"Help you marry Paul," Whitney clarified.

Elizabeth's blue eyes widened. "No! No, really, I couldn't," she stammered, blushing gorgeously.

"Of course you could!" Whitney declared, passing her a tray of little pastries. "You're a very beautiful girl and Paul has always . .."

"No," Elizabeth contradicted softly, shaking her blond head. "You are more in the way of being beautiful. I am only, well, pretty, at best."

After taking this monumental step in befriending Elizabeth, Whitney wasn't about to have her generosity outdone. "You have beautiful manners, Elizabeth. You always do and say the proper thing at the proper time."

"The properly dull thing," Elizabeth argued prettily. "Not lively and interesting things like you say."

"Elizabeth," Whitney said, unable to suppress her amusement, "I was always perfectly outrageous, while you were always perfectly perfect."

Elizabeth relaxed back in her chair and giggled. "There, you see! I would have only said thank you' but you always say unusual things."

"Do not pay me another compliment," Whitney warned with a laughing look. "I won't be outdone, you know, and we will be here all night admiring one another."

Elizabeth sobered and said, "I'm very happy about you and Paul." At Whitney's stunned glance, she explained, "Everyone knows your betrothal is supposed to be a secret, but since everyone is talking about it, I didn't think you would mind if I mentioned it."

"What do you mean, everyone is talking about it?" Whitney said hoarsely. "Who else knows?"

"Well, let me think. Mr. Oldenberry, the apothecary, told Margaret and me. He said he heard it from Lady Eubank's maid, who heard it from Lady Eubank, who heard it from Paul's own mama. I suppose everyone in the village knows."

"But it isn't true!" Whitney cried desperately.

Elizabeth's pretty face fell. "Please don't say it isn't true!" she implored agitatedly. "Not now, not when Peter is almost to the point of offering."

"Who is Peter going to offer for?" Whitney asked, momentarily diverted.

"For me. But he won't if Paul is unattached. You see, Peter is shy, and he's always believed I have a secret tendre for Paul, which isn't in the least true. But even if it was, my papa would never permit me to marry Paul because he's a shocking spendthrift and his lands are mortgaged."

Whitney slumped back in her chair and gaped at Elizabeth. "Peter Redfern shy?" she echoed. "Elizabeth, are we talking about the same Peter Redfern? The one who tried to box my ears the day of the picnic when you fell out of the tree?"

"Well, he's shy around me," Elizabeth said.

In speechless disbelief, Whitney pictured Peter's freckled face and thinning red hair, and tried to imagine how he could have won the heart of a fragile, ethereal beauty like Elizabeth, who had always had Paul at her beck and call. "Do you honestly mean to tell me," Whitney uttered, "that you've been in love with Peter all these years?"

"Yes," Elizabeth admitted brokenly. "But if you tell everyone that you and Paul aren't going to be married, then Peter will just stand back, the way he always has, and let Paul take his place. And then I'll-I'll-" Elizabeth groped for her lacy handkerchief and promptly trailed off into dainty tears.

Whitney cocked her head to one side. "However do you manage to cry like that?" she asked admiringly. "I always gasp and snort and my eyes spill over like fountains."

Elizabeth giggled tearily and dabbed at her eyes before lifting them pleadingly to Whitney. "You said you'd done me injustices and you were sorry. If you truly mean it, couldn't you wait just a few days before crying off with Paul? Peter is going to say he wants to marry me any moment now, I can tell."

"You don't realize what you're asking of me," Whitney said, tensing. "If a certain person were to hear the gossip and believe I've truly betrothed myself to Paul, my life wouldn't be worth a farthing." Elizabeth looked on the verge of a fresh bout of tears and Whitney stood up, torn between the certainty that a few days really wouldn't make a difference and the inexplicable fear that they could result in disaster. "I'll give you three days before I put a stop to the gossip," Whitney reluctantly conceded.

Long after Elizabeth's departure, Whitney sat in her room, thinking and worrying. If everyone, including the servants, was openly gossiping about her "betrothal" to Paul, Clayton would certainly hear of it as soon as he returned. He had made it very clear that he wouldn't tolerate people believing she had ever been betrothed to anyone but him, and Whitney tried to think of some proof she could offer him that none of this was her fault-that she had, in fact, told Paul she wouldn't marry him, exactly as she had promised Clayton she would.

He had accepted her word and trusted her to keep it, and Whitney wanted him to believe she had, but the only one who could prove it was Paul, and Paul was in no mood to aid her.

Whitney bit her lip, concerned with more than just the loss of her honor. Without the incentive of marrying Paul to give her courage, she now felt a deep-rooted, genuine fear of Clayton's wrath. The more she pondered it, the more convinced she became that the best way to avert certain disaster was to go to London and explain to Clayton what was happening here. He would be far less angry hearing it from her than from strangers, and he would know she wasn't to blame. After all, if she was truly planning to marry Paul, as the gossip had it, why would she return to London to see Clayton?

Resolutely, Whitney got up and went down the hall to her aunt's room. She poured out the entire story, including the gossip about her betrothal to Paul and her abandoned plan to elope. Aunt Anne blanched but she remained silent until Whitney was finished. "What do you intend to do now?" she asked then.

"I think it would be best if I went to London and stayed with Emily. As soon as I arrive, I'll notify his grace I'm there, and he'll naturally come to see me. Then I'U choose exactly the right moment to tell him about the gossip here. I don't think he'll care so much about the talk, so long as he believes it isn't my fault."

"I'll come to London with you," her aunt instantly volunteered.

Whitney shook her head. "I wish you could, but there's a slim chance that he might return to the village without my having been able to see him in London. If he does, he'll hear the gossip and undoubtedly come straight here to the house. I need you here to explain and calm him down."

"What a cheerful prospect," Lady Anne said drily, but she was smiling. "Very well, I'll stay here. Now, assuming you reach him in London, what reason will you give him for being there?"

Whitney's smooth forehead knitted into an irritated frown. "I suppose I'll have to tell him the truth-that I was afraid he would come back to the village and believe that despite his warning, I hadn't refused Paul. Although, I find it excessively galling to have to tear off to London like a rabbit frightened of incurring his wrath. That man walked into my life a few months ago, and I've been like a puppet obliged to dance to his tune ever since. I think I shall tell him that too!" Whitney finished mutinously.

"While you're bent on being so honest about your feelings," Aunt Anne suggested with a knowing gleam in her eyes, "why don't you also tell him that you have developed a sincere affection for him and you are willing now to honor the betrothal contract? It will please him immensely to hear you say it."

Whitney shot up off the sofa as if she'd been scorched. "I most certainly will not!" she declared hotly. "Considering that he never cared whether I wanted to marry him, and has never doubted for a minute that I would marry him, I fail to see why I should flatter his vanity now by professing to want to marry him. Besides, I haven't made up my mind to marry him."