Deceived (29 page)

“God, you were beautiful tonight,” he growled as he tugged her skirts higher and she shifted so that he could bunch them between them. “But all I could think about was what was under this dress.”

He pushed his hand between them and found the slit in her drawers. Sliding inside, he stroked his fingers across her sex and found her wet for him already. She gasped at the touch and her head dropped back.

“I wanted you too, even though I hated myself for it,” she panted. “And you for being so irresistible even when I was determined not to let you in.”

“Let me in now,” he asked as he pressed his index finger to her opening.

“Yes,” she moaned as he glided inside her tight channel. “Yes.”

He stroked her gently, returning his mouth to hers as he pumped one finger, then two inside her squeezing body. She arched against him, meeting his thrusts with mewling whimpers that turned to cries when he pressed his thumb to her clitoris and took her over the edge of pleasure.

As her body shuddered around his fingers, he slid his opposite hand between them to loosen his trousers, freeing his aching cock. She shifted as his fingers popped from her wet sex and positioned herself over him. He tensed, but she didn’t lower her body to his.

Instead she cupped his cheeks. “I love you, Evan.”

Four words. Words she had already said, but with their bodies nearly joined and her eyes locked with his, his throat swelled. “I love you, Josie,” he whispered back, then pushed upward to slide into her.

She didn’t shut her eyes as he filled her, but held his stare. And when she moved, it was the most intense, powerful and passionate thing he had ever experienced. She rose over him in strong, sure thrusts, taking him and releasing him. But she never looked away.

“Come for me, Evan,” she whimpered, mimicking what he had said to her so many times in the course of their affair.

And those soft words did for him what they had done for her. The pleasure built and he let out a sharp cry as his seed began to move. At the same time, her pace quickened and her expression lit up with the pleasure they shared. They came together, rocking in time to the carriage as she kissed him once more with all her passion and love.

She collapsed against his chest with a laughing sigh and he put his arms around her to hold her tight.

“I swear to you, wife, at some point we will make love in a bed without any drama or potential interruption.”

She glanced up at him and her love shone in her eyes. “Oh, Evan…what fun would that be?”

Then she lifted up and kissed him once more.

Three months later

Josie stepped into the dining room to find Evan at his place at the head of the table, the paper in his hand. She smiled in this moment when he had not yet noticed her. They had only been married a short time, but he had filled that time with all the love and promises she could have wanted. Where she had once been uncertain, now she knew…

He loved her as much as she loved him. And the past had no power over them.

“Are you going to stare at me until luncheon is served, or come and give me a kiss?” he asked, looking up from this paper to speak to her with what she imagined was meant to be a stern glance.

She laughed and all but danced into the dining room. “And shock the servants?”

He smiled as he set the paper away, caught her hand and drew her into his lap. “Our poor servants are already so very scandalized. What is one more kiss to scar them?”

She bent her head and gave him his prize, sinking into the pressure of his lips and surrendering to the pleasure it awoke in her each and every time.

When they finally parted she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I had a letter from your mother this morning.”

“Did you?” he asked, even as he stroked her thigh beneath the table in a most distracting fashion.

“I did,” she said, her breath hitching. “She is going to return to London next week. With Gabriel.”

Evan’s hand stopped stroking and she saw him frown slightly. Although they had both received letters from Gabriel since their departure from Idleridge months before, he had not returned to London with the rest of the family. It would be the first time Josie saw him since their wedding.

“Will you receive my brother?” Evan asked softly.

She smiled. “Of course. Truly, as hurt as I was by how things transpired, I have always understood why. Gabriel and Claire have been close as siblings could be since the moment they were born. He is driven to find her—how could I hate him?”

Evan’s face relaxed slightly. “Good. And perhaps we can be of some help to him. I am pleased they will return. Miss Gray must think Mama is quite recovered to let her loose.”

“Well, that is the interesting thing,” Josie said, rising from her place in her husband’s lap and taking a seat beside him instead. “Your mother intends to have Miss Gray join us for the holidays and a short time after.”

Evan wrinkled his brow. “She does?”

“Apparently so,” Josie said. “And I’m glad. I like Juliet a great deal and I think we could help her find a very fine match of her own.”

Evan drew back. “You intend to play matchmaker?”

She nodded. “If she wishes it and if I can be of any help, I would try.” She tangled her fingers with his. “After all, I want all my friends to be as happy as I am.”

“Happy as us?” Evan whispered, leaning in close to her lips. “Impossible.”

Then he kissed her, and she forgot about anything in the world but him.

Look for the next chapter in The Wicked Woodleys series with Tempted, featuring the youngest brother Gabriel, coming January 2016.

The Wicked Woodleys Book 3

In her role as healer, Juliet Gray had been to the palatial estate on the hill dozens and dozens of times in the past four months, but every time the gates opened and she saw it rising above her, her heart fluttered wildly. At first it had been from nervousness that she would not be able to help the mistress of this house through an illness. Lady Woodley had been very sick when Juliet first arrived and having lost a mother herself, she had perfectly understood the grave faces of the adult children of the Dowager Marchioness.

Later, when the lady was out of danger and only needing support as she recovered, Juliet’s discomfort had come from a feeling of not belonging in the grand house. Until she had been called upon by the wife of the current Marquis to help, Juliet had never served anyone in the titled class. She didn’t know if she was supposed to talk to the lady and her children or try to disappear into the wallpaper so as not to bother them with her commonness. But she had found the entire family to be warm and welcoming, none more than Lady Woodley, herself, so soon that twinge of fear had faded.

But it had been replaced with another anxiety. One that she scarcely wished to name, even in her own head. One that had to do with Lady Woodley’s third son, Gabriel. Lord Gabriel, if she was to be technical about it, which she always strove to be since she feared if she were too forward, even in the safety of her own mind, that she would show too much to the world at large.

Would he be there today? Waiting up in that house with his stern expressions and occasionally furtive glances? With his pointed questions and unexpected…

No, she mustn’t think about that.

“You are very pale,” her father said, interrupting her thoughts as their modest carriage came to a stop in the round driveway. They would have exactly twenty seconds now before the door was opened by the servants. Juliet knew them well, after all her visits here.

She forced a smile for her father. “Am I? And what of you? You look nervous as a schoolboy seeing a girl for the first time!”

He chuckled and her heart warmed at the sound. “I suppose it isn’t very often that I am invited the home of a Dowager Marchioness, is it? I have certainly never accompanied you here before.”

Juliet somehow maintained her smile, but inside her father’s words echoed her own discomfort. Lady Woodley had never asked her father to come here, even though she had spoken of him before.

“You and Lady Woodley were friends of a sort as children, weren’t you?” she asked.

Her father’s face filled with color and he shifted in his seat. “I-well-yes, I suppose. My father worked for her father and we were of an age, so we saw each other often.”

“Then why be nervous, you are only meeting an old friend.”

“Yes,” his voice became far away. “An old friend.”

She might have said more, addressed the strange expression on his handsome face, but at that moment the carriage door opened and she was greeted by the familiar face of one of Lady Woodley’s footmen. He extended a hand to help her out of the rig.

As she took it, she said, “Good morning Thomas, thank you.”

The young man flashed a brilliant smile at her. “Miss Gray.”

Her father followed in her exit and the footman straightened up immediately. “Sir.”

“Yes, yes,” her father said, still shifting uncomfortably.

“Go on up, Vernon is waiting for you,” Thomas said with another of those wide smiles for Juliet.

She swallowed hard as she took her father’s arm and led him up the wide stairway to the door where the house butler, Vernon, awaited them.

“Good morning, Miss Gray,” Vernon said with a rare flash of a small smile. “And Mr. Gray, I presume.”

“Indeed,” her father said and Juliet still heard the anxiousness in his voice. He was truly shaken by this invitation. And she had no idea why it troubled him so much.

“Lady Woodley is waiting for you in the Yellow Room,” Vernon explained as he motioned for them to follow him down the hallway.

Juliet had been here so many times, she hardly noticed the opulence round them, but her father seemed taken in by all they saw as they walked up the hallway. He even dragged her back a bit as his stare flitted from art piece to art piece.

“She did marry well,” he muttered.

“What?” Juliet whispered.

“Nothing,” her father said with a shake of his head.

Juliet cast him a side glance as Vernon pushed opened the parlor door and stepped inside. “Mr. Gray and Miss Juliet Gray, my lady,” he announced.

“Of course,” came Lady Woodley’s warm and welcoming voice. A voice that made Juliet smile every time she heard it. “Please come in.”

Vernon stepped aside and Juliet drew her father into the room. It was a bright, happy room where Juliet knew Lady Woodley conducted mostly family gatherings and business. To be invited into this room meant the lady saw a person as close as family.

Juliet scanned the room swiftly, but their hostess was the only person in attendance. Gabriel was not with her. A fact that made Juliet’s stomach stop fluttering, but also left her with a faint disappointment she shoved aside immediately.

“My lady,” Juliet began, expecting Lady Woodley to offer her one of her welcoming smiles, perhaps a squeeze of the hand. But to her surprise, the lady wasn’t looking at her, but behind her where her father had come to a halt in the doorway.

Juliet stepped back and looked between the two. Lady Woodley was pale as parchment paper, her lips thin and her eyes wide. And Juliet’s father was just as pale, supporting himself against the doorjamb as if he couldn’t stand on his own.

“Susanna,” he finally whispered. “You have not changed, not in all these years.”

His words seemed to break the spell, for Lady Woodley turned her face with a blush and a faint smile. “Nor have you, Jed.”

Juliet stared at them. What in the world was happening? She had heard Lady Woodley speak warmly of her father, and she had suspected that perhaps there had once been a childish romantic interest between them, but now she saw a bald emotional connection that was as raw as it was intense.

She was an intruder here, apparently. More than she had ever suspected.

She shifted her attention to her father, trying to see him through new eyes. What Lady Woodley said was not true, of course. Her father
had
changed, certainly, even in just years since her mother’s death. He was still strong of body and exceptionally sharp of mind, but his hair had gone gray ten years before and his face had been lined with faint grief and too many long nights fiddling with experiments and reading until dawn.

Still, Juliet had always thought him handsome. And apparently so did the lovely, fine boned, utterly sophisticated Lady Woodley.

Lady Woodley suddenly shook her head. “Mr. Gray. Of course I mean, Mr. Gray.”

Her father blinked and he straightened up. “Lady Woodley, my apologies for my lack of manners.”

Lady Woodley ignored the apology and motioned them to the small circle of chairs that were gathered around a low table where tea had been set.

“Would you like refreshments?” Lady Woodley asked, the only remnants of any emotion between them a slight tremor to her voice.

Slowly, Juliet approached one of the chairs and settled herself in. Her father did the same.

“None for me,” Juliet said, caution in her tone. She suddenly felt like a chaperone and wasn’t sure how to play the part.