“Wedding?” Whitney repeated. “Did I forget to tell you? There’s not going to be a wedding.” Tossing an apologetic glance at Aunt Anne, Whitney rose from the table and left the room.
“Really, Martin, you are the greatest fool to push her that way. What choice do you leave her except to defy you?” Distastefully, Anne shoved her plate aside and followed Whitney.
After a moment, Martin also shoved his plate aside and sent for his carriage in order to pay a morning call on his future son-in-law.
By eleven o’clock Whitney’s headache had abated, but her mood had not improved. Seated across from Aunt Anne in the sewing room, she listlessly worked at her embroidery frame. “I loathe needlework,” she observed unemotionally. “I have always loathed it. Even if I could do it well, I’d still loathe it.”
“I know,” her aunt sighed, “but it keeps one’s hands busy.” They both looked up as a footman came in with the mail and handed a letter to Whitney. “It’s from Nicki,” Whitney said, brightening with fondness at the memory of him. Eagerly she broke the seal and began to read Nicki’s bold, firm scrawl.
The smile faded from her face, and her head began to pound with renewed vigor. Slumping back in her chair, she gazed in numb horror at her aunt. “Nicki is arriving in London tomorrow.”
Anne’s embroidery needle froze in mid-stitch. “His grace will not be pleased to have Nicolas DuVille here on our doorstep, pressing his suit right beside Paul Sevarin.”
Whitney was more concerned about sparing herself the humiliation of having Nicki here as a houseguest, where he would inevitably learn of her scandalous elopement with Paul next week. “It needn’t come to that,” she said firmly, taking charge of the matter. She left the room, returning a moment later with quill and parchment.
“What are you going to say?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Whitney announced, dipping the quill into the inkpot and beginning to write, “I am going to tell Nicki to remain in London. What sort of contagious disease do you prefer? Marlaria? The plague?” Seeing that her aunt was not sharing her semi-hysterical humor, Whitney added more calmly, “I shall simply tell Nicki that I have commitments away from here and won’t be able to see him this trip. I gather from what he wrote that he is only going to be in England for a short time to attend some social function at Lord Marcus Rutherford’s—whoever that may be.”
For want of any more helpful comment, Anne said, “Lord Rutherford is connected with several of the best families in Europe, including the DuVilles. Your uncle has often said he is the most astute man in the government, and one of the most powerful, as well.”
“Well, he certainly chose an inconvenient time to ask Nicki to come to England,” Whitney remarked as she sprinkled fine sand over the note and rang for a footman to have it sent off at once.
Now that she’d taken matters into her own hands and done something to help avert disaster, Whitney felt better. With great gusto she applied herself to her needlework, but she had never been any good at it, and the tiny perfect stitches she planned in her mind failed to materialize on the cloth. In a fit of frustrated impatience, she ignored the ghastly effect she was creating and simply enjoyed the act of stabbing at the cloth with the needle.
Long after her aunt had gone down to lunch, she continued. This stab was for fate, which out of sheer perversity, was thwarting her at every turn. This stab was for Lord Rutherford, who was responsible for Nicki coming to England. This stab was for her father—cruel, heartless, unloving. This stab was for . . . In her vengeful enthusiasm, Whitney missed the fabric and yelped in pain as the needle pierced her left index finger.
A throaty chuckle preceded a familiar, deep voice. “Are you embroidering that cloth or assaulting it?”
Whitney surged to her feet in surprise, sending her embroidery sliding to the floor. She had no idea how long Clayton had been standing in the doorway watching her. All she knew was that he seemed to fill the room with his compelling presence and that her spirits soared crazily at the sight of him. Embarrassed by her reaction, she hastily directed her attention to her finger where a minuscule drop of blood had appeared.
“Shall I send for Dr. Whitticomb?” he offered. A smile tugged at the corner of his handsome mouth as he added, “If you don’t want Whitticomb, I can send for ‘Dr. Thomas’ but I understand that his specialty is more in the line of sprains and breaks . . .”
Whitney bit her bottom lip, trying desperately not to laugh. “Actually, Dr. Thomas is very busy with another patient right now—a sorrel mare. And Dr. Whitticomb was rather irritated over being sent here on a fool’s errand the last time. I doubt he’d be quite so gracious about being summoned on a second one.”
“Was it ‘a fool’s errand’?” Clayton asked quietly.
The laugher fled from Whitney’s face and an inexplicable guilt assailed her. “You know it was,” she whispered, averting her eyes.
Clayton studied her pale face with a slight, worried frown. Despite her momentary gaiety, he could tell that she was as tense as a tightly coiled spring. He wasn’t concerned by her rebellious announcement at breakfast this morning that there was not going to be a marriage, which was what had sent her father scurrying to him in a state of wild agitation. Martin Stone was a stupid bastard who continued trying to bully her, even though it only made Whitney more hell-bent on defying him. For that reason, Clayton said with quiet firmness. “I would like you to accompany me to a ball in London. You can bring that peculiar little abigail of yours—the stout woman with white hair who always scowls at me as if she suspects I’m going to carry off the family silver.”
“Clarissa,” Whitney provided automatically, her mind already searching for a suitable excuse not to accompany him.
Clayton nodded. “She can play duenna, so there’ll be no lack of a proper chaperone.” Actually, Lady Gilbert would have been a far more suitable chaperone, but he wanted Whitney to himself for a while. “If we leave in the morning, the day after tomorrow, we can be in London by late afternoon. That will give you the time to visit with your friend, Emily, and rest before the ball. I’m certain the Archibalds will be delighted to have you stay for the night, and we’ll return the following day.” Before she could refuse, which Clayton could see she was about to do, he added, “Your aunt is even now writing a note to advise Emily Archibald of your arrival.”
Wildly, Whitney wondered what madness had made Aunt Anne agree to such a thing, and then she realized that her aunt was in no better position to deny the Duke of Claymore anything than she herself was. “You didn’t have a favor to ask,” Whitney corrected him irritably. “You had a command to issue.”
Clayton ignor
ed her lack of enthusiasm for the ball—an idea which he had only conceived after talking to her father this morning. “I was hoping very much that you would like the idea,” he said.
His gentle reply made Whitney feel churlish and rude. Sighing, she accepted the inevitable. “Whose ball are we attending?”
“Lord Rutherford’s.” Clayton hadn’t really expected any reaction to that, but even if he had, nothing would have prepared him for what happened next. Whitney’s eyes widened until they were huge green saucers. “Whose?” she demanded in a choked whisper, and before he could answer, she gave a stunned shriek of horrified laughter and literally collapsed into his arms, convulsed with gales of mirth.
Her eyes swimming with tears of hilarity, she finally leaned back in his arms and said, “You see before you a demented female who is beginning to look upon life’s tragedies as one great lark.” Swallowing another giggle, she said eagerly, “Does my aunt know yet? Whose ball we are to attend?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
Whitney reached for Nicki’s note and handed it to him. “I wrote Nicki this morning and told him not to come—that I had other commitments away from home.”
Clayton skimmed the note and gave it back to her. “Fine,” he said curtly, annoyed because she called DuVille “Nicki,” yet she persisted in addressing him, to whom she was betrothed, only in formal terms. With grim satisfaction, he realized that Whitney would be at his side when DuVille saw her at the Rutherford’s and his annoyance abated. Pressing a light kiss on her forehead, he said, “I’ll call for you at nine in the morning, the day after tomorrow.”
21
* * *
Two days later, on the stroke of nine o’clock, Whitney watched two shiny black travelling chaises draw up in the front drive. Pulling on the aqua kid gloves that matched her travelling costume, she trooped down the stairs to the entrance foyer with Clarissa marching beside her. Aunt Anne and her father came to bid her farewell. Whitney ignored her father and gave her aunt a fierce hug while Clayton excused himself to escort Clarissa personally out to the chaise. Whitney had argued that her aunt should accompany her as chaperone, but Clayton had brushed that aside and said that Clarissa could perform the dual role of ladies’ maid and chaperone. As he pointed out to Whitney and Anne, the entire journey would be accomplished before nightfall, and futhermore, as Whitney’s affianced husband, he had every right to spend a few hours with his future wife without the presence of her relatives.