"Elope!" Paul's voice lashed out and his fingers bit viciously into her arms. "Are you out of your mind? My mother and sisters would never be able to hold up their heads."
"No," Whitney whispered hoarsely. "The shame will be mine."
"Damn your shame!" he snapped, shaking her. "Don't you see what you've done? 1 have just spent a small fortune on five horses and a phaeton!"
How was that her fault? Whitney wondered, recoiling from the blaze in his eyes. And then she knew. Bitter resentment twined around her heart like sharp steel bands, wringing a ragged, choking laugh from her. "You spent the 'fortune' you thought I had-the dowry you imagined I would bring, didn't you?"
Paul didn't have to answer; she could see the truth in his flaring eyes. Angrily flinging his hands away, she stepped back. "Five minutes after I accepted you, you were mentally spending my money, weren't you? You couldn't even watt to talk to my father first! You 'loved' me so much that you didn't bother to stay here with me and ask his consent. All you cared about was the money, and you didn't even spend it on important things. Your lands are mortgaged, your house is in disrepair . . . Paul," she whispered, her green eyes glittering with tears, "what sort of man are you? Are you so spineless and so irresponsible that you would have married me just for money to spend on horses you don't even need?"
"Don't be an idiot!" Paul snapped, but his face was flushed with guilty embarrassment. "I loved you. I'd never have asked you to marry me otherwise." "Love!" Whitney scoffed bitterly. "None of you know the meaning of the word! My father 'loves' me and he sold me to save himself. All you care about is how much money I'm worth to you. At least Clayton doesn't insult my intelligence by claiming to love me. He bought me like a bondservant, and now he expects me to live up to the bargain, but he doesn't pretend to 'love' me."
Paul's breath came out in a ragged sigh. "I'll think of something, but eloping is out of the question. Will Westland . . . Westmoreland . . . give you up?"
Whitney looked at nun and stubbornly lifted her chin. "No," she said proudly, and at that moment, she would have given him that answer even if she believed otherwise. Turning, she stalked to the door, then paused to look at him over her shoulder. "Elizabeth Ashton is still available," she said bitterly. "I'm certain her dowry could cover your extravagances on this last trip. You'd better start thinking of ways to regain her favor so that you can get your hands on her money."
"Shut up!" Paul snapped. "Or I'll do just that."
Whitney slammed the door on his last word, but not until she gained the privacy of her own room did she allow the tears to come. Sinking down onto her bed, she wept all her heartbroken disillusionment into her pillow. She cried for herself, for her empty dreams and the misplaced devotion she'd lavished on Paul all these years. She cried because she had been willing to destroy her reputation for Paul, and all he had cared about was his mother and sisters. But most of all, she cried with rage at her own stupidity.
When Clarissa brought a dinner tray to her room that night, Whitney's eyes were puffy and her chest ached, but the storm of misery and animosity was mostly past. She ate alone, her thoughts in a swirling, melancholy turmoil that began nowhere and ended nowhere.
By noon the next day, Whitney was no longer angry with Paul. In fact, she was feeling strangely guilty. She had always imagined him as her modern-day knight in shining armor, courageous, romantic, and gallant, and it really wasn't his fault that he couldn't live up to that illusion. She felt a growing sense of shame and responsibility for the unwitting part she'd played in his worsened financial circumstances. She had exerted every wile she possessed to make him offer for her, and by accepting his offer, she'd inadvertently caused him to spend money she didn't have.
Late in the afternoon, as she wandered aimlessly among the last blooms in the rose garden, Whitney's active mind turned from the contemplation of problems to the consideration of solutions. Soon a hazy plan took shape. Elizabeth loved Paul, of that Whitney was certain. Surely there must be something Whitney could do to smooth things over with Elizabeth, so that she would be receptive to Paul if he chose to renew his interest in her.
Whitney hesitated and pulled her silk shawl tighter around her shoulders. Considering the chaotic state of her own affairs right now, she was the last person on earth capable of taking a guiding hand in someone else's romance. Nevertheless, it was her responsibility, and besides, she had never been able to stand meekly by and hope that fate would make the right things happen.
With a vitality that had been dormant for many days, Whitney decided to take matters into her own hands. She went into the house and dashed off a note to Elizabeth, then she paced across her bedroom, wondering if Elizabeth would flatly decline her invitation. There had been so much competitive jealousy on Whitney's part in years gone by, so many pranks and tricks, that poor Elizabeth would be understandably suspicious of any overture by Whitney to befriend her at this late date.
Whitney was so convinced that Elizabeth would refuse to come that she jumped when Elizabeth's soft voice spoke from the doorway of the bedroom. "You-you asked me to come?" Her blue eyes were darting nervously around the room, and she looked ready to bolt.
Whitney fixed a reassuring smile on her face and said graciously, "Yes, and I'm so happy that you have. May I take your gloves and bonnet?" As she reached out, Elizabeth nervously clapped both her hands to the crown of her bonnet, clutching it protectively to her curls, and Whitney recalled another bonnet of Elizabeth's-a little straw confection with pink ribbons that Paul had once complimented years ago. Five minutes later, the bonnet was discovered beneath the treads of the chair in which Whitney was rocking. Elizabeth was thinking of it too, Whitney realized, and a flush crept up her cheeks when she remembered poor Elizabeth's shriek of dismay.
"I-I prefer to keep it on," Elizabeth said.
"I don't blame you," Whitney sighed. For the next half hour, Whitney served tea and kept up a one-sided conversation of trivialities in an attempt to put Elizabeth at ease, but Elizabeth replied in monosyllables and continued to perch on the edge of her chair as if she were going to fly from the room at the first loud noise.
Finally, Whitney went to the point. "Elizabeth," she said, finding it very awkward to confess her foibles to the female she had always viewed as her archrival. "I owe you an apology for a grave injustice I've done you recently, as well as for some horrid things I did to you when we were young. About Paul-" she blurted out. "I know how you must hate me, and I don't blame you, but I would like to help you."
"Help me?" Elizabeth repeated blankly.
"Help you marry Paul," Whitney clarified.
Elizabeth's blue eyes widened. "No! No, really, I couldn't," she stammered, blushing gorgeously.
"Of course you could!" Whitney declared, passing her a tray of little pastries. "You're a very beautiful girl and Paul has always . .."
"No," Elizabeth contradicted softly, shaking her blond head. "You are more in the way of being beautiful. I am only, well, pretty, at best."
After taking this monumental step in befriending Elizabeth, Whitney wasn't about to have her generosity outdone. "You have beautiful manners, Elizabeth. You always do and say the proper thing at the proper time."
"The properly dull thing," Elizabeth argued prettily. "Not lively and interesting things like you say."
"Elizabeth," Whitney said, unable to suppress her amusement, "I was always perfectly outrageous, while you were always perfectly perfect."
Elizabeth relaxed back in her chair and giggled. "There, you see! I would have only said thank you' but you always say unusual things."
"Do not pay me another compliment," Whitney warned with a laughing look. "I won't be outdone, you know, and we will be here all night admiring one another."
Elizabeth sobered and said, "I'm very happy about you and Paul." At Whitney's stunned glance, she explained, "Everyone knows your betrothal is supposed to be a secret, but since everyone is talking about it, I didn't think you would mind if I mentioned it."
<
br /> "What do you mean, everyone is talking about it?" Whitney said hoarsely. "Who else knows?"
"Well, let me think. Mr. Oldenberry, the apothecary, told Margaret and me. He said he heard it from Lady Eubank's maid, who heard it from Lady Eubank, who heard it from Paul's own mama. I suppose everyone in the village knows."
"But it isn't true!" Whitney cried desperately.
Elizabeth's pretty face fell. "Please don't say it isn't true!" she implored agitatedly. "Not now, not when Peter is almost to the point of offering."
"Who is Peter going to offer for?" Whitney asked, momentarily diverted.
"For me. But he won't if Paul is unattached. You see, Peter is shy, and he's always believed I have a secret tendre for Paul, which isn't in the least true. But even if it was, my papa would never permit me to marry Paul because he's a shocking spendthrift and his lands are mortgaged."
Whitney slumped back in her chair and gaped at Elizabeth. "Peter Redfern shy?" she echoed. "Elizabeth, are we talking about the same Peter Redfern? The one who tried to box my ears the day of the picnic when you fell out of the tree?"
"Well, he's shy around me," Elizabeth said.
In speechless disbelief, Whitney pictured Peter's freckled face and thinning red hair, and tried to imagine how he could have won the heart of a fragile, ethereal beauty like Elizabeth, who had always had Paul at her beck and call. "Do you honestly mean to tell me," Whitney uttered, "that you've been in love with Peter all these years?"
"Yes," Elizabeth admitted brokenly. "But if you tell everyone that you and Paul aren't going to be married, then Peter will just stand back, the way he always has, and let Paul take his place. And then I'll-I'll-" Elizabeth groped for her lacy handkerchief and promptly trailed off into dainty tears.
Whitney cocked her head to one side. "However do you manage to cry like that?" she asked admiringly. "I always gasp and snort and my eyes spill over like fountains."
Elizabeth giggled tearily and dabbed at her eyes before lifting them pleadingly to Whitney. "You said you'd done me injustices and you were sorry. If you truly mean it, couldn't you wait just a few days before crying off with Paul? Peter is going to say he wants to marry me any moment now, I can tell."
"You don't realize what you're asking of me," Whitney said, tensing. "If a certain person were to hear the gossip and believe I've truly betrothed myself to Paul, my life wouldn't be worth a farthing." Elizabeth looked on the verge of a fresh bout of tears and Whitney stood up, torn between the certainty that a few days really wouldn't make a difference and the inexplicable fear that they could result in disaster. "I'll give you three days before I put a stop to the gossip," Whitney reluctantly conceded.
Long after Elizabeth's departure, Whitney sat in her room, thinking and worrying. If everyone, including the servants, was openly gossiping about her "betrothal" to Paul, Clayton would certainly hear of it as soon as he returned. He had made it very clear that he wouldn't tolerate people believing she had ever been betrothed to anyone but him, and Whitney tried to think of some proof she could offer him that none of this was her fault-that she had, in fact, told Paul she wouldn't marry him, exactly as she had promised Clayton she would.
He had accepted her word and trusted her to keep it, and Whitney wanted him to believe she had, but the only one who could prove it was Paul, and Paul was in no mood to aid her.
Whitney bit her lip, concerned with more than just the loss of her honor. Without the incentive of marrying Paul to give her courage, she now felt a deep-rooted, genuine fear of Clayton's wrath. The more she pondered it, the more convinced she became that the best way to avert certain disaster was to go to London and explain to Clayton what was happening here. He would be far less angry hearing it from her than from strangers, and he would know she wasn't to blame. After all, if she was truly planning to marry Paul, as the gossip had it, why would she return to London to see Clayton?
Resolutely, Whitney got up and went down the hall to her aunt's room. She poured out the entire story, including the gossip about her betrothal to Paul and her abandoned plan to elope. Aunt Anne blanched but she remained silent until Whitney was finished. "What do you intend to do now?" she asked then.
"I think it would be best if I went to London and stayed with Emily. As soon as I arrive, I'll notify his grace I'm there, and he'll naturally come to see me. Then I'U choose exactly the right moment to tell him about the gossip here. I don't think he'll care so much about the talk, so long as he believes it isn't my fault."
"I'll come to London with you," her aunt instantly volunteered.
Whitney shook her head. "I wish you could, but there's a slim chance that he might return to the village without my having been able to see him in London. If he does, he'll hear the gossip and undoubtedly come straight here to the house. I need you here to explain and calm him down."
"What a cheerful prospect," Lady Anne said drily, but she was smiling. "Very well, I'll stay here. Now, assuming you reach him in London, what reason will you give him for being there?"
Whitney's smooth forehead knitted into an irritated frown. "I suppose I'll have to tell him the truth-that I was afraid he would come back to the village and believe that despite his warning, I hadn't refused Paul. Although, I find it excessively galling to have to tear off to London like a rabbit frightened of incurring his wrath. That man walked into my life a few months ago, and I've been like a puppet obliged to dance to his tune ever since. I think I shall tell him that too!" Whitney finished mutinously.
"While you're bent on being so honest about your feelings," Aunt Anne suggested with a knowing gleam in her eyes, "why don't you also tell him that you have developed a sincere affection for him and you are willing now to honor the betrothal contract? It will please him immensely to hear you say it."
Whitney shot up off the sofa as if she'd been scorched. "I most certainly will not!" she declared hotly. "Considering that he never cared whether I wanted to marry him, and has never doubted for a minute that I would marry him, I fail to see why I should flatter his vanity now by professing to want to marry him. Besides, I haven't made up my mind to marry him."
"I think you have, darling."
Her aunt's quiet voice checked Whitney in mid-stride as she headed for the door. "And if it will make it easier for you to admit your own feelings, I will tell you that, in my opinion, that man loves you with an intensity that would astonish him if he but recognized it-and very likely flatter your vanity."
"You're wrong, Aunt Anne," Whitney said tonelessly. "He has never even said he cares for me. I'm a possession he's acquired, nothing more. Don't ask me to crawl to him; I have very little pride left as it is, and I won't sacrifice it to soothe his temper or flatter his ego."
Elizabeth Ashton appeared at the house each afternoon to report her progress, but by the end of the third day, there was still no cause for celebration. Clarissa and Whitney were packing for the next day's trip to London when Elizabeth trailed into the bedroom, a soldier returning in defeat from a battle that should have been easy for her to win. "Peter is no nearer declaring himself now than he was ten years ago," she said glumly, flopping into a chair.
Whitney thrust an armload of underclothing into a trunk
and gazed at Elizabeth in perplexed dismay. "Are you certain?"
"Positive," Elizabeth said morosely. "I suggested we dine at my house tonight, without my parents, and do you know what he said? He said"-Elizabeth sighed heavily-"that he likes dining with my parents."
"That idiot!" Whitney burst out irritably. Slowly she began to pace back and forth. "You may be ready to accept defeat, but I'm not-at least not from Peter Redfern, of all people! That dolt has worshiped you since we were children. What he needs is some sort of motivation to force him into declaring himself without delay." Idly, Whitney shoved the fully packed portmanteau out of the way with her foot and frowned at the luggage scattered everywhere around the room. "I have it!" she burst out, whirling on Elizabeth with an impetuous, daring gleam in her green eyes
that Elizabeth well remembered from days gone by. Terrified, she shrank back into her chair: "Whitney, whatever you're thinking, we aren't going to do it."
"Oh yes, we are!" Whitney hooted triumphantly. "Miss Ashton, I hereby invite you to come to London with me."
"But I don't want to go to London," Elizabeth sputtered desperately. "I want Peter."
"Good, and you're going to get him tonight. Now repeat after me, 'Yes, I will go to London with you.'"
"Yes, I will go to London with you," Elizabeth parroted. "But I don't want to."
"Perfect, because you aren't going to. But I have just asked you and you've accepted. This way, when you tell Peter you've agreed to come with me, you won't be lying to him." Advancing purposefully on a bewildered Elizabeth, Whitney caught her hand and pulled her over to the writing desk. "Now, write and tell Peter to join you here for dinner with me tonight. Tell him . . ." Whitney hesitated, her forefinger pressed to her lips, then chuckled at her own stroke of genius. "Tell him that you and I are planning to do the most extraordinary thing together. That should petrify him."
"Peter isn't going to like our going to London together," Elizabeth said.
"He'll detest the idea!" Whitney agreed proudly, "Even though I've grown up, Peter still watches me as if he expects me to do something outrageous at any moment."
For the first tune in her sweet, acquiescent life, Elizabeth displayed a stubborn streak. "If Peter won't approve, I won't go."
Stung by Elizabeth's lack of appreciation for her brilliant plan, Whitney said, "You aren't going. Don't you see, Peter will be appalled at the idea of our going off together. He doesn't think I've truly changed. He still thinks of me as the same hoyden who used to smile Reverend Snodgrass's old mare on the rump with a slingshot."
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