existed in a tense limbo,
suspended between a past she refused to think about and a future she could
not bear to contemplate.

Today was much like the others, except that when
Elizabeth launched into an enumeration of all Peter's wonderful qualities,
Whitney leapt to her feet, excused herself, snatched her cape from her room
and practically ran out of the house. Ignoring the stricture which required
that she take someone with her, she fled to the small park a few blocks
away, then slowed her steps and wandered aimlessly down the deserted paths.