"No."

"I will never forgive myself for laughing at Carlisle," she said, her hand tightening convulsively on Whitney's. "Whitney," she whispered painfully, "where did he take you? What did he do to you?"

A pair of vulnerable green eyes lifted to Emily's, and in them Emily saw the answer. "That monster!" she hissed, leaping to her feet. "That blackguard, that devil! He ought to be hung! He-" Emily stopped, obviously deciding that Whitney needed encouragement, not more fuel for her hurt and anger. "We have to look on the bright side of this."

"What 'bright side'?" Whitney said tiredly.

"It may not seem like it, but there is one. Just listen." Dropping to her knees, Emily took both Whitney's hands in her reassuring grasp. "I don't know much about the law, but I do know that your father can't force you to marry that. . . that monster! And after what he's done, Claymore must know you will never willingly marry him. Therefore, he has no choice but to release you from the betrothal agreement and forget about the money he gave your father."

Whitney's head jerked up. For long moments, she stared blankly at the wall across from her. Of course Clayton meant to release her. That must be why he hadn't come to see her. He was going to withdraw his offer. A strange, sick feeling swept over her at the thought. "No," she said firmly. "He won't withdraw his offer. I know he won't. Oh Emily," she cried, "do you truly think he'll just walk away and let me go?"

"Of course!" Emily promptly reassured. "What else can he possibly-" Emily's eyes widened on Whitney's unhappy face. "Whitney?" she gasped, slowly coming to her feet and staring down at her unhappy friend. "You cannot possibly mean- My God! You don't want him to let you go," she cried.

Whitney's gaze flew upward. "It's only that I never considered that he might release me."

"You don't want him to!" Emily persisted in rising tones. "It's written all over your face."

Whitney stood up too, nervously rubbing her palms against the folds of her dress. She willed herself to say she hoped above everything that Clayton Westmoreland would release her, but the words lodged in her throat. "I don't know what I want," she admitted miserably.

Emily dismissed that with a wave of her hand, her anxious eyes riveted on Whitney. "Has he sent word to you, or approached you in any way since that night?"

"No! And he had better not!"

"And you have no intention of trying to see him?"

"Certainly not," Whitney declared heatedly.

"He can't possibly approach you. First he would need some sign from you that you would at least listen to an apology. And you won't-can't-give him that sign, can you?"

"I would the first!" Whitney announced proudly, and she meant it.

"But if he cares for you at all, he will be filled with remorse for what he did. He'll think that you must loathe him."

Whitney walked over to the bed and leaned her forehead against the poster which supported the canopy. "He won't let me go, Emily," she said with more hope than regret in her voice. "I think he cares . ._. cared . . . for me very much."

"Well!" Emily exploded. "He certainly has a peculiar way of showing his regard."

"So do I," Whitney whispered. "I constantly defied him. I would have shamed him in front of his friends by eloping with Paul. I never stopped lying to him." She closed her eyes and turned her head away. "If you don't mind," she said in a suffocated voice, "I'd like to go to bed now."

Emily went to bed too, but after lying awake for hours, she finally gave up trying to sleep. Propping up the pillows, she sat back, watching Michael as he slept peacefully beside her. "Could I still love you if you'd done that to me?" she whispered to his sleeping form. "Yes," she answered, tenderly smoothing the hair at his temple. "I could forgive you almost anything." But if Michael had done that, he would have an opportunity to make amends. They were married, and no matter how battered or angry she felt in spirit, they would still be forced to be in each other's company, in order to keep up appearances. Before long, matters would inevitably come to a head, and then the breach could be healed. But Whitney wasn't married to Claymore. They were both avoiding each other, and they would continue to do so. Whitney's pride and hurt would prevent her from making the first move, and the duke would continue to believe that she hated him and wanted nothing to do with him. Unless something brought them face to face-and soon-this breach could never be healed.

Torn between interfering in a highly explosive situation, or politely staying out of it, Emily pulled up her knees and perched her chin on them. After several minutes' contemplation, she slowly shoved the bedcovers aside. Trembling with guilt and uncertainty, she crept out of bed. Downstairs she groped in the darkness for a tinder and lit a candle, then she tiptoed into the yellow salon and put the candle on the desk while she searched through the drawers for one of the unused wedding invitations she'd helped Elizabeth address.

She slid into the chair and nibbled on the end of a quill, trying to think of what she could say. It was imperative that the duke not mistakenly believe she was acting on Whitney's instructions, for there was every likelihood that when Whitney first saw him she would turn on him in hurt outrage. The important thing was bringing them face to face and leaving the rest to fate.

Hastily, before she lost her courage and changed her mind, Emily wrote on the bottom of the invitation, "Someone we both care very much for will be in attendance on the bride this day." She signed it simply, "Emily Archibald."

A footman wearing vaguely familiar livery was shown into Clayton's library on Upper Brook Street. "I have an invitation which my mistress instructed be given directly to you, your grace," he explained.

Clayton was deeply engrossed in his morning correspondence. "Are you to await a response?" he asked absently.

"No, my lord."

"Then leave it there." Clayton nodded at a small table near the door.

He was getting dressed to go out for the evening when he recollected the envelope left lying in his library that morning. "Send someone for it, Armstrong," he murmured to his valet without looking away from the mirror which reflected the success of the intricate folds he was putting into his snowy neckcloth.

Clayton shrugged into the jacket Armstrong held for him, then he took the envelope a footman had just brought up. Opening it, he extracted what appeared to be yet another invitation for his secretary to attend to.

The name "Ashton" leapt out at him and his heart instantly contracted with painful memories. "Tell my secretary to decline, but to send an appropriate gift in my name," he said quietly, handing the invitation back to the footman.

As he passed it across, however, a tiny handwritten message along the bottom caught his eye. Clayton read it, then read it again, his pulse beginning to hammer. What in God's name was Emily trying to tell him? That Whitney wished to see him? Or that Emily wanted him to see her? Impatiently waving his valet and the footman away, he carried the invitation into his bedchamber and reread Emily's words three more times, growing more agitated with each reading. Futilely he tried to find something in the brief note to indicate that Whitney had forgiven him. But there was nothing.

That evening, Clayton sat through the play at the Crown Theatre paying no more attention to the raven-haired beauty beside him than he did to the performances on the stage. His emotions veered back and forth between hope and despair. There was nothing about Emily's note to give him any encouragement except that she had sent it to him. Emily Archibald and Whitney had been fast friends since childhood. If Whitney hated him, Emily would have discovered that by now, and she would never have sent him the invitation. On the other hand, if Whitney had forgiven him, she would have sent it to him herself.