Until You

"No," Sheridan answered, loving every feature on his face. "It's not hot."

He gri

"Noel!"

Noel broke into a grin, and before Charity could stop him, he turned and raced to his uncle, who swept him up into his arms. "You've grown a foot!" Stephen told him, shifting him to his left arm, his gaze on the group of adults beneath the tree. "Have you missed me?"

"Yes!" Noel said emphatically with a shake of his head, but as they passed within a few feet of Sheridan, Noel saw Sherry watching him with a hesitant smile. He made a sudden decision and wriggled to get down.

"What, leaving me so soon?" Stephen asked, looking surprised and a little hurt. "Obviously," he joked to the Townsendes and Fieldings, as well as Georgette and Monica, as he lowered the wriggling little boy to his feet, "I need to start bringing him more lavish gifts. Where are you going, young man?"

Noel gave him an adoring look, but pointed a chubby finger to a woman who was standing a few paces away, wearing a drab dark blue gown, and explained, "First, kiss 'bye!"

Unaware that he was the cynosure of a half-dozen pairs of eyes, Stephen straightened, glanced in the direction the child had pointed… and froze, his gaze levelling on Sheridan, who was bending to receive her kiss but looking directly at Stephen.

Whitney saw his reaction, saw his jaw clench so tightly that a muscle began to throb in his cheek. She had secretly harbored the hope that he might somehow believe the Skeffingtons were actually acquaintances of hers and that Sherry's appearance here was coincidence, but that hope was in vain. Slowly, Stephen turned his head and looked straight at her, his eyes boring into Whitney's. In frigid silence he accused his sister-in-law of complicity and treachery, and then he turned and stalked purposefully toward the house.

Afraid that he intended to leave, Whitney put down her wineglass, excused herself to her guests, and went after him. His legs were longer, and he didn't care about appearances, so he had gained the house several minutes before she entered it. The butler provided the information that he had called for his carriage to be brought round and gone up to his room.

Whitney ran up the steps. When there was no answer to her knock on his door, she knocked again. "Stephen? Stephen, I know you're in there-"

She tried the door, and when it wasn't locked, she opened it and went inside. He stalked out of the dressing room wearing a fresh shirt, saw her, and his expression became more forbidding than it had been outside. "Stephen, listen to me-"

"Get out," he warned, quickly fastening the shirt up the front and reaching for his jacket.

"You aren't leaving, are you?"

"Leave?" he jeered. "I can't leave! You worked that out too. My compliments to you, your grace"-he emphasized contemptuously-"on your duplicity, your dishonesty, and your disloyalty."

"Stephen, please," she implored, taking a few hesitant steps into the room. "Just listen to me. Sherry thought you were marrying her out of pity. I thought if you had a chance to see her again-"

He started toward her, his expression threatening. "If I'd wanted to see her, I'd have asked your friend DuVille," he said scathingly. "She went to him when she left me."

Whitney began talking faster as she automatically backed away. "If you will just try to see it from her perspective."

"If you are wise," he interrupted in a soft, blood-chilling voice as he loomed over her, "you will avoid me very carefully this weekend, Whitney. And when this weekend is over, you will communicate with me through your husband. Now, get out of my way."

"I know you loved her, and I told-"

He clamped his hands on her shoulders, forcibly moved her aside, and walked around her.

In stu

Slowly, she went back downstairs to rejoin her guests for a party that had already had a very inauspicious begi

From the sidelines, the dowager duchess watched the blonde girl and, in a halfhearted attempt to distract their thoughts from Stephen's very violent reaction to Sheridan's presence, she idly remarked to Whitney, "Julia

Whitney dragged her thoughts from the alarming things Stephen had said to her to Julia

"It makes one marvel at the capriciousness of nature that allowed that man-" she nodded distastefully toward Sir John, "and that woman-" she grimaced at Lady Skeffington, "to produce that heavenly creature."

52

Normally a full staff of footmen were always on hand to assist arriving guests from their carriages and see that the vehicles and horses were taken around back to the stables, but when Stephen returned from his jaunt to the village, no one came out of the house. The only servant in evidence was a lone footman who was standing in the drive, staring fixedly in the general direction of the hills that rolled gently away from the stables at the back of the estate. He was concentrating so hard on whatever it was he was trying to see, that he seemed not to hear the carriage wheels until Stephen pulled up behind him, then he turned with a guilty start and trotted over to take the reins.

"Where is everyone?" Stephen asked, noticing that the butler still had not dispatched more servants from the house, nor opened the front door, as was customary.

"They're down at the stables, milord. It's quite a show, if I may say so, and not one to miss. Or so I've heard from them that's watching from the back of the house."

Stephen took the reins back from the footman, having decided to drive around to the stables and see for himself what the footman meant by "quite a show."

A long stretch of fence enclosed the stables and the large grassy area between the buildings where the horses were walked and cooled before being put away. To one side of the fence, pasture stretched all the way to the base of wooded hills, dotted with hedges and stone fences that were used to train Claymore's horses for the hunt. When Stephen pulled the carriage to a stop at the stables, the entire length of fencing was lined with grooms, footmen, coachmen, and stable hands. Stephen helped Monica and Georgette down from the carriage, noting as he did so that the entire house party, minus his treacherous sister-in-law, were standing on the far side of the fence, as absorbed with whatever unknown spectacle was taking place on the hillside as the servants were.