“You can’t mean that,” Audrey whispered, though she could see from her sister’s expression that she did. She’d seen that stubborn tilt to Claire’s chin far too many times to doubt it.
“I do,” Claire said, her tone gentle but oh, so firm. “You don’t understand and I don’t ask you to. But I have gone too far, Audrey, to turn back. Too much is at stake now.”
Audrey’s lips parted. “You are saying you will never come home?”
There was a brief flash of hesitation in Claire’s bright eyes and she bent her head. “I-I cannot say never. But not now.”
Audrey shook her head. “You can’t mean that. You are delirious or terrified, but you can’t mean that. Let us get Gabriel. Let him talk to you—”
Claire flattened against the wall behind her, her face twisting with pain and horror. “Gabriel is here?”
Jude nodded. “He came with me here to look for Audrey. And honestly, he’s probably searching for you as well. Edward and Evan will likely be coming shortly, as soon as they realize Audrey isn’t where they are looking.”
Claire had begun to shake at the mention of her twin. “I won’t see him,” she whispered. She stared at Audrey for a moment. “I’m sorry, Audrey. Sorry to hurt you. But I won’t stay. And I won’t go with you.”
Audrey parted her lips, but Claire held up a hand to silence her.
“I will give you one bit of advice.” She looked at Jude. “Don’t turn away from Samson. He was deceived by Aston and…and by me. What happened wasn’t his fault and he has spent a very long time trying to fix it. Not for our family, but for you.”
Audrey turned her tear-streaked face toward him, searching for his help, searching for his comfort. And of course he offered it, stretching out his hand to take hers, squeezing it gently. The touch of his skin against hers soothed her in her distress, bringing a moment of light and pleasure into this pain.
“One of us should have love, sister,” Claire whispered. “Look at him and tell me it won’t be you.”
Audrey did just that, staring at the man she loved. She caught her breath and turned her face to speak to her sister again, but to her shock she saw Claire’s booted foot disappearing out the window.
She let out a cry, and both she and Jude bolted to the window, but Claire was gone, vanished on the wind much like Willows had been in the alley earlier in the day.
Behind them, the door opened and Audrey turned to find Gabriel rushing inside. His face lit with relief when he saw her.
“They said you were here, they said—” He cut himself off. “What is it?”
“Claire,” Audrey sobbed as she turned into Jude’s chest.
“Claire!” her brother repeated. “Where?”
“Disappeared out the window not a moment ago,” Jude explained as he stroked her hair.
“No!” Gabriel cried and ran back out the door, down the hall.
Audrey pulled away. “He won’t find her,” she whispered.
Jude hesitated. He could lie to her, try to comfort her, but he wouldn’t. She deserved the truth now, just as she had from the beginning. “No, not until she wants to be found, I fear. They’ll pull up stakes now that we’ve been here.”
“Oh God, poor Gabriel,” Audrey breathed as the ache in her chest blossomed and spread. “He’s so desperate to find her. As his twin, he feels her loss all the more.”
Jude touched her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “In the midst of this, you worry more for Gabriel than for yourself. When you have equally lost. You are wonderful.”
She shook her head. “I am not wonderful. And I would do anything to keep my family from pain. Just as you did, and I blamed you for it. I’m sorry.”
Jude wrapped an arm around her. “You have nothing to feel sorry about, my love. And we can talk about this later. Come, we’ll find Gabriel and go back to the hotel.”
Audrey nodded. “We have much to discuss.”
“Much,” he agreed, his tone grim but also hopeful. And even through her pain she felt the same hope. For them and their future. The one she hadn’t been considering. The one she wanted now more than ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As Jude entered the room, Audrey looked up from her small bag and smiled. It was a tired smile, a sad one. The same one that had been on her face since their encounter with Claire two long days before.
“You look tired,” she said before he could say the same.
He shrugged. “Two nights sharing a room with Gabriel, hearing all his plans to find Claire, were not restful, I admit.”
“You should have come here,” she said softly.
He lifted both eyebrows. Since two evenings past, they had not been alone long enough to discuss the future. The past. Them. Now those quiet words renewed a hope he’d been trying to keep in check in the midst of Woodley family turmoil.
“With Evan and Edward in the rooms on either side of you?” he said with a laugh. “I would have been shot dead at dawn for sure.”
She smiled a little wider. “But the last wish would have been very sweet, I promise you,” she murmured, then crossed to him. “Do you think you might convince Edward to allow you to ride in my carriage back with me? We have much to discuss.”
He drew in a long breath. “I-I already asked him as much. And he agreed. Ursula will ride my mount, at least for a while.”
She nodded, but he thought he saw her eyes light up. “Good.”
He took her bag and led her downstairs where the carriage and the horses were lined up in wait. Ursula, Gabriel and Evan were already mounted, Gabriel’s face was lined with heavy emotion, Evan’s only slightly less so. Edward stood at the carriage door and his face was also drawn as she approached him.
Jude watched as the brother and sister embraced silently. Then he helped Audrey in and turned his attention to Jude.
“You two deserve a little time,” Edward said softly.
Jude nodded. Since Claire’s second disappearance and the arrival of the rest of the Woodley brothers, there had been tension between them. But there had also been hope. Still, he had no illusions that what had been damaged could ever be fully repaired.
“Edward,” he said. “When we get back, if you want to sack me, I won’t argue. I’ll understand if you never wanted to see me again.”
Edward shook his head as if in disbelief. “Is that what you’ve been waiting for all these days? To be turned away?”
Jude shrugged. “I would deserve no less.”
“You made a mistake,” Edward conceded. “And I’m still angry about that mistake. But you have long been as much a brother to me as Evan or Gabriel is. And I would never turn away a brother. Especially one who has shown remorse for what he did.” Edward glanced at the carriage, where Audrey was certainly eavesdropping. “And even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t hurt Audrey like that. To tear away someone she loves would be especially cruel. So you are not in danger. At least not from me or Evan or Gabriel. Audrey…” He tapped the carriage lightly and then turned to climb on his mount. “Well, she’ll speak her own mind plainly enough, I’d wager.”
Jude took a deep breath of relief—but also nervousness—and climbed into the carriage. As the door was shut behind him and the vehicle began to move, he looked at Audrey. “Your brother is right, we have much to discuss.”
She shook her head and slowly moved to his side of the vehicle. She wrapped her arms around him, lifted her lips to his. “We do, but I also have a lot to show you,” she whispered before she kissed him.
He was silent and stiff in surprise for a moment, but soon the pressure of her mouth on his was too much to deny. He opened to her, wrapping her closer, feeling her strain toward him without hesitation.
“Audrey,” he panted as he forced their mouths to part. “This isn’t what I had in mind when we planned to ride together.”
“Isn’t it?” she said with a wicked smile. “Because touching you is all I’ve thought about for a very long time.”
She accentuated tha
t statement by cupping him through his trousers, stroking the rapidly hardening length of him that disprove any statement he might make about not wanting her. He groaned at the intimate touch and lifted toward her seeking fingers.
“I want you,” she murmured. “Now. Please.”
“I could never deny you,” he said, almost pleading, because it was true.
He had never been able to walk away, and until the day she told him she didn’t want him, he never would. Despite not knowing where he stood, despite still feeling like he was on the verge of losing her, as she loosened the flap on his pants and lowered it, revealing his hard cock, he sighed with pleasure and anticipation.
“I have missed this,” she breathed, then lowered her head to his sex. She brushed him with her lips, darting out her tongue to taste him with a low moan of pleasure that mimicked his.
“Audrey,” he groaned, quiet because he knew her brothers were just outside. “We shouldn’t.”
“The curtains are closed,” she whispered against his flesh. She swirled her tongue around him before she continued, “And I can’t wait.”
He grunted softly, then grabbed her arms and pulled her up into his lap. He crushed his mouth to hers, tasting her, claiming her, as he shoved her skirts up around her waist.
She returned his ardor with her own shifting as he pressed his fingers through the slit in her drawers and found her wet sex waiting. They sighed in unison as she straddled him, bringing herself down over him, over him, around him until he was fully seated.
“I love you,” she murmured as she began to move over him. Their joining was hard and fast, without much finesse, but he didn’t care. The feel of her pulsing around him, the look on her face as she strove for pleasure, built toward it and finally stifled her cry as she found it was too much. Her sex milked him with release and he grunted as his seed moved and flowed into her, a final joining that trumped all others before it.
She collapsed against his chest with a shudder of pleasure, then smiled up at him as she moved from his body and slowly fixed herself. He did the same before he gathered her against him in satisfied pleasure.
“Now that that’s done,” he said after they had ridden along for a while. “I think it’s time for our chat.”
“Yes,” she agreed, looking up into his face. “I have a great deal to say.”
He laughed. “Of course you do.”
She swatted him playfully, but her face sobered. “I don’t like that you’ve lied to me, to everyone, for so long. But I’ve thought a lot about it. I know I’ve lied to protect those I loved in the past. And I can admit I have sometimes lied to protect myself.”
“I shouldn’t have done it, though.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I look into your eyes and I believe you wouldn’t do it again. I believe that you would tell me the truth, if only to keep me from running off as I did.”
“What if we make a deal,” he suggested. “You don’t run away trying to save your sister and I won’t keep anything from you again.”
She nodded. “It’s fair. But I’ll need another promise.”
“Which is?”
She took a long breath. “I want to marry you, Jude. I want to love you for the rest of our lives. I want to be yours and have you be mine, publicly and permanently.”
He set back in disbelief at her words and the earnestness with which she spoke them. All her love was in her eyes. All her hope. All her fear.
“Are you proposing to me, Lady Audrey?”
“I am, Mr. Samson,” she said with a faint smile of her own. “I know, more than others, how fleeting our time together can be. I don’t want to lose another moment with you.”
He couldn’t help the smile that was so broad he feared he would split his cheeks. “You have always been terrible at the concept of patience, so I will tell you that I always intended to ask for your hand as soon as we got home and I could speak to your mother and Edward. So if they agree to these terms, I will marry you as soon as legally possible. And I will make you as happy as I can possibly do for the rest of both our lives. If that will suit you.”
She smiled at him. “It will suit me very well. Very well, indeed.”
He settled his mouth against hers once more and she lifted to him hungrily. Happily. But when she pulled away, there was trouble lingering on her face. Trouble he understood.
“Still thinking of Claire?” he asked.
“I can’t help it, Jude.” She shivered even though the carriage was warm. “I go over her words over and over. That she’s gone too far, that she won’t return, that we shouldn’t seek her out anymore.”
“But you aren’t going to listen,” he said. “And neither am I.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “What? Are you saying you will disregard her order to let her go? That you will continue to seek her out? For me?”
“For you. But also because Claire is a Woodley. And I may not share my blood or my name with your line, but I am a Woodley in my heart.”
“And you will be a Woodley once we wed,” she pointed out.
He smiled wide at that thought. “I suppose I will be a Woodley at last. And the thing I have learned from my life on the outside edges of your family is that you don’t give up.”
“No,” she said with a smile. “We don’t give up. Not on each other.”
“And so we won’t give up on Claire,” he reassured her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
His heart swelled with the same feeling, his body was full of it. And he gathered her up again to kiss her. But before he did, he said, “And I love you, Audrey. With all I am, with all I ever have been. With all I ever will be. Forever.”
EPILOGUE
“And so you will marry here,” Lady Woodley said as she beamed up from her spot on her pillows, her face more filled with light and strength then it had been for days.
But of course Audrey had never doubted that her mother would approve of her union, even if Jude had been nervous about it.
Audrey nodded, reveling in the warmth of her future husband’s strong arm around her waist. “As soon as we can, if it is amenable to all.”
“It’s certainly amenable to me,” Jude murmured, eliciting smiles from all in the room, even Gabriel, who had not smiled since they lost Claire once again. But her brother was putting on a good face for their mother.
“Edward will use his influence to obtain the license, I’m sure,” her mother said, and Edward nodded his agreement. “And I will send a note to the vicar to see if we can do it swiftly. Though I am sorry we won’t be able to go to London and enjoy the preparations for a giant wedding.”
Audrey looked around the room at her family, or what remained of it. She let her gaze fall last on Jude, who had punished himself for so long.
“A huge London wedding does not appeal to me in the slightest,” she said. “I have everything I want right here.”
“That’s funny,” Jude said softly, his words for her even though the rest of the room could hear. “I was going to say the exact same thing.”
Look for the next chapter in The Wicked Woodleys series with Deceived, featuring second oldest brother Evan, coming October 13.
Excerpt from Deceived
THE WICKED WOODLEYS BOOK 2
1816
Evan speared a perfectly cooked sausage link and cut into it with gusto. “Great God, Mrs. Ford is the best cook in the empire,” he said. “I must have her come and give lessons at my London home.”
His younger sister Audrey laughed. “I’m sure your cook would love that.”
“Yes, nothing a person, a servant, loves more than to be told they need to learn their job,” Audrey’s fiancé and their longtime family friend Jude Samson said drily.
“Mrs. Ford does outdo herself,” their oldest brother Edward said as he swirled a piece of toast through the yolk left on his plate. “But that is more for Mama than for us.”
Evan smiled, but his jovial mood faded slightly. The reason they were
all at the country estate, Briarlake Cross, was because of their mother. The Dowager had fallen gravely ill just over a month before and they had nearly lost her. Even now she was still weak in her recovery.
“How do you think she is?” Evan asked.
At that moment, Edward’s new wife Mary stepped into the room. Evan watched as she gave his brother a secret smile meant just for him before she addressed the room at large.
“I can answer that,” Mary said, taking her spot beside her husband and beaming as he stood and set about filling her a plate from the sideboard. “She is very well, I think. Just overly tired this morning. She’s taking her tray upstairs with Miss Gray as company.”
Juliet Gray was the healer who had saved their mother’s life. The entire family owed the young woman a debt.
“Miss Gray is here?” Gabriel asked, sitting up slightly and joining the conversation for the first time that morning. Their brother had been melancholy for weeks.
And Evan couldn’t blame him. Their sister, Claire, Gabriel’s twin had been missing for nearly two years after an unfortunately marriage. Just a few weeks before they had nearly found her, but she’d disappeared once more.
“She is,” Mary said softly and Evan saw her watching Gabriel closely. She was a new edition to their family, but already she had the same care and worry for them as anyone could hope for.
“Do you think that the wedding will be too much for her?” Audrey asked. “It is only a few days away.”
At the question, everyone at the table began to smile. How could they not? Audrey’s impending nuptials to Jude Samson, who the entire family had long considered a brother, were cause for much joy, even if their “courtship” had not been usual.
“No,” Edward said with an encouraging smile for Audrey as he handed over Mary’s plate and retook his spot. “I spoke to her at length about it last night. She is very much looking forward to it, I assure you. We will all be mindful of her condition and Miss Gray will attend to insure she is not overly excited.”
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