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His gaze narrowed on her imploring features, and then a cynical smile twisted his lips. “Are you offering to show me how repentant you are, Whitney?”
Her heart thundering with fear and guilt, Whitney hesitated and then she nodded imperceptibly.
“In that case,” he said conversationally as he straightened abruptly, “one of us is overdressed.” His hands went to the waistband of his pants, and Whitney squeezed her eyes closed.
The bed shifted, and he stretched out beside 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, 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 drove 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 Clayton’s powerful shoulders and drew him down against her.
With shattering remorse, Clayton gathered her gently 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. Her belief that he loved her evaporated, and 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 three 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, he wondered achingly, 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 fondling touch that had humiliated 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.
* * *
Whitney awoke the next morning, vaguely aware of a tenderness between her legs. 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.
She was in a gigantic bed situated on a dais. The immense bedroom was ten times the size of her large bedroom at home, and splendidly furnished. She blinked dazedly at the thick moss-green carpet stretching luxuriously across the vast floor. The entire wall to her left was a sweeping expanse of mullioned glass, and the one across from her had a marble fireplace so large that she could easily have stood up in the opening. The two remaining walls were covered with wide, richly carved rosewood panels and hung with magnificent tapestries. Wearily, Whitney closed her eyes and started to drift back into the
peace of slumber. Odd that she would be sleeping in a room that seemed so masculine.
Her eyes snapped open and she 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 eyes 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.
“I hope God doesn’t forgive him!” Whitney hissed brokenly, stepping into the warm bathwater. “I hope he burns in hell! I wish I had a knife so that I could cut his heart out!” Mary started to soap her back, but Whitney took the cloth from her and began to scrub every part of her body that Clayton had touched. Suddenly her hand froze. What insanity possessed her to climb obediently into this tub when she should be dressed already and planning a way to escape? She clutched at the maid’s wrist, her green eyes wild with pleading. “I have to leave before he comes back, Mary. Please help me find some way out of here. You can’t believe how badly he hurt me, the things—awful things—he said to me. If I don’t get away, he’ll—he’ll make me do that again.”
With confused, sorrowful blue eyes, the maid looked down at Whitney and gently shook her head. “His grace has no wish to enter this room or keep you here. He told me himself that only I am to look after you. The coach is already waiting for you around in front, and when you’re dressed, I’m to take you down myself.”
Two stories above the main entrance to his house, Clayton stood at the window, waiting for a last glimpse of her. Waiting to make his final farewell. The trees bent and sighed in the wind, bowing deeply to her as she stepped out into a day as bleak and dreary as his soul. Her gown flew about her as she descended the long sweep of steps to the waiting coach, and the wind caught her hair, tumbling it wildly about her.
On the bottom step, Whitney paused and for one agonizing, soul-wrenching moment, Clayton thought that she was going to turn and look up at him. Helplessly he stretched his hand out, longing to slide his knuckles over her soft, silken cheek. But all he touched was a cold pane of glass. As if she sensed somehow that he was watching her, Whitney lifted her head in that regal way of hers, gave it a defiant toss, and without looking back, she stepped into the coach.
The brandy glass Clayton was holding shattered in his clenched hand, and he looked down at the bright red drops oozing from his fingers.
“I imagine you’ll be getting poison of the blood now,” Mary, standing in the doorway, predicted with a certain amount of satisfaction.
“Unfortunately, I doubt it,” Clayton replied flatly.
* * *
Whitney huddled in a corner of the coach, her thoughts marching dizzily in a tight circle of shame, misery, and anger. She thought of the vulgar things he had said to her, the businesslike way his hands had moved over her flesh, expertly evoking an unwilling response from her traitorous body.
Bitter bile rose up in her throat, choking her. She wished she were dead—no, she wished he were dead! Last night was only the beginning of the humiliating nightmare she would have to endure. Michael Archibald would undoubtedly insist that Emily send her home, for he would never permit a woman of questionable virtue to associate with his wife. Even if Whitney could convince him that she had been forced to spend the night with Clayton, she would still be just as soiled, just as unfit to be received in polite society.
Fighting down a surge of nausea, Whitney leaned her head back. Somehow, she had to think of a feasible excuse to give the Archibalds to explain why she had been gone all night. Otherwise, she’d be banished from her best friend’s company, banished from the company of decent people. She would spend her life in lonely shame with only her father for company.
After nearly an hour, Whitney finally settled on an excuse she could give Michael and Emily; it sounded a little lame, but it might suffice if they didn’t question her. Now she felt less afraid, but infinitely more alone, more vulnerable. There was no one to whom she could turn for comfort or understanding.
She could write to Aunt Anne at her cousin’s house in Lincolnshire, and ask her to come to London. But what could Aunt Anne do except demand that Clayton marry her immediately? What a punishment that would be for him, Whitney thought sarcastically. He’d get precisely what he’d always wanted, and she would be condemned to marriage with a man she would hate for as long as she lived. If Whitney refused to marry Clayton, Aunt Anne would naturally turn to Uncle Edward for advice. When Uncle Edward learned what Clayton had done, he would probably demand that Clayton give him satisfaction, meaning a duel, which must at all cost be avoided. In the first place, duelling was illegal now; in the second, Whitney was terrifyingly certain that that bastard would kill her uncle.
The only other alternative was for Uncle Edward to demand justice through the courts, but a trial and the public scandal attached to it would ruin Whitney for as long as she lived.
And so, here she was, forced to bear her hurt and shame alone, with no way of avenging herself on that devil! But she would think of something, she told herself bracingly. The next time he came near her, she would be ready. The next time he came near her? Whitney’s hands grew clammy, and perspiration broke out on her forehead. She would die if he ever came near her again. She would kill herself before she ever let him touch her! If he tried to speak to her, if he touched her, she would start screaming and never be able to stop!
Every servant in the Archibald household seemed to be hovering in the hallways, watching her with secret condemnation when Whitney entered the house. She marched bravely past the butler, three footmen, and a half dozen housemaids with her chin up and her head high. But when she closed the bedroom door behind her, she collapsed against it, her body shaking and her chin quivering. Clarissa descended on her a moment later, bristled up like a maddened porcupine, slamming drawers, muttering under her breath about “shameless hussies” and “slurs on the family name.”
Whitney hid her mortification behind a stony expression and jerked off the hated ivory satin gown, self-consciously snatching on a dressing robe when Clarissa’s eyes raked suspiciously over her naked body.
“Your poor sweet mother must be spinning in her grave,” Clarissa announced, plunking her hands on her ample hips.
“Don’t say such ghoulish things,” Whitney said wretchedly. “My mother is resting in peace because she knows I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Well, it’s just too bad the servants in this house don’t know that,” replied Clarissa, puffing up with ire. “As hoity-toity as royalty they are here. And every one of them is whispering about you!”
Whitney’s interview with Emily late that afternoon was even more humiliating. Emily simply sat there, listening attentively to Whitney’s lame tale of how the duke had escorted her to another party across town and when the hour had grown too late to return, her unnamed hostess
had insisted that Whitney spend the night. At the end of the explanation, Emily nodded her complete, unqualified understanding, but her pretty, honest face reflected a stunned shock that was worse than any accusation she could have made.
Emily went directly to her husband’s study and repeated the story to him. “So you see,” she said in a determinedly confident voice while anxiously scanning Michael’s face, “it was all perfectly innocent and not in the least scandalous. You do believe her explanation, don’t you, Michael?” she pleaded.
Michael leaned back in his chair and regarded his young wife levelly. “No,” he said quietly, “I don’t.” He reached out and drew Emily down onto his lap. For a long moment he studied her distraught features, then he said gently, “But I do believe in you. If you tell me she’s innocent, I will believe that.”
“I love you, Michael,” Emily said simply, her body sagging with relief. “Whitney would never do anything indecent, I know it!”
Whitney had dreaded the evening meal, but Emily and her husband seemed perfectly relaxed and natural. In fact, Michael even urged her to remain with them until after Elizabeth’s wedding, which was slightly more than a month away. He seemed so sincere, and Emily so eager for her to stay, that Whitney gratefully and happily accepted their invitation. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to go home to her father and face the rumors of her betrothal to Paul.
But that night, as she lay in bed, loneliness and despair washed over her in a tidal wave. She wished her aunt were here to tell her what to do, but she knew in her heart there was nothing Anne or anyone else could do to help her. She was going to have to bear this alone.
From this day forward, she would always be alone. She could never have a husband or children because no decent man would want her. She was soiled, dirtied, used by another. She had always wanted to have children, but now she couldn’t. A painful lump of desolation swelled in her throat.
