A lazy smile, very much like his brother's and just as fatal to a lady's heart, flashed across Stephen's features. "If she's like Whitney, I'll marry her out of hand and give you enough grandchildren to make you blush."
"You can't possibly be serious!" the duchess gasped at lunch, when Clayton announced his intention to be wed in eight weeks.
"I am perfectly serious." Rising from his chair, he pressed a kiss on Whitney's forehead and lightly mocked, 'Til leave the little details of the affair to the two of you." He strode toward the door, turned back toward his mother and Whitney who were staring at each other, overwhelmed, and took pity on them. "Just draw up a list of things to be attended to, and give it to Hudgins. He'll be able to prevail upon the various establishments to act with haste."
"Exactly who is Hudgins?" Whitney asked. "I've never seen him."
"He's Clayton's secretary. And he's a wizard," the duchess sighed. "Hell employ the magic of Clayton's name, and everything will be ready in eight weeks, but I had so hoped to have more time for parties and-"
Her sentence was interrupted by Clayton, who poked his head back into the room and, grinning like a devil, said, "Well, is the list ready yet?"
Chapter Thirty-one
IN RESPONSE TO WHITNEY'S NOTE, LADY ANNE GILBERT arrived the following morning, ready to help with the wedding preparations, and an almost instant friendship sprang up between her and the duchess.
For Whitney, the next four days drifted by in a haze of comfort and togetherness, of smiles exchanged across the table, and stolen moments of joy in each other's arms.
True to Clayton's mother's prediction, all the various shops agreed to meet their eight-week deadline, despite the fact that the fashionable modistes were already overburdened with orders for the next season. Frequently, it was the proprietors themselves who arrived, carrying large sketches and boxes of swatches, all of them eager to claim that they had been of assistance to the future Duchess of Claymore in her wedding preparations.
On the fifth day, however, Whitney received a rather perfunctory summons from a footman who informed her that "His grace wishes to see you in his study-at once." Trying to smother the apprehensive feeling in her breast, Whitney hurried down the hall, nodded toward a distinguished-looking man she passed who was carrying a large, flat, oblong case under his arm, and entered Clayton's study. Closing the doors behind her, she bobbed a funny little servant's curtsy and said teasingly, "You rang for me, your grace?"
Clayton was standing in front of his desk, and he gazed at her silently across the room, his expression very somber.
"Is-is something wrong?" Whitney breathed after a moment.
Although he spoke gently, there was a strange new gravity to his tone. "No. Come here, please."
"Clayton, what is it?" Whitney said, hurrying toward him. "What has-"
He caught her to him in a crushing embrace. "Nothing is wrong," he said in an odd, rough voice. "I missed you." With one arm still around her waist, he turned aside and picked up a small velvet box from the desk behind him. "I thought about an emerald," he said in that same gentle, grave voice, "but it would be outshone by your eyes. So I decided on this instead." He unsnapped the lid of the box with his free hand, and a magnificent diamond shot prisms of color across the intricate plasterwork scrolls at the ceiling.
Whitney stared at it in awed wonder. "I've never seen anything so …" She stopped as tears of poignant happiness welled in her eyes.
Taking her hand, Clayton slid the exquisite gem onto her long finger. Whitney looked down at her own hand which now bore the first tangible proof that she was actually Clayton's. She belonged to him now, and all the world would see the ring and know it.
No longer was she Whitney Allison Stone, her father's daughter, Lord and Lady Gilbert's niece. She was now the promised bride of the Duke of Claymore. In the space of one moment, she had lost her identity and been given a new one. She wanted to tell him that his ring was beautiful, that she worshiped him, but she only managed to whisper, "I love you" before the tears came, and she turned her face into his chest. "I'm not sad," she tried to explain as the reassuring strength of his arms encircled her, "I'm happy."
"I know, little one," he whispered, holding her until the same emotion that had unexpectedly rocked him when he'd chosen the ring a few minutes ago, had passed through her.
Finally Whitney drew back, smiling a little sheepishly, and held her hand out in front of her to admire the glittering splendor of the single stone. "It's the most magnificent thing I've ever seen," she said, "except for you."
A surge of hot desire swept through Clayton at the sound of her words, and he bent his head to capture her mouth with his, then he checked the motion-there was a limit to how much stimulation his body could tolerate these days. Instead, be said ma tone of mock severity, "Madam, I hope you'll not make a habit of crying whenever I give you a jewel, else we'll have to send for buckets when you see the ones that belong to yon from my grandmothers."
"Didn't this ring belong to one of your grandmothers?"
"No. Westmoreland duchesses are never betrothed with a ring that has belonged to another-it's tradition. Your wedding band will be an heirloom, though."
"Are there any other Westmoreland traditions?" Whitney asked, her smile filled with love.
Clayton's restraint broke; he gathered her into his arms, his mouth descending with hunger and need on hers. "We could start one," he whispered meaningfully. "Tell me you want me," he said thickly, his mouth fiercely tender as it ravaged hers.
"I love you," she answered instead, but Clayton felt her intoxicating body straining automatically to be closer to his. A deep, knowing laugh sounded in his chest as he drew back. "I know you love me, little one," he said, tipping her chin up. "But yon want me, too."
Whitney conveniently remembered, then, that her aunt and the seamstresses were waiting for her in the other room. Only half reluctantly, she stepped away. "Win that be all, your grace?" she smiled, bobbing another servant's curtsy.
Clayton's tone was politely impersonal. "For now, thank you," he said, out when she turned, he gave her an affectionate smack that landed squarely on her derriere.
Whitney halted. Over her shoulder she regarded him with an expression of exaggerated severity, and warned, "If I were you, I'd not forget what happened when you did that to me after the Rutherfords' party."
"At the Archibalds' house?" he clarified. "When I brought you home?"
Her lips twitched with laughter, but she managed a slow, haughty nod. "Precisely."
"Am I to understand," Clayton mocked, trying unsuccessfully to keep his face straight, "that you're threatening to knock these paintings off the wall?"
Puzzled, Whitney glanced at the portraits in heavy carved frames hanging along the wall, and then at Clayton's laughing face. "I thought I slapped you."
"You missed."
"I did?"
"I'm afraid so," he confirmed gravely.
Whitney muffled a giggle. "How provoking."
"Undoubtedly," he agreed.
Bemused, Whitney turned and started to walk away. His second smack landed with a little more force upon her derriere than the first, and although she managed to look quite disapproving, she couldn't stifle her laughter.