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 have more success with the stubborn chit
than I have had.'"
Edward chuckled. "Show me where it says she's 'sweet-
tempered.'"
Hiswife 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."
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 blonde 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 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, and
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. 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.
"P-proper? 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 every
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 will he say if he finds out?"
Whitney hesitated, feeling the force of her father'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. 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 lip 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
grateful.
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 sisterin-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
savagely. "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 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 broadshouldered, 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.
"Good-bye, 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 -- "
"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'll 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.
Weak-kneed, her chest heaving with each labored breath,
Anne topped the steep rise and collapsed unceremoniously
onto the blanket beside Whitney. "I-I thought I'd take...a
nice stroll," Anne lied. When she caught her breath, she
noticed the leather-bound book lying face down on the
blanket and, seizing on books as a topic of conversation,
she said, "Is that a romantic novel?"
"No, Aunt," Whitney demurely uttered, carefully placing
her hand over the tide of the book to conceal it from her
aunt's eyes.
"I'm told most young ladies adore romantic novels," Anne
tried again.
"Yes," Aunt Whitney agreed politely.
"I read one once but I didn't like it," Anne remarked, her
mind groping for some other topic that might draw Whitney
into conversation. "I cannot abide a heroine who is too
perfect, nor one who is forever swooning."
Whitney was so astonished to discover that she wasn't the
only female in all of England who didn't devour the
insipid things, that she instantly forgot her resolution
to speak only in monosyllables. "And when the heroines
aren't swooning," she added, her entire face lighting up
with laughter, "they are lying about with hartshorn
bottles up their nostrils, moping and pining away for some
faint-hearted gentleman who hasn't the gumption to offer
for them, or else has already offered for some other,
unworthy female. I could never just lie there doing
nothing, knowing the man I loved was falling in love with
a horrid person." Whitney darted a glance at her aunt to
see if she was shocked, but her aunt was regarding her
with an unexplainable smile lurking at the comers of her
eyes. "Aunt Anne, could you actually care for a man who
dropped to his knees and said, 'Oh, Clarabel, your lips
are the petals of a red rose and your eyes are two stars
from the heavens'?" With a derisive snort, Whitney
finished, "That is where I would have leapt for the
hartshorn!"
"And so would I." Anne said, laughing. "What do you read
then, if not atrocious romantic novels?" She pried the
book from beneath Whitney's flattened hand and stared at
the gold-embossed title. "The Iliad?" she asked in
astonished disbelief. The breeze ruffled the pages, and
Anne's amazed gaze ricocheted from the print to Whitney's
tense face. "But this is in Greek! Surely you don't read
Greek?"
Whitney nodded, her face flushed with mortification. Now
her aunt would think her a bluestocking -- another black
mark against her. "Also Latin, Italian, French, and even
some German," she confessed.
"Good God," Anne breathed. "How did you ever learn all
that?"
"Despite what Father thinks, Aunt Anne, I am only foolish,
not stupid, and I plagued him to death until he allowed me
tutors in languages and history." Whitney fell silent,
remembering how she'd once believed that if she applied
herself to her studies, if she could become more like a
son, her father might love her.
"You sound ashamed of your accomplishments, when you
should be proud."
Whitney gazed out at her home, nestled in the valley
below. "I'm sure you know everyone thinks it's a waste of
time to educate a female in these things. And anyway, I
haven't a feminine accomplishment to my name. I can't sew
a stitch that doesn't look as if it were done blindfolded,
and when I sing, the dogs down at the stable begin to
howl. Mr. Twittsworthy, our local music instructor, told
my father that my playing of the pianoforte gives him
hives. I can't do a thing that girls ought to do, and
what's more, I particularly detest doing them."
Whitney knew her aunt would now take her in complete
dislike, just as everyone else always did, but it was
better this way because at least she could stop dreading
the inevitable. She looked at Lady Anne, her green eyes
wide and vulnerable. "I'm certain Papa has told you all
about me. I'm a terrible disappointment to him. He wants
me to be dainty and demure and quiet, like Elizabeth
Ashton. I try to be, but I can't seem to do it."
Anne's heart melted for the lovely, spirited, bewildered
child her sister had borne. Laying her hand against
Whitney's cheek, she said tenderly, "Your father wants a
daughter who is like a cameo -- delicate, pale, and easily
shaped. Instead, he has a daughter who is a diamond, full
of sparkle and life, and he doesn't know what to do with
her. Instead of appreciating the value and rarity of his
jewel -- instead of polishing her a bit and then letting
her shine -- he persists in trying to shape her into a
common cameo."
Whitney was more inclined to think of herself as a chunk
of coal, but rather than disillusion her aunt, she kept
silent. After her aunt left, Whitney picked up her book,
but soon her mind wandered from the printed page to dreamy
thoughts of Paul.
That night when she came down to the dining room, the
atmosphere in the room was strangely charged, and no one
noticed her sauntering toward the table. "When do you plan
to tell her she's coming back to France with us, Martin?"
her uncle demanded angrily. "Or is it your intention to
wait until the day we leave and then just toss the child
into the coach with us?"
The world tilted crazily, and for one horrible moment,
Whitney thought she was going to be sick. She stopped,
trying to steady her shaking limbs, and swallowed back the
aching lump in her throat. "Am I going somewhere, Father?"
she asked, trying to sound calm and indifferent.
They all turned and stared, and her father's face
tightened into lines of impatience and annoyance. "To
France," he replied abruptly. "To live with your aunt and
uncle, who are going to try to make a lady out of you."
Carefully avoiding meeting anyone's eyes, lest she break
down then and there, Whitney slid into her chair at the
table. "Have you informed my aunt and uncle of the risk
they are taking?" she asked, concentrating all her
strength on preventing her father from seeing what he had
just done to her heart. She looked coldly at her aunt and
uncle's guilty, embarrassed faces. "Father may have
neglected to mention you're risking disgrace by welcoming
me into your home. As he will tell you, I've a hideous
disposition, I'm rag-mannered, and I haven't a trace of
polite conversation."
Her aunt was watching her with naked pity, but her
father's expression was stony. "Oh Papa," she whispered
brokenly, "do you really despise me this much? Do you hate
me so much that you have to send me out of your sight?"
Her eyes swimming with unshed tears, Whitney stood up. "If
you...will excuse me...I'm not very hungry this evening."
"How could you!" Anne cried when she left, rising from her
own chair and glaring furiously at Martin Stone. "You are
the most heartless, unfeeling -- it will be a pleasure to
remove that child from your clutches. How she has survived
this long is a testimony to her strength. I'm sure I could
never have done so well."
"You refine too much upon her words, Madam," Martin said
icily. "I assure you that what has her looking so
distraught is not the prospect of being parted from me. I
have merely put a premature end to her plans to continue
making a fool of herself over Paul Sevarin."