Deceived (24 page)

Inside the drawer were letters. He stared at the small stack, bound with a ribbon. He reached out to take the pile and tugged the bow loose. The finer point of how he had loosened another bow a few hours before, on Josie’s robe was not lost on him. The first had been for pleasure, the second, disloyalty.

He leaned in closer to the light to examine the first letter. It was from her oldest brother. He put it aside, face down so he would remember the order when he put everything back. The second letter was from a friend, but not Claire, and he added it to the stack. A third was from her sister. His heart both soared and sank with each successive failure to find anything from Claire. Soared because he didn’t have to commit the ultimate act of treachery and sank because he had no information to draw him closer to his wayward sister.

He turned past another letter that was of no interest to him, and froze. There on the next folded piece of thick vellum was Claire’s handwriting. He would have known it anywhere even though there was no name on the outer sheet aside from Josie’s. His breath hitched as he turned the paper over and broke the seal. There were two sheets within. He sat with the letter in his lap, staring at it.

There were his sister’s words, meant not for him but for the best friend she loved and trusted. The same friend who cared for him and trusted him. Reading what was not meant for him was a violation of both women, but Gabriel’s words rang in his ears. Was he willing to do anything to save Claire? Images of her being hurt jumped before his eyes, and he unfolded the sheets and began to read.

He had gotten no further than the greeting
and the date of six months ago when he heard a shallow gasp behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t need to look to know who had found him here.

“Evan!” Josie burst out, her voice shaking.

He set the letter aside and stood. Taking a deep breath, he turned to face his wife. She had put her robe back on and tied it loosely, but he could see the outline of her naked curves beneath the silk. With her hair mussed by sleep and passion, she made quite a lovely sight. One he might have had the opportunity to cherish.

Except that the betrayal in her eyes was already bright as she stared at him and the pile of her private correspondence on her desk.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her tone flat and pained.

He swallowed. “Josie—”

She shook her head as if in disbelief. “What are you doing, Evan?”

He could have lied in that moment. A dozen stories filled his head, ways to make that look of pain and betrayal leave her face. But Josie was too smart, and to lie to her would only sport with her intelligence. It would only make the situation worse.

“You—you told me you had received letters from my sister,” he admitted. “I thought perhaps I would find some of them here.”

Her lips parted as his words sank in and he watched her face go from confused to angry to betrayed to heartbroken in a flash of horror that made his stomach hurt.

“You left our wedding night bed to search through my
private
things.”

Her words were not a question, but he answered her anyway. “Yes.”

She blinked at him, looking at him like she had never seen him before. That expression stabbed him, and he moved toward her as if he could make her see that nothing had changed.

“How could you?” she asked, her voice soft but trembling. “Why? Why would this be your focus on our wedding night? Why would you want to—”

She stopped herself suddenly and her gaze jerked to his face again. Her mouth twisted and tears filled her eyes. Tears she blinked away before she spoke again.

“Was this why you pursued me, Evan? To get closer to the truth about Claire?”

He opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to find an answer, but apparently his silence was a good enough response, for she spun away from him, staggering back through the dressing room and into the bedroom. He followed her in a few long strides.

“Wait, Josie, listen to me.”

She pivoted to face him. “What is there to say, Evan? How stupid was I? I believed you when you said this wasn’t your goal. I believed you even though you asked me about your sister several times when you spent time with me. I pretended it was because she was a common bond between us, that you needed a friend to hear your fears. But no, of course that wasn’t it.” She shook her head. “How foolish was I to believe I was your confidante? You only wanted me to tell you what I knew. And you would have done
anything
to obtain that information.”

He winced at the pain in her rapidly rising voice. The pain he had put there. “Josie, you need to listen to me. It wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t it?” she asked, turning away from him. “Wasn’t it?”

“No!” he insisted. “It wasn’t.”

“Then how was it?” She looked at him again, but the guard she had finally dropped with him over the past few weeks was back up. “Explain to me, Evan.”

He drew a deep breath. “Josie, when you came back to the village, I admit I was perhaps less than thrilled. After all, you hated me. And your presence was always a reminder of the worst of myself.”

She folded her arms and said nothing. So he continued.

“When I saw you at my sister’s wedding, I was taken aback by you. Genuinely attracted to you.” She snorted derision and he scowled. “Please do not deny what I’m saying. It’s the truth.”

“But?” she encouraged, her tone cold. “Because there is obviously a
but
to all this poetry or else I wouldn’t have found you snooping through my things.”

“That same afternoon, I realized you might know something about Claire,” he admitted. “I spoke to Gabriel about it and he pushed me to pursue that truth.”

Her bottom lip trembled, but her voice was strong as she said, “Why you?”

He hesitated. “I’m going to tell you the whole truth, Josie. Even though it may hurt you, but I want you to understand, to see—”

“Why
you
, Evan?” she repeated, folding her arms in that shield once again.

He dropped his gaze from hers. He didn’t want to look in her eyes when he said the next words destined to fall from his lips. “Because…because Gabriel believed you might
like
me.”

She barked out a pained laugh and moved to the chair beside her fire. She collapsed into it and stared silently into the flames for a long time. He wanted so badly to speak, but her expression was a warning to him to wait. To let her guide what would happen next.

After all, she had been a victim of everything that had transpired before.

“So you and your brother concocted a plan to take advantage of whatever feelings you thought I had for you,” she finally said, her voice rough and almost foreign. “Did you laugh while you did it?”

He moved toward her, guarded as he took the chair next to hers. Her hand was close, but he didn’t take it even though he wanted to. Instead he fisted his fingers against the chair arm and said, “Never. I was never comfortable with the idea, Josie. I swear to you that is true. But Gabriel is so desperate to find any information about Claire. He is certain if he could just find her, he could fix this, save her. And his desperation drove me. Just as thoughts of what my sister might be enduring drove me.”

Her lips pinched, but he could see his words had somehow hit their mark. She shook her head. “I can’t imagine what your loss must be like. Actually, I can, for it is much like mine. But that you would go so far, Evan, that you would woo me, seduce me into giving you information?”

“That wasn’t it,” he said. “I swear to you it wasn’t. The more time I spent with you, the more I wanted you.
You
. That had nothing to do with Claire or Gabriel or anyone else. Everything that transpired between us was the truth, Josie.”

She took a long breath and turned her face toward his. Her expression was so pained that it made his own chest hurt. Once more the power of what he had done was evident.

“You can say that all you want, Evan,” she whispered. “But your actions tell me that it’s a lie. You took me, you pleasured me and you waited until I was asleep to snoop through my things.”

“I didn’t come here intending to do it. I told Gabriel I wouldn’t,” he insisted.

Her face drained of what color remained and she stood up slowly, staring down at him with renewed upset and anger. “That was what Gabriel meant.”

He wrinkled his brow in confusion. “What?”

“At the party celebrating our marriage,” she explained. “He was drunk and I approached him, hoping to offer some comfort after you told me you two had argued. I wanted to make peace for you.”

Of course she would do such a thing, try to be a balm on the trouble between them. That was an utterly Josie thing to do, one of the main things that had drawn him to her despite any connection she might have to Claire.

“What did my brother say?” he asked.

“He said
I
was what you two argued about. Because you wouldn’t do what he wanted.” Her voice caught with hurt. “He was babbling and I had no idea what he could possibly mean at the time. But now it’s so clear. He wanted you to continue to use our connection to leverage information about your sister.”

He jumped up. “And he told you I refused, Josie. So that must mean something to you, doesn’t it?”

She stared at him, holding his gaze until her scrutiny made him shift with discomfort.

“It might,” she finally said. “Except that I found you doing his bidding not five minutes ago. In the end, using me was just as easy for you as it was for him.”

He couldn’t let that stand. Not now. He reached out to catch her upper arms and drew her closer. She didn’t struggle, though her eyes went wide.

“Listen to me, Josie, please, please listen. I didn’t seduce you or wed you in order to use you. I care for you. Truly care.”

Somehow he expected that confession to soften her. That she would hear him and understand. But her face twisted with more hurt and anger, and she struggled from his grip to back away from him.

“Don’t toss me your bones, Evan,” she snapped. “Don’t think that just because you have found me pathetic enough to trick that I will continue to dance to your tune.”

He drew back in horror. “That isn’t what I’m doing. I just want you to see—”

“I see!” she shouted, her anger finally bubbling over as a tear slid down her cheek. “I see perfectly clearly, I assure you. And a part of me even understands. The loss of Claire is so painful and so horrifying and so deep, that perhaps if I thought I might have a chance to find her, I would also betray someone who was in lov—”

She cut herself off with a painful gasp, but Evan knew the word she was going to say. Even the truncated version hit him like a shot to the chest. In love with him? Did Josie truly love him? He had never asked for that, never expected it. If someone had asked him a month ago if he wanted it, he would have said no.

But today his answer felt very different.

“Please, Josie,” he whispered. “I wasn’t trying to betray you.”

“But you have,” she said softly. “Because now that I know what your intentions were at the beginning, now that I’ve seen you were willing to follow through with them even after everything we’ve shared…well, it poisons everything, doesn’t it?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was close to a wail. “It doesn’t have to.”

“It does,” she said, and another tear fell. She swiped it away angrily and straightened her spine. “You have come this far, Evan. You have done this much, so I suppose you have earned the truth you sought. Though once you hear it, I doubt it will give you any chance of finding Claire. So all your lies and sacrifices will have been for nothing.”

He blinked. “You’ll tell me?”

She nodded. “I never thought I was keeping it from you. And though I hesitated to betray confidences, it seems you are determined to rip them from me. So here is the truth. Claire has written to me just four times since her departure with Jonathon Aston. Mostly they are letters very much like she wrote before she left, and their light and airy style cut me to the bone since I know she suffers. She never speaks about her whereabouts and she only vaguely references any unhappiness she feels at her circumstances.”

Evan sagged with disappointment. “That is all?”

“No,” she said softly. “The very first time she wrote me, she said she knew I must wonder why she left. She told me that she no longer belonged in your family. That she was more like Aston than any Woodley.”

He staggered back. “Why, why would she say that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “After all, I never have an address to respond, do I? So I couldn’t prod her. She asked me not to tell your family her feelings. She didn’t want to hurt you.” She shook her head. “And neither did I.
That
is the secret you sensed me keeping, Evan. A riddle about not belonging that brings you no closer to the truth about why she left or where she is or if you could ever convince her to come home. So you have sacrificed yourself for nothing.”

Evan watched as Josie paced away from him, far away this time, to the other side of the bed they had shared, like she wanted as much space between them as possible. She let out a long sigh.