Deceived (17 page)

“Josie, I claimed your innocence. And I spent inside you, so we might have created a child.” He shook his head. “Propriety—nay,
honor
—dictates what must happen next.”

Josie could hardly breathe as she watched him begin to move toward her. “Evan—”

“Josie, we must marry.”

“Honor,” Josie repeated, and Evan flinched at the suddenly flat and emotionless tone of her voice. Just a moment before it had been filled with excitement, pleasure and the remnants of desire.

Oh, he had gone too far. Worse, he had
known
how out of control he was allowing the situation to become, perhaps from the first moment he had touched Josie. But when she had pressed her sex to him, when he had felt her humid heat and saw her trembling need, reason had been crushed. Honor had been silenced.

He could not have denied her in that moment any more than he could deny himself breath. Taking her had been everything he’d dreamed of and more.

But now there were consequences.

“Honor, Evan?” she repeated again.

He nodded. “Yes. Josie, what I’ve done is unforgiveable. What we’ve done could cause a lifetime of consequences for us and for our families. The only thing we can do, whether we want to or not, is to marry.”

Her face twisted, her cheeks filled with red heat, and she backed away. “Why, you are a romantic, my lord.”

He frowned. “You want romance in this moment?”

She shook her head. “No, Evan, I don’t want anything in this moment. I got what I wanted already. But I never asked for more.” She moved even further away, closer to the door. “And while I thank you for your kind offer to lower yourself to be my husband, I am afraid I have to decline. Good evening.”

He stepped toward her to stop her, but she had already turned the handle and yanked the door open. But before she could escape, she came to a sudden stop, for right in the hallway was Gabriel.

“Ah,” his brother said with a slight smile for Josie. “There you two are. You’ve been missed.”

Josie shifted and shot Evan a quick look over her shoulder. Her hurt was plain on her face. But so was her strength. Strength he wanted to lean into, to share.

“Well, then I should get back,” she said. “And it is lucky you are here, for I’m certain your brother has a great deal to discuss with you. Good night, gentlemen.”

She shoved past Gabriel and hurried away, leaving Evan in his place like he had been glued there. Gabriel leaned into the hall to watch Josie go and shook his head.

“What did she mean by that?” he muttered, then came into the room and shut the door. “Or, wait, did she tell you something about Claire?”

Evan fisted his hands at his sides and paced away from his brother. “Not everything is about Claire, Gabriel.”

“No, of course not,” Gabriel muttered. “So you don’t know anything new.”

“I know a great deal of new things,” Evan mused, thinking of the way Josie’s tight body felt pulsing around him in pleasure, the way her face looked when he filled her. “Just not about Claire.”

Gabriel shook his head. “What is going on?”

Evan scrubbed a hand over his face before he looked at his brother again. Gabriel was too observant for Evan to pretend nothing had just happened. And in truth, he needed to talk about this with someone he could trust. There was no one in the world he trusted more than his brothers.

“Josie and I…” he began. “Josie and I made love.”

Gabriel stared at him, blinking and unspeaking, for what felt like an eternity. “Made love? As in made love, made love? As in sex?”

Evan glared at him. “That is what making love means.”

Gabriel took a long step back. “I-I—”

“Well, I have shut you up,” Evan drawled. “I suppose that is a point in my favor, at least.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just…shocked.” Gabriel moved across the room and sat down, happily in a chair before the fire and not the settee where Gabriel and Josie had just been so entangled.

“Why are you shocked? It isn’t as if this hasn’t happened before,” Evan said softly. “Men take women every day.”

Gabriel shook his head. “You and Edward were never libertines, but I know you both had your dalliances here and there. Still, there is a difference between you tupping an obliging widow or the occasional light skirt and taking Josie, who is…
was
an innocent!”

Evan heard the judgment in his brother’s tone and it rubbed raw along his own guilt. “I thought you wanted me to do anything necessary to obtain any information Josie had regarding Claire.”

Gabriel flinched. “I did say that. And I suppose now that you are…you are
physically
connected, there will be increased opportunity to press for that information. But, Evan, I never thought you would go so far in seduction! To
take
her like this? This is our sister’s best friend. This is a lady. This is…this is wrong.”

Evan stepped away, not able to look at his brother and see such horror on his face. Gabriel was only voicing every thought in his own head. He was just as torn as his younger brother, only over slightly different reasons. While Gabriel was caught between the wrongness of the act and the potential for gain, all Evan could think about was how he had stolen something precious from Josie. But how he wanted so desperately to do it again. And again. And again. Until she was his in every sense of the word.

Gabriel wouldn’t understand that. Hell, Evan hardly did.

“What are you going to do?” Gabriel asked.

Evan let out a long sigh. “Well, there is only one thing a man can do in such a situation, isn’t there? Even if the lady resists.”

Gabriel drew back. “You don’t mean…”

“Yes. I intend to marry her.” He thought of Josie’s hurt, her refusal, just a short time ago. “One way or another, Jocelyn Westfall will be my bride.”

Josie sat at her mirror, staring at her face in the reflection. She didn’t look different. It seemed like she should after such a life-altering event as last night. But she didn’t.

With a sigh, she stood and paced away from her reflection and all the things she didn’t want to see.

“How can you be so confused when you actually got everything you ever wanted?” she asked the open window and the breeze that took her words away into the world.

Except what she said wasn’t exactly true, was it? She had managed to convince Evan to take her at last, but afterward everything between them had been so complicated. So charged and changed. Evan had looked at her, but it was no longer the same. Now she was a burden he had to carry, a point of honor he had to see through even though he didn’t want to do so.

How she hated that.

There was a light knock on her door and she turned with a false smile. “Yes?”

When the door opened, it was her mother standing there. Josie braced herself for whatever was to come. “Good morning, Mama.”

“Good morning,” her mother replied cautiously. “You do not look like you slept well.”

Josie frowned. “Of course I did,” she lied.

Mrs. Westfall let out a sigh. “Do you want to talk to me about something, Jocelyn?”

Josie’s lips pursed. If her mother was calling her by her given name, she must be concerned, indeed.

“What do you think I have to talk about?” she asked, hoping her tone sounded light instead of shrill.

“At the ball last night—”

Josie turned away. “I’d rather not discuss it.”

Mrs. Westfall stepped closer. “Yes, so you have said ever since the moment we left, and I gave you your space, but now I must demand that you talk to me.”

Josie shook her head and looked at her mother again in confusion. “Why?”

Mrs. Westfall let out a long, heavy breath. “I know you think of me as the enemy because I push you toward a future that frightens you. But you must know I do it out of love.”

At her mother’s sad tone and hurt expression, Josie leapt forward. “No, Mama, I don’t see you as the enemy at all.”

Mrs. Westfall frowned. “I wasn’t ever an outcast, nor were your sisters.”

Josie pinched her lips together, some of her desire to sooth hurt feelings fading. “Yes, I know. I am a disappointment. We have had this discussion so many times.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant,” Mrs. Westfall said with a shake of her head. “What I meant to say was that I didn’t know what to do when you were teased. And until last night when Evan defended you in front of the assembled throng, I don’t think I fully realized how deeply you were hurt and how completely you were sometimes isolated.” She moved forward and took her hand. “I should have come to your rescue, I think, as he did. And I’m sorry.”

Josie bent her head. There had been times she wished someone would ride in like a hero and protect her. And hearing this heartfelt apology meant so much to her.

“Mama, it wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said softly. “Claire defended me many times and the worst of the tormenters continued on, just not in her presence. It would have been the same with you. As for Evan…”

She trailed off, for she had no idea what to say on the subject of him, especially to her mother. What they shared was not at all appropriate.

“He seems to care for you,” Mrs. Westfall said slowly, almost carefully, like she feared the response.

Josie flitted her gaze to her mother and found her looking expectant. “You can stop looking like a cat who has finally cornered an elusive mouse. There is…there is nothing between us. I will still likely die a disappointing spinster.”

“That is the second time you have claimed I am disappointed in you,” her mother said, moving closer and cupping her cheeks. “And I am not. Josie, you are unique. You are lovely. You are kind. Do I want you to find happiness with a husband and home and family of your own? Of course, but because I think you would be content in that life. But I could
never
be disappointed in you.”

Josie blinked at the sudden tears in her eyes. “You couldn’t?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then why push me so hard in the marriage mart?” Josie asked.

Mrs. Westfall wiped a tear from her cheek. “Because I feared if you weren’t pushed a little, you wouldn’t even give another option a chance.”

Josie considered that. Her mother was right, of course. If she had been left to her own devices, she likely never would have come out at all. She would have stayed in her room with her books and only gone out when Claire dragged her away.

“Now may we briefly return to the subject of Evan?” Mrs. Westfall said softly.

Josie paced away. “There is nothing to say on that subject,” she said through clenched teeth.

“People were talking when he defended you, when you two disappeared together for so long, Josie,” her mother said. “And now I must ask you, you say there is nothing between you, but is that true? Is there something going on that I should know about?”

Josie caught her breath. She could dance around the truth. That was something she had taught herself to do quite well over the years. But right now her mother was asking her a pointblank question. And lying outright was not as easy.

She turned slowly and found her mother standing by, waiting, her arms folded and a look on her face that did not allow for lies.

Josie worried her lower lip, trying to find words, explanations, some way out of this conversation.

“I—” she began.

But before she had to finish that sentence, there was another knock at her door and then her maid, Nell, popped her head into the room.

“Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt,” the young woman said with a deferent nod to Mrs. Westfall. “But you have a visitor, Miss Jocelyn.”

Josie wrinkled her brow. “A visitor?” she repeated.

Nell nodded. “Yes, miss. Lord Evan Hartwell is here.”

Josie took a long step back, as if putting space between herself and her maid would make the truth disappear. “I—tell him no, tell him—”

Mrs. Westfall frowned. “Nell, you will tell the gentleman nothing. We will be down in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nell said with an odd look for Josie before she left the room and Josie and her mother were alone again.

“Mama,” Josie began.

But her mother held up a hand. “Jocelyn Westfall, between your refusal or inability to answer a simple question about Evan and this desire to avoid him, it is clear something is between you two. You
will
go and see him.”