Whitney, My Love (48 page)

His fingers moved within her and she moaned in her
throat.

"So you like that, do you?" he taunted in a low whisper,
then he stopped. "I don't want you to enjoy this too much, my love," he
explained abruptly and shifted his weight on top of her, wedging his knee
between her legs. He grasped her hips, lifting them, at the same moment the
cynical inflection in his voice pierced the thick, sensual haze engulfing
her. Her eyes flew open. She saw his harsh, bitter expression just as
Clayton drew back and then rammed himself full-length into her tight,
virginal passage. Searing pain ripped through her and she screamed, burying
her face in her hands, her back arching. Above her a savage curse exploded
from Clayton's chest. He withdrew, and she stiffened hysterically, trying to
brace herself for the next agonizing pain that would come when he entered
her again . . .

But the pain never came; he remained withdrawn,
motionless.

Whitney's hands fell limply from her face. Through a
blurring haze of tears, she saw him above her. Clayton's head was thrown
back, his eyes clenched shut, his features a mask of tortured anguish. As
she stared at his ravaged face, her body jerked with suppressed sobs until
the burden of holding them back was more than she could bear. She wanted to
be held, to be comforted, and irrationally, she sought this comfort from her
own tormentor. Shuddering on a lonely, convulsive cry, Whitney reached her
arms up around Clay-ton's powerful shoulders and drew him down against her.

With aching gentleness, Clayton gathered her into his
arms, and shifted to lie beside her. Without a word, she turned her face
into his bare chest and wept, cried her heart out in harsh, racking sobs
that shook her slender body with such violence that Clayton thought they
would surely tear her apart. He lay there, holding her defiled, naked body
cradled against him, stroking the rumpled silk of her hair, while he
punished himself with the sound of her muffled weeping, lashed himself with
the tears that poured from her eyes and drenched his chest.

"I-I told Paul I-I wouldn't marry him," Whitney cried
brokenly. "The gossip w-wasn't my fault."

"It wasn't that, little one," Clayton whispered, his
voice raw with emotion. "I'd never have done this to you for that."

"Then why did you?" she choked.

Clayton expelled a ragged breath. "I thought you'd lain
with him. And with others."

Abruptly Whitney's crying subsided. Clutching the sheet
to her naked breasts, she reared up on an elbow and stared at him with
scornful green eyes. "Oh you did, did you!" she hissed, and tore herself
from his embrace, rolling over onto her other side to face the wall. The
bewildered terror that had seized her in the coach evaporated, along with
her belief that he loved her. In a blinding flash of sick humiliation, she
understood that he had done this to degrade her; his monstrous pride had
demanded this unspeakable revenge for some imagined crime. Bile rose in her
throat as she realized that she had submitted to him without struggling. He
hadn't deceived her, she had deceived herself. He hadn't stolen her virtue,
she had given it to him! She had given it to him. Drowning in shame and
self-loathing, she struggled to pull the heavy bedcovers up to cover
herself.

Clayton saw her and reached across to draw them tenderly
over her lovely, naked body. Realizing too late that he had just added
insult to her injury, he put his hand on her shoulder, gently trying to turn
her toward him. "If you'll let me," he implored, "I'd like to explain-"

Furiously, she shrugged his hand off. "I'd like to see
you try! But do it by letter, because if you ever come near me or my family
again, I'll kill you, I swear I will!" The substance of this brave threat
was diminished by the muffled sobs that followed it and seemed to go on
forever until she sank into an exhausted slumber.

His grace, Clayton Robert Westmoreland, Duke of
Claymore, descendent of five hundred years of nobility, possessor of estates
and wealth so vast as to defy comprehension, lay beside the only woman he
had ever loved, helpless either to comfort her or regain her.

He stared at the ceiling, seeing her as she had been
only hours before, conducting a group of merry, would-be musicians.

How could he have done this to her, when all he had ever
wanted to do was pamper and cherish and protect her? Instead he had coldly
and deliberately taken her innocence. And in doing so, he had lost more than
she had, for he had managed to lose the only thing he had ever really wanted
to possess-this one headstrong, beautiful girl lying beside him. Loathing
him.

He remembered all the coarse, vulgar things he'd said to
her in the coach and in this room. Each degrading word he had spoken, each
touch that had hurt her, paraded across his mind bringing a sharp agonizing
pain, so he punished himself by going over and over every vicious thing he
had said and done to her.

Near dawn, she turned onto her back. Clayton leaned over
and tenderly brushed a wayward lock of mahogany hair from her smooth cheek,
then he lay back to watch her sleep. Because he knew that this would be the
last time Whitney would ever lie beside him.

She awoke the next morning, vaguely aware of a
tenderness between her legs and at her waist and thighs. Her lashes
fluttered open and she rolled onto her back. Her mind felt sluggish and
fuzzy as she glanced with half-closed, sleepy eyes at her surroundings.

She was in a gigantic bed situated on a dais. The
immense bedroom was ten times the size of her large bedroom at home, and
splendidly furnished. She blinked dazedly at the thick moss-green carpet
stretching luxuriously across the vast floor. The entire wall to her left
was a sweeping expanse of mullioned glass, and the one across from her had a
marble fireplace so large that she could easily have stood up in the
opening. The two remaining walls were covered with wide, richly carved
rosewood panels and hung with magnificent tapestries. Wearily, Whitney
closed her eyes and started to drift back into the peace of slumber. Odd
that she would be sleeping in a room that seemed so masculine.

Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright in bed.
His bed! His room! Someone opened the door and she cringed backward,
clutching the silk sheets to her bare breasts. The diminutive red-haired
maid Whitney had seen on the balcony the night before came in carrying
Whitney's mended ivory gown and chemise, which she carefully hung over a
door that led into a dressing room. As she turned to go, she saw Whitney
huddled watchfully in the bed and picked up an elegant lace dressing gown
that was draped over a chair. "Good morning, Miss," she said as she
approached the bed, and Whitney bitterly noted that the servant showed no
surprise at finding a naked woman in her master's bed- obviously, it was
nothing out of the ordinary.

"My name is Mary," the maid said in a soft Irish brogue
as she extended her arm over which was draped the lace dressing gown. "May I
help you up?"

Shamed to the depths of her soul, Whitney took her
outstretched hand and climbed unsteadily down from the bed. "Merciful God!"
Mary gasped, her ayes riveted on the blood-stained silk sheets. "What did he
do to you?"

Whitney smothered a trill of hysterical laughter at the
idiocy of the question. "He ruined me!" she choked.

Mesmerized, Mary stared at the blood stains. "He'll pay
an awful price for this in the judgment. The Lord'll not forgive this
easily-the master being what he is, and knowing better, and you a virgin!"
She dragged her eyes from the sheets and led Whitney to a sunken marble bath
which adjoined the bedchambers.

"I hope God doesn't forgive him!" Whitney hissed
brokenly, stepping into the warm bathwater. "I hope he burns in hell! I wish
I had a knife so that I could cut his heart out!" Mary started to soap her
back, but Whitney took the cloth from her and began to scrub every part of
her body that Clayton had touched. Suddenly her hand froze. What insanity
possessed her to climb obediently into this tub when she should be dressed
already and planning a way to escape? She clutched at the maid's wrist, her
green eyes wild with pleading. "I have to leave before he comes back, Mary.
Please help me find some way out of here. You can't believe how badly he
hurt me, the things-awful things-he said to me. If I don't get away,
he'll-he'll make me do that again."

With confused, sorrowful blue eyes, the maid looked down
at Whitney and gently shook her head. "His grace has no wish to enter this
room or keep you here. He told me himself that only I am to look after you.
The coach is already waiting for you around in front, and when you're
dressed, I'm to take you down myself."

Two stories above the main entrance to his house,
Clayton stood at the window, waiting for a last glimpse of her. Waiting to
make his final farewell. The trees bent and sighed in the wind, bowing
deeply to her as she stepped out into a day as bleak and dreary as his soul.
Her gown flew about her as she descended the long sweep of steps to the
waiting coach, and the wind caught her hair, tumbling it wildly about her.

On the bottom step, Whitney paused and for one
agonizing, soul-wrenching moment, Clayton thought that she was going to turn
and look up at him. Helplessly he stretched his hand out, longing to slide
his knuckles over her soft, silken cheek. But all he touched was a cold pane
of glass. As if she sensed somehow that he was watching her, Whitney lifted
her head in that regal way of hers, gave it a defiant toss, and without
looking back, she stepped into the coach.

The brandy glass Clayton was holding shattered in his
clenched hand, and he looked down at the bright red drops oozing from his
fingers.

"I imagine you'll be getting poison of the blood now,"
Mary, standing in the doorway, predicted with a certain amount of
satisfaction.

"Unfortunately, I doubt it," Clayton replied flatly.

Whitney huddled in a corner of the coach, her thoughts
marching dizzily in a tight circle of shame, misery, and anger. She thought
of the vulgar things he had said to her, the businesslike way his hands had
moved over her flesh, expertly evoking an unwilling response from her
traitorous body.

Bitter bile rose up in her throat, choking her. She
wished she were dead-no, she wished he were dead! Last night was only the
beginning of the humiliating nightmare she would have to endure. Michael
Archibald would undoubtedly insist that Emily send her home, for he would
never permit a woman of questionable virtue to associate with his wife. Even
if Whitney could convince him that she had been forced to spend the night
with Clayton, she would still be just as soiled, just as unfit to be
received in polite society.

Fighting down a surge of nausea, Whitney leaned her head
back. Somehow, she had to think of a feasible excuse to give the Archibalds
to explain why she had been gone all night. Otherwise, she'd be banished
from her best friend's company, banished from the company of decent people.
She would spend her life in lonely shame with only her father for company.

After nearly an hour, Whitney finally settled on an
excuse she could give Michael and Emily; it sounded a little lame, but it
might suffice if they didn't question her. Now she felt less afraid, but
infinitely more alone, more vulnerable. There was no one to whom she could
turn for comfort or understanding.

She could write to Aunt Anne who was staying with a
cousin in Lincolnshire, and ask her to come to London. But what could Aunt
Anne do except demand that Clayton marry her immediately? What a punishment
that would be for him, Whitney thought sarcastically. He'd get precisely
what he'd always wanted, and she would be condemned to marriage with a man
she would hate for as long as she lived. If Whitney refused to marry
Clayton, Aunt Anne would naturally turn to Uncle Edward for advice. When
Uncle Edward learned what Clayton had done, he would probably demand that
Clayton give him satisfaction, meaning a duel, which must at all cost be
avoided. In the first place, duelling was illegal now; in the second,
Whitney was terrifyingly certain that that bastard would kill her uncle.

The only other alternative was for Uncle Edward to
demand justice through the courts, but a trial and the public scandal
attached to it would ruin Whitney for as long as she lived.

And so, here she was, forced to bear her hurt and shame
alone, with no way of avenging herself on that devil! But she would think of
something, she told herself bracingly. The next time he came near her, she
would be ready. The next time he came near her? Whitney's hands grew clammy,
and perspiration broke out on her forehead. She would the if he ever came
near her again. She would kill herself before she ever let him touch her! If
he tried to speak to her, if he touched her, she would start screaming and
never be able to stop!

Every servant in the Archibald household seemed to be
hovering in the hallways, watching her with secret condemnation when Whitney
entered the house. She marched bravely past the butler, three footmen, and a
half dozen housemaids with her chin up and her head high. But when she
closed the bedroom door behind her, she collapsed against it, her body
shaking and her chin quivering. Clarissa descended on her a moment later,
bristled up like a maddened porcupine, slamming drawers, muttering under her
breath about "shameless hussies" and "slurs on the family name."

Whitney hid her mortification behind a stony expression
and jerked off the hated ivory satin gown, self-consciously snatching on a
dressing robe when Clarissa's eyes raked suspiciously over her naked body.

"Your poor sweet mother must be spinning in her grave,"
Clarissa announced, plunking her hands on her ample hips.

"Don't say such ghoulish things," Whitney said
wretchedly. "My mother is resting in peace because she knows I've done
nothing to be ashamed of."