Page 305 of Taken Away

But Mabel had not taken Aubrey.

Anne had kept her away.

Mabel had not stolen Harold.

Harold had chosen.

And Mabel had not destroyed their family.

Anne had done that all by herself.

A sound broke from her throat.

She turned toward the wall and pulled the thin blanket over her shoulder.

She had gone back to Blackwood believing there was still something left to win.

Instead, she had taken the last thing she had ever truly wanted back.

Her sister.

And now Mabel Blackwood would be with her for the rest of her life.

Not as the woman Anne blamed.

Not as Harold's wife.

Not as the owner of Blackwood.

As the girl who had once reached for her in the dark and whispered⁠—

Annie.

Aubrey

The Victorian mansion held a different kind of silence now—the soft hush of a house being lived in again.

Aubrey knelt on the rug, a stack of sweaters in her lap. She folded them slowly, her movements deliberate—a woman finally deciding which pieces of her past were worth keeping.

A familiar shadow fell across the hardwood.

Aubrey looked up.

Bennett leaned against the doorframe, sleeves rolled to his elbows, watching her. The guardedness was gone. Just the steady presence of a man who knew exactly where he belonged.

“You’re still at it,” he said.

Aubrey smiled, lifting one sweater. “I told you I was an over-packer.”

“I remember.”

He crouched in front of her, gently taking the sweater from her hands and setting it aside.

“You know,” he said, his gaze dropping to her mouth, “there’s a perfectly good bed at my place. And plenty of room for all thirty-two of these if you wanted to leave them here for the weekend.”

“Oh, I would love that,” she said.

She caught his belt loops, tugging him closer.