Why did he keep looking at her? And why did he have to be so dratted handsome while he did it? Couldn’t he have had a hunchback or crossed eyes or a pockmarked face if she was trying to hate him?
“You have a very faraway look, my dear,” Lady Woodley said.
Josie jolted and blushed at being caught with such thoughts in her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, searching for an appropriate lie. “I-I was just admiring your gardens.”
Lady Woodley nodded. “Are they not lovely? Our staff takes such good care of them and have been bringing in fresh flowers for my room every day of my convalescence.”
“You’ve always had the prettiest roses,” Josie’s mother said with a sigh.
“They are,” Josie said, encouraged by the fact that she caught Evan yawning from the corner of her eye. Perhaps he would grow bored of their conversation and just go away.
“You should take a walk in the conservatory if you like the roses so much, Jocelyn,” Lady Woodley said. “The hothouse flowers are also doing very well this year.”
“I would love that,” Josie said, both because she meant it and because Evan’s eyes were glazing over.
“Evan, why don’t you escort Josie to the conservatory?” Lady Woodley said.
Josie jolted and turned her full attention to the dowager, even as Evan did the same. “I—” she began.
At the same time, Evan said, “Mother—”
Their eyes locked and Josie folded her arms. Seemed all this talk about him liking her was pure poppycock. He didn’t want to walk with her any more than she did with him. And while that should have pleased her, for some reason it did not.
“I think your son would not like to leave you, my lady,” Josie said, ice in her tone that she could not control.
Evan’s eyes narrowed and for a moment she thought he might defy her words. But he had no chance. Lady Woodley waved her hand. “Oh, ridiculous. I do not need to be handled like I am made of glass. Evan, take our guest. I insist.”
Slowly, Evan rose to his feet and held out an arm. “Of course. Miss Westfall, if you would like to come with me, I’m happy to show you the conservatory.”
“And take some cuttings if you’d like, my dear,” his mother said as Josie got to her feet and stared at the arm outstretched to her.
It was a very muscular arm. And she knew if she touched it, she would be connected physically to this man she had been avoiding for over a decade. Was she ready for that?
She had no choice but to be, because every eye in the room was on them, watching and waiting for her to act politely. And probably wondering why it was taking her so long.
Tensing, she took the arm and tried to ignore the way his muscles flexed as he drew her forward. The way his spicy, male scent filled her nostrils. The way her hand curled perfectly around him, like it was made to go there.
“Take your time, we are having a lovely talk,” Josie’s mother called out.
She squeezed her eyes shut. There was never any subtly to Rachel Westfall. No one could accuse her of that.
Evan guided her into the hall and down through a maze of twists and turns that led them to a large set of double doors. He released her and she found herself finally able to breathe as he pushed them open and revealed the conservatory.
For a moment, Josie forgot her discomfort, forgot everything except for the beauty before her. The conservatory was a flood of green deliciousness, with trees and flowers and fruits in all directions. She stepped into its steamy heat with a sigh of pleasure and hardly noticed that Evan moved in behind her and shut the door softly.
“It has been years since I was here,” she breathed. “We used to play hide-and-seek in this very room. You could be lost forever, I think, and I used to imagine how I would build myself a little house and live off the fruit.”
The moment that confession left her lips, she wished she could take it back. She hadn’t meant to tell something so intimate to a man she didn’t trust. She shot Evan a side glance and found him watching her intently.
“Of course, those were silly, girlish thoughts,” she said, trying to distance herself.
“I rather like the idea,” he said with a shrug. “You could hide a long time here and not be found if you wanted to.”
Josie’s retort was on her lips, a quip about why would he want to when he had everything he wanted outside those doors. But she held it back. If she were rude to him, it would only drive home the point that she gave a damn. Her best course here was to be calmly polite and hope that would put the distance between them that she so desperately wanted.
“How do you find the weather this summer, my lord?” she asked.
He tilted his head at her question. “The—the weather?” he repeated.
She forced a smile. “Yes. I’ve found it quite fair. Hardly any rain. Such a refreshing change from last year’s torrents all through the summer months.”
He was silent for a moment, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish. “Are you—are you making small talk with me? Being polite?”
Josie felt heat flood her cheeks and not just from the effect of the greenhouse. “Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “But you aren’t supposed to point it out, you know!”
For a moment, he seemed stunned into silence, but then he surprised her by tilting his head back and laughing. She stared, for he wasn’t mocking her. This was real laughter, brought on by their odd situation. And he was so handsome while he did it, the sound of it was so infectious that she found herself doing the same.
He smiled as their shared mirth faded. “I’m sorry, Josie. I didn’t mean to so rudely point out your politeness. Will you ever forgive me?”
“This time,” she teased back.
But now his expression grew more serious. “Well, that is a start. If you have a small bit of forgiveness in your heart for me, perhaps that means that someday you will have more.”
She caught her breath. “I—oh—Evan—” She turned away, ready to bolt, but he reached out and caught her forearm gently.
“Oh, please don’t run away. Josie, I don’t want us to be enemies.”
She swallowed as years of pain came rushing back in a flash. Memories of cruelty, both his unintentional kind and the very intentional kind that had followed.
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
“Why have you hated me all these years?” he asked, suddenly very close to her. “Was it only that day? I know I was rather silly toward you, but I’ve seen you be a friend to many. Why can’t you forgive me?”
“Silly toward me?” Josie repeated, pulling her arm away from him as she stared up into his handsome and utterly clueless face. “Is that what you think that was? That you were silly to me to impress a girl?”
His lips parted. “Yes.”
“It was more than that.” Her jaw clenched at his utter cluelessness. “You hurt my feelings so very badly. But I could have forgiven that. You threw out a nasty name for me. Horsey.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he began. “A slip of the tongue!”
“I don’t care,” she said back, far more passionately than she meant to. “Don’t you understand? That is what everyone called me for years afterward! It has stuck all the way up to now. I was already awkward, I was already plump and unpretty. And you made it all worse because you gave them a slur to use when they saw me. And what’s worse is that you are staring at me as if I am crazy. You are staring at me as if you hardly remember what was one of the worst days of my life.” She turned away from him. “And that is why I have hated you, Evan. That is why your half-hearted apologies have never meant a thing to me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Evan stared at Josie’s trembling back, her sharp words like knives in his chest.
“I didn’t realize they carried the name forward,” he said with a shake of his head. “Why didn’t Claire say something?”
“I told her not to,” Josie said softly, not turning toward him. “I didn’t want to talk to you, to listen to you
tell me how sorry you were, to hear the pity in your voice that I hear now. What good would it have done? They still would have called me names—it wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
“I don’t have pity in my voice,” he said, moving toward her, wishing she would look at him. “Please, Josie.”
She stood stock still for a long moment, then let out a very long sigh and turned to face him at last. Her arms were folded like a shield across her chest, her chin was lifted in defiance and wavering strength, but in her eyes he saw the pain she had suffered. She had never been more beautiful and in that moment he had a strange longing to just…hold her.
“I don’t feel pity for you,” he began. “Because you are not pitiable. The fact that you endured that kind of teasing and are so strong today is a testament to your character. The fact that I participated, even peripherally, in what happened to you is, sadly, a testament to mine.”
Her lips parted, but he held up his hand. “Please, let me finish.”
She nodded. “All right.”
“Jocelyn Westfall, I did you a wrong. And I am truly sorry. Not half-heartedly, but truly. And I hope that you can forgive me at last.”
She was looking at his face, exploring it like she could determine if he was being true. He hoped he could see that he was. His odd desire for her and the fact that he thought she might know something about Claire aside, he did want to make up for what he’d done.
“I can accept your apology,” she said at last.
He frowned. She said the words, but there was still hesitation in her eyes, in her voice. Perhaps that was born after years of habit when it came to mistrusting him, but he thought there was more to it.
“Who was the girl?” he asked.
She blinked in confusion. “The girl?”
He nodded. “You said that I was trying to impress a girl. I vaguely recall her, but who was it?”
Josie shook her head. “Viscount Aldridge’s eldest daughter, Aurora. I think she’s Lady Denham now.”
Evan recoiled. “That girl?” He shuddered. “God, she must be the biggest bit—” He cut himself off. “She is one of the nastiest women in Society. I thought her attractive?”
“She was very pretty,” Josie admitted, he thought reluctantly. “She still is. She and her younger sister Philippa made great sport about teasing me.” She bit her lip. “Occasionally they still do when they feel they can get away with it.”
Evan clenched his hands at his sides at the thought that Josie was still being tormented. “How about this? I will make it up to you.”
“How?” she asked, incredulous tone proving she had no trust for him whatsoever.
“When we return to London, I will give those little witches the cut direct. I will make it clear to all that no one will get away with calling you names again.”
She tilted her head with a small laugh. “And how will you enforce that edict, Evan? It isn’t as if we will be together all the time.”
Evan hesitated. The idea of being with Josie all the time was not as unpleasant as it should have been. He could almost see it perfectly in his mind. Dancing with her at midnight, stealing a kiss, taking her home to his bed.
He shook his head. “We’ll work it out.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she began, moving to turn away again.
He caught her arm, tugging her a bit closer, not allowing her to turn her back to him and shut him away. “But it does,” he said softly. “I see how much it does now.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she stared up at him, and something dark and deep stirred in him. That desire he didn’t want to feel roared back to the surface, tormenting him.
“I appreciate that,” she whispered, her gaze suddenly back on his lips as it had been a few nights before.
“I really am sorry that my words helped in any way to make your life hell,” he whispered.
She smiled. “I believe that, perhaps for the first time. But you know, it wasn’t always awful. I had Claire. Claire made it sweet enough times that the bitter didn’t destroy me.”
He tensed. Here was Josie, opening up to him in a way that meant she was beginning to forgive him, and yet she was also giving him an opening to press her about Claire. He could use this moment to get what he wanted. And yet, that felt so…terrible.
But it was Claire! And perhaps something Josie revealed in her weakness could help their family.
“You loved Claire, I know. You were like a second sister to her,” he said.
“My own sisters were so much older, I hardly even existed for them. I honestly still don’t. So Claire was truly my sister in every real sense of the word.”
“You must miss her as deeply as we all do,” he whispered.
“I do,” she admitted, but he noticed her gaze flitted away.
Slowly, he slipped a finger beneath her chin. Her skin was so soft under his rough fingertip he suddenly wanted to stroke her all over. She tilted her face up.
“Do you ever hear from her?” he asked.
She caught her breath, though he wasn’t certain if it was from the unexpected intimacy of the moment between them or from his question. Perhaps both.
“Do you know something?” he pressed, but he found his lips descending toward hers. Lower, lower, and then he kissed her.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her at all. But now that he was doing it, it felt more right than any other kiss he’d had in years. Her lips were as soft as her skin and he melted against them, lifting his hands to tilt her face, brushing his lips back and forth against her as he coaxed her to open, to welcome.
And to his surprise, she did. Her lips parted on a sigh and he darted his tongue inside, tasting the sweetness of her like a man starved for far too long. Once he had, he couldn’t let go. He molded her closer, sucking her tongue and drawing her in until she felt like a part of him.
And she did not resist. In fact, her hands came up to his upper arms, fingers digging into him through his clothes as she lifted to meet him. Slowly, she became more daring, swirling her own tongue against his, exploring his mouth with hesitance that gently blossomed into passion.
But just as swiftly and powerfully as the kiss began, it ended. With a cry, she pulled herself from his arms and spiraled away, nearly tripping into the flowerbeds neither one of them had spent any time exploring.
“Josie,” he began.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice broken. “Oh please, don’t!”
Then she gathered her skirt into her hand and ran.
Josie paced the first room she had come to after fleeing the conservatory. The billiard room was vast and masculine, but she didn’t give a damn. Her mind was very much elsewhere.
“What did you do?” she gasped out loud. “Oh God, what did you do?”
But she knew what she’d done. She’d allowed Evan to kiss her. She’d very much kissed him back. And now as she thought of it, her errant mind took her back to the moment and she felt as much of a thrill and desire as she had then.
But with Evan? Evan whom she had an infatuation with since she was a girl? Evan whom she had vowed to despise the rest of her days? Why in the world had she had to kiss Evan?
“Josie.”
She froze in her pacing at the sound of Evan’s voice at the door behind her. She refused to look at him. Looking at him wasn’t going to help.
“How did you know I was here?” she whispered.
“I followed you,” came his voice again, after a brief hesitation.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please Evan, go away. Just go away and let’s pretend the conservatory never happened.”
She heard him move and she forced herself to look at him, if only to ensure that he wouldn’t intrude upon her space again and prove to them both how weak she was. He had shut the door and they were alone. In a dim billiard room.
Alone.
Her breath caught.
“Josie, please,” he began.
She shook her spinning head. She couldn’t let him talk
her into anything. Because he would. With his dark brown eyes, and his full lips, he would spin some kind of spell on her, just like he had in the orangery. She would forget herself if she didn’t find a way to distance them.
But her mind was too addled to concoct some lie. And she found herself instead blurting out the truth.
“I know no one is going to marry me!”
The moment she said the words, she wished she could take them back. They sounded so pathetic.
“What?” Evan asked, his brow wrinkling and his face confused.
“Oh God,” she said as she spun away and moved across the room again. Maybe distance would help. Certainly standing so close to him did nothing to clear her addled mind.
“What do you mean by that?” he pressed, and to her surprise and horror and a bit of relief, he moved on her again.
She swallowed. “I-I know my situation better than anyone. No one wants me, no one ever has. So I don’t expect to marry. I’m not even sad about that fact.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Sometimes she thought about her life in the future, alone and it did make her sad. But then she thought about independence and it helped a little.
“And this has to do with you running because…?” Evan asked, dragging out the last word into a long question.
She folded her arms.
“I-I suppose I’m just confused by this between us,” she admitted, motioning her hand back and forth between them.
He smiled slightly and her heart thumped. Why, oh, why did his smile have to be crooked? Why, oh, why was she so stupidly attracted to him even after everything that had happened between them?
“Confused by what?” he pressed, and he moved closer again. Now she was just a foot away from him and she swore she could smell the heated, leathery scent of him. She felt a strange throb between her legs and squeezed her thighs together to make it stop.
It didn’t stop.
“By…by…I don’t know,” she whispered. She could hardly breathe as he moved forward again and reached out his hand. She watched it cup her cheek in slow motion.
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