Whitney, My Love wds-2
Page 35
Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to clear them of the burning tears that would blind her when she hurtled from the coach. She edged her fingertips along the padded leather of the door until they closed around the hard, cold metal of the handle. A few more seconds until they were even with the open gates of the inn yard, and the horses slowed against the strain of the incline. Whitney's fingers tightened . . . She screamed as Clayton's hand clamped around her arm, jerking her away from the door.
"Don't be so impatient, my sweet. A common roadside inn is hardly the proper setting for our first coupling. Or do you prefer inns for your little trysts?" With a sharp twist of his arm, he flung her onto the seat across from him. "Do you?" he repeated savagely.
With pounding heart, Whitney watched the distance widen between the coach and the inn, and with it went her hope of escape. She couldn't possibly take him by surprise again, nor could she overpower him.
"Personally," Clayton continued almost sociably, "I have always preferred the comforts of my 'dingy' home to the questionable cleanliness and worn bed linen one usually finds in these places."
His cool mockery finally snapped her fragile self-control. "You-you are a bastard!" she burst out.
"If you say so," he agreed indifferently. "And if I am, that makes me eminently well suited to spend the night in bed with a bitch!"
Whitney squeezed her eyes closed and leaned her head back against the seat, trying desperately to bring her emotions under control. Clayton was infuriated about Paul, and somehow she had to explain. Swallowing convulsively, she whispered into the darkness, "Mrs. Sevarin is to blame for the gossip you heard. Despite what you think, as soon as Paul came home, I told him that I couldn't marry him. I couldn't stop the gossip at home, so I went to London-"
"The gossip followed you there, my sweet," he informed her in a silky tone. "Now stop boring me with your explanations."
"But-"
"Shut up," Clayton warned with deadly calm, "or I will change my mind about waiting until we nave a comfortable bed, and I'll take you right here."
Tendrils of fresh terror wrapped themselves around Whitney's heart.
They had been travelling for nearly two hours when the coach slowed and passed through gates of some sort. The dazed exhaustion which had blessedly numbed her mind vanished, and Whitney stiffened, staring out the window at the lights of a large house looming in the far distance.
By the time they pulled up before the house, her heart was hammering so wildly she could scarcely breathe. Clayton climbed down, then reached in and dragged her from the coach.
"I am not going into that house," she cried, writhing and twisting in his grasp.
"It's a little late for you to start trying to protect your virtue," he jeered, swinging her up into his arms. His hands bit into her thigh and waist as he carried her into the dimly lit house and up the endless, curving staircase.
A red-haired maid rushed out onto the balcony and Whitney opened her mouth to cry out, then choked on the cry as Clayton's fingers dug agonizingly into her flesh.
"Go to bed!" he snapped at the woman who watched them pass with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Please, please stop this!" Whitney begged frantically as he kicked open the door to a bedroom and strode inside. Her mind dimly registered the splendid furnishings and a fire burning in the grate of an enormous fireplace across the room, but the object that claimed all her wild-eyed attention was the large four-poster bed on a dais to which Clayton was carrying her.
He dumped her unceremoniously in the center of the bed, then turned on his heel and headed across the room toward the door. For one relieved moment, Whitney thought he intended to leave. Instead he reached out and rammed the bolt into place with the finality of a death blow.
In a frozen paralysis, she watched him stride past the bed toward the fireplace across the room. He flung himself into one of the sofas at right angles to the fireplace, and minutes passed while he sat there, looking at her as if she were some strange, captive animal, a curiosity, deformed and loathsome to his sight.
The silence was finally shattered by his order rapped out in a cold, unfamiliar voice. "Come here, Whitney."
Whitney's whole body jerked. She shook her head and inched backward along the bed toward the pillows, her gaze flying to the windows, then the other doors. Could she possibly reach one of them before he could stop her?
"You can try," Clayton commented. "But I promise you'll never make it."
Swallowing a panicked sob, Whitney sat straighter, struggling against the hysteria welling up in her throat. "About Paul-"
"Say his name one more time," Clayton lashed out furiously, "and I'll kill you, so help me God!" And then he became frighteningly polite. "You may have Sevarin if he still wants you. But we can discuss all that later. Now, my love, are you going to walk over here to me unaided, or must I come and assist you?"
He lifted a dark brow at her, permitting her a moment to think it over. "Well?" he threatened, half rising from his chair.
Refusing to beg, or to give him the added satisfaction of subduing her, Whitney rose from the bed. She tried to hold her head high, to look scornful and proud, but her knees felt like water. Two paces away from him, her shaking legs refused to move again. She stood there, staring at him with tear-brightened eyes.
He surged to his feet. "Turn around!" he snapped. Before Whitney could utter a protest, he caught her by the shoulders and whipped her around. With one vicious jerk, he ripped her dress down the back and the sound of tearing fabric screamed
in Whitney's ears, while satin-covered buttons scattered across the carpet to shine in the firelight, He turned her back toward him and smiled malevolently. "I own the dress too," he reminded her. He settled back in his chair, stretched his long legs out, and for several moments watched Whitney's clumsy attempts to keep the slippery satin bodice clutched to her breasts. "Drop it!" he ordered.
The satin bodice slid from her fingers and he watched impassively as yards of fine ivory satin swooshed down her hips and slender legs, landing in a heap at her feet.
"The rest?" he said blandly.
Choking on her humiliation, Whitney hesitated, then stepped woodenly out of the stiff petticoats, standing before him clad only in her thin chemise. He was waiting for her to remove the chemise, Whitney knew-because he intended total nakedness to be her final humiliation. He meant to punish her for the gossip about Paul by terrifying her like this. Well, she was terrified and degraded enough already, punished for whatever she'd done or thought of doing. In mute rebellion, she started to back away.
Clayton was on his feet before she could take the second step. His hand shot out and twisted tightly in the thin fabric at the neckline of her chemise, drawing it taut over her thrusting breasts. Her chest rising and tailing in rapid, harsh breaths, she stared down at the strong, well-manicured hand at her breasts, the same hand that had once caressed her with gentle passion. Abruptly the hand tightened and with one sharp jerk he split the thin garment in two, flinging it away from her body. "Get into the bed," he ordered coldly.
Desperate to hide her nakedness, Whitney fled to the big four-poster and quickly pulled the sheets up to her chin, as if they could protect her from him. In a blur of unreality, she saw Clayton strip off his jacket. He unbuttoned his shut and pulled it off, and she stared blindly at the rippling muscles of his powerful shoulders and arms. When his hands went to the waistband of his pants, Whitney twisted her head to the wall and squeezed her eyes closed. His footsteps bore down on the bed, and she opened her eyes to see him towering menacingly above her.
"Don't cover yourself from me!" He caught the sheets and tore them from her clenched fists. "I want to see what I paid so handsomely for." Pain slashed across his features as his gaze swept over her naked body, then his jaw hardened.
In a shivering trance of fear, Whitney stared at his hard, ruthless face while her tortured mind superimposed other, gentle memories of him. She saw him bending over her the day she fell from he
r horse, his face white with alarm. She saw him gazing tenderly into her eyes the day she had kissed him near the stream-"My God you are sweet" he had whispered. She thought of the night he had taught her to gamble with cards and chips. She remembered the way he had stood beside her only a few nights ago at the Rutherfords' and proudly introduced her as his fiancee.
Aunt Anne had been right; Clayton did love her. Love and possessiveness were driving him to do this terrible thing to her-she had driven him to it, by denying her feelings for him for so long, by her blind determination to marry Paul, He was deliberately compromising her so that she would have no choice except to marry him and not Paul. He loved her, and in return she had caused this proud man to become an object of public ridicule.
The bed shifted beneath his weight as he stretched out beside her, and Whitney's fear gave way to a deep, shattering remorse. Her eyes aching with unshed tears, she turned her face to his and hesitantly laid her trembling fingers against his rigid jaw. "I-I'm sorry," she whispered chokily. "I'm so sorry."
His eyes narrowed, then he leaned toward her, his weight supported on an elbow, his free hand gliding over her bare arm to boldly cup her breast. "Show me," he invited, teasing her nipple with his thumb. "Show me how sorry you are."
Overriding the shrieking protest of her conscience, Whitney complied, letting his fingers send shooting sensations from her breast to the pit of her stomach. She didn't struggle She was prepared to show him she was sorry-she was prepared to let him do this to her.
His mouth came down on hers, parting her lips in a deep, languorous kiss, and Whitney tried to kiss him back with all the love and contrition in her aching heart. "You're very lovely, my sweet," he murmured as his hands began boldly to explore her body. "But then I suppose you've heard that before." His mouth burned a hot trail down her throat to the pink tips of her full breasts, his tongue teasing, flicking and then circling. Suddenly his lips closed tightly around her nipple, drawing hard, and Whitney gasped with startled pleasure. Instantly his hand moved down her thighs, then up between them to cover the soft mound of hair and she gave a leap of instinctive shock. He ignored her, his questing fingers parting her and then intimately exploring her, sending melting, tingling sensations racing along her raw nerve endings.
Nuzzling her neck, he continued the arousing movement of his hand against her most sensitive place, his skillful fingers moving with unerring certainty to linger and teasingly caress the precise places where his touch could send shock waves of desire shooting through her.
Whitney yielded helplessly to the hot, searing need he was expertly building within her, while a nameless panic slowly began to grip her. Something was different, wrong, in the way he was kissing her, touching her! For a man driven by possessive, unrequited love, his kisses lacked his usual smoldering ardor, his caresses were without tender urgency . . .
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.
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.