“Very well, show him in here,” Clayton said with an irritated sigh. With Whitney, Clayton had all the patience in the world; with his future father-in-law, he had none. In fact, it was all he could do to stomach the man.
“I had to come before I started for London,” Martin explained as he hastened across the room and seated himself at the table across from the duke. “We’ve got a beastly mess on our hands, and it’s going to get messier if you—we—don’t do something about it at once.”
Clayton nodded a curt dismissal to the footman who had been serving him his lunch and waited until the servant had closed the door behind him, before shifting the impassive gaze to his unwelcome visitor. “You were saying, Martin?”
“I was saying that something has come up. A complication. It’s Sevarin. He was with Whitney when I left.”
“I told you I’m not worried about Sevarin,” Clayton said impatiently.
“Then you’d better start worrying about him,” Martin warned, looking anguished and angry at the same time. “When Whitney was fifteen years old, she got some bee in her bonnet about snatching Sevarin away from the Ashton girl, and even though it’s taken her five years—five years!—she’s still hell-bent on pulling it off. And she’s about to. You mark my words, that poor devil is thinking of marrying her. He’s only a hair’s breadth from offering for her. God knows why, because she’d drive him mad. She drives me mad.”
Clayton’s voice was heavy with ironic amusement. “Speaking as the ‘poor devil’ who has already offered for her, I can only applaud Sevarin’s taste. However, as I’ve told you several times, I can handle Whitney and—”
Martin looked as if he were going to explode from frustration. “You can’t handle her. You think you can, but you don’t know her as I do. Dammit, she’s a stubborn, willful chit and always has been. Once she gets some maggot in her head—like marrying Sevarin—she’ll follow through with it no matter what.”
Reaching into his pocket, Martin found a handkerchief and swiped at the film of nervous perspiration standing on his forehead, then he continued, “Once she brings Sevarin to the point of wanting to marry her, she may feel she’s accomplished her goal, and forget all about him after that. On the other hand,” he emphasized in a dire tone, “if that hellion of mine takes it into her head to actually marry him, you’ll end up dragging the chit to the altar while she fights you every step of the way. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”
A pair of cool gray eyes regarded him dispassionately. “Yes.”
“Good, good. Then the thing to do is prevent Sevarin from mentioning marriage to her, and the way to do it is to tell Whitney at once that she’s been betrothed to you since July. Tell Sevarin that. Tell everyone that. Announce your engagement immediately.”
“No.”
“No?” Martin repeated in bewilderment. “Then what are you going to do about Sevarin?”
“What do you suggest I do?”
“I told you!” said Martin desperately. “Order Whitney to give up whatever scheme she has in mind for Sevarin and command her to prepare herself to be wed to you at once!”
Clayton had a difficult time keeping his face straight. “Martin, have you ever actually ‘commanded’ your daughter to do something she didn’t want to do?”
“Of course I have. I’m her father.”
Amusement tugged at the corner of Clayton’s lips. “And when you ‘commanded’ her, did Whitney dutifully accept your authority, and do as she was bidden?”
Martin slumped back in his chair, his face flushed with chagrined defeat. “The last time I ‘commanded’ my daughter to do my bidding she was fourteen years old,” he admitted. “I ordered her to emulate the Ashton girl, and for two months afterward, Whitney curtsied me to death. She curtsied into and out of every room in the house. She curtsied to the butler and the cook, she curtsied to the horses. Every damn time I looked at the chit, she dropped whatever she was doing and curtsied to me. The rest of the time she did that ridiculous thing with her eyelashes . . . you know, fluttering them. She said she was obeying my order to emulate the Ashton girl.”
“Whitney will do my bidding,” Clayton said in a tone that brooked no further debate. “But until I am ready to tell her about our betrothal, no one is to tell her about it. When I think the time is correct, I will do so. Is that understood, Martin?”
Martin nodded resignedly.
“Fine,” Clayton said, picking up an envelope from the stack of correspondence and opening it.
Running a nervous finger between his neckcloth and throat, Martin said, “There’s just one more thing. A small thing.”
“Yes, go on,” Clayton said without looking up from his correspondence.
“It’s Lady Anne Gilbert. She has some ridiculous notion that Whitney dislikes you. I’d like you to convince her that you can overcome that problem.”
“Why?”
“Because my servants inform me that she is sending letters directed to her husband at consulates all over Europe. I assume she wants to find him and bring him here at once.”
The duke’s face hardened with such cold displeasure that Martin pressed back in his chair. “Are you telling me that she is opposed to the marriage?”
“My God, no! I didn’t mean that,” Martin exclaimed desperately. “Anne Gilbert’s a sensible woman, but she’s soft where Whitney’s concerned. After you told her what we’d done—you and I—and her shock had passed, she admitted that it was a brilliant match. She said you were the best catch in all Europe, and that there is no more aristocratic, important family in England than the Westmorelands.”
“I’m delighted that Lady Gilbert is so sensible,” Clayton said, somewhat mollified.
“Not that sensible!” Martin contradicted. “She’s up in the boughs over the way we went about the matter without Whitney’s knowledge.” Bitterly, he added, “She accused me of being a cold, heartless father without a grain of human sensitivity!” Stung by the look of agreement on the duke’s face, Martin burst out defensively, “She accused you of being dictatorial and autocratic. She said she doesn’t like your reputation with the ladies above half, and that you are entirely too good-looking for comfort. In short, Lady Gilbert thinks Whitney is too good for both of us.”
“I’m surprised my little gift to you of £100,000 didn’t soften her feelings,” Clayton drawled cynically.
“She called it a bribe,” Martin announced, then shrank back at the frigid look in the duke’s eyes. “Lady—Lady Gilbert needs assurance that you won’t force Whitney to marry you without first giving her ample time to develop a tendre for you. If she doesn’t receive this assurance from your own lips, I think she means to urge her husband to use his influence to block the marriage. He has contacts in the highest circles, and his opinions carry much weight with people who count.”
Unexpectedly, the duke’s ominous expression lightened with genuine amusement. “If Lord Gilbert wants to maintain his influence in those circles, he won’t want to make an adversary of me. At
the risk of sounding immodest, Martin, I am one of those ‘people who count.’?”
After Martin had left, Clayton got up and walked over to the window. Leaning his shoulder against the frame, he gazed at workmen constructing a small rustic pavillion at the far end of the lawn near the woods.
If Martin had come to him yesterday, rather than today, and urged him to order Whitney to marry him, he might have given the idea more consideration. Until last night, Whitney had simply been a possession he had acquired—a valued possession, perhaps even a treasured one, but a possession nonetheless.
On the night of the Armands’ masquerade, he’d briefly considered making Whitney his mistress, but deflowering a gently reared virgin violated even his relaxed code of honor where women were concerned. Then, too, it was his duty to marry and provide an heir, a responsibility of which he had been constantly reminded from the day he came of age. And so, as he gazed down into her radiant, laughing face in the Armands’ garden, he had arrived at a highly satisfactory solution to the dual problem of his duty and his desire: He would marry Whitney Stone.
Until last night, Whitney had merely been the delightful object of his lustful thoughts, and the future mother of his needed heir. But last night, that had changed. Last night, she had touched a tenderness, a protectiveness, within him that he never knew existed.
He had listened to her laughingly tell a story that seemed more sad than funny to him, a story about a motherless young girl who was made to play at a stupid musicale in front of a roomful of thoughtless people and, for the first time, he had realized the pain and frustration, the angry humiliation, she must have felt as a girl.
He didn’t like most of her neighbors; they struck him as small-minded, gossipy country bumpkins, and from the moment word had reached them that Whitney was returning from France, they had regaled each other—and him—with endless tales of her girlish antics and her youthful pursuit of Paul Sevarin.
If showing them all that she could bewitch Sevarin was the only way Whitney could regain her pride, then Clayton was willing to allow her to do it. Let her show the villagers she had captivated Sevarin for a few days more. Clayton could wait that long . . . provided that Sevarin didn’t actually screw up the courage to ask her father for her hand. Clayton’s leniency toward Whitney did not extend to allowing her actually to betroth herself to another man. That he would not tolerate.