Whitney, My Love

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.'"His wife 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 wMcNaught, Judith is the author of 'Whitney, My Love', published 0011 under ISBN 9780671776091 and ISBN 0671776096.