Forbidden

by Jess Michaels

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  All the air left Jude’s lungs in that horrible moment, and he swayed in his place. “This is not how I would have had you find out the truth.”

  Her face twisted into a mask of disgust and disbelief. “You would not have had me find out the truth at all,” she hissed.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but she grasped his arm, shaking it.

  “No, you look at me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Look at me while you lie so that I’ll know what it looks like from now on. So that I won’t be…won’t be fooled again.”

  He caught his breath as he reached for her, but she let go of his arm and skittered back from him. He sucked in a long breath and said, “Audrey, I don’t want to lie to you. I want to tell you the truth. I fully intended to do so, actually.”

  “Did you now?” she whispered as she swiped angrily at a tear that escaped her dark eyes and began to slide down her cheek. “And I’m to believe that? I’m to believe that you were just about to tell me what you did and then find a way to excuse what you have done?”

  “Nothing I say will excuse it,” he said, moving toward her again. She moved away just the same length and he frowned. “I have never been able to excuse it to myself and I won’t try to do so with you. But I want to tell you the whole story, beyond what you’ve seen in those letters. Please, Audrey, give me that chance.”

  “Why should I?” she asked, her voice dull. “Why should I do anything besides march up the hill to that house and show my whole family that we have had a viper in our midst for so many years?”

  He flinched. “Because I love you. And until a short while ago, you loved me.”

  “I loved what I thought I knew,” she snapped, but she didn’t push past him. She didn’t move at all.

  “Please,” he repeated. “Please.”

  She shrugged. “Fine. Tell me more lies if that will help you.”

  “They won’t be lies,” he assured her.

  She arched a brow. “And how would I know?”

  “I deserve your hatred. I know I deserve it more than I ever deserved your love.”

  Her face softened just a fraction at that statement, but she hardened herself quickly. “Speak, Samson. Get it over with.”

  He nodded. “Let me start at the beginning. Almost two years ago, Claire came to me in London. She was…distraught. Rambling about secrets and lies, about the past and a lot of other things I didn’t understand.”

  “Why did she come to you?” Audrey asked, her voice dripping with incredulity.

  “Did you not consider me a friend to this family at least until today?” He forced his voice to be soft when he wanted to shout and scream the house down.

  She hesitated, but then nodded once.

  “Claire obviously saw me the same way. As your brother’s man of affairs, I suppose she trusted me to help her privately.”

  “Help her with what?”

  “She wanted me to uncover some information on a woman named Lila Elsworth.”

  “Who?” Audrey asked, her brow wrinkling. “And what does this have to do with her running away with Jonathon Aston?”

  He held up a hand. “Wait. Please, wait. I have no idea what her connection to this woman was. I tried to get her to tell me more, but she was secretive. She begged me and I finally relented.”

  “And who was the woman?” Audrey encouraged him.

  “I still don’t really know,” he admitted with a sigh. “After a few months of research, searching high and low, all I knew was that this woman wasn’t titled.”

  Audrey pressed her lips together. “What would Claire want with her?”

  “I never found a connection to Claire. Hell, this Elsworth woman died at almost the same time your sister was born. Claire never even met her and yet she was obsessed. She must have talked to me twenty times over those months, always asking if I had information.”

  Audrey shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  He shrugged. “Honestly, neither do I. But after I revealed what I had uncovered, Claire seemed to shrink into herself. She was upset, despondent. You all saw it at the time, even Edward commented on it.”

  “Yes, I know she was different in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. She wouldn’t discuss it with me. But why didn’t you tell Edward about this?” she asked. “Why keep her inquiries a secret?”

  “Because Claire asked me to do so,” he admitted. “And Edward was so lost in his own pain after Alice’s death I thought it best to keep such an odd interaction to myself. I never thought…”

  “But you did,” she snapped as he trailed off. “You did think, Jude. My sister’s letters to you make no mention of this Lila Elsworth, but they do imply—no, they say outright—that you helped Jonathon Aston make contact with her.”

  That all too familiar sick feeling churned in his chest. “After I was cast out by my family, in that brief time before your brother took me on as his man of affairs, I met Jonathon Aston in a reputable club. He misrepresented himself to me then, allowing me to believe that he was not titled, but was landed and moneyed, a gentleman.”

  “He’s no gentleman,” Audrey growled.

  “With hindsight, I see that even then he was likely hoping to one day trade on my connections, either to my own family or to yours. But at the time, I only knew him as a man who was kind to me at one of my lowest points.”

  “So he waited all that time, all those years, to use that moment of kindness against you?” she asked, her tone suspicious.

  He tilted his head to examine her closer. “You have been sheltered from the world in some ways, Audrey. There are men out there, men and women, who are always searching for angles to better themselves. They run elaborate games to steal money, secrets that can be traded for power or money, whatever they can. And the way they do that is to gain relationships. They know they may not use them in that very moment, but someone one meets a year or five years or ten years before could become useful tomorrow.”

  “You make it sound like people are currency,” Audrey said.

  He nodded. “In a way, they are, to men like Aston. He sensed my weakness and knew my connections, and he filed those facts away in case he found a way to use them. I assume he was watching your family for a long time, likely exactly because of what he had learned about me all that time ago. If he was watching, he must have seen that Claire was hurting, isolating herself.”

  She flinched. “He saw her vulnerability too.”

  “And her money. Your father’s arrangement with you two about your pin money was odd.”

  Audrey squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. “Instead of putting our brothers in charge of our wealth, he allowed us access directly. We always knew that was why Aston wanted her.”

  “He likely discovered that Claire had just been granted access to her wealth by the terms of your father’s will.”

  “When he saw Claire’s pain, he must have thought he could manipulate her,” Audrey breathed.

  “Aston reappeared suddenly in my life at the same time. We met ‘accidentally’ at a gentleman’s gathering where I was sent to do some business for Edward.” Bile churned in his gut. “I was pleased to see my old friend at the time, in fact.”

  “Aston,” Audrey said, the name like the vilest of curses on her lips.

  “He mentioned that he had seen Claire at a gathering—he seemed smitten. When I said something to her, she recalled Aston, and for the first time in a long time, she seemed happy. So I encouraged it, I admit it. I thought the man was a gentleman and that ultimately he would take their courtship public.”

  “But instead he took her.”

  Jude nodded. “Yes, and I…I am the cause of that too.”

  She shook her head. “How?” she whispered.

  “The night he took her, ruined her, he asked me where she was. I told him. And by the time we realized she was gone, they had vanished on the wind.”

  Audrey said nothing, but turned away and walked to his settee where she sa
t with a thump and placed her hands over her face. He let out a shuddering sigh. He had held these secrets for so long that saying them out loud was almost a relief, despite the painful consequences he now stared in the face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “It is my fault.”

  She lifted her face and stared at him, expressionless, empty. He hated that look more than he would have hated her anger or her betrayal. Now he was nothing to her. And he ached.

  “Yes,” she said just as quietly. “It is your fault.”

  Audrey watched as Jude recoiled from her cold statement. The same emotion she forced herself to strip from her expression was wild on his face. Guilt. Anger, but at himself. Grief. And love. She still saw his love for her burning in his dark blue eyes.

  Worst of all was that even after knowing how deeply he had betrayed her, betrayed her family, those emotions still moved her. She ached for his love. She wanted to reach for it, let it comfort her. She wanted to forgive him.

  But she couldn’t.

  “How could you?” she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the crackle of the fire.

  “Do what I did or lie about it?” he asked, his voice strained.

  She shook her head. “Either. Both.”

  He sighed and slowly came to sit in the chair near the settee. He watched her carefully, but made no additional efforts to touch her.

  Oh, how she wished he would touch her. Even though she knew she would pull away. She still wanted the warmth of him against her. Something to remember forever.

  “I did what I did out of foolish blindness,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken Aston at his word. But he was convincing. And I should have told Edward or Evan or Gabriel or you about Claire’s questions, about her attraction to Aston. But I thought I was protecting her privacy. That she would give over her secrets in her own time.”

  “And why did you lie afterward?”

  “Because yours is the only family I have ever truly known,” he admitted. “And you are the only woman I have ever loved. And I was a coward who didn’t want to lose it all. And yet here I am and I have done that. Lost everything. Haven’t I?”

  She stared across the distance between them. So short, but it felt like a chasm now. Uncrossable.

  “Are there any more secrets, Jude?” she asked softly.

  His lips pinched slightly and her heart sank even before he said, “When I left to visit my mother before Edward’s marriage, I did go see her. But I also…”

  “What did you do?” she demanded, wishing her voice were stronger. “What did you do, Jude?”

  “I convinced your sister to meet with me,” he admitted.

  She leapt up. “What? You saw Claire?”

  He bent his head. “I did.”

  “What did she say? How did she look?” she all but shrieked as joy and horror and terror flooded her at once.

  He stood slowly. “She looked tired, but well. Like her old self, though without as much light in her eyes. She said she wouldn’t come home.”

  She rushed forward without thought and pushed him. He caught her arms before she could repeat the attack, holding her impassively as she struggled, wanting to lash out at him but unable because he was physically stronger. Finally she went limp and he drew her against him, keeping her upright with his arms.

  “Why didn’t you bring Edward?” she sobbed, finally letting her pain out. “Why didn’t you bring any of us? We could have talked to her, convinced her!”

  He picked her up and carried her back to the settee, where he set her down and then stepped away. His face was twisted with a pain that mirrored her own.

  “Claire made it clear to me that if anyone from the family was there, she would run before we would even see her. She told me she would cut off all contact with me and with Gabriel if I brought anyone else along. I couldn’t sever that lifeline or raise anyone’s hopes when I didn’t know the outcome.” He leaned closer. “Please tell me you understand that.”

  She stared at him, her body hurting, her tears still falling even as she struggled to stop them. She stared at him and she saw the man she loved. She also saw a stranger.

  Slowly, she got up. “I don’t understand any of this,” she murmured. “Everything I believed about you, about us, is a lie. And I’m going up to the house.”

  She staggered past him, feeling him watching her with every step. Her body hurt, like she had been physically beaten. But it was only her soul and her heart that had been battered. She reached for the door and his voice stopped her.

  “Audrey.”

  She hesitated before she turned. She looked over him before she responded, her beautiful love. He looked the same with his handsome face and soulful blue eyes. And yet he wasn’t the same. Or she wasn’t. One way or another, they weren’t.

  “What?” she finally managed to push past dry lips.

  “Will you tell Edward?” he asked.

  She turned her face. “Worried about your job, Samson?”

  “No,” he said softly. “Sod my job. I’m worried about losing my brothers, my family, like I’ve lost you. I know I deserve it, but I want to know it, to prepare for it.”

  She swallowed hard, thinking of her sickly mother, thinking of Edward who was only so recently happy again with Mary. She thought of Gabriel and Evan too.

  She shook her head and refused to look at him. “I have been made a partner in your lies. Telling my family would only hurt them, wouldn’t it? So I’ll keep your betrayal to myself. You may rest easy.”

  He said nothing, but suddenly he moved, and before she could step away, he had her hand. Gently he pulled her to his chest and his warmth enveloped her, teased her, taunted her with everything she had believed, wanted, loved. He dropped his mouth to hers.

  She waited for the kiss to be rough and demanding, for him to claim the passion she knew she would give, even if her mind screamed at her not to. But instead, the kiss was a soft brush of his lips. Tender and loving, not demanding, not claiming.

  “I will never rest easy again, Audrey,” he said, his voice cracking as he released her hand and pushed the door open to hold it for her. “I will never be at peace when you can’t forgive me.”

  She blinked at the unexpected and very real emotion she heard in his voice. It drew her to him, once again made her want to forgive him. But right now his betrayal was too raw.

  “I swear to you, Samson,” she whispered. “I’m going to undo the wrong you did. Only then will I be able to forgive you.”

  He straightened up. “Audrey—” he began, a hint of warning in his tone.

  She ignored him, turned her back and walked away, his voice ringing in her ears, along with his lies. His warmth still making her entire body tingle, along with her love.

  But nothing would ever be the same again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Do you think that Mama would be very upset if I…if I left?”

  Audrey folded her arms and lifted her chin as she watched Edward looked up from his paper slowly. At his side, Mary got to her feet.

  “Audrey, what are you talking about?” Mary asked, eyes wide with surprise.

  She shifted. “I-I want to leave. To…” She trailed off, finding the lie she was about to tell difficult when she had just been berating Jude for telling lies. “I want to go back to London.”

  Her brother set his paper aside. “Are you all right?”

  She cast a quick glance at her sister-in-law and forced a smile. “Perfectly. It is only that—that—” She struggled for words.

  “Is it safe to assume that you have had a discussion with Samson?” Edward asked softly.

  Audrey caught her breath. “How do you know that?”

  “I spoke with him earlier today about you.” Edward sighed. “Audrey, you do know he cares for you, don’t you?”

  Hurt slammed into her like a punch and she almost staggered with its power. Since her encounter with Jude over an hour before, she had been pacing her room, thinking about his confession
, tangled in confusing feelings of love and anger toward him.

  And wishing she could undo the damage he’d done. Somehow if she could…well, wouldn’t that erase some of the pain? Wouldn’t it make it possible for the love to shine through once more?

  “He says he cares,” she whispered, willing herself not to weep. “But there is too much to keep us apart. At least right now.”

  Mary exchanged a brief look with her husband and then stepped forward. Unexpectedly her new sister-in-law wrapped her arms around her and squeezed gently. “I’ll leave you and Edward to talk for a while,” she said. “But if you’d like, perhaps we can take a turn around the garden later, just the two of us.”

  Audrey watched her go, watched her quietly shut the parlor door behind her to give the siblings privacy. Despite her internal pain, Audrey smiled. “Mary is wonderful.”

  Edward’s face lost some of the concern for a moment and he returned the smile. “She is. I am very lucky to have her as my wife. Not that there weren’t obstacles.” His gaze grew more intense. “There will always be obstacles, Audrey. Running away won’t change them.”

  She flinched. He wouldn’t say that if he truly understood the obstacles between her and Jude. God, he might call the other man out to duel if he knew the truth.

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered.

  Edward slowly moved toward her and took her hands in his. He smiled down at her, handsome and kind and so much happier than she had seen him in years.

  “I likely don’t,” he admitted. “But I know my friend and I know my sister. I think if you wanted to be, you two could be happy together. Or is it that you don’t want to be?”

  She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

  “So you do care for him,” he pressed.

  Audrey stared up at him, her breath short, her hands trembling in his. “I love him,” she admitted, and the feelings mobbed her now that they had a voice.

  She did love Jude. Even his lies hadn’t stolen that strong, wonderful feeling.