Whitney My Love Read online

  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 loved her.”

  “I agree.”

  * * *

  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 her: “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 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.

  26

  * * *

  Whitney’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.

  Aunt Anne and Whitney’s father were coming up to London for Elizabeth’s wedding—Elizabeth had surprised everyone by deciding she wished to be married in all the splendor London could provide. As much as she longed to see her beloved aunt, Whitney dreaded the confrontation. In four days Aunt Anne would arrive, expecting to find Clayton and Whitney acting like an unofficially engaged couple. Instead, Whitney was going to tell her that she was never going to marry the Duke of Claymore. And Aunt Anne would insist on knowing why.

  Why? Whitney thought wildly, rehearsing the scene with her aunt. “Because he dragged me away from Emily’s party, he took me to his house and he tore my clothes off, and he made me get into his bed.”

  Aunt Anne would be stunned and outraged, but she would want to know what had happened before that. She would want to know why. Whitney sank down onto a park bench, her shoulders drooping with confused despair. Why had Clayton believed she had given herself to Paul? And why hadn’t he at least come to find out how she was faring? Or to tell her what he was going to do?

  Not once in the last four weeks had Whitney allowed herself to think about that night, but now that she had started, she couldn’t stop. She tried to remember Clayton as the man who had coldly and viciously ripped her clothes off. Instead she remembered him in that awful, pain-blurred moment when he had discovered her virginity. She saw his tensed shoulders above her, his head thrown back, his face a tortured mask of anguish and regret.

  She wanted to remember the names he had called her and the in