Deceived

by Jess Michaels

  “By this?” he whispered, and his lips dropped her hers again.

  She should have pulled away, pushed away, screamed, slapped him, but none of those were her reaction. Instead she found herself lifting into the kiss, opening her mouth for the wicked, hot invasion of his rough tongue. He tasted ever so faintly of sugar and whiskey, and that combination made her head spin.

  She felt like she was getting swept away on a heady sea, and that at some point she wouldn’t be able to return. But there was a part of her rational mind that screamed at her to fight the riptide before it was too late.

  She pulled back and broke the kiss, but couldn’t manage the strength to extract herself from his arms, which had somehow came around her as he kissed her. And in those strong arms, she felt…safe.

  A foolish lie.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “That. That is what confuses me. I just don’t understand.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Do you need to?”

  She pursed her lips. When it had become clear that she was not going to be a great beauty and that she would be teased mercilessly by some of her peers, she had retreated into the world of books. Learning the answers to questions had been one of her most favorite pastimes. And now Evan asked if she needed to understand this most base of her desires?

  “Yes,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No? Yes.”

  He smiled at her swinging pendulum of answers, but she didn’t feel like he was making fun of her. He released her from his embrace and she felt both relieved and bereft. But he caught her hand instead and stroked his thumb along the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She almost stopped breathing.

  “You aren’t alone,” he said. “I assure you, this connection, this desire to touch you, it is confusing to me too. After all, you have been my strongest critic, my most vocal enemy for over a decade.”

  Josie shifted. When he said it that way, she sounded quite petulant. Perhaps she had been in some ways, though he had deserved some of her ire, that she knew.

  “But,” he continued, lifting her hand to his chest, “is it wrong to simply follow what we want?”

  Josie blinked. “What exactly are you offering me?”

  He locked stares with her and she felt the world beginning to spin again. “What exactly do you want? Right now I’d give you anything.”

  Her lips parted and he took the opportunity she hadn’t fully meant to give. His mouth covered hers and she was lost once more. She wrapped her arms around his neck, shivering as she slid his hands to her waist and molded even closer to her. It was so intimate, and with someone she swore she wanted no conversation with, let alone this.

  And yet there was no way to resist it. This was attraction, plain and simple, something she couldn’t control. He stroked her tongue with his and her body grew hot and liquid. For the first time, she understood how Claire could be swept away by a dangerous man with only pretty whispers and sweet kisses to recommend him.

  Her eyes flew open at that thought. Claire had been swept away by passion. Dangerous passion just like this one. And she had paid the price.

  With a groan of pain, she pushed away from Evan and shook her head. “No, no I can’t. I-I must go now. Please don’t follow me. Please.”

  He opened his mouth to say more, but she refused to allow it when she knew his seductive words would only draw her back into his web. She walked away and this time he did not follow.

  Evan was still standing in the billiard room nearly an hour after Josie left him a second time. And although his mind was filled with wild thoughts, he had made no sense out of what had transpired between them.

  He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Or chase her. Or corner her. Or kiss her again. He certainly had never had the intention of wanting her. Her? Josie Westfall? Never.

  Except that he did. Even now he could feel her soft, full curves pressed against his body and he went hard at the memory. How he wished he had just thrown caution and shared history and gentlemanliness out the window and laid her across the billiards table. He could have made her come in few moments, he could have tasted her, claimed her.

  “And then where would you be?” he snapped out loud as a way to wake himself from his odd daydream. “Shackled to Josie?”

  The door behind him opened and Gabriel strode into the room. His brother’s face was drawn down in a deep scowl and his brows were furrowed together in the same look that all the Woodley clan shared when frustrated.

  “Gabriel,” Evan said.

  His brother blinked, as if he had been unaware of Evan’s presence until his name was said. “Oh, yes, hello.”

  “Were you looking for me?” Evan asked.

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. No. I don’t know. I suppose I wondered where you went off to when Josie came back to the parlor alone.”

  Evan tensed at the mention of her name. “Are they still here?”

  “Josie and her mother? No, Josie claimed a headache and they went home just a short while ago.”

  “Then why do you look so troubled? Only Josie Westfall could inspire such frustration as far as I’m concerned.”

  His brother stared at him like he had grown a second head. “Trust I hardly think of Josie—she could not upset a flea. No, I just had a conversation with Juliet about Mama.”

  Evan blinked as he tried to place who in the world Juliet was. And then it came to him. He tilted his head. “Miss Gray? The healer?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said,” Gabriel snapped.

  Any curiosity Evan might have had about that statement was replaced with tense concern. “Is Mama all right? Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Gabriel ground out. “Mama is fine. It was a simple disagreement, that is all.”

  “You had a disagreement with—”

  Gabriel cut him off with a wave of his hand. “What about Josie, though?”

  “What about Josie?” Evan asked, tension tightening in his chest.

  “Did you discover something?” Gabriel pushed as he moved to the sidebar and poured himself a drink.

  Evan let out a long breath. Oh, he had discovered a great deal. Like how Josie felt like heaven. Or tasted like ripe peaches. He had discovered that all the discord between them certainly translated into a passion unlike any he’d ever felt for a woman.

  But he doubted Gabriel meant that when he spoke of discovery.

  “What exactly did you think I would discover?”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You spent a great deal of time alone with Josie today. Didn’t you think to ask about Claire?”

  Evan pursed his lips. That was how all this had begun, wasn’t it? He had thought Josie knew something about Claire and he’d been willing to roam into the lion’s den to discover what. But once he had made it past Josie’s barriers, Claire had somehow become secondary. He’d seen Josie’s pain, he’d felt her desire, he’d been lost in her.

  His sister be damned.

  “I-I did ask about her,” he admitted.

  Gabriel leaned closer, his dark eyes growing bright and focused. “What did Josie say exactly?”

  Evan hesitated. Gabriel was such a stickler for details. His brother would analyze them relentlessly to souse out any tiny thread. It was one of his greatest skills, but at the moment Evan didn’t want Gabriel to turn his expertise on him. What had happened between him and Josie was far too…private. And very confusing.

  “The topic of Claire came up, but only peripherally,” he said. “Josie is cagey when it comes to our sister.”

  “That isn’t exact,” Gabriel said with an arch of his brow.

  “I wasn’t recording our conversation with an eye for repeating it back to you,” Evan snapped, throwing up his hands. “God, you will drive a man to madness.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “You too. Fine, so you don’t know exactly what was said. But we can still work with the fact that she wants to avoid the subject of Claire entirely. How did she do that?”

  Evan held back a laugh. Oh, they had certainly found a w
ay to avoid the topic. He wasn’t going to tell his brother that.

  “She, er, ran,” he admitted.

  Gabriel drew back. “Interesting. And what did you do?”

  “Followed her here to the billiard room.” He shifted. “But the topic didn’t come up again.”

  “And then she returned to the parlor and almost immediately told her mother she had a headache to further escape.” Gabriel set his drink down. “She definitely knows something. And she’s obviously close to telling you. You know what you must do, don’t you?”

  Evan shook his head. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew exactly what his brother would say. “Get closer to her?”

  “Get closer to her,” Gabriel repeated. “Push harder.”

  Evan jolted. Oh he wanted to push harder, all right. He wanted to push past all of Josie’s barriers until she was his. And that twisted want was like a fire in him that he couldn’t quench.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he whispered.

  “Why?”

  “It seems unkind to play upon whatever lingers between us,” he said, thinking of the pain in Josie’s eyes when she’d confessed to how much he’d hurt her. How much so many people had hurt her.

  “Don’t you want to save Claire?” Gabriel asked.

  Evan looked at his brother. Gabriel and Claire were twins and their connection had always run deep. Now he saw his brother’s deep pain, his panic, his need to save her. And that touched him as powerfully as anything Josie had whispered in the conservatory.

  And then there was Claire, out there with a villain having God knew what done to her. Evan tried not to picture what her life was like, but sometimes it haunted him.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I want to save her. But I don’t want to hurt someone she loves in the process. Claire would never forgive me.”

  “Then don’t!” Gabriel cried out with a frustrated shake of his head. “I’ve watched you in action for years, Evan. There is no one more well versed in the female form than you. You know the line between flirtation and something more serious.”

  “Do I?” Evan asked, thinking of all those passionate kisses and just how close he’d come to making them something more. “It sometimes seems I don’t.”

  Gabriel caught his arm and shook it. “Please, just keep working on Josie, will you? For me? For Claire?”

  Evan let out a long sigh. He couldn’t deny his family. So he nodded. “All right. I’ll keep working on her.”

  His brother smiled and the look of relief on his face moved Evan. But it also made him think of Josie. Of all the damage he could do to her, to them both, if he couldn’t walk the very fragile line between her desire and her hate.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Josie shifted the basket on her arm and waved to her maid as Nell exited Martin’s general store with a bottle in her hand.

  “Here it is, miss! The very last one!”

  “Oh, thank you, Nell. I’m sorry, I would have gone and collected it myself, but you know how Mrs. Swanson can talk the ear off a goat. I could not escape her easily.”

  Nell laughed. “That she can, but it weren’t no trouble. Mr. Martin said he’d put the cordial on your account.”

  Nell let out a huge sneeze at the end of her statement and shook her head with a look of pursed-lipped frustration.

  “Bless you! And Mrs. Howard will love it, I know,” Josie said as she placed the bottle carefully in her already full basket. There was bread and other pastry in there, seeds from their very own garden, a salve, several pairs of socks, a salami and now the bottle of cordial, along with a few other sundries.

  “Please tell me you two are going on the oddest picnic in the history of Britain.”

  Josie froze in her place as the all-too-familiar voice washed over her. She didn’t want to look. She couldn’t look. She ought not look.

  And yet…she still turned and faced Evan. She had not seen him in nearly three days, not since their heated, odd, wonderful encounter in the billiard room. It had been all she thought about since, but she managed to remain calm as she said, “Good afternoon, my lord.”

  He arched a brow at her formality, but continued to grin at her. “Good afternoon, Josie and…”

  “Nell, my lord,” her maid said with a glance between Josie and Evan. She stifled yet another sneeze.

  Josie gritted her teeth. Some girls told tales to their maids about gentlemen. But as much as she liked Nell, she hadn’t said a peep about what had happened between Evan and her.

  “And Nell,” Evan said with an acknowledging nod. “Now, do tell me, you two have a very mixed basket there. What are you doing?”

  Josie wished she could fold her arms, but with the basket in the way, it was impossible. So she made her tone very frosty as she said, “Well, if you must know, Nell and I are about to make the rounds of those who live and work on my late father’s lands.”

  Evan’s smile fell a little, replaced by an expression of surprise. “You are?”

  “Yes. I do it every time I come here for any extended period,” she explained. “My mother usually goes with me, but today she is actually with your mother. So Nell is going to accompany me.”

  The maid responded with another sneeze.

  “Gracious, are you all right?” Evan asked, his focused attention suddenly shifting to the maid.

  Nell just stared up at him, smiling slightly. Josie rolled her eyes. Trust Nell to be taken in by a handsome face. A very handsome face with the most kissable dimple.

  Damn, now she was doing it.

  “The horse chestnut tree seems to make Nell sneeze,” Josie explained. “In London we don’t have any, but here we are in the country.”

  “I’m perfectly fine otherwise,” Nell said, then let out a sneeze that belied her statement. “Thank you for inquiring, my lord.”

  Evan shook his head. “If you are going out to see the tenants, you’re going to be strolling right through copses of the trees. You will explode.”

  “I have a handkerchief,” Nell offered weakly.

  Evan folded his arms. “It will not do. No, Nell, you will march back home right away and have a good hot tea.”

  Josie stepped forward. “Now wait just a moment, you have no right to tell my servant what to do.”

  “Do you want her to sneeze all day? It sounds painful,” Evan asked. He had a smile on his face, damn him, for he knew she wouldn’t agree that Nell should hurt herself.

  “Of course not,” Josie sighed. “Come, Nell, we should go back. I’ll see if someone else can accompany me. Or wait for my mother and go tomorrow.”

  “No, no,” Evan said, swooping in to gently remove the basket from her arm. “This is beastly heavy, Josie, great God.”

  “What are you doing?” Josie asked, ignoring his comments and grimaces about the basket.

  “I’m going to accompany you,” he said, blinking at her as if that should have been perfectly clear. “Go on, Nell, your mistress is perfectly safe with me.”

  “No one is perfectly safe with you,” Josie muttered and to her surprise Evan laughed. She frowned at him and turned to Nell. Her maid shifted with discomfort.

  “I don’t know, miss. Is that proper?”

  Josie glared at Evan, but then shrugged. “Not precisely, I suppose. But Evan is an old friend to our family and his brother is the marquis, so in truth, all our tenants are also under Lord Woodley’s charge. And Evan is right, you are going to suffer all day. I should have been more mindful of that fact and I apologize for my lack of care toward you.”

  Nell waved her hand. “My reaction has never been so strong.”

  “Go back, have tea and do not worry yourself,” Josie said, well aware that Evan was watching her every move. She rather wanted to slap him for it, actually. Or kiss him again. She would choose to do neither, though the second was so very tempting.

  Relief flooded Nell’s features. “Oh, thank you, miss. And thank you, my lord.”

  Nell scurried away and Josie took a long breat
h before she turned back to Evan. “What do you want with seeing tenants with me?”

  He laughed. “You said it yourself that the charges of your father are also in some ways the charges of my family.”

  “Well, all your charges got a good dose of Woodley wisdom and company while your brother and his wife were here. They visited every single person in the shire.”

  Evan blinked. “Edward and Mary did? I thought they went out for just a long ride.”

  Josie turned her eyes upward with a sigh. “Evan.”

  He moved a little closer. “Please don’t say my name like it’s a curse.”

  She jerked her gaze toward him. His tone was teasing but his eyes were serious.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Old habits, you know.”

  “We should form some new habits,” he returned, his voice silky.

  She shivered despite herself and didn’t resist when he took her arm and led her across the main street to the phaeton that was parked there.

  “Oh,” Josie said with surprise. “Nell and I were going to walk.”

  “Don’t you like phaetons?” he asked as he set her basket in the tiny space behind their seat and then helped her up.

  She wobbled slightly in the high perch. “I-I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in one. My mother doesn’t own one and it isn’t as if I get invited to ride by the kind of fast gentlemen who do.”

  Evan laughed again as he took a place beside her and urged the horses forward. “Well, consider yourself in the company of a fast gentleman.”

  “I do,” she muttered under her breath, but his chuckle told her that he had heard her yet again.

  And in truth, she rather liked that he laughed at her little quips. In London, there were gentlemen who looked at her like she was speaking another language if she made a sarcastic remark. Certainly her intellect and wit had done her no favors in the marriage mart.

  Which was part of why the fact that she would likely never marry didn’t trouble her. Much.

  “My mother will likely give me a full report tonight,” Josie said, searching for a comfortable topic. “But how is Lady Woodley’s recovering going?”