“I can’t,” he whispered against her shining hair. He drew a long, tortured breath. “I can’t find the words.”
The naked anguish in his voice brought tears to her eyes as she leaned back and looked at him. “I can,” she whispered brokenly. “You taught them to me—I love you. I love you.”
Threading his fingers through her hair, he framed her face between his hands and gazed at her. “I love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “God! How I love you.”
* * *
In the flickering candlelight, the hands on the ormulu clock across the room from the bed had just moved to half past one. Clayton gazed down tenderly at the beauty who was nestled up against him, asleep in his arms, her tousled head resting trustingly against his naked chest. Brushing a wayward curl gently off her cheek, he drew her closer to him and touched his lips to her forehead. “I love you,” he breathed softly. He knew Whitney was asleep and couldn’t hear him, but he needed to say the words again.
He had said them to her in his heart tonight, each time his mouth touched the dewy softness of hers in hungry urgency or aching tenderness. “I love you.” It was a song his heart sang when she writhed beneath him and arched sweetly up to meet his thrusts; a melody that rose to a soaring crescendo as he led her to the peak of ecstasy and then joined her there.
His wife snuggled closer against him and dreamily whispered, “I love you, too.”
“Ssssh, darling. Sleep,” Clayton murmured. He had lingered over her endlessly tonight, deliberately delaying the final, exquisite moment of release until they were both wild with wanting. After such prolonged lovemaking he wanted her to rest.
“What took you so long?” she whispered.
Leaning his head down to better see her face, Clayton grinned. “I can’t believe you mean what I think you mean.”
She looked puzzled at first, then she blushed and looked away.
Surprised and concerned by her reaction, Clayton tipped her chin up. “What did you mean?” he asked gently.
“It—it doesn’t matter. Truly it doesn’t.”
Gazing down into her pain-shadowed green eyes, he said quietly, “I think that, whatever it is, it matters very much to you.”
Whitney wished she hadn’t spoken, wouldn’t have, except that the hurt was spreading through her like a bruise that would not stop aching. Knowing that Clayton would now insist on an answer, she gave it in a barely audible whisper, “Marie.”
“What about her?”
“Was she the reason it took you so long to come for me?”
Tightening his arms around her, as if he could absorb some of the pain he had caused her, Clayton smiled wryly. “Darling, the reason it took me so long was that forty investigators could not find a trace of you. And I—who undoubtedly should have known better—failed to consider my own mother as a possible partner in a conspiracy to keep my wife from me.”
“But I thought this would be the first place you would think of looking for me, once you had time to think things over.”
“Well it wasn’t,” Clayton said quietly. “But then, neither did I ‘think things over’ within five miles of Marie St. Allermain—which I gather is what you’re trying to ask me.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Her green eyes filled with tears as she gazed at him and smiled tremulously. “Thank you,” she whispered simply.
“You’re very welcome,” Clayton said with a tender smile at her upturned face. He traced his finger along the elegant curve of her cheek. “Now sleep, my love. Otherwise, this bed is again going to be put to another use.”
Obediently she closed her eyes and snuggled into his arms. Her fingertips slid up to lightly brush the hair at his temple; a few minutes later they slipped down his shoulder to his chest. Clayton felt his body’s instant response and tried to control the mounting passion which Whitney was inadvertently igniting with her sleepy caresses. When her hand drifted down the planes of his stomach, he caught it and held it firmly in his own to prevent its further descent. He thought he heard a smothered laugh as she turned in apparent sleep, and her lips touched his ear.
Leaning back, Clayton gazed suspiciously into her face. She was wide awake, her eyes aglow with love.
In one quick, smooth motion, he rolled her over onto her back and pressed her into the pillows, his body half covering hers. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he whispered in a husky voice.
“I won’t.”
36
* * *
When Whitney awoke, he was gone, and for a horrid moment, she thought she had only dreamed that he’d been with her last night. She rolled onto her back, her spirits plummeting—and then she saw him. He was seated near the windows a few steps from the bed, wearing a burgundy dressing robe that a servant had evidently brought to him along with a silver coffee service that was on the table in front of him.
The heavy draperies were partially open, revealing a bright blue, cloudless sky, but in contrast to the cheerful July morning, Clayton’s handsome face looked very somber, as if his thoughts were far away. Uneasily, she wondered what was causing that expression when he’d seemed so warm and passionate a few hours ago.
Pulling on the blue silk robe she’d worn the night before, Whitney walked across the Oriental carpet, stopping beside his chair. So absorbed was he in his thoughts, that he was visibly startled when she touched his shoulder. “When you weren’t in bed when I awakened, I thought for a moment that I had only imagined you were here last night.”
His expression softened and he reached out, took her arm, and pulled her gently but firmly down onto his lap. “How do you feel?” he asked as he slipped his arm around her waist.
“I feel appallingly well for a woman in my condition,” she joked, trying to lighten his mood. “Although, if I’m left unattended for more than a few moments, I exhibit a shocking tendency to fall asleep.”
Splaying his fingers over her abdomen, he asked tenderly, “How is the babe?”
“We’re both perfectly fine, now that you’re with us,” Whitney assured him.
He nodded, satisfied, but his expression turned solemn again. “I’ve been sitting here, thinking—” he explained.
“I hate it when you do that,” Whitney teased, reaching up and smoothing the frown lines from his forehead.
“You hate it when I do what?”
“When you think about things that make you frown.”
“I’m sorry—” he began.
“Very well, I’ll forgive you this time, but no more thinking.”
Clayton smiled at her jest but ignored her determined efforts to act as if everything was already settled and perfectly normal between them because of the night before. “I realized when I awakened that I have neither apologized for my inexcusable behavior, nor have I explained the reasons for it, and I need to do both.”
Sobering, Whitney nodded and let him begin.
“As you already know, when you sent me up to your desk for your aunt’s letter, I found another letter—an unfinished one. It was dated the day before you came to me at Claymore, and in the letter, you wrote that you feared you were with child.”
“How did you know I realized you found the letter?”
“The day before yesterday, I finally abandoned all dignity and sent for your friend, Emily Archibald, so that I could either persuade or intimidate her into giving me your direction.”
“Poor Emily. She couldn’t tell you that because I hadn’t told her where I planned to go.”
“So she said, and I believed her. She told me what little she did know, however, and that included the fact that you were aware I’d found that unfinished letter in your desk.”
Whitney nodded. “A few days after you found it, I realized you had seen it, and that it was responsible for the way you were treating me.”
“Then why in God’s name didn’t you discuss the letter with me and put us both out of our misery?”
“I should like to ask you tha