McNaught, Judith - Westmoreland 01 - Whitney, My Love

674 Pages·2016·1.65 MB·English

Whitney, My Love, by Judith McNaught

Copyright (c) 1985

In memory of Michael-my friend, my husband, my love

ENGLAND

1816

Chapter One

AS THEIR ELEGANT TRAVELLING CHAISE ROCKED AND SWAYED
along the rutted country road, Lady Anne Gilbert leaned her cheek against her
husband’s shoulder and heaved a long, impatient sigh. “Another whole hour
until we arrive, and already the suspense is positively gnawing at me. I keep
wondering what Whitney will be like now that she’s grown up.”

She lapsed into silence and gazed absently out the coach window at the lush,
rolling English countryside covered with wild pink Foxglove and yellow
Buttercups, trying to envision the niece she hadn’t seen in almost eleven years.

“She’ll be pretty, just as her mother was. And she’ll have her mother’s smile, her
gentleness, her sweet disposition …”

Lord Edward Gilbert cast a skeptical glance at his wife. “Sweet disposition?” he
echoed in amused disbelief. “That isn’t what her father said in his letter.”

As a diplomat attached to the British Consulate in Paris, Lord Gilbert was a
master of hints, evasions, innuendoes, and intrigues. But in his personal life, he
preferred the refreshing alternative of blunt truth. “Allow me to refresh your
memory,” he said, groping in his pockets and retrieving the letter from
Whitney’s father. He perched his spectacles upon his nose, and ignoring his
wife’s grimace, he began to read:

” ‘Whitney’s manners are an outrage, her conduct is reprehensible. She is a
willful hoyden who is the despair of everyone she knows and an embarrassment
to me. I implore you to take her back to Paris with you, in the hope that you may

to me. I implore you to take her back to Paris with you, in the hope that you may
have more success with the stubborn chit than I have had.’ “

Edward chuckled. “Show me where it says she’s ‘sweet-tempered.’”

His wife shot him a peevish glance. “Martin Stone is a cold, unfeeling man who
wouldn’t recognize gentleness and goodness if Whitney were made of nothing
else! Only think of the way he shouted at her and sent her to her room right after
my sister’s funeral.”

Edward recognized the mutinous set of his wife’s chin and put his arm around
her shoulders in a gesture of conciliation. “I’m no fonder of the man than you
are, but you must admit that, just having lost his young wife to an early grave, to
have his daughter accuse him, in front of fifty people, of locking her mama in a
box so she couldn’t escape had to be rather disconcerting.”

“But Whitney was scarcely five years old!” Anne protested heatedly.

“Agreed. But Martin was grieving. Besides, as I recall, it was not for that offense
she was banished to her room. It was later, when everyone had gathered in the
drawing room-when she stamped her foot and threatened to report us all to God
if we didn’t release her mama at once.”

Anne smiled. “What spirit she had, Edward. I thought for a moment her little
freckles were going to pop right off her nose. Admit it-she was marvelous, and
you thought so too!”

“Well, yes,” Edward agreed sheepishly. “I rather thought she was.”

“Well, yes,” Edward agreed sheepishly. “I rather thought she was.”

As the Gilbert chaise bore inexorably down on the Stone estate, a small knot of
young people were waiting on the south lawn, impatiently looking toward the
stable one hundred yards away. A petite blond smoothed her pink ruffled skirts
and sighed in a way that displayed a very fetching dimple. “Whatever do you
suppose Whitney is planning to do?” she inquired of the handsome light-haired
man beside her.

Glancing down into Elizabeth Ashton’s wide blue eyes, Paul Sevarin smiled a
smile that Whitney would have forfeited both her feet to see focused on herself.
“Try to be patient, Elizabeth,” he said.

“I’m sure none of us have the faintest idea what she is up to, Elizabeth,”
Margaret Merryton said tartly. “But you can be perfectly certain it will be
something foolish and outrageous.”

“Margaret, we’re all Whitney’s guests today,” Paul chided. “I don’t know why
you should defend her, Paul,” Margaret argued spitefully. “Whitney is creating a
horrid scandal chasing after you, and you know it!”

“Margaret!” Paul snapped. “I said that was enough.” Drawing a long, irritated
breath, Paul Sevarin frowned darkly at his gleaming boots. Whitney had been
making a spectacle of herself chasing after him, and damned near everyone for
fifteen miles was talking about it.

At first he had been mildly amused to find himself the object of a fifteen-year-
old’s languishing looks and adoring smiles, but lately Whitney had begun
pursuing him with the determination and tactical brilliance of a female Napoleon

pursuing him with the determination and tactical brilliance of a female Napoleon
Bonaparte.

If he rode off the grounds of his estate, he could almost depend on meeting her
en route to his destination. It was as if she had some lookout point from which
she watched his every move, and Paul no longer found her childish infatuation
with him either harmless or amusing.

Three weeks ago, she had followed him to a local inn. While he was pleasantly
contemplating accepting the innkeeper’s daughter’s whispered invitation to meet
her later in the hayloft, he’d glanced up and seen a familiar pair of bright green
eyes peeping at him through the window. Slamming his tankard of ale on the
table, he’d marched outside, grabbed Whitney by the elbow, unceremoniously
deposited her on her horse, tersely reminding her that her father would be
searching for her if she wasn’t home by nightfall.

He’d stalked back inside and ordered another tankard, but when the innkeeper’s
daughter brushed her breasts suggestively against his arm while refilling his ale
and Paul had a sudden vision of himself lying entangled with her voluptuous
naked body, a pair of green eyes peered in through yet another window. He’d
tossed enough coins on the planked wooden table to mollify the startled girl’s
wounded sensibilities and left—only to encounter Miss Stone again on his way
home.

He was beginning to feel like a hunted man whose every move was under
surveillance, and his temper was strained to the breaking point. And yet, Paul
thought irritably, here he was standing in the April sun, trying for some obscure
reason to protect Whitney from the criticism she richly deserved.

A pretty girl, several years younger than the others in the group, glanced at Paul.
“I think I’ll go and see what’s keeping Whitney,” said Emily Williams. She
hurried across the lawn and along the whitewashed fence adjoining the stable.

hurried across the lawn and along the whitewashed fence adjoining the stable.
Shoving open the big double doors, Emily looked down the wide gloomy
corridor lined with stalls on both sides. “Where is Miss Whitney?” she asked the
stableboy who was currying a sorrel gelding.

“In there, Miss.” Even in the muted light, Emily saw his face suffuse with color
as he nodded toward a door adjacent to the tack room.

With a puzzled glance at the flushing stableboy, Emily tapped lightly on the
designated door and stepped inside, then froze at the sight that greeted her:
Whitney Allison Stone’s long legs were encased in coarse brown britches that
clung startlingly to her slender hips and were held in place at her narrow waist
with a length of rope. Above the riding britches she wore a thin chemise.

“You surely aren’t going out there dressed like that?” Emily gasped.

Whitney fired an amused glance over her shoulder at her scandalized friend. “Of
course not. I’m going to wear a shirt too.”

“B-but why?” Emily persisted desperately.

“Because I don’t think it would be very proper to appear in my chemise, silly,”
Whitney cheerfully replied, snatching the stableboy’s clean shirt off a peg and
plunging her arms into the sleeves.

“Pproper? Proper?” Emily sputtered. “It’s completely improper for you to be
wearing men’s britches, and you know it!”

“True. But I can’t very well ride that horse without a saddle and risk having my
skirts blow up around my neck, now can I?” Whitney breezily argued while she
twisted her long unruly hair into a knot and pinned it at her nape.

“Ride without a saddle? You can’t mean you’re going to ride astride-your father
will disown you if you do that again.”

“I am not going to ride astride. Although,” Whitney giggled, “I can’t understand
why men are allowed to straddle a horse, while we-who are supposed to be the
weaker sex-must hang off the side, praying for our lives.”

Emily refused to be diverted. “Then what are you going to do?”

“I never realized what an inquisitive young lady you are, Miss Williams,”
Whitney teased. “But to answer your question, I am going to ride standing on the
horse’s back. I saw it done at the fair, and I’ve been practicing ever since. Then,
when Paul sees how well I do, he’ll-”

“He’ll think you have lost your mind, Whitney Stone! He’ll think that you
haven’t a grain of sense or propriety, and that you’re only trying something else
to gain his attention.” Seeing the stubborn set of her friend’s chin, Emily
switched her tactics. “Whitney, please-think of your father. What win he say if
he finds out?”

Whitney hesitated, feeling the force of her cither’s unwaveringly cold stare as if
it were this minute focused upon her. She drew a long breath, then expelled it
slowly as she glanced out the small window at the group waiting on the lawn.

slowly as she glanced out the small window at the group waiting on the lawn.

Wearily, she said, “Father will say that, as usual, I have disappointed him, that I
am a disgrace to him and to my mother’s memory, that he is happy she didn’t
live to see what I have become. Then he will spend half an hour telling me what
a perfect lady Elizabeth Ashton is, and that I ought to be like her.”

“Well, if you really wanted to impress Paul, you could try …”

Whitney clenched her hands in frustration. “I have tried to be like Elizabeth. I
wear those disgusting ruffled dresses that. make me feel like a pastel mountain,
I’ve practiced going for hours without saying a word, and I’ve fluttered my
eyelashes until my eyelids go limp.”

Emily bit her Up to hide her smile at Whitney’s unflattering description of
Elizabeth Ashton’s demure mannerisms, then she sighed. “I’ll go and tell the
others that you’ll be right out.”

Gasps of outrage and derisive sniggers greeted Whitney’s appearance on the
lawn when she led the horse toward the spectators. “She’ll fall off,” one of the
girls predicted, “if God doesn’t strike her dead first for wearing those britches.”

Ignoring the impulse to snap out a biting retort, Whitney raised her head in a
gesture of haughty disdain, then stole a look at Paul. His handsome face was taut
with disapproval as his gaze moved from her bare feet, up her trousered legs, to
her face. Inwardly, Whitney faltered at his obvious displeasure, but she swung
resolutely onto the back of the waiting horse.

The gelding moved into its practiced canter, and Whitney worked herself
upward, first crouching with arms outstretched for balance, then slowly easing
herself into a standing position. Around and around they went and, although
Whitney was in constant terror of falling off and looking like a fool, she
managed to appear competent and graceful.

As she completed the fourth circle, she let her eyes slant to the faces passing on
her left, registering their looks of shock and derision, while she searched for the
only face that mattered. Paul was partially in the tree’s shadow, and Elizabeth
Ashton was clinging to his arm, but as Whitney passed, she saw the slow,
reluctant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and triumph unfurled like a
banner in her heart. By the time she came around again, Paul was grinning
broadly at her. Whitney’s spirits soared, and suddenly all the weeks of practice,
the sore muscles and bruises, seemed worthwhile.

At the window of the second floor drawing room overlooking the south lawn,
Martin Stone stared down at his performing daughter. Behind him, the butler
announced that Lord and Lady Gilbert had arrived. Too enraged at his daughter
to speak, Martin greeted his sister-in-law and her husband with a clenched jaw
and curt nod.

“How-how nice to see you again after so many years, Martin,” Lady Anne lied
graciously. When he remained icily silent, she said, “Where is Whitney? We’re
so anxious to see her.”

Martin finally recovered his voice. “See her?” he snapped savagery. “Madam,
you have only to look out this window.” Bewildered, Anne did as he said. Below
on the lawn there stood a group of young people watching a slender boy
balancing beautifully on a cantering horse. “What a clever young man,” she said,
smiling.

Her simple remark seemed to drive Martin Stone from frozen rage to frenzied
action as he swung on his heel and marched toward the door. “If you wish to
meet your niece, come with me. Or, I can spare you the humiliation, and bring
her here to you.”

With an exasperated look at Martin’s back, Anne tucked her hand in her
husband’s arm and together they followed Martin downstairs and outside.

As they approached the group of young people, Anne heard murmurings and
laughter, and she was vaguely aware that there was something malicious in the
tone, but she was too busy scanning the young ladies’ faces, looking for
Whitney, to pay much heed to the fleeting impression. She mentally discarded
two blondes and a redhead, quizzically studied a petite, blue-eyed brunette, then
glanced helplessly at the young man beside her. “Pardon me, I am Lady Gilbert,
Whitney’s aunt. Could you tell me where she is?”

Paul Sevarin grinned at her, half in sympathy and half in amusement. “Your
niece is on the horse, Lady Gilbert,” he said.

“On the-” Lord Gilbert choked.

From her delicate perch atop the horse, Whitney’s eyes followed her father’s
progress as he bore down on her with long, rapid strides. “Please don’t make a
scene, Father,” she implored when he was within earshot.

“I make a scene?” he roared furiously. Snatching the halter, he brought the
cantering horse around so sharply that he jerked it from beneath her. Whitney hit
the ground on her feet, lost her balance, and ended up half-sprawling. As she
scampered up, her father caught her arm in a ruthless grip and hauled her over

scampered up, her father caught her arm in a ruthless grip and hauled her over
toward the spectators. “This-this thing,” he said, thrusting her forward toward
her aunt and uncle, “I am mortified to tell you is your niece.”

Whitney heard the smattering of giggles as the group quickly disbanded, and she
felt her face grow hot with shame. “How do you do, Aunt Gilbert? Uncle
Gilbert?” With one eye on Paul’s broad-shouldered, retreating form, Whitney
reached mechanically for her nonexistent skirt, realized it was missing, and
executed a comical curtsy without it. She saw the frown on her aunt’s face and
put her chin up defensively. “You may be sure that for the week you are here, I
shall endeavor not to make a freak of myself again, Aunt.”

“For the week that we are here?” her aunt gasped, but Whitney was preoccupied
watching Paul help Elizabeth into his curricle and didn’t notice the surprise in
her aunt’s voice.

“Goodbye, Paul,” she called, waving madly. He turned and raised his arm in
silent farewell.

Laughter drifted back as the curricles bowled down the drive, carrying their
occupants off to a picnic or some other gay and wonderful activity, to which
Whitney was never invited because she was too young.

Following Whitney toward the house, Anne was a mass of conflicting emotions.
She was embarrassed for Whitney, furious with Martin Stone for humiliating the
girl in front of the other young people, somewhat dazed by the sight of her own
niece cavorting on the back of a horse, wearing men’s britches … and utterly
astonished to discover that Whitney, whose mother had been only passably
pretty, showed promise of becoming a genuine beauty.

She was too thin right now, but even in disgrace Whitney’s shoulders were
straight, her walk naturally graceful and faintly provocative. Anne smiled to
herself at the gently rounded hips displayed to almost immoral advantage by the
coarse brown trousers, the slender waist that would require no subterfuge to
make it appear smaller, eyes that seemed to change from sea-green to deep jade
beneath their fringe of long, sooty lashes. And that hair-piles and piles of rich
mahogany brown! All it needed was a good trimming and brushing until it
shone; Anne’s fingers positively itched to go to work on it. Mentally she was
already styling it in ways to highlight Whitney’s striking eyes and high
cheekbones. Off her face, Anne decided, piled at the crown with tendrils at the
ears, or pulled straight back off the forehead to fall in gentle waves down her
back.

As soon as they entered the house, Whitney mumbled an excuse and fled to her
room where she flopped dejectedly into a chair and morosely contemplated the
humiliating scene Paul had just witnessed, with her father jerking her
ignominiously off her horse and then shouting at her. No doubt her aunt and
uncle were as horrified and revolted by her behavior as her father had been, and
her cheeks, burned with shame just thinking of how they must despise her
already.

“Whitney?” Emily whispered, creeping into the bedroom and cautiously closing
the door behind her. “I came up the back way. Is your father angry?”

“Cross as crabs,” Whitney confirmed, staring down at her trousered legs. “I
suppose I ruined everything today, didn’t I? Everyone was laughing at me, and
Paul heard them. Now that Elizabeth is seventeen, he’s bound to offer for her
before he ever has a chance to realize that he loves me.”

“You?” Emily repeated dazedly. “Whitney Stone, Paul avoids you like the
plague, and well you know it! And who could blame him, after the mishaps
you’ve treated him to in the last year?”

“There haven’t been so many as all that,” Whitney protested, but she squirmed
in her chair.

“No? What about that trick you played on him on All Soul’s-darting out in front
of his carriage, shrieking like a banshee, and pretending to be a ghost, terrifying
his horses.”

Whitney flushed. “He wasn’t so very angry. And it isn’t as if the carriage was
destroyed. It only broke a shaft when it overturned.”

“And Paul’s leg,” Emily pointed out.

“But that mended perfectly,” Whitney persisted, her mind already leaping from
past debacles to future possibilities. She surged to her feet and began to pace
slowly back and forth. “There has to be a way-but short of abducting him, I-” A
mischievous smile lit up her dust-streaked face as she swung around so quickly
that Emily pressed back into her chair. “Emily, one thing is infinitely clear: Paul
does not yet know that he cares for me. Correct?”

“He doesn’t care a snap for you is more like it,” Emily replied warily.

“Therefore, it would be safe to say that he is unlikely to offer for me without
some sort of added incentive. Correct?”

“You couldn’t make him offer for you at the point of a gun, and you know it.
Besides, you aren’t old enough to be betrothed, even if-”

Besides, you aren’t old enough to be betrothed, even if-”

“Under what circumstances,” Whitney interrupted triumphantly, “is a gentleman
obliged to offer for a lady?”

“I can’t think of any. Except of course, if he has compromised her-absolutely
not! Whitney, whatever you’re planning now, I won’t help.”

Sighing, Whitney flopped back into her chair, stretching her legs out in front of
her. An irreverent giggle escaped her as she considered the sheer audacity of her
last idea. “If only I could have pulled it off… you know, loosened the wheel on
Paul’s carriage so that it would fall off later, and then asked him to drive me
somewhere. Then, by the time we walked back, or help arrived, it would be late
at night, and he would have to offer for me.” Oblivious to Emily’s scandalized
expression, Whitney continued, “Just think what a wonderful turnabout that
would have been on a tired old theme: Young Lady abducts Gentleman and ruins
his reputation so that she is forced to marry him to set things aright! What a
novel that could have made,” she added, rather impressed with her own
ingenuity.

“I’m leaving,” Emily said. She marched to the door, then she hesitated and
turned back to Whitney. “Your aunt and uncle saw everything. What are you
going to say to them about those trousers and the horse?”

Whitney’s face clouded. “I’m not going to say anything, it wouldn’t help-but for
the rest of the time they are here, I’m going to be the most demure, refined,
delicate female you’ve ever seen.” She saw Emily’s dubious look and added,
“Also I intend to stay out of sight except at mealtimes. I think I’U be able to act
like Elizabeth for three hours a day.”

Whitney kept her promise. At dinner that night, after her uncle’s hair-raising tale
of their life in Beirut where he was attached to the British Consulate, she
murmured only, “How very informative, Uncle,” even though she was positively
burning to ply him with questions. At the end of her aunt’s description of Paris
and the thrill of its gay social life, Whitney murmured, “How very informative,
Aunt.” The moment the meal was finished, she excused herself and vanished.

After three days, Whitney’s efforts to be either demure or absent had, in fact,
been so successful that Anne was beginning to wonder whether she had only
imagined the spark of fire she’d glimpsed the day of their arrival, or if the girl
had some aversion to Edward and herself.

On the fourth day, when Whitney breakfasted before the rest of the household
was up, and then vanished, Anne set out to discover the truth. She searched the
house, but Whitney was not indoors. She was not in the garden, nor had she
taken a horse from the stable, Anne was informed by a groom. Squinting into the
sunlight, Anne looked around her, trying to imagine where a fifteen-year-old
would go to spend all day.

Off on the crest of a hill overlooking the estate, she spied a patch of bright
yellow. “There you are!” she breathed, opening her parasol and striking out
across the lawn.

Whitney didn’t see her aunt coming until it was too late to escape. Wishing she
had found a better place to hide, she tried to think of some innocuous subject on
which she could converse without appearing ignorant. Clothes? Personally, she
knew nothing of fashions and cared even less; she looked hopeless no matter
what she wore. After all, what could clothes do to improve the looks of a female
who had cat’s eyes, mud-colored hair, and freckles on the bridge of her nose?
Besides that, she was too tall, too thin, and if the good Lord intended for her ever
to have a bosom, it was very late in making its appearance.