Джудит Макнот - Whitney, My Love

Emily went to bed too, but after lying awake for hours, she finally gave up trying to sleep. Propping up the pillows, she sat back, watching Michael as he slept peacefully beside her. "Could I still love you if you'd done that to me?" she whispered to his sleeping form. "Yes," she answered, tenderly smoothing the hair at his temple. "I could forgive you almost anything." But if Michael had done that, he would have an opportunity to make amends. They were married, and no matter how battered or angry she felt in spirit, they would still be forced to be in each other's company, in order to keep up appearances. Before long, matters would inevitably come to a head, and then the breach could be healed. But Whitney wasn't married to Claymore. They were both avoiding each other, and they would continue to do so. Whitney's pride and hurt would prevent her from making the first move, and the duke would continue to believe that she hated him and wanted nothing to do with him. Unless something brought them face to face-and soon-this breach could never be healed.

Torn between interfering in a highly explosive situation, or politely staying out of it, Emily pulled up her knees and perched her chin on them. After several minutes' contemplation, she slowly shoved the bedcovers aside. Trembling with guilt and uncertainty, she crept out of bed. Downstairs she groped in the darkness for a tinder and lit a candle, then she tiptoed into the yellow salon and put the candle on the desk while she searched through the drawers for one of the unused wedding invitations she'd helped Elizabeth address.

She slid into the chair and nibbled on the end of a quill, trying to think of what she could say. It was imperative that the duke not mistakenly believe she was acting on Whitney's instructions, for there was every likelihood that when Whitney first saw him she would turn on him in hurt outrage. The important thing was bringing them face to face and leaving the rest to fate.

Hastily, before she lost her courage and changed her mind, Emily wrote on the bottom of the invitation, "Someone we both care very much for will be in attendance on the bride this day." She signed it simply, "Emily Archibald."

A footman wearing vaguely familiar livery was shown into Clayton's library on Upper Brook Street. "I have an invitation which my mistress instructed be given directly to you, your grace," he explained.

Clayton was deeply engrossed in his morning correspondence. "Are you to await a response?" he asked absently.

"No, my lord."

"Then leave it there." Clayton nodded at a small table near the door.

He was getting dressed to go out for the evening when he recollected the envelope left lying in his library that morning. "Send someone for it, Armstrong," he murmured to his valet without looking away from the mirror which reflected the success of the intricate folds he was putting into his snowy neckcloth.

Clayton shrugged into the jacket Armstrong held for him, then he took the envelope a footman had just brought up. Opening it, he extracted what appeared to be yet another invitation for his secretary to attend to.

The name "Ashton" leapt out at him and his heart instantly contracted with painful memories. "Tell my secretary to decline, but to send an appropriate gift in my name," he said quietly, handing the invitation back to the footman.

As he passed it across, however, a tiny handwritten message along the bottom caught his eye. Clayton read it, then read it again, his pulse beginning to hammer. What in God's name was Emily trying to tell him? That Whitney wished to see him? Or that Emily wanted him to see her? Impatiently waving his valet and the footman away, he carried the invitation into his bedchamber and reread Emily's words three more times, growing more agitated with each reading. Futilely he tried to find something in the brief note to indicate that Whitney had forgiven him. But there was nothing.

That evening, Clayton sat through the play at the Crown Theatre paying no more attention to the raven-haired beauty beside him than he did to the performances on the stage. His emotions veered back and forth between hope and despair. There was nothing about Emily's note to give him any encouragement except that she had sent it to him. Emily Archibald and Whitney had been fast friends since childhood. If Whitney hated him, Emily would have discovered that by now, and she would never have sent him the invitation. On the other hand, if Whitney had forgiven him, she would have sent it to him herself.

Suppose Whitney didn't want to see him. Suppose she took one look at him in the church and fainted? A sad smile touched Clayton's eyes. Whitney might hurl her bouquet in his face, but she wouldn't faint. Not his brave, courageous girl.

Al THE BACK OF THE CROWDED CHURCH, ELIZABETH ASHTON stood with her father, watching her third bridal attendant drift slowly down the carpeted aisle, then she turned to Whitney who would be next. "You're going to steal the day from me," she smiled, surveying the yellow and white roses entwined in Whitney's lustrous hair and the flowing yellow velvet bridesmaid gown she wore. "You look like a jonquil in springtime."

Whitney laughed. "You look like an angel, and don't you dare try to begin another flattery contest with me. Besides, as a bride, you're supposed to be nervous. Isn't she, Emily?" Whitney whispered, looking over her shoulder at her friend, who would follow her down the aisle.

"I believe so," Emily said absently. This morning she had, confessed to Michael that Whitney and the duke had had a dreadful rift (which was certainly the truth) and that she had invited the duke to the wedding in hopes of bringing them back together. Michael's reaction had been alarmingly unencouraging. He told her that she should not have interfered, that she might be doing both parties an injustice, and that, in the end, they might both despise her for her well-intentioned interference.

Now, Elizabeth was also involved in Emily's scheme. When the guest list was originally prepared, "Mr. Clayton Westland" had been on it, but at Whitney's panicked insistence, Elizabeth had removed his name. Three days ago, Emily told Elizabeth that a secret romance had been blossoming between Whitney and Mr. Westland, but that the couple had quarreled (which was also the truth). Elizabeth had delightedly agreed that sending him a secret invitation was a splendid way to effect a reconciliation. She still did not realize, of course, that Mr. Westland was actually the duke of Claymore, for despite her weeks spent in London, she moved in very different circles from the duke.

Today, Emily cursed her plan as the worst idea she'd ever had.

"You're next, Miss," Emily's maid told Whitney as she bent down and straightened Whitney's train.

The other bridesmaids had cringed in nervous terror from making the long, solitary walk down the aisle, but the prospect didn't bother Whitney in the least. She'd done it a dozen times in Paris for Therese DuVille and other friends, but today she felt especially joyous, for she had played a very large part in bringing this wedding about. With a breezy smile Whitney accepted her bouquet of yellow and white roses from the maid. "Elizabeth," she whispered affectionately, "when next we speak, you'll be married." And she stepped out into the aisle.

Clayton's gaze riveted on her the instant she stepped into view, and the sight of her had the devastating impact of a boulder crashing into his chest. Never had she looked so radiantly beautiful or so serene. She was a shaft of glowing moonlight moving down the center of the candlelit aisle.

He was standing only inches from her as she swept gracefully past him, and he felt as if he were stretched on the rack. Every muscle in his body tightened, straining to endure the torture of her nearness. But it was a torture he welcomed, an agony he didn't want to be spared.

Whitney took her appointed place at the front. She stood quietly through the ceremony but when Elizabeth began softly repeating her vows, the words held a poignancy for Whitney that she'd never felt before, and sentimental tears suddenly stung the backs of her eyes. Without turning her head more than an inch or two, Whitney could view half the audience in the church, and as her gaze touched the crowded rows, she noticed that most of the women were dabbing at their eyes. Aune Anne smiled a silent greeting. Whitney acknowledged it with an imperceptible tip of her head, feeling a surge of comfort at the sight of her aunt's reassuring face.

As the threat of tears passed, and the lump of emotion in her throat began to dissolve, Whitney let her eyes drift back over the rows of guests, past her father, past Margaret Merryton's parents . . . past Lady Eubank who was wearing one of her outrageous turbans . . . past a very tall, dark-haired man who . . . Whitney's heart gave a leap, missed a beat, then began to thump madly as a pair of penetrating gray eyes looked straight into hers. Paralyzed, she saw the bitter regret carved into his handsome features and the aching gentleness in his compelling eyes. And then she tore her gaze from his.

Dragging air into her constricted lungs, she stared blindly ahead. He was here! He had finally come to see her, she thought wildly. He couldn't be here to attend the wedding because he hadn't been invited to it. He was here! Here, looking at her in a way that he had never, ever looked at her before-it was as if he were offering himself to her! Standing very straight and very tall, he was humbly offering himself to her. She knew it, she could feel it.

Whitney wanted to scream, to drop to her knees and weep, to hurt him as he'd hurt her. Fury, humiliation, and wild uncertainty all collided into one another. This was her opportunity to repay him, she thought hysterically, to show him with a single contemptuous glance that she despised him. She might never have another chance. He hadn't tried to see her before this, and he would leave after the wedding; he couldn't attend the banquet without an invitation. Emily said he couldn't possibly approach her without some sign from her, and he was asking her for that sign now.

Oh God! He was silently asking for her forgiveness, standing there and offering himself to her. If her answer was no, he would walk out of this church when the wedding was over. And out of her life.

Whitney closed her eyes in an agony of indecision, not caring that Clayton would see her doing it and know the struggle raging within her. He had abused her body and ravaged her soul and he knew it! Her pride demanded that she look up at him and show him that she felt only contempt for him. But her heart screamed not to let him walk out of this church.

"Don't cry, darling," he whispered in her memory. "Please don't cry anymore."

Whitney couldn't breathe; she couldn't move. "Help me!" she prayed to someone. "Please, please, help me!" And then she realized that the "someone" she was praying to was Clayton. And she loved him.

The moment Whitney stirred, Clayton knew that she was going to face him, that his answer would be there. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the bench in front of him, bracing himself. Her eyes lifted to his and the gentle yielding in their melting green depths nearly sent nun to his knees. He wanted to drown himself in her eyes, to pull her into his shaking arms, to carry her from the church and beg her to say aloud the same three words she had just spoken in silence.

Everyone rushed down the aisle behind the bridal procession, pushing and jostling gaily for position on the broad crowded steps outside. Clayton was the last to leave. He strolled slowly along beneath the high vaulted ceiling, his footsteps echoing hollowly in his ears. Outside the massive doors of the church, he stopped, watching Whitney smiling and nodding, her hair shining in the late afternoon sunlight. He hesitated, knowing that if he went to her now, they'd not be able to exchange more than a few words, yet he couldn't bring himself to wait until the banquet. Meeting as few eyes as possible to avoid being waylaid by any of his former "neighbors," he stepped into the crowd, wending his way toward Whitney until he was standing only an inch behind her.

Whitney instantly sensed his presence as if it were a tangible force, something powerful and magnetic. She even recognized the elusive, tangy scent of his cologne. But she scarcely recognized his voice; it was raw with emotion, a hoarse, aching whisper. "Miss Stone-I adore you."

The shattering tenderness of the words sent a jolting tremor up Whitney's spine, a reaction which was not lost on Clayton. He saw her stiffen, and for one chilling second he thought he'd only imagined what had passed between them in the church, but then she took an imperceptible step backward. Very lightly, he felt her lean against him. His breath froze at the exquisite sensation of her body pressing against him. He dropped his hand to her waist, gently sliding it around in front of her, drawing her nearer and tighter to him. And she made no resistance at all… but stood quietly in his embrace. Clayton's mind flew to the cleric in the church. If he led Whitney inside now, would she stand beside him like some gorgeous greenhouse flower and repeat the same words Elizabeth had just said? Would he need a special license?