“Why is that?” Clayton demanded, pulling his arm away.
“Because Paul has just discovered what M. DuVille has known for years—neither of them was her first!” She saw Clayton’s face blanche and the muscle leaping in his clenched jaw. Turning on her heel, she hissed brokenly over her shoulder, “In case you’re interested, a stableboy was the first! That’s why she was sent to France.”
Something shattered inside of Clayton, splintering his emotions from all rational control. At another time, he would have shrugged off Margaret’s words, for he was well enough acquainted with female jealousy to recognize it when he saw it. But this wasn’t another time. This was the day he had realized that Whitney had been playing him for a fool, that she was a treacherous liar.
He paused, waiting while DuVille departed, then he reached down, grasped the handle of the door and jerked it open. He stepped onto the terrace directly behind Whitney just as one of her drunken admirers dropped to one knee.
“Miss Stone,” the young man joked, his words slightly slurred. “It occurs to me that two talented ‘musicians’ such as you and I ought . . . ought to form a permanent duet! May I have the honor of your arm . . . no, your hand in . . .” Suddenly he stopped and swallowed audibly, his alarmed gaze fixed on something behind Whitney.
Dissolving with laughter at the young man’s comic antics, Whitney glanced over her shoulder, then half turned toward Clayton. Happiness soared through her and she smiled joyously at him, but Clayton’s attention was frozen on poor Carlisle, who was still kneeling on one leg.
“Get up!” Clayton snarled. With withering sarcasm he added, “If you intend to request Miss Stone’s hand in marriage, you will have to wait until she grows another. At present, she has only two, and she has already pledged them both.” With that he caught Whitney’s wrist in a vice-like grip and turned on his heel, dragging her with him.
Whitney ran, trying to keep up with him as he strode around the wide balcony and down the front steps to his coach waiting below a street lamp.
“Stop this, you’re hurting me!” she panted, stumbling on the hem of her gown and falling halfway to her knees. Clayton jerked her up with such cruel force that a pain shot from her wrist to her shoulder blade, then he snapped a command at his driver, grabbed her by the waist and flung her into the coach.
“How dare you!” Whitney hissed, angry and embarrassed at being so ignominiously hauled from Emily’s house, and then manhandled to boot. “Who do you think you are?” The horses bolted from the curb and the coach lurched violently, sending Whitney reeling against the back of her seat.
“Who do I think I am?” Clayton jeered. “Why, I am your owner. By your own words, your father sold you, and I bought you.”
Whitney stared at him, her mind in a complete turmoil. She couldn’t imagine why Clayton was so angry over Carlisle’s mock proposal when he’d interrupted her cousin, Cuthbert, in the midst of a serious one, and had been laughingly good-natured about it. She had believed that tonight would be a time for sweet reconciliation between them, and it was harshly disconcerting to now find herself the target of Clayton’s fury instead of his ardor.
Even so, she was absurdly happy that he hadn’t ignored her invitation, and she couldn’t really blame him for losing his temper when he discovered yet another gentleman offering marriage to her. Very gently, she said, “Mr. Carlisle was quite foxed, you see, and his proposal was only a joke. He—”
“Shut up!” Clayton snapped. His head twisted toward her, and for the first time, in the flickering light of the coach lamp, Whitney actually saw the savage, scorching fury that was emanating from the man beside her. His handsome jaw was taut with rage, his mouth was drawn into a ruthless, forbidding line, and his expression was filled with cold loathing. His contemptuous eyes raked over her . . . and then he turned his head away, as if he couldn’t stomach the sight of her.
Never in her life had Whitney witnessed such controlled, menacing fury, nor had anyone ever looked at her with such scathing contempt, not even her father. She had hoped so much to see laughter, or warmth, or affection in those penetrating, soul-searching gray eyes of his tonight; she had never imagined he could look at her with this alarming, malicious hatred. Her shock faded to hurt, and very slowly, the first glimmerings of fear were born in her heart. Silently, she stared out the window until the lights of the city began to glimmer less frequently and the long stretches of lonely darkness lengthened. “Where are you taking me?” she asked unsteadily. He was coldly silent. “Clayton?” she almost begged. “Where are we going?”
Clayton turned and stared down at her beautiful, frightened face. He wanted to strangle her for defiling her body with other men, for betraying his own love and trust, and for finally calling him “Clayton” now, when he knew her for what she was—a lying, deceiving little bitch who had freely shared her lush, ripe body with any rutting pig who asked her to. He tore his mind from thoughts of her coupling with other men and, without answering her question, pointedly looked away.
Whitney tried to combat her mounting alarm by concentrating on where they were and in which direction they were traveling. North! she realized as they turned off the main road. They were heading north. Now she was frantic. Drawing a quick breath, she swallowed what was left of her pride and said, “I was going to tell you that I’m willing to marry you. It isn’t necessary to take me to Scotland to marry me. I’ll—”
“Not necessary to marry you?” Clayton interrupted with a bitter laugh. “So I have heard. However, I have no desire to elope, nor have I any intention of pushing my horses much further. They’ve already chased across half of England today in pursuit of you.”
Abruptly, the coach turned west onto a smooth, but less travelled road, at the same moment the full import of his words slammed into her. If he’d been on the road all day “in pursuit” of her, then he must have returned to the village today and heard the gossip about her betrothal to Paul. Pleadingly, Whitney laid her hand on his arm. “I can explain about Paul. You see—”
His fingers clamped down on her hand, wringing a gasp of pain from her. “I’m delighted that you’re so eager to touch me,” he drawled sarcastically, “because in a short while, you are going to have an opportunity to do exactly that.” Distastefully he removed her hand from his arm and dropped it into her lap. “However, since this is not the place for you to demonstrate your affection, you will have to control your passions until then.”
“Control my—?” Whitney gasped, and then hopefully she blurted, “Are you foxed?”
His lips twisted with cynical amusement. “I am not drunk, so you needn’t worry that I will be unable to perform . . .” He emphasized the last word, making it sound ominous. Then almost pleasantly he added, “You should sleep now. You’ve a long and exhausting night ahead of you.”
Frightened by his taunting and hurt by the disgusted revulsion in his eyes whenever he looked at her, Whitney tore her gaze from his. She had no idea what he was talking about. She was on the verge of hysterical terror, and he was sitting here telling her to control her passions, assuring her that he would be able to “perform.” In the darkness of the coach, the vulgar crudity of his remark finally penetrated the turbulent agitation of her mind, and her eyes grew huge with fear. Now she understood his plans!
Whitney searched the starlit night for sign of a village, a house, anywhere she could seek refuge. There were a few lights up ahead on her side of the road—a posting house or an inn, she thought. She didn’t know what kind of injury she would sustain by jumping from the coach and she didn’t care, so long as she would be able to get up and run . . . run to the lights beside the road.
Biting her trembling lower lip, Whitney inched her hand cautiously along her skirts toward the handle that would open the door. She stole a final, parting look at the granite profile of the man beside her and felt as if something were dying within her.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to clear them of the burning tears that would blind her
when she hurtled from the coach. She edged her fingertips along the padded leather of the door until they closed around the hard, cold metal of the handle. A few more seconds until they were even with the open gates of the inn yard, and the horses slowed against the strain of the incline. Whitney’s fingers tightened . . . She screamed as Clayton’s hand clamped around her arm, jerking her away from the door.
“Don’t be so impatient, my sweet. A common roadside inn is hardly the proper setting for our first coupling. Or do you prefer inns for your little trysts?” With a sharp twist of his arm, he flung her onto the seat across from him. “Do you?” he repeated savagely.
With pounding heart, Whitney watched the distance widen between the coach and the inn, and with it went her hope of escape. She couldn’t possibly take him by surprise again, nor could she overpower him.
“Personally,” Clayton continued almost sociably, “I have always preferred the comforts of my ‘dingy’ home to the questionable cleanliness and worn bed linen one usually finds in these places.”
His cool mockery finally snapped her fragile self-control. “You—you are a bastard!” she burst out.
“If you say so,” he agreed indifferently. “And if I am, that makes me eminently well suited to spend the night in bed with a bitch!”
Whitney squeezed her eyes closed and leaned her head back against the seat, trying desperately to bring her emotions under control. Clayton was infuriated about Paul, and somehow she had to explain. Swallowing convulsively, she whispered into the darkness, “Mrs. Sevarin is to blame for whatever gossip you heard. Despite what you think, as soon as Paul came home, I told him that I couldn’t marry him. I couldn’t stop the gossip at home, so I went to London—”
“The gossip followed you there, my sweet,” he informed her in a silky tone. “Now stop boring me with your explanations.”
“But—”
“Shut up,” Clayton warned with deadly calm, “or I will change my mind about waiting until we have a comfortable bed, and I’ll take you right here.”
Tendrils of fresh terror wrapped themselves around Whitney’s heart.
They had been travelling for nearly two hours when the coach slowed and passed through gates of some sort. The dazed exhaustion which had blessedly numbed her mind vanished, and Whitney stiffened, staring out the window at the lights of a large house looming in the far distance.
By the time they pulled up before the house, her heart was hammering so wildly she could scarcely breathe. Clayton climbed down, then reached in and dragged her from the coach.
“I am not going into that house,” she cried, writhing and twisting in his grasp.
“It’s a little late for you to start trying to protect your virtue,” he jeered, swinging her up into his arms. His hands bit into her thigh and waist as he carried her into the dimly lit house and up the endless, curving staircase.
A red-haired maid rushed out onto the balcony and Whitney opened her mouth to cry out, then choked on the cry as Clayton’s fingers dug agonizingly into her flesh.
“Go to bed!” he snapped at the woman who watched them pass with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“Please, please stop this!” Whitney begged frantically as he kicked open the door to a bedroom and strode inside. Her mind dimly registered the splendid furnishings and a fire burning in the grate of an enormous fireplace across the room, but the object that claimed all her wide-eyed attention was the large four-poster bed on a dais to which Clayton was carrying her.
He dumped her unceremoniously in the center of the bed, then turned on his heel and headed across the room toward the door. For one relieved moment, Whitney thought he intended to leave. Instead he reached out and rammed the bolt into place with the finality of a death blow.
In a frozen paralysis, she watched him stride past the bed toward the fireplace across the room. He flung himself into one of the sofas at right angles to the fireplace, and minutes passed while he sat there, looking at her as if she were some strange, captive animal, a curiosity, deformed and loathsome to his sight.
The silence was finally shattered by his order rapped out in a cold unfamiliar voice. “Come here, Whitney.”
Whitney’s whole body jerked. She shook her head and inched backward along the bed toward the pillows, her gaze flying to the windows, then the other doors. Could she possibly reach one of them before he could stop her?
“You can try,” Clayton commented. “But I promise you’ll never make it.”
Swallowing a panicked sob, Whitney sat straighter, struggling against the hysteria welling up in her throat. “About Paul—”
“Say his name one more time,” Clayton lashed out furiously, “and I’ll kill you, so help me God!” And then he became frighteningly polite. “You may have Sevarin if he still wants you. But we can discuss all that later. Now, my love, are you going to walk over here to me unaided, or must I come and assist you?”
He lifted a dark brow at her, permitting her a moment to think it over. “Well?” he threatened, half rising from his chair.
Refusing to beg, or to give him the added satisfaction of subduing her, Whitney rose from the bed. She tried to hold her head high, to look scornful and proud, but her knees felt like water. Two paces away from him, her shaking legs refused to move again. She stood there, staring at him with tear-brightened eyes.
He surged to his feet. “Turn around!” he snapped. Before Whitney could utter a protest, he caught her by the shoulders and whipped her around. With one jerk, he ripped her dress down the back and the sound of tearing fabric screamed in Whitney’s ears, while satin-covered buttons scattered across the carpet to shine in the firelight. He turned her back toward him and smiled malevolently. “I own the dress too,” he reminded her. He settled back in his chair, stretched his long legs out, and for several moments watched Whitney’s clumsy attempts to keep the slippery satin bodice clutched to her breasts. “Drop it!” he ordered.
The satin bodice slid from her fingers and he watched impassively as yards of fine ivory satin swooshed down her hips, and slender legs, landing in a heap at her feet.
“The rest?” he said blandly.
Choking on her humiliation, Whitney hesitated, then stepped woodenly out of the stiff petticoats, standing before him clad only in her thin chemise. He was waiting for her to remove the chemise, Whitney knew—because he intended total nakedness to be her final humiliation. He meant to punish her for the gossip about Paul by terrifying her like this. Well, she was terrified and degraded enough already, punished for whatever she’d done or thought of doing. In mute rebellion, she started to back away.
Clayton was on his feet before she could take the second step. His hand shot out and twisted tightly in the thin fabric at the neckline of her chemise, drawing it taut over her thrusting breasts. Her chest rising and falling in rapid, harsh breaths, she stared down at the strong, well-manicured hand at her breasts, the same hand that had once caressed her with gentle passion. Abruptly the hand tightened and with one sharp tug he split the thin garment in two, flinging it away from her body. “Get into the bed,” he ordered coldly.
Desperate to hide her nakedness, Whitney fled to the big four-poster and quickly pulled the sheets up to her chin, as if they could protect her from him. In a blur of unreality, she saw Clayton strip off his jacket. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, and she stared blindly at the rippling muscles of his powerful shoulders and arms then she twisted her head toward the wall and squeezed her eyes closed. His footsteps bore down on the bed, and she opened her eyes to see him towering menacingly above her.
“Don’t cover yourself from me!” He caught the sheet and tore it from her clenched fists. “I want to see what I paid so handsomely for!” Pain slashed across his features as his gaze swept over her naked body, then his jaw hardened.
In a shivering trance of fear, Whitney stared at his hard, ruthless face while her tortured mind superimposed other, gentle memories of him. She saw him bending over her the day she fell from her horse,
his face white with alarm. She saw him gazing tenderly into her eyes the day she had kissed him near the stream—“My God you are sweet,” he had whispered. She thought of the night he had taught her to gamble with cards and chips. She remembered the way he had stood beside her only a few nights ago at the Rutherfords’ and proudly introduced her as his fiancée.
Aunt Anne had been right; Clayton did love her. He loved her, and in return for his affection and generosity, she had caused this proud man to become an object of public ridicule. Love and possessiveness were driving him to do this terrible thing to her—she had driven him to it, by denying her feelings for him for so long, by her blind determination to marry Paul. Now, Clayton intended to force her to lie with him in order to compromise her—in order to leave her with no choice except to marry him rather than Paul.
Whitney was certain that was what Clayton intended.
She was wrong.
As Clayton stood there looking down at her, he suddenly felt neither a desire for her body or even a desire for revenge. All he felt was an increasing and overwhelming sense of contempt and revulsion. Lying there, with her gleaming hair tumbling over her smooth shoulders and her beautiful, treacherous green eyes fixed on his face, Whitney Stone represented the living proof that he was a complete fool. A dupe.
He had squandered a fortune in money and invested a wealth of naïve dreams in a scheming, shallow little slut—and now, he had almost let her drive him to commit rape. The realization filled him with sick disgust and he reached for her arm, intending to pull her out of bed and order her to get dressed, then send her away.
Whitney had no idea his intention had altered. She knew only that his expression had turned even more distant and more cruel, and her fear gave way to a deep shattering remorse. Her eyes aching with unshed tears, she laid her trembling fingers against his chest just as his hand clamped on her upper arm. “I—I’m sorry,” she whispered chokily. “I’m so sorry. Can’t you forgive me just once more, as you have in the past?”