The more she thought of it, the angrier she became. Putting up her chin, Whitney marched over to the bellpull and summoned Clarissa. “Please have my blue silk pressed,” she said. “And have the carriage brought round after dinner. I am going out.”
Four hours later, Whitney swept into the dining room. Her hair was twisted into elaborate coils entwined with a rope of sapphires and diamonds, with soft tendrils falling at her ears. If they were going to live like strangers, then they could live like friendly strangers. But if Clayton thought for one moment that after she bore his child he was going to be permitted to come to her bed again and take up where they had left off before yesterday—well, he didn’t know her quite so well as he thought!
Except that when he automatically came to his feet when she walked into the room, Whitney took one look at him and felt a pang of longing and need so strong that she felt faint. He was so splendid, so unbearably handsome that if he had just smiled at her a little she would have flung herself against him and begged him . . . but begged him for what? For forgiveness for loving him? Or for carrying his child?
Several times during their silent meal, Whitney was aware of his gaze resting momentarily on her breasts which swelled above the sapphire bodice of her gown. And each time Clayton looked away again, she had the feeling that he was angrier than the time before. She almost wondered if it were possible that he was the least bit jealous. After all, this was the first time that they had ever gone to separate affairs in the evening. The next time his gaze slid to her breasts, she asked innocently, “Do you like my new dress?”
“If you mean to display your charms to the world, it suits you admirably,” he said cynically.
“Are you settled into your new rooms?” she asked.
Clayton shoved his plate aside as if her conversation had ruined his appetite and rose from the table. “I find them vastly preferable to the ones I occupied before,” he said icily. Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode from the room. A few minutes later the front door closed behind him, and Whitney heard the sound of his coach pulling away. She felt deflated, ill and miserable. But she went to the Wilsons’ party and purposely stayed until well past midnight in the vague hope that Clayton might not like her being out late without him, and would accompany her the next time.
She was weary to the bone but she woke up abruptly as her carriage pulled up in the Claymore drive, just as Clayton was alighting from his. They walked up the steps together and Whitney could see the taut anger in the set of his jaw. “Continue to stay out this late and you will have all London gossiping about you within a week,” he said tersely.
“I will not be able to go out in society once my condition becomes apparent,” she informed him, and then out of sheer obstinacy, she gave her head a toss and added, “Besides, I was having a wonderful time!” She was not absolutely sure, but she thought he swore under his breath.
* * *
The next morning she went down to the stables and was bluntly refused a mount. She was hurt, confused, and irate. She was also embarrassed, as were the grooms who had to tell her that those were his grace’s orders. Whitney was too distressed to reconsider her actions. Without a word, and looking very much like the young duchess she was, she swung on her heel and marched toward the house, through the front door, and down the hall to Clayton’s study, which she entered without bothering to knock first.
He was in conclave with a large group of men seated in a semicircle around his desk. They all leapt to their feet, with the exception of Clayton, who rose with noticeable reluctance.
Smiling angelically at the circle of surprised men, Whitney said, “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I didn’t realize my husband had visitors.” Then to Clayton who was standing rigidly behind his desk: “There has been a misunderstanding at the stables. No one there seems to realize that Khan belongs to me. Shall I tell them or would you prefer to explain?”
“Do not,” her husband said in a terrible voice, “even consider riding him.”
“I am sorry to have interrupted your meeting,” Whitney said, hot with embarrassment that he had spoken to her in front of strangers in that degrading tone. She stormed up to her room. This was madness, cruel, perverse insanity. Now Clayton intended to keep her from doing anything to occupy her time. He wanted to deprive her of her smallest joys in life. She jerked off her riding hat. She hated wearing those silly hats when half the fun of riding was feeling the wind in your hair. She took two steps toward her dressing room, intending to change her clothes, and changed her mind instead.
She stormed back to the stables, gave the first groom who stepped in front of her such a haughty look of disdain that he stepped aside, and then she strode into Khan’s stall. She curried him herself. She bridled him herself and then she marched over to the rack where her saddle was kept and dragged it down. She gained courage with each second. After all, not one of them would dare to lay a hand on her to prevent her from doing what she had set out to do. It took three tries to swing the heavy sidesaddle up and over Khan’s back, but she finally made it. She tightened his girth strap as best she could then she led him out of his stall.
Whitney rode for three hours. She was tired after the first hour, but she hated to go back. From the minute she rode off on Khan, she had known that Clayton would be informed of her action, and she dreaded having to face him.
She had expected a confrontation later; she had not expected to find Clayton waiting for her at the stables. He was standing there with one shoulder propped casually against the whitewashed fence, his features composed as he conversed with the head groom. Inwardly, Whitney quailed at the sight of him. She knew that relaxed, almost indolent stance of his was only a surface calm, beneath which was a murderous fury which he would unleash on her.
As she trotted briskly past him, Clayton reached out in a deceptively casual move and caught Khan’s bridle, jerking the horse around to a teeth-jarring stop. His eyes held a terrifying menace and his voice was so icy, so soft, that Whitney’s heart pounded in fear. “Get down!”
Whitney had scarcely conceived the notion of whirling Khan and racing for parts unknown, when in that same awful voice he said, “Don’t try it, I’m warning you.”
To her consternation and fury, Whitney felt her cheeks grow hot and her hands shake. She swallowed and reached her arms toward him in an unconsciously childlike gesture. “Then will you help me down?”
Clayton lifted her roughly from the sidesaddle. “How dare you disobey me,” he hissed, his fingers clamping on her upper arm as he marched her away from the curious grooms and stablekeeps.
Whitney waited until they were out of earshot of the stable and approaching the rear door of the house before she pulled her arm away and turned on him. “Disobey you?!” she repeated, stamping her foot. “Do you mean to actually remind me of my vows? Why of all the— Would you like me to remind me of yours, my lord?”
“I will give you a warning. Just one,” Clayton enunciated viciously. “Call it advice, if you prefer.”
“If I wanted advice,” Whitney retorted, her eyes sparkling with jade fire, “you would be the last person on earth I would ask!” She opened her mouth to say more, then changed her mind at the boiling wrath her outburst brought to his features.
“Defy me one more time—just once more, and I will have you locked in your rooms until your brat is born!”
“I’m sure you would like nothing more!” Whitney said, hating him for calling her baby a brat. “You are the meanest, crue
lest . . . you’re a fraud and a liar! How dare you have told me you love me and then treat me so! And another thing, my lord duke,” she added in choking fury, “which I’m sure will come as a tremendous surprise to you: It so happens that making love makes babies!”
Clayton was so stunned by her ridiculous “revelation” that he never saw the blow coming. She caught him full on the side of the face with the flat of her hand, then reared back, looking like a tempestuous goddess in all her fine fury.
“Go ahead and hit me back,” she raged. “You want to hurt me. What’s wrong—have you lost your desire to torture me?” she taunted, ignoring the drumming pulse at her temple. “Well good, because I’m just angry enough to do it again!” She swung wide, then gasped with pain as her wrist was caught in a vise-like grip a split second before her hand would have hit his face.
“You are a deceitful little bitch,” he said furiously. “But just once in our misbegotten lives together, tell me one small truth. Just one honest admission. I swear that whether the answer is, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘yes’ I won’t care either way.”
“You swear to me?” Whitney hurled back at him. “As you swore at our wedding? As you swore in this house never to hurt me? Your word isn’t worth the—”
“Is the child mine?” Clayton snapped, tightening his grip on her wrist.
Her eyes widened until they were huge green orbs; her soft lips parted in shocked disbelief that was so convincing Clayton wondered for a split-second if somehow he was wrong about everything. Tears of outrage sprang into her eyes. “Is it yours? Yours?” Her voice rose and then, unexpectedly, she collapsed against him, her shoulders quaking violently.
Clayton released his grip on her wrist. He wanted to thrust her slender, shaking form away from him. And he wanted just as much to gather her into his arms and bury his face in her hair. But more than anything, he longed to take her into the house and ease the pain in his heart with her body. She was clinging with both hands to his lapels, her shoulders shaking, her face buried in his chest, saying over and over again, “Is it yours?”