"Left for where?" Clayton snapped impatiently.
"S-she wouldn't say, your grace. She said she left a note for you in her desk." His formerly loyal housekeeper began to sniffle, but Clayton ignored her as he strode stiffly to Whitney's desk. It was empty, save for a single crumpled ball of blue writing paper in the top drawer. Clayton hated even to touch it, but he smoothed it out and made himself look at it in case she had written something else. She hadn't. It was just her way of telling him she had discovered the reason for his anger. He crammed the despised note into his pocket and turned in the doorway.
"I'm moving back into my own rooms," he said in a soft snarl to Mary. "Get her things out of there."
"And where shall I put them next?" Mary asked in a mutinous tone.
"Back in here, dammit!" Clayton was aware that the Irish housekeeper found something to smile about in his reply, but he was too furious at being cheated of his true prey to bother chastising a servant for her impertinence. Besides, he was in the mood for murder, and little gratification would be had in murdering Mary.
He was halfway down the hall on the way to the east wing when it dawned on him what had seemed vaguely different about the note in his pocket. It was stained now as if droplets of water had splashed on it. Tears! he thought with a mixture of disgust and an uncomfortable feeling of guilt. A great many tears.
For the next four days, Clayton waited like a caged tiger for his errant wife to return. He was positive she would come back when she realized he was not going to pursue her in a frenzied state of alarm over the danger to her delicate condition. She would have to come back. After all, who would shelter her from her own husband, in violation of the law of England? Her father was much too sensible a man not to order Whitney back to her husband's side where she belonged, Clayton decided in an abrupt change of attitude toward Martin Stone.
When she wasn't back by the fifth day, Clayton knew a wrath that was beyond anything he had ever felt in his life. She couldn't be visiting anyone for this length of time. By God! She had actually left him! He could scarcely contain his fury; it was one thing for him to have considered leaving her or sending her away-he was the injured party, after all. Besides, he hadn't actually done it. But Whitney had! She had obviously gone home to her father, and that stupid bastard was letting her remain.
He ordered the travelling chaise made ready and the horses put to and snapped at McRea, "I want to be at Martin Stone's house in six hours. Not one minute more!" Based on McRea's knowing grin, Clayton almost wondered if his driver had been lying about not knowing where Whitney had gone. It was McRea's story that Whitney had had him take her to the first posting house on the way back to London, where she had, according to the proprietor of the posting house, rented a hack. What in the hell was she doing traipsing all over the countryside, alone and pregnant with his child? The little fool! Obstinate, infuriating little fool! Beautiful little fool.
Martin Stone came out to greet Clayton himself, smiling openly as Clayton alighted. "Welcome, welcome," he said expansively, looking expectantly toward the open door of the coach. "How is my daughter? Where is she?"
Clayton tasted bitter defeat. "Whitney is fine, Martin. She wanted me to come and tell you that we are expecting a child," Clayton said, improvising quickly. After all, Martin Stone was a decent sort, and Clayton didn't want to worry him by admitting that he had driven his daughter away with Ms surly temper.
"The Hodges place," Clayton snapped at McRae a half hour later, which was the earliest possible moment he could escape from Martin without either looking ridiculous or nosing the man's suspicions. Whitney was not staying in seclusion at the Hodges place. And McRea was not smiling when Clayton acidly ordered the chaise back to Claymore.
According to the investigation Clayton instigated the following morning, Whitney was not staying with the Archibalds. She had in fact vanished somewhere between the posting house and no-one-knew-where.
Clayton was no longer angry, he was worried. And when it was reported that she had not crossed the Channel on a packet for France, his worry became alarm.
Alone in his elegant bedroom suite a week after he had returned to Claymore and found her missing, Clayton considered the possibility that Whitney had gone to the man who had been her lover before they were married. Perhaps the bastard had been unwilling or unable to offer her his name before, but now was willing to keep her neatly tucked away and available to him.
That was an agonizing thought and an infuriating one. But only for a minute, because in the purple light of deepening dusk, Clayton couldn't actually believe that Whitney would go to another man. It might have been the mellowing effect of the half bottle of brandy he had consumed during the last two hours, but it seemed to him … it seemed somehow that Whitney must have grown to love him. A little. He thought of the way she had preferred to sit curled up in a chair La his study during the day while he worked and she read, or wrote letters, or went over household accounts. She had liked being near him. And she had damn well liked being in bed with him. No woman alive would have melted in his arms, and tried in every way to give him as much pleasure as he was giving her, if she weren't at least infatuated.
He had loved her desperately on the day they were married; she hadn't loved him. Then. But surely in the months afterward, in the shared hours of quiet talk and laughter and unbridled passion, surely she must have come to love him.
Restlessly, Clayton got up and wandered from his empty, lonely room into hers. It wasn't pretty and alive without her. She was gone and with her, his reason for living each day. He had driven her away, finally broken her spirit and defeated her. And she had so much spirit! So damned much spirit. She had stood up to his rage that day she'd taken her horse out, and then defied him openly by going to the Clifftons' party in that glorious green dress that made her eyes turn the color of emeralds. And when he had been waiting here, in this very room in the dark, to confront her with it, she had stood up to him then too. No woman alive but Whitney would have dared to gaze boldly up into his eyes and flatly refuse to be confined to her rooms unless he stayed there with her! And why would she have wanted him to stay with her, if she didn't care for him?
Walking back into his room, Clayton leaned a shoulder against the broad expanse of mullioned glass that ran the length of it on one side. Staring out into the dark night, he thought about what she had said when he had grabbed her and shaken her, trying to silence her. "I can't stop." she had whispered, flinching from his harsh grip. "Because I love you. I love your smile and your eyes …" Oh Christ! How could she have said that to him when he had been deliberately hurting her? "I remember exactly how your hands feel against my skin when you touch me," she had said, "and the things you have whispered to me when you are so deep inside of me that you have touched my heart."
Clayton slowly walked into his dressing room and opened the leather case where his shirt studs were kept. He took out the ruby ring she had given him and turned it in his fingers so that he could catch the inscription inside. With a ragged sigh he read the two beloved words: "My Lord." He hesitated, torn between putting it on now or waiting until Whitney could place it on his hand as she had the night they were married. She had put the ring on his finger, then she had kissed his hand and held it softly to her cheek. He put the ring on himself-he didn't want to wait any longer.
He felt better now that her ring was on his hand where it belonged, and he sat down and stretched his long legs out in front of nun, slowly sipping brandy white he stared in silence at the big four-poster bed they had shared. He knew he had to come to grips with her betrayal now, before he found her. Otherwise he would take one look at her, and his temper would erupt and destroy them both again.