"You did that?" Elizabeth gasped.
"That, and a great many other things Peter knows about," Whitney admitted impenitently. "He'll try to dissuade you from coming with me, but you are to tell him that I am insisting. I'll be right there to insist, and when Peter can't talk either of us out of it, he'll do the only thing he can do."
"What?" Elizabeth asked, looking intrigued but dubious.
Whitney threw up her hands. "Why, he'll propose, you widgeon!" Taking Elizabeth's trembling hand in an affectionate, reassuring grasp, Whitney said, "Please, please trust me. Nothing wrings an offer so quickly from a man as the fear that you are going to leave him. And nothing makes a man quite so brave and bold as the opportunity to rescue an innocent female from 'unsuitable companions,'-in this case, the unsuitable companion is me. Nicolas DuVille scarcely paid any attention to me unless he objected to some gentleman who was courting me, then he swooped down like an avenging angel to protect me from some man who was not nearly as dangerous a flirt as he! It was vastly amusing, I can tell you. Now please write that note. Before this night is over, Peter will propose, you just wait and see."
Reluctantly Elizabeth did as she was bidden and the note was dispatched to Peter with a footman.
Three hours later, against her protests, Elizabeth was draped in Whitney's most daring gown, which had been temporarily shortened, and her golden curls had been tamed into a sleek chignon. Still objecting, she was led to a mirror by Clarissa and Whitney.
"Go ahead," Whitney urged. "See how lovely you look-"
Elizabeth's timid gaze travelled up the clingy folds of the elegant silk gown, past her sum hips and dainty waist, then riveted in shock on her exposed decolletage. Her hands flew to cover the tops of her breasts swelling above the bodice of the gown. "I can't," she gasped, blushing.
Whitney rolled her eyes. "Yes, you can, Elizabeth. Why in France, this gown would be considered only a tiny bit daring."
A nervous giggle trilled from Elizabeth as she slowly lowered her hands. "Do you think Peter will like it?"
"Not," Whitney predicted happily, "when I tell him that I think your gowns are much too demure and that when we're in London I intend to make certain you buy more like this one to wear at the parties we shall be attending."
At eight o'clock Peter strode into the candlelit drawing room and joined the two young women who were waiting for him. After a brief nod in Whitney's direction, he looked around the room for Elizabeth, who was staring out the window with her back to him.
"What is this 'extraordinary thing' the two of you are planning to do?" he demanded.
Elizabeth slowly turned and an expression of comical incredulity froze Peter's features. With slackened jaw and glazed eyes, he gaped at her.
Elizabeth, who had evidently hoped he would take one look at her and fail to his knee to propose matrimony, waited in expectant silence. When he neither spoke nor moved, her dainty chin lifted with stubborn determination and for the first time in her twenty-one years, Elizabeth consciously began to use the feminine wiles with which she was born. "Whitney is taking me for an extended trip to London tomorrow," she explained, while strolling back and forth, parading her blond loveliness before a staggered Peter. "Whitney thinks I shall be all the rage in London once I have new clothes and a new hair style. She is going to teach me how to flirt with gentlemen too," ad-libbed Elizabeth with wide-eyed innocence. "Of course," she finished with a spurt of inspiration, "I do hope I shan't have changed so much by the time we return that you won't recognize me …"
Whitney's lips trembled with admiring laughter which she quickly suppressed as Peter's outraged glower swung toward her. "What the devil do you think you're doing?" he snapped furiously.
Somehow Whitney managed to look almost as innocent as Elizabeth. "I'm only trying to take Elizabeth under my wing."
"Elizabeth would be safer under an axe!" he exploded. "I won't permit-"
"Now Peter," Whitney soothed, struggling desperately to keep her face straight. "Be reasonable. All I intend to do is take Elizabeth to London and introduce her to some of the gentlemen I met at a ball there this week. They are a most charming, eligible group, and all of them have impeccable backgrounds and unexceptionable reputations. They may be a little fast, but I'm quite certain Elizabeth won't fall violently in love with more than one or two of them. It's time for her to marry, you know. She's a year older than I."
"I know how old Elizabeth is!" Peter raked his hand through his hair in frustration.
"Then you should also know that you have no say in what she does. You aren't her papa, nor her husband, nor even her fiance. So do stop arguing and admit defeat. I'll just go and see about dinner," she finished, hastily turning away to hide her brimming laughter.
Whitney was absolutely certain that Peter would propose when he took Elizabeth home. She was wrong; they were standing hand-in-hand when she returned to the drawing room ten minutes later.
"It grieves me to upset your plans," Peter mocked, "but Elizabeth will not be accompanying you to London. She has agreed to become my wife. Well," he demanded irritably, "what have you to say to that?"
"Say?" Whitney repeated, lowering her eyes to hide her delighted smile. "Why . . . how very provoking of you,
Peter. I had so wanted to … give Elizabeth a glorious taste of London."
Peter, who was innately good-tempered, glanced with smiling tolerance at his future wife and said in a friendlier voice, "Since you're so bent on being with Elizabeth in London, you can shop for her trousseau with her. If her papa accepts me tonight, I expect she'll want to leave tomorrow, and she has already informed me that she wants you to be a bridesmaid."
Chapter Twenty-three
UPON ARRIVING AT THE ARCHIBALDS' TOWNHOUSE, WHTTNEY was greeted by a flustered Emily, her brown hair covered with a kerchief, her cheeks smudged with dirt. "You look like a chimney sweep," Whitney laughed.
"You look like a godsend!" Emily countered, embracing her. "Can a knight be seated beside an honorable at dinner?" she burst out desperately.
Whitney blinked in surprised confusion.
"It's this wretched party," Emily explained in the salon after Whitney had taken off her pelisse and Clarissa had been shown to her room. "Michael's mama said that I must begin to entertain as suits Michael's station in life. Have you any idea how much fuss the ton can make over the simple act of sitting down to dinner? Here, just look at what I've been going through." She went over to a desk and plucked up a seating diagram for the dining tables that evening. It was obvious she had repeatedly scratched out names to rearrange them. "Can you, or can you not, seat an honorable beside a knight? Michael's mama lent me a dozen books on etiquette, but they're so filled with contradictions and exceptions to rules that I know less now than I did before I read them."
Whitney scanned the seating diagram and then promptly slid into the sabre-legged chair at the desk. Dipping the quill into the inkpot, she deftly rearranged the guests, then sat back and flashed a sunny smile at her stunned friend. "Thanks to Aunt Anne's training, 1 can do that when there are nobles from five different countries present," she said.
Emily sank down on the sofa, her eyes still clouded with worry. "This is our first formal party and Michael's mama is going to be here watching every move I make. She's a stickler for formalities. She was less than pleased when her son married A Nobody, and I want more than anything to show her I can have the most perfect, grandest party she's ever attended!"
Whitney, who had been racking her brain for some excuse to see Clayton other than the obvious one, slowly began to smile with delight. Turning back to the desk, she picked up the quill and wrote his name and title in the proper place on the seating diagram. "This should make you the hostess of the year," she announced proudly, handing the diagram to Emily. "And it will also make your mother-in-law positively envious!"
"The Duke of Claymore," Emily gasped. "But he'd think me the most presumptuous person in the world. Besides, he'd not come-none of our guests is his
social equal, despite their titles."
"He'll come," Whitney assured her. "Give me a spare invitation and a sheet of paper." After a moment's thought, Whitney wrote to Clayton and explained that she had come to London to visit Emily, and that she hoped very much that he would join her at the party. She enclosed the invitation and gave it to one of the Archibalds' footmen with instructions to take it to his grace's secretary, Mr. Hudgins, in Upper Brook Street and to tell Mr. Hudgins that the note was from Miss Stone-which was how Clayton had told her to reach him if she wanted him to come back early.
The footman returned a short time later with the information that the duke had gone to his brother's country home, and would be back in London early the next day-Saturday.
Emily looked simultaneously relieved and crestfallen. "He'll be too weary to come to the party tomorrow night," she sighed. "He'll be here," Whitney said with smiling certainty.
After dinner, Emily tried to open the subject of Paul, and then the Duke of Claymore, but Whitney said very gently, and very firmly, that she didn't want to discuss either of them just yet. To take the sting out of her refusal to confide in her best friend, Whitney then regaled her with an hilarious account of how she'd coerced poor Peter into offering for Elizabeth. "Elizabeth and Peter, along with their parents, and Margaret and Mrs. Merryton, all left the village this morning when I did," she finished gaily. "They have come here to shop for Elizabeth's trousseau."
"If anyone had told me a few years ago that you would someday be Elizabeth's bridesmaid, I'd have accused them of being deranged!" Emily said with a laugh.
"I think Elizabeth means to ask you to be her matron of honor," Whitney said. "The wedding is going to take place here in London, since most of Elizabeth and Peter's relatives live here."
Not until Saturday afternoon did Whitney allow herself to dwell on her forthcoming confrontation with Clayton tonight. She and Clarissa spent the morning doing errands for Emily, and on the way back, Whitney asked the Archibalds' driver to turn into the park and stop. She left Clarissa in the open carriage and wandered along the path between the neatly tended beds of chrysanthemums.
She had told Aunt Anne that Clayton didn't care for her, but she knew that wasn't entirely true. He had said he "wanted" her, which must mean he desired her. Whitney sat down on the park bench, a faint blush staining her cheeks as she thought of his lips moving warmly on hers and his hands caressing her body, molding her to his masculine frame.
She thought about the times they had been together, beginning with the first time she'd seen him in England. He'd been standing beside the stream with his shoulders propped against the sycamore, watching her sunning her bare legs. He had already been betrothed to her that day, and she had virtually ordered him oft her property. She felt a surge of righteous indignation when she recalled the way he had used the crop on her tender backside, but it dwindled away when she thought about what she'd done to deserve it. A smile touched her lips as she recalled the night they bad played chess at his house, and her flush deepened as she remembered the stormy passion of his kisses before he took her home.
Clayton desired her. And he was very proud of her-she had seen that at the Rutherfords' ball. He didn't love her, of course, but he did care for her. He cared enough about her to be hurt by the dreadful things she'd said to him that day beside the pavilion. Tenderness welled in her heart as she remembered how furiously he'd rejected her kiss until he finally lost control and his arms went around her, crushing her to him. And she remembered how desolate she'd felt when she believed they were saying goodbye forever.
Sternly, Whitney reminded herself of the arrogant, tyrannical, and high-handed way he had negotiated their betrothal, and then she shrugged the thought aside. He was all those things and more, yet she cared for him too, and there was no point in denying it merely so that she could keep the fires of her resentment and rebellion alive.
She cared for him, and if she hadn't been so obsessed with marrying Paul, she would have realized it much sooner. Her mind shied away from delving too deeply into the exact nature of her feelings for Clayton; it seemed obscene to even consider the possibility that she loved him, when three days ago, she'd thought she loved Paul. Besides, after believing she was in love with Paul for all these years, only to discover that she'd merely been blindly infatuated, she had little faith left in her ability to judge her own emotions. But she did care tor Clayton, there was no use denying it. She had always responded wantonly to his caresses and, although he often made her furious, he made her laugh too.
They were going to be married. Clayton had decided that last spring, and his indomitable will was going to prevail as surely as the sun was going to set.
It was inevitable; she was ready to accept that now. That handsome, powerful, sophisticated nobleman was going to be her husband. He was also going to be furious tonight when she told him the villagers all believed she was betrothed to Paul.
Sighing, Whitney scuffed at a pebble with the toe of her slipper. Instinctively, she knew that she could assuage Clay-ton's anger simply by telling him that she was willing to marry him whenever he wished. Now, she had to decide what tone she would use when she told him. She could salvage some of her pride by being coolly unenthusiastic and saying something like, "Since I have no real choice except to marry you, we may as well wed whenever you wish." If she told him in that way, Clayton would undoubtedly look at her with that sarcastically amused expression which never failed to irk her and reply with something equally unenthusiastic, such as, "As you wish, Ma'am."
Whitney frowned unhappily. Although that would save a bit of her pride, it was an awful way for two people to begin a marriage-each pretending complete indifference. In all truth, she didn't feel indifferent to him. These past days she had missed him more than she would have believed possible; she had missed his quiet strength, his lazy smile; she had missed the laughter they often shared; she had even missed arguing with him!
Since she felt this way, it seemed not only silly, but wrong, to pretend she hated the idea of marrying him. Mentally, Whitney rehearsed a different way of telling him that she was ready to marry him. Tonight, after she told him that everyone at home believed she was betrothed to Paul, she could smile softly into those fathomless gray eyes of his and say, "I suppose the best way to put a stop to the gossip would be for us to announce our engagement." Her smile would tell him that she was surrendering, unconditionally giving over in the battle of wills that had waged between them all these weeks. True, her pride would suffer a bit, but Clayton was going to be her husband, and he truly deserved to know that she was willingly accepting him.
If she told him her decision in this manner, Instead of replying with mocking sarcasm, Clayton would probably take her in his arms and kiss her in that bold, sensuous way of his. Just thinking about it made Whitney feel giddy.
The devil with her pride! Whitney decided. She would take the latter course. As she walked back toward the carriage, anticipation and happiness began to pulse through her veins.
When she returned to Emily's house, Whitney was informed that Emily was in the salon with guests. Rather than intrude, Whitney went up to the luxurious guest room she was temporarily occupying.
Emily came in just as she was removing her bonnet. "Elizabeth, Peter, Margaret, and their mamas just left. Elizabeth asked me to be in her wedding." Apprehensively, Emily added, "I-I invited them to our party tonight. I couldn't possibly avoid it, with my whole household in an uproar, obviously preparing for a party."
Whitney pulled off her gloves, a puzzled smile on her lips as she studied Emily's worried expression. "Don't fret about it, we'll just make a few changes to the seating for dinner. It's as simple as that."
"No, it isn't," Emily said bleakly. "You see, while they were shopping, they encountered your friend, M. DuVille. He asked Margaret about you, and Elizabeth told him that you were staying here with me, and naturally he came here with them . . ."
Whitney felt a cloud of doom descending over her eve
n before Emily said, "I had to invite him too. I knew it might make things awkward for you with the duke coming at your invitation, but I was absolutely certain M. DuVille would decline on such short notice."
Whitney sank down on the bed. "But Nicki didn't decline, did he?"
Emily shook her head. "I could cheerfully have strangled Margaret. He was obviously interested only in you, but she was hanging on his arm like a … a leech, imploring him to come. I wish her parents would marry her off to someone before she disgraces herself and them. She is the most clinging, indiscriminate, vicious female alive, and Elizabeth is so sweet, she lets Margaret trample all over her."
Unwilling to let anyone or anything dampen her joyous anticipation of the night to come, Whitney gave Emily a reassuring smile. "Don't worry about Margaret or Nicki. Everything's going to be fine."
Chapter Twenty-four
CLAYTON TOSSED THE REPORTS HIS BROTHER HAD ASKED HIM TO read onto the opposite seat of his coach and leaned his head back, impatient with himself for returning to the village a day ahead of schedule.
The horses slowed as they neared the cobbled street of the village, and he leaned sideways, glancing out the window. Heavy clouds roiled overhead, nearly obliterating the struggling sunlight of the early Saturday afternoon. The road through the village was temporarily rendered impassable by an overturned wagon and several abandoned vehicles whose owners were trying to right the wagon and catch the fleeing sheep. "McRea!" he called irritably, "when we get close to that snarl, stop and lend a hand. Otherwise we'll be here all day."
"Aye, your grace," McRea called from his perch atop the coach.
Clayton glanced at his watch and his mouth twisted with wry derision. He was behaving like a besotted idiot, racing back here a day early. Driven by a ridiculous eagerness to see Whitney, he had left his brother's house at six o'clock this morning and headed straight here, instead of spending the day in London as he'd originally planned. For seven hours, he'd been travelling as if his life depended upon reaching her, stopping only to change horses. He should never have given her this week by herself, he told himself for the hundredth time. Instead of offering her solitude, he should have offered her firm but gentle moral support. By now she had probably worked herself into a fresh fit of rebellion because he had forced her to turn down Sevarin. What a stubborn little fool she was to persist in believing she loved that weakling. A beautiful, spirited, magnificent little fool. If she cared a snap for Sevarin, she could never respond to his own caresses the way she did.
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