Whitney, My Love (41 page)

Esterbrook's brows lifted in amused mockery. "Vanessa
was not nearly so complimentary when she remarked about you a few moments
ago, Miss Stone. But then, she is quite convinced that you have wrung an
offer from Claymore. Have you?" he asked abruptly.

Whitney was so stunned by his monumental nerve that she
didn't even consider getting angry. In fact, her eyes danced with laughter.
"Somehow, I cannot conceive of anyone 'wringing' anything from him, can
you?"

"Oh come now," Esterbrook said testily, "I am not naive
enough to believe you misunderstood my question."

"And I," Whitney said softly, "am not naive enough to
believe I have to answer it."

With the exception of Lord Esterbrook, all her other
partners were lavishly attentive and outrageously flattering, but the
dancing and animated conversation eventually began to wear on her. She found
herself longing to be at Clayton's side. Declining her current partner's
request for another dance, she asked him to return her to the duke instead.

As usual, Clayton was surrounded with people, but
without looking up from the conversation, he reached out and firmly took her
arm, drawing her into the circle of his friends, and keeping her close to
his side. It was a casually possessive gesture that somehow added to
Whitney's sense of euphoric well-being ... as did the next two glasses of
champagne.

"What happened to Esterbrook?" Clayton asked drily a
while later. "I expected him to ask you for a third dance."

Whitney twinkled. "He did. But I refused."

"To prevent gossip?"

An unconsciously provocative smile curved her lips as
she shook her head in denial. "I refused because I knew you didn't want me
to dance with him the last time, and I was quite, quite certain that if I
did it again, you would retaliate by dancing again with Miss Standfield."

"That's very astute of you," he complimented softly.

"And very perverse of you," Whitney admonished,
laughing. And then it dawned on her that she had just admitted to being
jealous.

"Cherie-" Nicki's deep chuckle brought her spinning
around in joyous surprise. "Have you now decided to conquer London as you
did Paris?"

"Nicki!" she breathed, beaming at the handsome face that
had been so dear to her for so long. "It's wonderful to see you," she said
as he took both her hands in his familiar warm grasp and held them. "I asked
Lord Rutherford if you were here, but he said you had been delayed in Paris
and might not arrive until tomorrow."

"I got here an hour ago."

Whitney turned to Clayton, intending to introduce Nicki
to him, but evidently they had already met. "Claymore, isn't it?" Nicki
interrupted her introduction, his tawny eyes surveying Clayton critically.

Clayton's response was an equally cool inclination of
the head, followed by a lazy, mocking smile which Whitney sensed was
deliberately intended either to infuriate or intimidate Nicki. Whitney, who
had never seen either man act this way to anyone before, had a sudden urge
to run for cover, and an equally strong impulse, induced by champagne, to
giggle at the male hostility she had somehow provoked.

"Dance with me," Nicki said, arrogantly disregarding
etiquette, which required that he first ask Clayton if he objected.

Since Nicki was already exerting pressure to draw her
with him to the dance floor, Whitney looked helplessly over her shoulder at
Clayton. "Will you excuse us, please?" she asked.

"Certainly," came Clayton's cupped reply.

The moment Nicki took her in his arms, his features
tightened with disapproval. "What are you doing with Claymore?" be demanded,
and before she could possibly answer, he said, "Cherie, the man is a ... a
..."

"Are you trying to say he's a frightful rogue where
ladies are concerned?" Whitney asked, struggling against her mirth.

Nicki nodded curtly, and Whitney continued teasingly,
"And he is a trifle arrogant, isn't he? Also very handsome and charming?"

Nicki's eyes narrowed and Whitney's shoulders trembled
with laughter. "Oh Nicki, he is very much like you!"

"With one important difference." Nicki countered, "and
that is that I would marry you!"

Whitney almost clapped her hand over his mouth in
laughing horror. "Don't say that to me, Nicki. Not here and not now. You
would not believe the coil I'm in already."

"This is not a laughing matter," Nicki said sharply.

Whitney swallowed a giggle. "No one knows that better
than I."

Nicki studied her flushed face in frowning silence. "I
am going to stay in London," he announced. "I have business I can transact
while I am here and friends with whom I will visit. You said in your note
that you had social commitments for the next two weeks. At the end of those
two weeks, you and I are again going to discuss the subject of marriage-
when you are in a clearer frame of mind."

Caught between horror and hilarity, Whitney made no
protest and allowed him to return her to Clayton where she downed more
champagne and gaily contemplated her predicament, which was growing more
complicated and perilous by the moment.

Clayton sent word to have his coach brought round; then
he took her in his arms for a last dance. "What amuses you so, little one?"
he asked, smiling down at her and holding her much closer than was seemly.

"Oh, everything!" Whitney laughed. "For example, when I
was a girl I was absolutely positive that no one would ever want to marry
me. And now Paul wants to-and Nicki says he does-and of course, you do."
After a moment's thought, she announced expansively, "I wish I could marry
all three of you, for you are all very nice!" She peeked at him from beneath
her long sooty lashes, and asked almost hopefully, "I don't suppose you are
the least bit jealous, are you?"

Clayton watched her intently. "Should I be?"

"Indeed you should," Whitney said merrily, "if for no
other reason than to flatter my vanity because I was jealous when you danced
with Miss Standfield." She sobered a bit and lowered her voice to the barest
whisper. "I had freckles when I was a girl," she confessed.

"Surely not!" Clayton said in exaggerated shock.

"Yes, thousands of them. Right here-" she jabbed a long
tapered fingernail at the general vicinity of her nose and almost poked her
eye out.

A throaty chuckle escaped Clayton as he quickly
reclaimed her right hand to prevent its being jabbed at her other eye.

"And," Whitney continued in the tone of one admitting to
a ghastly deed, "I used to hang upside down from tree limbs. All the other
girls used to pretend they were royal princesses, but I pretended I was a
monkey ..." She tipped her head back, expecting to see condemnation on
Clayton's face. Instead he was smiling down at her as if she were something
very rare and very fine. "I am having a wonderful time tonight," she said
softly, mesmerized by the tenderness she saw in his eyes.

An hour later, Whitney sighed with contentment and
snuggled deeper into the burgundy velvet squabs of Clayton's coach,
listening to the steady clip-clop of the horses' hooves on the cobbled,
fog-shrouded London streets. Experimentally, she closed her eyes, but
dizziness made her snap them open. She concentrated instead on the weak
yellow light from the flickering coach lamps that sent shadows dancing
within the cozy confines of the coach. "Champagne is very nice," she
murmured.

"You won't think so tomorrow," Clayton laughed, putting
his arm around her.

Clutching his arm to help maintain her fragile balance,
Whitney trailed beside him up the steps toward the front door of the
Archibalds' townhouse, her face turned up to the dawn-streaked sky. At the
front door, Clayton stopped.

Whitney finally realized that he was evidently waiting
for something and pulled her gaze from the sky to his face. Her eyes
narrowed on the laughter tugging at his lips, and she drew herself up to her
fullest height. In a voice of offended dignity, she asked, "Are you thinking
that I have had too much to drink?"

"Not at all. I am hoping that you have a key."

"Key?" she repeated blankly.

"To the door . . ."

"Oh certainly," she proudly declared.

After several moments passed, he chuckled. "May I have
it?"

"Have what?" Whitney asked, trying desperately to
concentrate. "Oh yes, of course-the key." She glanced about, trying to
remember where she'd left her elegant little beaded reticule, and discovered
it hanging haphazardly from her left shoulder by its short golden chain.
Grimacing to herself, she muttered, "Ladies do not carry their reticules
thus," and pulled it down, rummaging clumsily within it until she finally
found the key.

In the darkened entrance hall, Whitney turned abruptly
to bid Clayton good night, misjudged the distance separating them and
collided with his chest. His strong arm encircled her, steadying her. She
could have drawn away, but instead she stood there, her heart beginning to
hammer as his gray eyes slid to her lips, lingering on them for an endless
moment. And then he purposefully lowered his head.

His mouth opened boldly over hers, his hands sliding
intimately over her back and then her hips, molding her tightly to his
muscular frame. Whitney stiffened in confused alarm at the hardening
pressure of his manhood, then suddenly wrapped her arms around his neck and
shamelessly returned his kiss, glorying in the feel of his tongue
insistently parting her lips, then plunging into her mouth, slowly
retreating and plunging again in a wildly exciting rhythm so suggestive that
she felt as if his body were plunging into hers.

Dizzily, she finally pulled away, and then was
disappointed that he released her so readily. Drawing a long, unsteady
breath, she opened her eyes and saw two Claytons gazing down at her, one
superimposed over the other on her swimming vision. "You are shockingly
forward, sir," she admonished severely, then spoiled it with a giggle.

Clayton grinned impenitently. "Understandably so, since
you seem to find my attentions less than repulsive tonight."

Whitney considered that with a hazy, thoughtful smile.
"I suppose that's true," she admitted in a candid whisper. "And do you know
something else-I believe that you kiss quite as well as Paul!" With that
backhanded compliment she turned and started up the stairs. On the second
step, she paused to reconsider. "Actually," she said, looking at Clayton
over her shoulder, "I think you kiss as well as Paul, but I can't be
perfectly certain until he returns. When he does, I shall ask him to kiss me
the way you do, so that I may make a more objective comparison." On a stroke
of brilliance, she added, "I shall make a scientific experiment of it!"

"The hell you will!" Clayton half growled, half laughed.

Whitney lifted her delicate brows in haughty challenge.
"I will if I wish."

A hard smack landed familiarly on her derriere. Whitney
lurched around, swinging her arm in a wide arc with every intention of
slapping his grinning face. Unfortunately, her aim was off and her hand
grazed the wall alongside the staircase instead, dislodging a small painting
and sending it clattering to the polished floor. "Now look what you've
done!" she hissed unfairly, "You're going to awaken the entire household!"
Turning, she flounced up the stairs.

Three Archibald servants were stationed at the sideboard
which was covered with steaming platters of buttered eggs, ham, bacon,
wafer-thin sliced sirloin, fresh crusty rolls, three kinds of potatoes and
several other tempting dishes which Emily had ordered last night after due
consideration as to what was appropriate to serve a man of the Duke of
Claymore's lofty rank. They were waiting for Whitney to come downstairs and
join them for the meal, to which the duke had been invited since he was
escorting Whitney back home that day. Stirring her tea, Emily furtively
studied the duke as he conversed across the table with Michael, while a
romantic daydream of Whitney becoming the Duchess of Claymore floated
through her mind.

"It appears that our houseguest is going to sleep away
the day," Michael remarked.

Emily saw the meaningful look which his grace directed
at her husband as he said mildly, "Whitney may be suffering from the effects
of her evening."

"I had no idea she might be ill," Emily exclaimed. "I'll
go up and see her."

"No," Whitney croaked behind them. "I-I'm here."

At the sound of her hoarse voice, all three turned in
unison. She was standing in the doorway, arms extended, her hands braced
against the doorframe on either side of her, swaying slightly as if she
couldn't support herself. Alarmed, Emily pushed back her chair, but the duke
was already out of his and striding swiftly across the room.

A knowing smile touched Clayton's eyes as he studied her
pale face. "How do you feel, little one?" he asked.

"How do you think I feel?" she whispered, focusing an
anguished, accusing look on him.

"You'll feel better after you've had some breakfast," he
promised, taking her arm to lead her toward the table.

"No," Whitney rasped. "I am going to the."

Chapter Twenty-two

SHE WAS STILL HALF CONVINCED OF IT WHEN THEIR COACH DREW
away from Emily's London townhouse. "Do you know," she whispered miserably,
"I never liked champagne."

With a throaty laugh Clayton put his arm around her and
drew her throbbing head against his shoulder. "I'm rather surprised to hear
that," he teased.

Sighing, Whitney closed her eyes and slept until they
were almost at her home, occasionally clutching Clayton's arm when their
coach gave a particularly sharp lurch

She awakened feeling entirely restored and very
sheepish. "I haven't been very good company," she apologized, smiling
ruefully at Clayton. "If you would like to come for supper. I-"