Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught

Author:Judith McNaught [McNaught, Judith]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-05-18T17:10:13.924000+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

TWO DAYS LATER, ON THE STROKE OF NINE O'CLOCK, WHITNEY watched two shiny black travelling chaises draw up in the front drive. Pulling on the aqua kid gloves that matched her travelling costume, she trooped down the stairs to the entrance foyer with Clarissa marching beside her. Aunt Anne and her father came to bid her farewell. Whitney ignored her father and gave her aunt a fierce hug white Clayton excused himself to escort Clarissa personally out to the chaise.

"Where is Clarissa?" Whitney asked a few minutes later as Clayton handed her into his empty chaise.

Clayton, who had unceremoniously dispensed with the irate, protesting chaperone by thrusting her into the other chaise with his valet, said smoothly, "She is comfortably ensconced in the coach behind us, undoubtedly browsing through the excellent books I took the liberty of providing for her."

"Clarissa adores romances," Whitney remarked.

"I gave her The Successful Management of Large Estates and Plato's Dialogues," Clayton admitted impenitently. "But then, I had already put up the stairs and slammed the door before she ever had an opportunity to see the titles."

Whitney burst out laughing and shook her head.

The chaises swayed gently as they turned from her drive onto the rutted country road, and it occurred to Whitney that although the chaise looked, from the outside, like hundreds of similar conveyances, it was much more spacious and luxurious on the inside. The velvet squabs were deeper and more comfortable, and the coach was so well sprung that it seemed to float on its frame. Beside her, Clayton had ample room to stretch out his long buckskin-clad legs without being cramped by the opposite seat, and although his broad shoulders were almost touching hers, it was not a lack of ample room that caused him to sit so close to her on the seat. Her pulse stirred as the faint scent of his spicy cologne touched her nostrils, and she hastily turned her head to concentrate on the lovely fall landscape moving past.

"Where is your home?" she asked after a long, comfortable silence.

"Wherever you are."

The quiet tenderness in his deep voice took her breath away. "I-I mean where is your real home-Claymore?"

"An hour and a half drive from London in good weather."

"Is it very old?"

"Very."

"Then it must be quite dismal," Whitney reflected. He shot her a quizzical look and she hastily explained, "I mean that most of the old noble houses look very large and spacious from without, but inside they seem dark and oppressive."

"There have been some modernizations and additions made to Claymore." Dry amusement vibrated in his voice. "I don't think you'll find it 'dingy.'"

Whitney instantly assumed that his ducal residence must be palatial and extravagantly beautiful, but then she realized she would never see it, and a strange depression settled on her. Clayton seemed to sense her change of mood, and to Whitney's surprised delight he began regaling her with hilarious stories of his boyhood and his brother, Stephen. In all the time she had known him, he

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