His fingers clamped down on her slim hand, wringing a gasp of pain from her. "I'm delighted that you're so eager to touch me," he drawled sarcastically, "because in a short while, you are going to have an opportunity to do exactly that." Distastefully he removed her hand from his arm and dropped it into her lap. "However, since this is not the place for you to demonstrate your affection, you will have to control your passions until then."

"Control my-?" Whitney gasped, and then hopefully she blurted, "Are you foxed?"

His lips twisted with cynical amusement "I am not drunk, so you needn't worry that I will be unable to perform …" He emphasized the last word, making it sound ominous. Then almost pleasantly he added, "You should sleep now. You've a long and exhausting night ahead of you."

Frightened by his taunting and hurt by the disgusted revulsion in his eyes whenever he looked at her, Whitney tore her gaze from his. She had no idea what he was talking about. She was on the verge of hysterical terror, and he was sitting here telling her to control her passions, assuring her that he would be able to "perform." In the darkness of the coach, the vulgar crudity of his remark finally penetrated the turbulent agitation of her mind, and her eyes grew huge with fear. Now she understood his plans!

Whitney searched the starlit night for sign of a village, a house, anywhere she could seek refuge. There were a few lights up ahead on her side of the road-a posting house or an inn, she thought. She didn't know what kind of injury she would sustain by jumping from the coach and she didn't care, so long as she would be able to get up and run . . . run to the lights beside the road.

Biting her trembling lower lip, Whitney inched her hand cautiously along her skirts toward the handle that would open the door. She stole a final, parting look at the granite profile of the man beside her and felt as if something were dying within her.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to clear them of the burning tears that would blind her when she hurtled from the coach. She edged her fingertips along the padded leather of the door until they closed around the hard, cold metal of the handle. A few more seconds until they were even with the open gates of the inn yard, and the horses slowed against the strain of the incline. Whitney's fingers tightened . . . She screamed as Clayton's hand clamped around her arm, jerking her away from the door.

"Don't be so impatient, my sweet. A common roadside inn is hardly the proper setting for our first coupling. Or do you prefer inns for your little trysts?" With a sharp twist of his arm, he flung her onto the seat across from him. "Do you?" he repeated savagely.

With pounding heart, Whitney watched the distance widen between the coach and the inn, and with it went her hope of escape. She couldn't possibly take him by surprise again, nor could she overpower him.

"Personally," Clayton continued almost sociably, "I have always preferred the comforts of my 'dingy' home to the questionable cleanliness and worn bed linen one usually finds in these places."

His cool mockery finally snapped her fragile self-control. "You-you are a bastard!" she burst out.

"If you say so," he agreed indifferently. "And if I am, that makes me eminently well suited to spend the night in bed with a bitch!"

Whitney squeezed her eyes closed and leaned her head back against the seat, trying desperately to bring her emotions under control. Clayton was infuriated about Paul, and somehow she had to explain. Swallowing convulsively, she whispered into the darkness, "Mrs. Sevarin is to blame for the gossip you heard. Despite what you think, as soon as Paul came home, I told him that I couldn't marry him. I couldn't stop the gossip at home, so I went to London-"

"The gossip followed you there, my sweet," he informed her in a silky tone. "Now stop boring me with your explanations."

"But-"

"Shut up," Clayton warned with deadly calm, "or I will change my mind about waiting until we nave a comfortable bed, and I'll take you right here."

Tendrils of fresh terror wrapped themselves around Whitney's heart.

They had been travelling for nearly two hours when the coach slowed and passed through gates of some sort. The dazed exhaustion which had blessedly numbed her mind vanished, and Whitney stiffened, staring out the window at the lights of a large house looming in the far distance.

By the time they pulled up before the house, her heart was hammering so wildly she could scarcely breathe. Clayton climbed down, then reached in and dragged her from the coach.

"I am not going into that house," she cried, writhing and twisting in his grasp.

"It's a little late for you to start trying to protect your virtue," he jeered, swinging her up into his arms. His hands bit into her thigh and waist as he carried her into the dimly lit house and up the endless, curving staircase.

A red-haired maid rushed out onto the balcony and Whitney opened her mouth to cry out, then choked on the cry as Clayton's fingers dug agonizingly into her flesh.

"Go to bed!" he snapped at the woman who watched them pass with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"Please, please stop this!" Whitney begged frantically as he kicked open the door to a bedroom and strode inside. Her mind dimly registered the splendid furnishings and a fire burning in the grate of an enormous fireplace across the room, but the object that claimed all her wild-eyed attention was the large four-poster bed on a dais to which Clayton was carrying her.

He dumped her unceremoniously in the center of the bed, then turned on his heel and headed across the room toward the door. For one relieved moment, Whitney thought he intended to leave. Instead he reached out and rammed the bolt into place with the finality of a death blow.

In a frozen paralysis, she watched him stride past the bed toward the fireplace across the room. He flung himself into one of the sofas at right angles to the fireplace, and minutes passed while he sat there, looking at her as if she were some strange, captive animal, a curiosity, deformed and loathsome to his sight.

The silence was finally shattered by his order rapped out in a cold, unfamiliar voice. "Come here, Whitney."

Whitney's whole body jerked. She shook her head and inched backward along the bed toward the pillows, her gaze flying to the windows, then the other doors. Could she possibly reach one of them before he could stop her?

"You can try," Clayton commented. "But I promise you'll never make it."

Swallowing a panicked sob, Whitney sat straighter, struggling against the hysteria welling up in her throat. "About Paul-"

"Say his name one more time," Clayton lashed out furiously, "and I'll kill you, so help me God!" And then he became frighteningly polite. "You may have Sevarin if he still wants you. But we can discuss all that later. Now, my love, are you going to walk over here to me unaided, or must I come and assist you?"

He lifted a dark brow at her, permitting her a moment to think it over. "Well?" he threatened, half rising from his chair.

Refusing to beg, or to give him the added satisfaction of subduing her, Whitney rose from the bed. She tried to hold her head high, to look scornful and proud, but her knees felt like water. Two paces away from him, her shaking legs refused to move again. She stood there, staring at him with tear-brightened eyes.

He surged to his feet. "Turn around!" he snapped. Before Whitney could utter a protest, he caught her by the shoulders and whipped her around. With one vicious jerk, he ripped her dress down the back and the sound of tearing fabric screamed

in Whitney's ears, while satin-covered buttons scattered across the carpet to shine in the firelight, He turned her back toward him and smiled malevolently. "I own the dress too," he reminded her. He settled back in his chair, stretched his long legs out, and for several moments watched Whitney's clumsy attempts to keep the slippery satin bodice clutched to her breasts. "Drop it!" he ordered.