“I can’t,” he whispered against her shining hair. He drew a long, tortured breath. “I can’t find the words.”
The naked anguish in his voice brought tears to her eyes as she leaned back and looked at him. “I can,” she whispered brokenly. “You taught them to me—I love you. I love you.”
Threading his fingers through her hair, he framed her face between his hands and gazed at her. “I love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “God! How I love you.”
* * *
In the flickering candlelight, the hands on the ormulu clock across the room from the bed had just moved to half past one. Clayton gazed down tenderly at the beauty who was nestled up against him, asleep in his arms, her tousled head resting trustingly against his naked chest. Brushing a wayward curl gently off her cheek, he drew her closer to him and touched his lips to her forehead. “I love you,” he breathed softly. He knew Whitney was asleep and couldn’t hear him, but he needed to say the words again.
He had said them to her in his heart tonight, each time his mouth touched the dewy softness of hers in hungry urgency or aching tenderness. “I love you.” It was a song his heart sang when she writhed beneath him and arched sweetly up to meet his thrusts; a melody that rose to a soaring crescendo as he led her to the peak of ecstasy and then joined her there.
His wife snuggled closer against him and dreamily whispered, “I love you, too.”
“Ssssh, darling. Sleep,” Clayton murmured. He had lingered over her endlessly tonight, deliberately delaying the final, exquisite moment of release until they were both wild with wanting. After such prolonged lovemaking he wanted her to rest.
“What took you so long?” she whispered.
Leaning his head down to better see her face, Clayton grinned. “I can’t believe you mean what I think you mean.”
She looked puzzled at first, then she blushed and looked away.
Surprised and concerned by her reaction, Clayton tipped her chin up. “What did you mean?” he asked gently.
“It—it doesn’t matter. Truly it doesn’t.”
Gazing down into her pain-shadowed green eyes, he said quietly, “I think that, whatever it is, it matters very much to you.”
Whitney wished she hadn’t spoken, wouldn’t have, except that the hurt was spreading through her like a bruise that would not stop aching. Knowing that Clayton would now insist on an answer, she gave it in a barely audible whisper, “Marie.”
“What about her?”
“Was she the reason it took you so long to come for me?”
Tightening his arms around her, as if he could absorb some of the pain he had caused her, Clayton smiled wryly. “Darling, the reason it took me so long was that forty investigators could not find a trace of you. And I—who undoubtedly should have known better—failed to consider my own mother as a possible partner in a conspiracy to keep my wife from me.”
“But I thought this would be the first place you would think of looking for me, once you had time to think things over.”
“Well it wasn’t,” Clayton said quietly. “But then, neither did I ‘think things over’ within five miles of Marie St. Allermain—which I gather is what you’re trying to ask me.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Her green eyes filled with tears as she gazed at him and smiled tremulously. “Thank you,” she whispered simply.
“You’re very welcome,” Clayton said with a tender smile at her upturned face. He traced his finger along the elegant curve of her cheek. “Now sleep, my love. Otherwise, this bed is again going to be put to another use.”
Obediently she closed her eyes and snuggled into his arms. Her fingertips slid up to lightly brush the hair at his temple; a few minutes later they slipped down his shoulder to his chest. Clayton felt his body’s instant response and tried to control the mounting passion which Whitney was inadvertently igniting with her sleepy caresses. When her hand drifted down the planes of his stomach, he caught it and held it firmly in his own to prevent its further descent. He thought he heard a smothered laugh as she turned in apparent sleep, and her lips touched his ear.
Leaning back, Clayton gazed suspiciously into her face. She was wide awake, her eyes aglow with love.
In one quick, smooth motion, he rolled her over onto her back and pressed her into the pillows, his body half covering hers. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he whispered in a husky voice.
“I won’t.”
36
* * *
When Whitney awoke, he was gone, and for a horrid moment, she thought she had only dreamed that he’d been with her last night. She rolled onto her back, her spirits plummeting—and then she saw him. He was seated near the windows a few steps from the bed, wearing a burgundy dressing robe that a servant had evidently brought to him along with a silver coffee service that was on the table in front of him.
The heavy draperies were partially open, revealing a bright blue, cloudless sky, but in contrast to the cheerful July morning, Clayton’s handsome face looked very somber, as if his thoughts were far away. Uneasily, she wondered what was causing that expression when he’d seemed so warm and passionate a few hours ago.
Pulling on the blue silk robe she’d worn the night before, Whitney walked across the Oriental carpet, stopping beside his chair. So absorbed was he in his thoughts, that he was visibly startled when she touched his shoulder. “When you weren’t in bed when I awakened, I thought for a moment that I had only imagined you were here last night.”
His expression softened and he reached out, took her arm, and pulled her gently but firmly down onto his lap. “How do you feel?” he asked as he slipped his arm around her waist.
“I feel appallingly well for a woman in my condition,” she joked, trying to lighten his mood. “Although, if I’m left unattended for more than a few moments, I exhibit a shocking tendency to fall asleep.”
Splaying his fingers over her abdomen, he asked tenderly, “How is the babe?”
“We’re both perfectly fine, now that you’re with us,” Whitney assured him.
He nodded, satisfied, but his expression turned solemn again. “I’ve been sitting here, thinking—” he explained.
“I hate it when you do that,” Whitney teased, reaching up and smoothing the frown lines from his forehead.
“You hate it when I do what?”
“When you think about things that make you frown.”
“I’m sorry—” he began.
“Very well, I’ll forgive you this time, but no more thinking.”
Clayton smiled at her jest but ignored her determined efforts to act as if everything was already settled and perfectly normal between them because of the night before. “I realized when I awakened that I have neither apologized for my inexcusable behavior, nor have I explained the reasons for it, and I need to do both.”
Sobering, Whitney nodded and let him begin.
“As you already know, when you sent me up to your desk for your aunt’s letter, I found another letter—an unfinished one. It was dated the day before you came to me at Claymore, and in the letter, you wrote that you feared you were with child.”
“How did you know I realized you found the letter?”
“The day before yesterday, I finally abandoned all dignity and sent for your friend, Emily Archibald, so that I could either persuade or intimidate her into giving me your direction.”
“Poor Emily. She couldn’t tell you that because I hadn’t told her where I planned to go.”
“So she said, and I believed her. She told me what little she did know, however, and that included the fact that you were aware I’d found that unfinished letter in your desk.”
Whitney nodded. “A few days after you found it, I realized you had seen it, and that it was responsible for the way you were treating me.”
“Then why in God’s name didn’t you discuss the letter with me and put us both out of our misery?”
“I should like to ask you tha
t very same question,” his wife countered with a prim, reproving look. “Why didn’t you discuss it with me as soon as you found it?”
Clayton accepted her barb with a half smile. “I see your point.”
“I’m glad,” she said more gently, “because that is precisely the point I wanted to make when I left home. Clayton, you have twice suspected me of doing something very wrong and, on both occasions, you refused to tell me what offense you believed I’d committed so that I could try to explain. You did that when you dragged me from Emily’s party and hauled me to Claymore. You did it once again when you found that note. I forgave you the first time, and I will forgive you for this last time, but I would ask you to grant me a favor in return.”
“Anything,” he agreed, wincing at the reminder of his earlier injustice.
“Anything?” she teased, trying to lighten his mood. “So long as it’s within reason?”
He laid his jaw against the top of her head. “Anything,” he said tenderly and unequivocally.
“In that case, I ask for your promise that you will never again fail to give me an opportunity to answer to whatever charges of grievous misconduct you may believe I am guilty of in the future.”
Lifting his head, Clayton looked at her as she sat in his lap. Her spirit and courage were evident in the set of her slim shoulders and the tilt of her chin, while her gentleness glowed in her candid green eyes and soft smile. Grievous misconduct? She was the embodiment of joy and love; an exquisite combination of feminine wisdom, utter innocence, and courageous impertinence. She had already given him a world of joy, and now she was about to give him a child as well. He wished she had asked him for something grander or set him to some impossible task, so that he could earn her forgiveness. But all she wanted was a simple promise. Because all she wanted was him. The knowledge filled him with an emotion that hoarsened his voice as he humbly and solemnly said, “I give you my word never to do that again.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Clayton turned her face up to his and sealed his promise with a kiss.
Completely satisfied with the outcome of the discussion, not to mention the intensity of his kiss, Whitney leaned her cheek against his chest, utterly contented. She was anxious to forget all about her ill-fated letter and the unhappiness it had caused.
Clayton, however, was not ready to end the discussion just yet. “About the letter I found in your desk,” he said, but Whitney dismissed that subject with an airy wave of her fingertips. “We need never discuss that letter again. I’ve forgiven you, darling, and it’s settled, forgotten.”
Clayton chuckled at her magnanimous attitude. “I appreciate your generosity, however, I’m not certain I completely understand what you were hoping to accomplish if you had sent it to me.”
Reluctant to dwell on any of that, Whitney glanced at the clock on the mantel, realized it was late, and pulled out of his arms, standing up. “We really ought to appear downstairs while everyone is breakfasting. Otherwise, some people will be gone and your mother will be disappointed that you weren’t there to see them off.”
Clayton had no desire for any company, save hers, but in view of his recent behavior, he didn’t want to refuse her even that minor request. He stood up, too, but did not drop the subject. “What were you thinking when you wrote that letter?” he persevered.
“I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but, after the way I behaved to you at Elizabeth’s wedding banquet—and the way you treated me when I saw you in public afterward—I was afraid you’d ignore any overture I made to you. By telling you in the note that I was afraid I was with child,” she finished as she started toward the bellrope to summon Clarissa, “I was trying to ensure that you wouldn’t marry Vanessa before I could explain everything and tell you that I loved you. I was also trying to salvage my pride by forcing you to come to me, instead of my going to you.”
“Had you sent me the note, my love, you wouldn’t have achieved either goal.”
Whitney tugged on the robe, then turned to him in surprise. “You mean you would have simply ignored the note and dismissed it?”
“I hardly think I would have been able to ignore it or dismiss it, but I can promise you it wouldn’t have brought me to heel.”
“I’m astonished to hear you say that,” Whitney said, feeling a little disappointed in him. “Wouldn’t you have felt the slightest responsibility?”
“For what?”
“For getting me with child the night you abducted me from Emily’s party and hauled me to Claymore.”
Clayton managed to keep his tone solemn, even though a smile was tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Although I understand your motives and applaud the ingenuity of your note, your scheme had one fatal flaw. It was that same flaw that caused me to react like a raving lunatic when I discovered the letter in your desk.”
“What flaw is that?”
“I could not have fathered your mythical child the night I brought you to Claymore. The contact between us in bed that night was extremely brief and the act was never consummated.”
In the months since their wedding, Clayton had taught her much about lovemaking, but she hadn’t realized there were prerequisites that evidently governed conception. Her eyes widened as the dire implications of that discovery hit her. “And so—” she whispered, and broke off, horrified.
“And so,” Clayton finished for her, “I naturally assumed when I read your note that someone else had fathered your babe. The note was dated one day before you suddenly and unexpectedly arrived at Claymore to profess your undying love for me. And so it took only a small leap of logic for me to arrive at the conclusion that you hadn’t come to me out of love, but out of desperate need for a father who could legitimatize your baby.”
“Oh, good God!” she whispered, the color draining from her face. “I never knew, never imagined that you might think someone else had fathered my child . . . or that you would have had reason to doubt my true motives for coming to you at Claymore. Once you doubted that, you would have begun to question everything else I’ve said and done since then, and . . .”
Alarmed by her sudden pallor, Clayton drew her into his arms. “Don’t think about that anymore. My only purpose in telling you that was to reassure you that I am not quite the monster I must have seemed to be.”
She laid her hand against his jaw, her green eyes shimmering with tears. “I’m so sorry. So terribly sorry.”
“Whitney, my love,” he said with a stern smile, “I forbid you to shed one tear or waste one more moment of regret on this subject.”
She made a half-hearted attempt at a smile.
Afraid that she was either unable or unwilling to let the subject drop, Clayton tried to give her reason for doing so. “Think of your son, darling. It is a scientific fact that the mood of the mother during her pregnancy affects the personality traits of her babe. Would you have the next Duke of Claymore be a weepy, bellicose little boy?”
The suggestion that Clayton could father a child who was so unlike himself made Whitney’s smile brighten with helpless amusement. “No,” she said, giving her head a shake.
When he smiled back at her, looking completely unperturbed about the possible effect of her recent mood on the baby’s personality, Whitney said suspiciously, “That part about my mood affecting our baby wasn’t true, was it?”
“Not a word of it,” he admitted with an impenitent grin.
The aching familiarity of his lazy smile, combined with the thrill of being held in his arms, made Whitney’s spirits soar. Feeling light-hearted enough to float, she gave him a jaunty smile and said, “ ’Tis your daughter’s personality that might have been weepy and bellicose if your scientific fact was truly scientific.”
He looked startled. “Daughter? Does your woman’s instinct tell you the babe is a girl?”
Suppressing a giggle, Whitney shook her head and traced the collar of his burgundy dressing robe to the vee at his chest. “I said that only to be perverse.”
“Ah, but you mis-guessed my reaction, for I would adore a little girl.”
“But you need an heir.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he lied and nipped her ear. “However, if this babe is a girl, I shall have to persevere in the begetting of an heir with even greater enthusiasm and for as long as it takes—or until you turn me away from your bed and plead with me to stop my advances.”
“If you wait for that to happen, I greatly fear you are going to have a very, very large family to support.”
“That would make my mother the happiest woman in Christendom,” Clayton remarked with a wry chuckle.
“You will nearly accomplish that this morning,” Whitney said as Clarissa knocked on the door, “when we tell her about the baby.”
Clayton was still somewhat annoyed with his mother for keeping his wife from him. “In that case,” he said dryly, “I ought to make her wait until this afternoon.”
37
* * *
Based on the cheerful voices and the greetings called out to him from the various rooms on the main floor, Clayton assumed his relatives were all enjoying themselves and in excellent spirits.
He found his mother in the dining room, presiding over breakfast, and when she saw Whitney’s happy expression, her own face lit with a smile. However, it faltered a little when Clayton pressed a brief kiss on her cheek and said in a quiet voice, “I would like to have a word with you in private before Whitney and I sit down to breakfast.”
“Very well,” Alicia Westmoreland said as she arose and excused herself to her guests. Although her shoulders were straight and her head was high, as she led Clayton to a small, sunny ante-room that overlooked the gardens at the rear of the house, she was feeling very much like an errant child who was about to receive a dreaded reprimand from her governess. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t realize Whitney was following along behind Clayton until she turned to close the door of the little room so her son could have the privacy he wanted.