Authors: Judith McNaught
Whitney was walking toward the door when he came in.
Without a word he strode right past her, went into his dressing room, and
began shrugging out of his jacket.
She followed him, unable to keep the tears from her
voice as she said, "Why are you doing this, Clayton?"
He jerked his shirt off but did not deign to answer her.
"Be-because of our baby?" she persisted in a whisper.
His eyes raked over her. "Because of a baby," he
corrected her.
"You-you don't like children?"
"Not another man's children," he informed her icily.
Flinging his shirt onto a chair, he turned, caught her elbow in a bruising
grip and began forcibly escorting her from the room.
"But you must want children of your own," Whitney said
brokenly as she was unceremoniously thrust into the hallway in full sight of
a passing servant
"Of my own," Clayton emphasized in a menacing voice, He
loomed over her with one hand on the door as if he were about to shut it in
her face.
"Are we going to the Wilsons' tonight? I-I accepted
their invitation weeks ago.
"I am going out. You can do as you damn well please."
"But," Whitney pleaded, "are you going to the Wilsons'?
If you are ..."
"No!" he snapped. Then in a terrible voice, he added,
"And if I ever find you in this room, or even in this wing of this house
again, I will personally remove you. And I promise you, Whitney, you won't
like the way I do it" The door slammed in her face.
Clayton stood rigidly still in the room on the other
side of the dosed door, his hands clenching and unclenching as he tried to
bring this new onslaught of fury under control. By dawn this morning he had
managed to drink himself into near oblivion in his study. But not before he
had carefully, coldly considered all the ways he could avenge himself for
his misplaced love and trust. He would take a mistress, flagrantly flaunt
her until Whitney teamed of her existence. Society would overlook a married
man with a mistress; it always had. But Whitney would be caught in a vice.
She'd not be able to go out alone very often without causing talk. And if
she appeared with another man she would be publicly scorned and ostracized.
But even that wasn't enough. If she was going to bear a
child, and he was going to have to give it his name, then by God he wasn't
going to have to look at it and wonder whose it was! He'd send the brat away
from his sight. But not right away. First he would let her keep the child
for a year or two until she was deeply attached to it; then he would wrench
the babe away from her. The child-that would be his ultimate weapon. He
didn't care whether it was the result of her duty little liaison with her
lover or whether it was the living proof of his own desires.
Whitney stood there staring at the oak panel. Her throat
ached and her eyes burned, but she would not cry! The more she had tried to
plead with him, the more pleasure he'd taken in verbally abusing her.
Stiffly, she walked down the long hall to the sanity . . . no, not the
sanity, this was all insane . . . to the safety of her rooms.
Mary and Clarissa were both working in the master suite,
moving Whitney's clothes into the next room, and everything was in disorder.
"If you dont mind," Whitney said, drawing a shaking breath, "I-I would like
to be alone for a while. You can finish this later." They both looked so sad
and so sympathetic that Whitney couldn't bear it.
When they left she looked all around her, trying to
assimilate what was happening to her. Clayton was actually casting her aside
because their lovemaking had resulted in her pregnancy.
For the first time since last night, Whitney felt a
surge of genuine anger. Since when was pregnancy entirely the woman's fault?
And just exactly what had he supposed was going to happen if they made love
together? Naive she might have been, but even she had known that this is how
babies were made. She had half a mind to go storming back to his rooms and
inform him of that!
The more she thought of it, the angrier she became.
Putting up her chin, Whitney marched over to the bellpull and summoned
Clarissa. "Please have my blue silk pressed," she said. "And have the
carriage brought round after dinner. I am going out."
Four hours later, Whitney swept into the dining room.
Her hair was twisted into elaborate coils entwined with a rope of sapphires
and diamonds, with soft tendrils falling at her ears, If they were going to
live like strangers, then they could live like friendly strangers. But if
Clayton thought for one mo-ment that after she bore his child he was going
to be permitted to come to her bed again and take up where they had left off
before yesterday-well, he didn't know her quite so well as he thought!
Except that when he automatically came to his feet when
she walked into the room, Whitney took one look at him and felt a pang of
longing and need so strong that she felt faint. He was so splendid, so
unbearably handsome that if he had just smiled at her a little she would
have flung herself against him and begged him . . . but begged him for what?
For forgiveness for loving him? Or for carrying his child?
Several times during their silent meal, Whitney was
aware of his gaze resting momentarily on her breasts which swelled
beautifully above the sapphire bodice of her gown. And each time Clayton
looked away again, she had the feeling that he was more furious than the
time before. She almost wondered if it were possible that he was the least
bit jealous. After all, this was the first time that they had ever gone to
separate affairs in the evening. The next time his gaze slid to her breasts,
she asked innocently, "Do you like my new dress?"
"If you mean to display your charms to the world, it
suits you admirably," he said cynically.
"Are you settled into your new rooms?" she asked.
Clayton shoved his plate aside as if her conversation
had ruined his appetite and rose from the table. "I find them vastly
preferable to the ones I occupied before," he said icily. Without another
word, he turned on his heel and strode from the room. A few minutes later
the front door closed behind him, and Whitney heard the sound of his coach
pulling away. She felt deflated, ill and miserable. But she went to the
Wilsons' party and purposely stayed until well past midnight in the vague
hope that Clayton might not like her being out late without him, and would
accompany her the next time.
She was weary to the bone but she woke up abruptly as
her carriage pulled up in the Claymore drive, just as Clayton was alighting
from his. They walked up the stairs together and Whitney could see the taut
anger in the set of his jaw. "Continue to stay out this late and you will
have all London gossiping about you within a week," he said tensely.
Whitney stopped with one hand on the door to her room.
"I will not be able to go out in society once my condition becomes
apparent," she informed him, and then out of sheer obstinacy, she gave her
head a toss and added, "Besides, I was having a wonderful time!" She was not
absolutely sure, but she thought he swore under his breath.
The next morning she went down to the stables and was
bluntly refused a mount. She was hurt, confused, and angry. She was also
embarrassed, as were the grooms who had to tell her that those were his
grace's orders. Whitney was too distressed to reconsider her actions.
Without a word, and looking very much like the young duchess she was, she
swung on her heel and marched toward the house, through the front door, and
down the hall to Clayton's study, which she entered without bothering to
knock first.
He was in conclave with a large group of men seated in a
semicircle around his desk. They all leapt to their feet, with the exception
of Clayton, who rose with noticeable reluctance.
Smiling angelically at the circle of surprised men,
Whitney said, "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I didn't realize my husband had
visitors." Then to Clayton who was standing rigidly behind his desk: "There
has been a misunderstanding at the stables. No one there seems to realize
that Khan belongs to me. Shall I tell them or would you prefer to explain?"
"Do not," her husband said in a terrible voice, "even
consider getting on him."
"I am sorry to have interrupted your meeting," Whitney
said, hot with embarrassment that he had spoken to her in front of strangers
in that degrading tone. She stormed up to her room. This was madness, cruel,
perverse insanity. Now Clayton intended to keep her from doing anything to
occupy her tune. He wanted to deprive her of her smallest joys in life. She
jerked off her riding hat. She hated wearing those silly hats when half the
fun of riding was feeling the wind in your hair. She took two steps toward
her dressing room, intending to change her clothes, and changed her mind
instead.
She stormed back to the stables, gave the first groom
who stepped in front of her such a haughty look of disdain that he stepped
aside, and then she strode into Khan's stall. She curried him herself. She
bridled him herself and then she inarched over to the rack where her saddle
was kept and dragged it down. She gained courage with each second. After
all, not one of them would dare to lay a hand on her to prevent her from
doing what she had set out to do. It took three tries to swing the heavy
sidesaddle up and over Khan's back, but she finally made it. She tightened
his girth strap as best she could and prayed that it would be tight enough
to hold, then she led him out of his stall.
Whitney rode for three hours. She was tired after the
first hour, but she hated to go back. From the minute she rode off on Khan,
she had known that Clayton would be informed of her action, and she dreaded
having to face him.
She had expected a confrontation later; she had not
expected to find Clayton waiting for her at the stables. He was standing
there with one shoulder propped casually against the whitewashed fence, his
features composed as he conversed with the head groom. Inwardly, Whitney
quailed at the sight of him. She knew that relaxed, almost indolent stance
of his was only a surface calm, beneath which was a murderous fury which he
would unleash on her.
As she trotted briskly past him, Clayton reached out in
a deceptively casual move and caught Khan's bridle, jerking the horse around
to a teeth-jarring stop. His eyes held a terrifying menace and his voice was
so icy, so soft, that Whitney's heart pounded in fear. "Get down!"
Whitney had scarcely conceived the notion of whirling
Khan and racing for parts unknown, when in that same awful voice he said,
"Don't try it, I'm warning you."
To her consternation and fury, Whitney felt her cheeks
grow hot and her hands shake. She swallowed and reached her arms toward him
in an unconsciously childlike gesture. "Then will you help me down?"
Clayton lifted her roughly from the sidesaddle. "How
dare you disobey me," he hissed, his fingers closing cruelly on her upper
arm as he marched her away from the curious grooms and stablekeeps.
Whitney waited until they were out of earshot of the
stable and approaching the rear door of the house before she pulled her arm
away and turned on him. "Disobey you?!" she repeated, stamping her foot. "Do
you mean to actually remind me of my vows? Why of all the- Would you like me
to remind you of yours, my lord?"
"I will give you a warning. Just one," Clayton
enunciated viciously. "Call it advice, if you prefer."
"If I wanted advice," Whitney retorted, her eyes
sparkling with jade fire, "you would be the last person on earth I would
ask!" She opened her mouth to say more, then changed her mind at the boiling
wrath her outburst brought to his features.
"Defy me one more time-just once more, and I will have
you locked in your rooms until your brat is born."
"I'm sure you would like nothing more!" Whitney said,
hating him for calling her baby a brat. "You are the meanest, cruelest.. .
you're a fraud and a liar! How dare you have told me you love me and then
treat me so! And another thing, my lord duke," she added in choking fury,
"which I'm sure will come as a tremendous surprise to you: It so happens
that making love makes babies!"
Clayton was so stunned by her ridiculous "revelation"
that he never saw the blow coming. She caught him full on the side of the
face with the flat of her hand, then reared back, looking like a tempestuous
goddess in all her fine fury.
"Go ahead and hit me back," she raged. "You want to hurt
me. What's wrong--have you lost your desire to torture me?" she taunted,
ignoring the drumming pulse at his temple. "Well good, because I'm just
angry enough to do it again!" She swung wide, then gasped with pain as her
wrist was caught in a vise-like grip a split second before her hand would
have crashed into his face.
Jerking her wrist up behind her back, Clayton brought
her slamming against his chest. "You are a beautiful, conniving, deceitful
little bitch," he said furiously. "But just once in our misbegotten lives
together, tell me one small truth. Just one honest admission. I swear that
whether the answer is 'I don't know' or 'yes' I won't care either way."
"You swear to me?" Whitney hurled back at him. "As you
swore at our wedding? As you swore in this house never to hurt me? Your word
isn't worth the-"
"Is the child mine?" Clayton snapped, viciously
tightening his cruel grip.
Her eyes widened until they were huge green orbs; her
soft lips parted in shocked disbelief that was so convincing Clayton
wondered for a split-second if somehow he was wrong about everything. Tears
of outrage sprang into her eyes. "Is it yours? Yours?" Her voice rose and
then, unexpectedly, she collapsed against him, her shoulders quaking
violently.
Clayton released his grip on her wrist. He wanted to
thrust her slender, shaking form away from him And he wanted just as much to
gather her into his arms and bury his face in her hair. But more than
anything, he longed to take her into the house and ease the pain in his
heart with her body. She was clinging with both hands to his lapels, her
shoulders shaking, her face buried in his chest, saying over and over again,
"Is it yours?"