Джудит Макнот: Whitney, My Love

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 worse, 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. Fm 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."

THE NEWS THAT MARTIN STONE'S DAUGHTER WAS BEING PACKED off to France poste haste spread through the countryside like a fire through dry brush. In a sleepy rural area where the gentry were usually aloof and reserved, Whitney Stone had again provided everyone with a delicious morsel of excitement.

On the cobbled streets of the village and in households wealthy and poor, females of all ages gathered to savor this latest piece of gossip. With great relish and at greater length, they discussed every scandalous escapade of Whitney's scandal-ridden life, beginning with the toad she let loose in church one Sunday when she was eight years old, to the time this past summer when she fell out of a tree while spying on Paul Sevarin, seated beneath it with a young lady.

Only when those events had been recalled in detail, did they allow themselves to conjecture over Martin Stone's reason for finally sending her off to France.

In general, they felt that the outrageous child bad probably pushed her poor, beleaguered father too far when she appeared in men's trousers. Because she had so many other shortcomings, there was some disagreement over exactly what had driven her father to take such sudden action, but if there was anything they all agreed upon, it was that Paul

Sevarin would be vastly relieved to have the girl out from under his feet.

During the next three days, Martin Stone's neighbors arrived at his house in droves, ostensibly to visit with Lady Gilbert and to bid Whitney goodbye. On the evening before their departure for France, Anne Gilbert was seated in the salon, enduring one of these social calls by three ladies and their daughters. Her smile was more formal than friendly as she listened with ill-concealed annoyance to these women who professed to be well-wishers and yet took a morbid delight in recounting to her Whitney's many youthful transgressions. Under the pretense of friendly concern, they made it clear that, in their collective opinion, Whitney was going to disgrace herself in Paris, destroy Anne's sanity, and very likely ruin Edward's diplomatic career.

She stood when they were finally ready to leave, and bade them a curt goodbye; then she sank into a chair, her eyes bright with angry determination. By constantly criticizing his daughter in front of other people, Martin Stone had made his own child a target for village ridicule. All Anne really needed to do was whisk Whitney away from these narrow-minded, spiteful neighbors of hers and let her bloom in Paris, where the social atmosphere wasn't so stifling.

In the doorway of the salon, the butler cleared his throat. "Mr. Sevarin is here, my lady."

"Show him in, please," Anne said, carefully hiding her surprised pleasure that the object of Whitney's childish adoration had come to say goodbye to her. Anne's pleasure faded, however, when Mr. Sevarin walked into the salon accompanied by a stunningly lovely little blonde. Since everyone for fifteen miles seemed to know that Whitney worshiped him, Anne had no doubt that Paul Sevarin knew it too, and she thought it very callous of him to bring a young woman with him when he had come to say goodbye to a girl who adored him.