“We were introduced,” Clayton interrupted. “We were introduced that same night, by Madame DuPre. You didn’t pay enough attention to hear my name, and you accorded me a brief nod and one shrug before you returned to the more pressing business of accumulating as many fawning admirers as you could squeeze around your skirts.”
How that cool reception must have deflated him, Whitney thought with secret pleasure. “Did you ask me for a dance?” she needled sweetly.
“No,” he replied drily. “My card was already full.”
Under other circumstances, Whitney would have laughed at the joke, but she knew it was intended as a barbed reminder that he, too, was popular with the opposite sex. As if she needed to be reminded! She threw him a derisive look that matched her tone. “I imagine that if men did have dance cards, yours would always be full! Now that I think about it, what does a man do with his mistress when he desires to dance with someone else?”
“I don’t recall having found that an insurmountable obstacle the night you and I danced at the Armands’ masquerade.”
The gloves Whitney had been holding dropped to the grass. “How dare you be so crude as to—”
“—as to even bring up such a thing?” he countered smoothly. “Isn’t the saying ‘an eye for any eye’?”
“I can hardly believe my ears!” Whitney scoffed furiously. “If you aren’t a living example of ‘the devil quoting scripture.’?”
“Touché.” He grinned.
His amusement only made Whitney angrier. “You may be able to dismiss your scandalous conduct with a laugh, but I can’t. In the time I remember knowing you, you’ve made lewd suggestions to me at the Armands’, insulted me at Lady Eubank’s, and assaulted me in this very spot.” Whitney bent down and snatched her gloves from the grass. “God alone knows what you’ll try to do next.”
Her last sentence brought a warm gleam to his eyes, and Whitney warily decided it was time to leave. She started to stalk past him toward the horses, but he reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her toward him. “With the exception of the Armands’ masquerade, I have always treated you precisely as you’ve deserved to be treated, and that’s the way it will always be between us. I have no intention of letting you walk all over me. If I did, you’d soon have no more respect for me than you would have had for Sevarin, had you been unfortunate enough to marry him.”
Whitney was thunderstruck by his monumental gall in presuming to know how she would feel, and she was stricken by the awful finality with which he dismissed her plan to marry Paul as an unfortunate whim, entirely beyond the realm of possibility. And to make everything worse, his arms were encircling her at that very moment. “Don’t you care that I don’t love you?” she asked despairingly.
“Of course you don’t,” Clayton teased, “You hate me. You’ve told me so at least half a dozen times. Right here, in this very spot, as a matter of fact. And just a few moments before you became a warm, passionate woman who held me in her arms.”
“Stop reminding me of what happened that day! I want to forget it.”
He gathered her closer against his muscular frame and gazed down at her with tender amusement. “Little one, I would give you anything within my power, but I will never let you forget what you were that day. Never. Ask anything else of me, and it’s yours.”
“Ask anything else of you and it’s mine?” she scoffed, wedging a space between them by forcing her hands up against his chest. “Very well. I don’t want to marry you. Will you release me from my father’s bargain?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
Whitney could hardly contain her bitterness and animosity. “Then don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to care about my wishes! I don’t want to be betrothed to you, but you won’t release me. I don’t want to marry you, but you fully intend to drag me to the altar anyway. I—”
He let go of her so abruptly that Whitney staggered back a step. “Had I any intention of ‘dragging you to the altar,’?” he said tersely, “you would have been ordered home from France to be fitted for your wedding gown. However, the simple fact is that I don’t want a cold, unwilling wife in my bed.”
Whitney was so relieved and overjoyed that she completely forgave his suggestive reference to his bed. She threw up her hands. “Good heavens, why didn’t you tell me that before? Since that’s the way you feel, there’s no need for you to trouble yourself with me any longer.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I would make you the coldest, most unwilling wife imaginable.”
One dark eyebrow flicked upward in a measuring look. “Are you threatening me?”
Whitney hastily shook her head, smiling. “No, of course not. I’m only trying to explain that my feelings toward you won’t change.”
“You’re quite certain?”
“Absolutely positive,” Whitney said brightly.
“In that case, there’s very little point in delaying the wedding any longer, is there?”
“What?” Whitney gasped. “But you said you wouldn’t marry me if I was cold and unwilling.”
“I said that I didn’t want to do so. I did not say that I wouldn’t, if that’s the way it has to be.” With that he nodded curtly toward the horses and started to turn, leaving Whitney petrified that he intended to go straight back to the house and summon a cleric to officiate at their wedding. No doubt he already had a special license! Her mind sought frantically for some way to save herself. If she fled, he’d overtake her; if she threatened him, he’d ignore her; if she refused, he’d make her.
She chose the only solution open to her, humiliating though it was to have to plead and wheedle. Reaching out, she laid her hand upon his sleeve. “I have a favor to ask of you, and you did say that you would give me anything within your power—?”
“Within my power,” he stated coolly, “and within reason.”
“Then will you give me time? I need time to get over this awful feeling I have of being a helpless pawn in a chess game being played by you and my father, and I need time to become adjusted to the idea of our marriage.”
“I will give you time,” he agreed evenly, “provided that you use it with discretion.”
“I will,” Whitney assured him, lying more easily now. “Oh, and there’s one thing: I’d like to keep both your identity and our betrothal a secret between us for a while.”
His expression turned coolly speculative. “Why?”
Because when she eloped with Paul next week, Clayton was going to be furious. But if she made a complete fool of him by publicly scorning him in front of villagers who knew of their betrothal, God alone knew what form his vengeance might take.
“Because,” she said cautiously, “if everyone knows about you—us—they’ll want to talk about who you are and how we met and when we’re getting married, and I’ll feel more pressed than I already do.”
“Very well, we’ll keep it a secret for now.” He walked her to her horse and lifted her effortlessly into the saddle. Thinking the subject was closed and their meeting at an end, Whitney gathered up Khan’s reins, eager to get away. But he wasn’t finished yet, and her entire body tensed at the threat disguised beneath the smooth politeness of his tone. “I’ve granted you the time you asked for because you said you want to become accustomed to the idea of our marriage. If I ever have reason to think you want the time for some other purpose, you will not like the consequences.”
“Are you through?” Whitney asked, hiding her fright behind hauteur.
“For now,” he sighed. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Whitney spent the rest of the day with her relatives. With her entire future hanging by a thread, it took a supreme effort to smile and converse with these cheerful, well-meaning people, and to ignore her father’s apprehensive glances. The moment the evening meal was over, she excused herself and escaped to the quiet of her room.
Late that evening, Anne came up to see her. Whitney, who had been dying to confide in her all day, jumped
up from the settee, wringing her hands in pent-up frustration. “Aunt Anne, that arrogant, ruthless tyrant actually intends to force me to marry him. He said as much this morning.”
Settling herself on the settee, Anne drew Whitney down beside her, “Darling, he can’t force you to marry him. I’m certain England has laws which would prevent him from doing so. As I see it, your problem is not whether he can force you to marry him, but rather, what will happen to your father if you don’t.”
“My father didn’t consider the consequences to me when he agreed to the betrothal, so I don’t feel the slightest need to consider the consequences to him, if I don’t agree to the marriage. He has never loved me, and I no longer love him.”
“I see,” Anne said, watching her closely. “Then it’s probably best that you feel that way.”