"McNaught, Judith - Westmoreland 01 - Whitney, My Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNaught Judith)

If he rode off the grounds of his estate, he could almost depend on meeting her en route to his destination. It was as if she had some lookout point from which she watched his every move, and Paul no longer found her childish infatuation with him either harmless or amusing.

Three weeks ago, she had followed him to a local inn. While he was pleasantly contemplating accepting the innkeeper's daughter's whispered invitation to meet her later in the hayloft, he'd glanced up and seen a familiar pair of bright green eyes peeping at him through the window. Slamming his tankard of ale on the table, he'd marched outside, grabbed Whitney by the elbow, unceremoniously deposited her on her horse, tersely reminding her that her father would be searching for her if she wasn't home by nightfall.

He'd stalked back inside and ordered another tankard, but when the innkeeper's daughter brushed her breasts suggestively against his arm while refilling his ale and Paul had a sudden vision of himself lying entangled with her voluptuous naked body, a pair of green eyes peered in through yet another window. He'd tossed enough coins on the planked wooden table to mollify the startled girl's wounded sensibilities and left--only to encounter Miss Stone again on his way home.

He was beginning to feel like a hunted man whose every move was under surveillance, and his temper was strained to the breaking point. And yet, Paul thought irritably, here he was standing in the April sun, trying for some obscure reason to protect Whitney from the criticism she richly deserved.

A pretty girl, several years younger than the others in the group, glanced at Paul. "I think I'll go and see what's keeping Whitney," said Emily Williams. She hurried across the lawn and along the whitewashed fence adjoining the stable. Shoving open the big double doors, Emily looked down the wide gloomy corridor lined with stalls on both sides. "Where is Miss Whitney?" she asked the stableboy who was currying a sorrel gelding.

"In there, Miss." Even in the muted light, Emily saw his face suffuse with color as he nodded toward a door adjacent to the tack room.

With a puzzled glance at the flushing stableboy, Emily tapped lightly on the designated door and stepped inside, then froze at the sight that greeted her: Whitney Allison Stone's long legs were encased in coarse brown britches that clung startlingly to her slender hips and were held in place at her narrow waist with a length of rope. Above the riding britches she wore a thin chemise.

"You surely aren't going out there dressed like that?" Emily gasped.

Whitney fired an amused glance over her shoulder at her scandalized friend. "Of course not. I'm going to wear a shirt too."

"B-but why?" Emily persisted desperately.

"Because I don't think it would be very proper to appear in my chemise, silly," Whitney cheerfully replied, snatching the stableboy's clean shirt off a peg and plunging her arms into the sleeves.

"P-proper? Proper?" Emily sputtered. "It's completely improper for you to be wearing men's britches, and you know it!"

"True. But I can't very well ride that horse without a saddle and risk having my skirts blow up around my neck, now can I?" Whitney breezily argued while she twisted her long unruly hair into a knot and pinned it at her nape.

"Ride without a saddle? You can't mean you're going to ride astride-your father will disown you if you do that again."

"I am not going to ride astride. Although," Whitney giggled, "I can't understand why men are allowed to straddle a horse, while we-who are supposed to be the weaker sex-must hang off the side, praying for our lives."

Emily refused to be diverted. "Then what are you going to do?"

"I never realized what an inquisitive young lady you are, Miss Williams," Whitney teased. "But to answer your question, I am going to ride standing on the horse's back. I saw it done at the fair, and I've been practicing ever since. Then, when Paul sees how well I do, he'll-"

"He'll think you have lost your mind, Whitney Stone! He'll think that you haven't a grain of sense or propriety, and that you're only trying something else to gain his attention." Seeing the stubborn set of her friend's chin, Emily switched her tactics. "Whitney, please-think of your father. What win he say if he finds out?"

Whitney hesitated, feeling the force of her cither's unwaveringly cold stare as if it were this minute focused upon her. She drew a long breath, then expelled it slowly as she glanced out the small window at the group waiting on the lawn.

Wearily, she said, "Father will say that, as usual, I have disappointed him, that I am a disgrace to him and to my mother's memory, that he is happy she didn't live to see what I have become. Then he will spend half an hour telling me what a perfect lady Elizabeth Ashton is, and that I ought to be like her."

"Well, if you really wanted to impress Paul, you could try . . ."

Whitney clenched her hands in frustration. "I have tried to be like Elizabeth. I wear those disgusting ruffled dresses that. make me feel like a pastel mountain, I've practiced going for hours without saying a word, and I've fluttered my eyelashes until my eyelids go limp."

Emily bit her Up to hide her smile at Whitney's unflattering description of Elizabeth Ashton's demure mannerisms, then she sighed. "I'll go and tell the others that you'll be right out."

Gasps of outrage and derisive sniggers greeted Whitney's appearance on the lawn when she led the horse toward the spectators. "She'll fall off," one of the girls predicted, "if God doesn't strike her dead first for wearing those britches."

Ignoring the impulse to snap out a biting retort, Whitney raised her head in a gesture of haughty disdain, then stole a look at Paul. His handsome face was taut with disapproval as his gaze moved from her bare feet, up her trousered legs, to her face. Inwardly, Whitney faltered at his obvious displeasure, but she swung resolutely onto the back of the waiting horse.