Tempted

by Jess Michaels

  Juliet frowned as she stared at her full plate again. Her father wasn’t talking about her regrets, she didn’t think. He was speaking of his own. It was obvious by the way his gaze slid to Lady Woodley once more and how the lady returned it with a wistful one of her own.

  They had been parted by some kind of circumstance, Juliet had not yet determined what. The intervening years had been happy, she thought, but now that they were together again, it was clear they each pondered what might have been.

  Would her experience be the same? If she allowed Gabriel to hide away as he was, would she look back in ten years or twenty or thirty and wish she had said something to him? Wish she’d had enough bravery to confront him?

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have an opening to do so. After all, she had offered her help in the search for his sister. Shouldn’t she at least try to give it?

  “Lady Woodley, this morning I was looking out my window at that wonderful view of the park across the street and thinking how beautiful the fresh snow looks,” Mr. Gray said, interrupting Juliet’s thoughts and bringing her back to the present. “What do you think of a walk there?”

  Lady Woodley’s face lit up. “Will we make a snowman like we did that year when Mother and Father’s Christmas soiree was snowed in?”

  Mr. Gray’s laughed. “The looks on their faces when the drifts blocked the way to the stables—I had almost forgotten. Yes, certainly we can if you feel up to it.”

  Juliet cleared her throat and the two looked at her with guilt. Clearly they had once again all but forgotten her existence. She had to laugh at their faces.

  “You could come, too, Juliet,” her father said with a blush. “Of course!”

  She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so. I would like to do some shopping for the upcoming holiday. Perhaps I will call on Josie and see if she will join me.”

  Lady Woodley looked relieved as much as happy. “A capital idea, my dear. Audrey would also love to do so, I’m sure. Make a day of it.”

  “I will, but only if you promise not to stay out in the cold too long. Papa, you must ensure she stays warm.”

  Her father cast another side glance at their hostess. “I shall, I promise.”

  “I should go up and put on a warmer gown,” Lady Woodley said, rising from the table.

  “I will also change,” Mr. Gray agreed, offering their hostess his arm as they smiled toward Juliet and left the room together.

  Juliet shook her head as they disappeared. The longer they spent together, the harder it was for them to hide their burgeoning relationship. And she was happy for them, though she wondered at their future.

  She did not, however, wonder at her own, at least for that day. She knew one thing for certain: when she got into her father’s carriage shortly, she would not be directing it to Josie or Audrey’s home. She was going to go to Gabriel.

  “A life lived without regret,” she muttered to herself as she tossed her napkin aside and pushed to her feet. She could only hope she wouldn’t regret following her desires even more.

  Gabriel paced his office with a frown, gazing at the notes had had tacked to the walls, the scribbled sketches. At last, he could concentrate.

  Of course he’d had to hide from Juliet for two whole days to do it, but sacrifices had to be made to save his sister. Didn’t they?

  God, how could that tiny question even pop into his mind? Of course he would sacrifice everything to find Claire. Up to and possibly including his own life.

  “Get your head in the game, you fool,” he cursed himself out loud, and returned his attention to the desk. A long sheet of paper covered the entire span of it and along it Gabriel had marked lines with important dates relating to Jonathon Aston and Claire. He stared at them now, reviewing each slim piece of information in his arsenal and wishing he could determine how they fit together and how they would reveal Claire’s whereabouts now.

  “Gabriel?”

  He froze in his work at the soft voice coming from the door behind him. The voice couldn’t be there. She couldn’t be there now. And yet as he turned, there she was. Juliet, standing in his doorway with his butler beside her, a nervous and agitated expression on his thin face.

  She didn’t wear one of the expensive gowns his mother had insisted upon buying for her, but one Gabriel knew well. It was made of a brown silky fabric with a thin piece of fine lace at the top. Plain and yet that fit her. After all, her face was so beautiful that she didn’t need elaborate gowns to mask imperfections.

  There were none.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Anders blustered when Gabriel was silent too long. “I did knock three times.”

  “You did?” Gabriel asked with a blink for the servant. He had been so lost in his work he hadn’t even noticed.

  “Yes. And the lady insisted,” the butler continued with a slight motion of his chin in Juliet’s direction.

  Other ladies might have blushed at that, but Juliet didn’t. She just continued to stare at Gabriel, unflinching, unflustered, just waiting.

  “As she often does. It’s all right, Anders. You may leave us.”

  The servant gave Juliet one more questioning look and then bowed from the room, leaving them alone.

  “Hello,” Juliet said softly, even as she reached behind her and closed the door.

  The action seemed to take an eternity and he stared as the barrier swung shut, inappropriately closing them in alone together. He thrilled at the thought, at the memories of all they could do together.

  He glanced back down to his desk with a scowl. Those thoughts were exactly why he’d avoided her. And now she was here, her presence turning everything on its head.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  He saw her flinch at his bluntness before she covered her response and instantly wished he had softened the question. But it was too late now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “My intention wasn’t to disturb you.”

  No, that had never been her intention, he knew. But she did disturb him. Down to his very core.

  “Is my mother with you?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I am alone.”

  His brow wrinkled. “Not even a maid?”

  “I don’t have a maid at home. The one who helps me at your mother’s doesn’t accompany me out, I doubt she knows I’ve even left.”

  “My mother is letting you flit about London all alone?” he asked.

  “Your mother is a little distracted, I think,” Juliet said with a faint smile. “She and my father hardly notice me anymore, which is not a slur, by the way. I’m pleased they are reconnecting. Anyway, it offers me opportunities to escape. I took this one today because I…I…” She trailed off.

  “Why?” he pressed, wanting desperately to hear the words.

  She blushed. “I could tell you a hundred falsehoods, but the truth is that I wanted to see you.”

  “Oh,” he breathed, unable to stop the pleasure that blossomed in his chest at those words.

  She turned her face. “You have been avoiding me, I think. Ever since we—”

  He flinched at her perceptiveness. “No,” he said, but instantly realized that it sounded just as much like a lie out loud as it had in his head. “Yes.”

  Her face fell a little more. “I see. Did I displease you, Gabriel?”

  “No!” he burst out. “Never. Quite the opposite.”

  There was a flutter of a smile on her face at that answer, but only a slight one. “But you are finished with me?”

  He hesitated. Wasn’t that what he’d been telling himself? Only, looking at her now, here in his home, with her pale cheeks and her wide eyes, her hands clenched in front of her, he knew it wasn’t true. He couldn’t do it.

  “I should be,” he began. “For both our sakes. I should be because you turn out to be the biggest distraction of my life. I should be because I ought not use you for pleasure. But…but I’m not, Juliet. I can’t be.”<
br />
  Her eyes lit up, and in that moment he had never seen anything more beautiful. He had never wanted anything or anyone more.

  “Good,” she said, then came closer, leaned up and pressed a kiss to his lips.

  He melted against her, tangling his tongue with hers as a rush of pleasure and desire washed over him. But before things could progress, she stepped away from him. She looked around the room, eyes wide, and then back to him.

  “What is all this, Gabriel?”

  He cleared his throat, wishing he could clear her from the blood pumping through his veins so easily. But he would focus. He had to focus.

  “Once upon a time, you would have called this my office. But now I look at it as my workroom of Claire’s disappearance. Everything you see relates to her somehow.”

  She moved to the walls, looking at snippets of descriptions, sketches. One of them was of his sister and she lingered there, examining Claire’s slender face and bright smile.

  “You sketched these?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She smiled at him. “They are beautiful. She is beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is.” He turned his face so that emotion wouldn’t overcome him. “And many of the others on that wall are not beautiful. I have sketched Aston and a few of his cohorts, all from the memories of those who saw them. Perhaps they are not perfect, but they help me put them into line.”

  She looked further down the row of sketches. Some of them made her shudder, just as they did him. While Aston himself was a good looking enough fellow, some of his lackeys were twisted and mangled by years of violence in the underground.

  She moved to his desk. “And this?”

  “A timeline of everything that led up to and since Claire’s disappearance,” he said, shifting as she leaned over the desk and looked at it. There were so many very personal notes written on the sheet, he almost didn’t want her to see it. Despite her own past, would she judge Claire? Or think less of him?

  “May I help you?” she asked as she straightened up.

  He blinked. “You still wish to do so?”

  She nodded. “I do. But I sense your hesitation and I don’t want to intrude upon something so private and so painful if I am not wanted here.”

  Gabriel pinched his lips together. What she had just said proved that she was far better versed in reading emotion than he was.

  “Will you think less of Claire?” he asked softly.

  She drew back as if surprised. “Of course not. I feel for her and I feel for your family, but I do not judge her. Nor could I. Whatever she did, whatever choices she made, she had her reasons. Though I can’t imagine that what I think would matter to her or to you.”

  He could no longer resist the draw she represented and edged closer. He reached up, hand trembling, and caressed the softness of her cheek with the back of his hand. “And yet it does matter to me.”

  She leaned into his touch. “I want to help, not hurt. I will not judge but try to offer insight.”

  He sighed in relief. “I do think a fresh perspective might help. Someone outside of our family without our feelings on the subject to cloud their mind.”

  She moved to the beginning of the timeline and pointed to the first mark on the page. “This says ‘something’ happened two years ago that made Claire feel as though she no longer belonged in the family.”

  He nodded. “No one knows what, but apparently she told Josie that she no longer belonged and that was what sent her into the arms of Jonathon Aston.”

  “How did she meet him?”

  “Audrey’s husband Jude knew the man in passing and somehow he began to watch her through their acquaintance. He took advantage of whatever pain Claire was going through.”

  She picked up the quill on his desk and motioned to the paper. “Do you mind?”

  “No.” He watched as she wrote: Aston begins to watch Claire at a point before his notation about Claire’s feelings of not belonging.

  “It seems an important part. After all, you cannot just track your sister, but Aston as well.”

  Gabriel frowned. “Yes, you’re correct. It isn’t that I haven’t looked into the man and his background, but I tend to put most of my attention into Claire’s side of things.”

  “Understandably, since you are most concerned about her. But it seems that if she has gone with Aston, he must hold the cards on where they go and what they do. Follow the man and you may find the woman. He is a scoundrel, yes, but what else?”

  “A thief,” Gabriel all but spat. “A charlatan.”

  “Is that because of your hatred for the man, or based on fact?”

  He drew back at the quiet, even question. He understood why she asked it. And as he calmed himself, he was able to answer. “Facts. The research I’ve conducted has led me to believe that Aston was involved in dozens of schemes in the years leading up to Claire’s disappearance. They began as minor deceptions but the sinister nature increased with each one. He has been building himself up in the criminal world. Trying to make a name.”

  “I see,” she said, looking again at Aston’s portrait. “And since he took Claire?”

  He pursed his lips. “I know he has continued his ways, but I have not tracked that as carefully.”

  She glanced at him and he could see her trying not to put her reaction on her face. “It seems a good place to start. Perhaps look into reports made to the guard about imposters and missing items in the past year, starting in outlaying counties. It could give you a trail.”

  Gabriel nodded. “A very good point.” He scribbled the suggestion into the notebook he always carried in his front pocket. One all but filled with leads to follow. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He moved away from the timeline, from the pictures and words scribbled and stuck to the walls. Sometimes they began to blur and merge in his mind into one giant, unsurmountable barrier of pain and loss. When that happened, he had to escape. And he hated himself for walking away from Claire in her time of need.

  He sank down in a chair facing the fire and sighed. “My sister was beautiful, as you mentioned, but she was also very smart. She was kind. She was funny.”

  “Is,” Juliet corrected quietly.

  He flinched. “Yes. Is. Or I hope she still is all those things. But it leaves me wondering. Why would a beautiful, smart, kind and funny woman walk away from everything she knew and loved, from safety and family, and go with a bastard like Jonathon Aston?”

  Juliet was quiet for a long moment, as if she was pondering his almost rhetorical question.

  “I look at the sketch of Aston and he is handsome, despite the somewhat frightful look you’ve put on his face, a version of the monster you believe lives within him,” she said.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Is that all it takes to override reason and values? An attractive face?”

  “Of course not,” she said with a shake of her head. “And I cannot say anything for certain without knowing Claire or Aston, even without studying your notes on her disappearance further. But the fact is that if she felt isolated in some way from her family, she would be far more likely to be taken in by a man who was a charlatan.”

  “Why couldn’t she see though him?” He pushed to his feet. “She is smarter than that!”

  Juliet moved closer. “You are angry with her.”

  He pressed his lips together. “No. I love her.”

  “The two are not mutually exclusive.” Juliet took his hand and lifted it to her mouth. An offer of comfort but one that made his body edgy rather than relaxed. “But recall that you have the benefit of hindsight, Gabriel. Claire was caught up in some kind of pain, and a man who is a charlatan will sense that. I would wager he became whatever she needed him to be in that moment. And through her strong emotion, her reason was clouded.”

  “And why not come home now?” Gabriel asked, the weight of that question pushing at his chest from the inside.

  Juliet fr
owned. “I don’t know. She may feel trapped by situations we couldn’t possibly understand.”

  He sighed. She was being logical where he couldn’t quite be. Funny since he prided himself on that. But in this situation, it was hard.

  “I shouldn’t be so hard on her,” he admitted as he released Juliet’s hand, though he didn’t take a step away from her. “After all, I understand a little clearer now the idea of reason being clouded by emotion.”

  She blinked up at him and in that moment the mood of the room shifted. The air felt thicker, hotter, and Juliet’s eyes were so impossibly blue. Like a sea he wanted to dive into. To drown in.

  “What emotion are you lost in, Gabriel?”

  He swallowed hard. Saying emotions out loud was so hard for him. And yet this one pushed him. Forced him.

  “Desire,” he whispered, his voice rough. “I want you, Juliet. So very much.”

  “I’m here,” she said in return, moving closer until her body flattened against his. “What’s stopping you?”

  “The amount of time it will take to get you to my chamber,” he said as he took her hand and led her to the door.

  Chapter Ten

  Juliet stared around Gabriel’s room in wonder. Somehow she had expected the chamber to be austere, stripped of the emotions he was always trying to reign in. But as he closed the door behind her and leaned against it, she saw almost entirely the opposite.

  The room was filled with life. Sketches were strewn across a table by the window, a pile of books with colorful spines were on the bed stand. There were even watercolors on the walls, signed by the man, himself.

  She turned to look at Gabriel and found his mouth was tight. “You are so very unexpected, my lord.”

  He shrugged but said nothing more. She edged closer, examining his expression.

  “You don’t like to share this chamber,” she said softly.

  “It feels very revealing,” he admitted. “These are my things, private things. I meet with my valet in the adjoining dressing room. No one comes in here, not even the maids.”