Whitney, My Love

by Judith McNaught

In the mood Stephen was in at that moment, he couldn’t imagine anything more urgent, or more dire, than what was happening in that room. A moment later, when he opened the door, he realized he had underestimated fate’s ability to rain down crushing blows on the innocent and unwary. “Have my coach brought round and waiting in front immediately,” he ordered the butler.

  He turned to Emily who looked frantic and put his arms around her. “I must leave at once. My sister-in-law took a fall and my mother thinks the baby is coming early. Much too early,” he added, more to himself than to her as he let her go.

  Emily walked with him to the front door, running a little to keep up with his long strides. “Are you going to Grand Oak?”

  “No, I’m going to our family physician. He lives beyond here, another hour to the north, but my horses are rested by now, and I’m already halfway there. I can reach him faster than the footman could have done.” Ignoring the presence of the butler and footmen in the front hall, Stephen pulled her into his arms for a quick, reassuring kiss. “Have faith in me, and in us,” he whispered, then he ran down the front steps, calling orders to his coachman to push his team to their limits.

  40

  * * *

  Emily returned to the drawing room, wrapped herself in a shawl, and sat close to the fire, but she couldn’t stop shivering because the chills that shook her originated from within. Her father walked in a few minutes later, and she stood up, filled with a dread that made her knees knock.

  “I passed Westmoreland’s coach just before I turned into the drive,” the duke announced angrily, “and his damnable coachman nearly ran me off the road!”

  “Stephen had to leave very suddenly just now—an emergency,” she explained, too upset to notice that she’d called Stephen by his given name. “His sister-in-law fell at Grand Oak and he’s on his way to fetch a physician. The baby may come early because of her fall.”

  “A pity,” he said perfunctorily, then his thoughts promptly reverted to his own concerns. “When Westmoreland arrived tonight, he told Jenkins he wanted to speak with me. Do you know what he wanted to discuss?”

  Emily nodded. Swallowing, she squared her shoulders and braced herself for an outburst of rage. “He intended to ask you for my hand in marriage.”

  Her father’s face went white with fury. “You little fool! You idiot! How could you let things get as far as that?”

  “I don’t know. It just—happened.”

  “Happened?” he thundered, then he lowered his voice to an infuriated hiss. “Damn you! Do you have any idea of what you’ve done? What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. I told him I was already betrothed to Glengarmon.”

  “Is that all you told him?”

  “No. I told him I had to marry Glengarmon because you wanted our lands joined and because it was my duty to marry in accordance with your wishes.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He was terribly upset. Papa, please believe me. I never imagined Stephen cared so much. I knew there was gossip and speculation that he planned to offer for me, but I never believed it. I had no reason to.”

  “Good God, this is a calamity! You have put me in the untenable position of having to turn down Stephen Westmoreland and alienating him and his entire family in the doing.” Raking his hand through the side of his hair, he paced once across the room, then rounded on her. “There’s only one solution: You will have to marry Glengarmon at once. Glengarmon can get a special license in the morning and you can be wed immediately.”

  Emily looked at him, then she turned and gazed at the fire, but she did not object. “Very well, Papa.”

  41

  * * *

  More terrified than he’d been when Whitney stumbled on the edge of a carpet and fell half-way down a flight of steps the night before, Clayton paced back and forth in the foyer at Grand Oak, his attention on the doorway at the top of the staircase. Beyond that door, his wife was giving birth to his child two months early, and both mother and baby were in the hands of Hugh Whitticomb.

  In the last twenty-four hours, Clayton’s opinion of Hugh Whitticomb had been dwindling from moment to moment. When Whitticomb first arrived the night before, he’d examined Whitney and reassured the family that mother and babe seemed to be doing quite well. This morning, he’d added more assurances to his original diagnosis. “There’s no sign that the babe will come early because of her fall,” he’d told Clayton and the others, “but I’ll stay until tonight, just in case I’m wrong.”

  By then, Clayton was unnerved to the point of issuing commands and following them up with threats. “If you think there is even an infinitesimal possibility that baby is going to come early, you’ll stay here for the next two months!” he decreed.

  Cocking his head to the side, Hugh Whitticomb had regarded him with the amused sympathy he always felt for men who were about to become fathers for the first time. “Just out of curiosity, what would you do to keep me here?”

  “I would not have any trouble finding a way, believe me,” Clayton snapped.

  “I have no doubt of it,” Hugh said with a chuckle. “I was merely curious. When your mother caught a chill a month before you were born, I believe your father threatened to hold me prisoner in the dungeon at Claymore. Or was that the Earl of Sutton? No . . . the earl merely sent my coach home and then refused me any of his conveyances.”

  His amusement vanished an instant later, when Whitney’s maid came flying out of the room and leaned over the landing. “She’s having pains, Dr. Whitticomb.”

  That was hours before, and since then Clayton had only been allowed to see Whitney twice and for only a few minutes each time. She looked pale and fragile in the big four-poster bed, but her pains were erratic, so she smiled her beautiful smile and invited him to sit beside her on the bed. “I love you, and I’m going to give you a wonderful, healthy baby in a little while,” she told Clayton, hiding her fright behind reassuring words. Clayton had been profoundly relieved—until a hard pain struck her, arching her back clear off the bed. “You need to leave now,” she said as she bit down on her lip until it drew blood.

  Clayton had vented his helpless rage on Whitticomb. “Dammit, can’t you do something for her?”

  “I am doing something for her,” Hugh replied. “I am going to send you downstairs now so that she doesn’t have to worry about you when the pains come.”

  An hour later, Clayton had insisted on seeing for himself that she was alright, and when the physician tried to stop him at the door, Whitney had called out to let him come in. She looked far more pale and her forehead was damp with perspiration. Clayton sat near her hip, smoothed her heavy hair off her forehead, and solemnly promised, “I will never let this happen to you again.”

  Another pain hit her before she could reply and Clayton snatched her into his arms, rocking her like a baby. “I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes blurred with tears of terror. He’d been evicted after that and the door to her room locked to keep him out.

  Whitticomb appeared periodically after that to give the family encouraging little bulletins, and false predictions about the hour of the baby’s likely arrival. Clayton wasn’t reassured by anything he said. Tearing his eyes from the door at the top of the staircase, he glanced at the clock in the hallway, saw that it was after nine, then he stalked over to the doorway of the drawing room where Stephen and his mother were keeping a vigil with Lord and Lady Gilbert. “Whitticomb is an incompetent imbecile!” Clayton told them furiously. “I’m going to send for a mid-wife, no, for two mid-wives.”

  Lady Gilbert smiled weakly. “I’m sure the baby will come soon and everything will be all right.” She did not succeed in reassuring Clayton because she was terrified and Clayton could see it.

  Lord Gilbert seconded his wife’s prediction with an emphatic nod of his head and a hearty voice: “It’ll happen any moment. Nothing to worry about. Babies are born every second of every day.” In Clayton’s opinion, Lord Gilbert was even more panicked
than Lady Gilbert.

  Stephen lifted his head out of his hands and gazed at Clayton in mute helplessness. Stephen, Clayton realized, had too much respect for his older brother to tell him lies he didn’t believe.

  The dowager duchess stood up and walked over to him. “I truly feel in my heart there is nothing to worry about,” she said shakily. “In my heart, I feel that Whitney and the babe will be perfectly fine.”

  Clayton paled and headed for a decanter of brandy on the side table. The last time his mother had made a prediction like that one was when her favorite mare had fallen ill. The mare died the next morning.

  He knew everyone was praying because they couldn’t do anything else. He knew it as surely as he knew that Hugh Whitticomb was a callous, incompetent idiot.

  “Your grace?”

  Everyone in the room looked up at Hugh Whitticomb who was standing in the doorway, looking suddenly haggard.

  Clayton froze. “Yes?”

  “Would you like to go upstairs and greet your son?”

  Clayton felt as if he were rooted to the carpet. He had to swallow over the lump in his throat to ask, “How is my wife?”

  “She is doing beautifully.”

  Clayton strode from the room and resisted an unprecedented impulse to embrace the excellent physician.

  When he left, Hugh Whitticomb walked over to the decanter of brandy and removed a handkerchief to mop his brow. The dowager duchess appeared at his side and touched his arm. “How was it?” she asked softly.

  “She gave me a scare, Alicia. She lost some blood, but she’s going to be fine. Even before the bleeding started, I’d no intention of leaving here until tomorrow, at the earliest. You know that.”

  “Of course I do,” she said with a teary smile, then she gave into the impulse that Clayton had ignored and hugged him tightly. “Thank you, Hugh,” she whispered. “I was terrified.” She looked around at the others. “I can scarcely hold my eyes open. I think I’ll retire.”

  “I believe I’ll do the same,” Lady Gilbert said.

  Lord Gilbert politely arose and when he bent to press a kiss on her cheek, he saw tears of relief glistening in her eyes. “There, there, my dear,” he said with a little laugh, “I told you there wasn’t any reason for alarm. Didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Edward,” Lady Anne said, giving him an abashed smile. “You were right all along.”

  Lord Gilbert leaned around her and peered at Stephen, who looked fifteen years younger than he had a few minutes before. “Just look over there at Stephen. He wasn’t alarmed. You ladies worry too much. Childbirth is the most natural thing in the world, isn’t it, Stephen?”

  “Yes, of course it is,” Stephen averred, smiling at Lord and Lady Gilbert. He stood up and walked over to the decanters of liquor. “I think I’ll have something to drink before I go up to bed—in honor of the occasion.”

  “That’s a capital idea,” Edward Gilbert seconded and promptly joined Stephen at the side table. He watched his wife drift from the room, then he looked around for the physician and realized he had already gone up to bed, leaving only Stephen and himself in the drawing room.

  “What will you have?” Stephen said, gesturing to the array of crystal decanters and glasses.

  “I believe I’ll have the brandy,” Edward replied.

  “Excellent choice,” Stephen replied, handing him a suitable glass along with the entire decanter of brandy. For himself, Stephen chose a glass and a decanter of whiskey.

  In silence the two men settled onto the sofa, then they filled their individual glasses with their choices of liquor. With his glass of whiskey in his hand, Stephen leaned back, stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. Lord Gilbert settled back into the cushions with his brandy glass and adopted the same pose, then he looked at Stephen in silent, masculine communication.

  Together they lifted their glasses and took a deep drink, then they waited for the liquor to begin to burn away the remnants of their terror.

  Stephen drank a great deal more than Lord Gilbert did, but then Stephen had more to forget than just his fear for Whitney and the baby. Emily had sent him a note a few hours before.

  She’d written to tell him that she had married Glengarmon.

  42

  * * *

  Three days after Noel Westmoreland’s arrival into the world, Whitney was sitting up in bed, propped up on a pile of pillows, wondering why neither her husband nor her mother-in-law had been in to see her since early that morning.

  Clayton arrived as the clock began to chime the hour of three. “Where have you been all day?” she asked after she returned his kiss.

  “I had to make a trip to Claymore,” Clayton replied, sitting near her left hip. “How are you feeling?”

  “Happy and well.”

  “Excellent. How is my son and heir?”

  “Hungry and very outspoken about it,” Whitney laughed. “Clarissa insisted on taking him to the nursery so I could get some rest, but I’m not sleepy.”

  “Good, because I’ve brought you a gift from Claymore.”

  “You went all the way to Claymore just to get me a gift?” she said. “I would have rather had you here, keeping me company.”

  “I am intensely flattered to hear that,” he said with a grin. “However, I actually had no choice, and it ended up taking my mother and me several hours longer than we expected to find what we were looking for.”

  Whitney was about to ask for further explanation when his mother appeared in the doorway followed by the butler who was carrying a heavy object concealed by a tasseled red velvet cloth.

  “I am to blame for his absence,” the dowager duchess replied with an impenitent smile. “I couldn’t recall exactly where I put this for safe-keeping, and so Clayton had to search for it.” She looked at the butler and gestured for him to place the object on the bed, on Whitney’s right side.

  “What is it?” Whitney asked, looking from one to the other of them.

  “It is the loveliest of all the traditions in the family, and it is always presented to each successive Duchess of Claymore during her lying-in after the birth of the heir.” As she spoke, she bent and carefully lifted the red velvet away, to reveal a splendid wooden chest with gold hasps and pearl inlays. It looked as if it were hundreds of years old.

  Whitney reached for the lid, her eyes alight with curiosity. “It looks like some sort of treasure chest?”

  “It is, but with one difference. After you explore the sort of treasure it contains, you must add a similar one of your own, and then you must place a likeness of yourself inside it. You may keep the chest with you while you lie abed, and after that it will be put away until the next Duchess of Claymore lies abed with a new heir.”

  Her mother-in-law was being unusually oblique and mysterious, Whitney realized, but she was more concerned that she might not be able to do her part in keeping the hallowed tradition alive. “Treasures? A likeness of myself?” she said worriedly. “When we came for the holidays, I didn’t expect any of this to happen. I never knew about any sort of tradition.”

  “Of course you did not,” the duchess reassured her, giving Whitney’s cheek a fond pat. “However, I made certain months ago that Clayton knew, and he has brought a likeness of you that you may put within the chest.”

  “But how am I to add a treasure similar to those inside?”

  “Open the chest and see its treasures,” the duchess instructed. “Clayton and I will leave you to explore them.”

  Completely baffled and thoroughly intrigued, Whitney lifted the golden latch and with both hands she opened the heavy lid. A thrill of delight shot through her and she raised glowing eyes to her smiling mother-in-law. “Letters!” she exclaimed. “Letters and miniature portraits! Oh, look, here’s an ivory fan—and here’s a ribbon. They must have been terribly special for some reason.”

  She was so excited that she scarcely noticed that her husband and mother-in-law were leaving the room, closing the door behind them.

>   With infinite care, Whitney removed each item from the chest and arranged them on the bed beside her. There were eight letters, most of them yellowed and some in danger of crumbling with age, which explained why the chest was only allowed to be opened for a few days before it had to be put away for another two decades.

  One of the letters had been written on parchment and rolled into a thick scroll. Thinking it could be the oldest, Whitney gently unrolled it and saw that she was correct.

  It was written on the sixth day of January, 1499, in the elaborate, scholarly hand of the first Duchess of Claymore.

  “I am Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland, Duchess of Claymore, wife of Royce Westmoreland and mother of William, born to us on the third day of January. I send you my loving greetings . . .”

  Mesmerized, Whitney read the tale of the first duke and duchess of Claymore, set down in wondrous detail by Jennifer Merrick Westmoreland. She wrote of jousts and tournaments and battles fought by her victorious husband, who was called “The Black Wolf,” but instead of concentrating on the sorts of details that would interest a man, she set out to explain the truth of her life to the women who would someday succeed her as the duchesses of Claymore.

  She wrote of her outrage when The Black Wolf abducted her from her family’s castle in Scotland and took her to England. When she described her clever efforts to escape his clutches, she made Whitney laugh out loud. She described his ire when he was forced to marry her by royal decree, and Whitney experienced the same indignation and fear that Jennifer Westmoreland would have felt. She wrote of the tournament he fought where she championed another knight against him, and Whitney sighed with shared guilt.

  But it was Jennifer Westmoreland’s love for her husband that shined so brightly at the end of the letter that Whitney’s eyes blurred with tears.

  She ended her letter with an explanation that she was putting a likeness of herself in the chest with her scroll so that her future daughters-in-law might know her face. “When I told my lord husband of my need for a small likeness and my plan for this chest to pass down through the generations, he commissioned an artist and presented me with this miniature. It is most flattering,” she confided modestly. “My eyes are not so large, nor my features nearly so fine, but my husband swears it is a perfect likeness. It was also his thought that my name should be engraved upon the back of the frame so that if my hopes for this chest come about, then you will be able to find my face among the many likenesses of all the duchesses of Claymore contained within the chest. I pray that each of your husbands will do as mine has done. I only wish that I could know your faces.”