“What’s wrong, Clare?”
“What did you call me?” She glanced up startled.
“Clare. Clarissa seems like a mouthful and much too old for you.” He let a small, dramatic shiver punctuate his thoughts.
“Oh,” she said uncertain what to think about this. She liked the sound of the shortened version of her name and how it rolled off Justin’s tongue. His Scottish brogue made her name sound like a caress, regardless of which version he used.
“Go back to sleep.” He crossed his arms over his massive chest and closed his eyes once more. She laid the now empty food tray on the floor by the bed and closed her eyes. Clarissa tried to ignore his shifting form that caused the chair to creak. She really did feel sorry for him. The question remained as to how sorry?
“Justin,” she called softly.
“Hmmm?”
“There’s enough room in this bed for the both of us.”
One of his eyes opened a mere slit. Open enough for him to see if she were serious. “Clare, I don’t know if this is really all that good of an idea.”
“Listen, you didn’t have to accompany me on this search. You could have simply walked away. We are both tired and need to rest. You can sleep on top of the blankets.”
Reluctantly he stood, his body crying out for the comfort of the bed. His back and neck were stiff and his knees popped with every step. When had he become old? His grandfather would say he wasn’t old, but soft. He could almost hear the old man say, “Too much of the Sassenach rubbin’ off on ye, grandson.” Perhaps, but right now he craved that bed more than anything, well, almost more than any thing.
He watched as the beautiful blonde creature made room for him. His make-believe wife. For a moment he almost wished it were real. His body very much wished it were so. He crawled onto the bed and stretched out, relaxing himself muscle by muscle. Then he felt her soft hand on his arm, and he felt the blood immediately flow to his manhood.
“Is this better?”
“No,” he grunted, pushing himself off the bed. He took a pillow and the very top blanket with him. He walked to the hearth and lay down in front of the glowing embers.
“You would rather lie on the floor than in a bed?” she questioned. He could hear confusion lace her voice.
“Right now, yes.”
“Fine, I hope you spend the night in agony,” she huffed and flipped over, her back to him.
“Not as much as if I had stayed in that bed,” he said softly, not knowing that she heard his every word. A deep blush covered her body, but excitement raced through her. As she fell asleep, for the first time in over a fortnight, her thoughts were not about the safety nor whereabouts of her father.
***
Stiffness greeted every bone and joint in Justin’s body the next morning. Slowly he stood up and stretched his aching muscles. When he turned to the bed, his heart skipped a beat. Where had she gone? He walked over to the mattress and noticed it was cool to the touch.
“Damn. Why can’t she just stay put?” he questioned the empty room. He moved quickly, throwing on clothes and pulling on boots. As soon as he finished dressing, he flew down the stairs. At the bottom, Justin came to an abrupt halt when he saw Clarissa sipping from a sturdy mug and staring out the window. His breath whooshed out of him in relief at just the sight of her. He rolled his neck to relieve the pent up tension. Feeling himself slowly relax, he walked across the room.
“Please tell me that is not ale you are drinking with your scone and clotted cream. I don’t want to have to hold your hair back half way down the road.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s tea, but this is the only glass Mr. West could find. His wife isn’t feeling well this morning, and he’s done a fine job seeing to my breakfast.”
“At least it is a decent combination.” He pulled a chair out and sat down, devouring three scones within ten minutes.
“Hungry?” Clarissa asked, cocking a brow mockingly.
“Starving.”
“Tea?” He motioned for her to fill a mug for him as well. “Anything else, your majesty? I am but a humble servant.” She bowed her head demurely, her tone mocking.
“As a matter of fact. The next time you decide to take your breakfast, let me know where you are. Some of these places have unsavory characters.”
“I left you a note. Did you not find it?”
“No.”
“Well, perhaps next time you should look more carefully before you accuse others of crimes they have yet to commit.”
“Are you ready to continue?”
“The horses should be saddled and ready. I brought my bag down with me.”
“I need to run up and get mine. I will be back momentarily.”
She nodded her agreement and sat back in the chair.
Justin charged up the stairs and opened the door to their room. His shirt that she had slept in last night still lay strewn across the bed. He picked it up and smelled deeply. Faintly he could pick up her scent on the shirt that reminded him of walking among roses. He noticed a piece of paper flutter to the cover of the bed. Downstairs, Clari Clare. He could barely read the hastily scrawled words, but the fact remained, she had left a note. She had even used his shortened version of her name. He stuffed it into the bag as well. He left the room and joined her once more.
“You know, Clare, you really need to work on your handwriting.”
“I know,” she replied flippantly. “I have always had the most atrocious handwriting. Papa tried everything to get me to write better. I don’t know how many tutors I went through when the governess failed to correct me. Being neat takes too much time and effort that I could be spending on other things. Your shortened version of my name makes it even quicker. I find I like it,” she explained as they shrugged into their heavy coats.
They had mounted their horses and left the inn yard. Once more on the road leading away from London, Justin queried, “Such as?”
“Such as what?”
“What better things do you have to do with your time than write?”
“Oh. Well, I would love to travel. That is what I was trying to talk Papa into doing with me when he married Lorraine.”
“Isn’t it a little dangerous to travel just now?”
“He said that as well, and I suppose he does have a valid point. But I’ve never even seen all of our country. I want to see the wild Highlands of Scotland, the quaint villages of Ireland, and the moors of England. There is so much out there, and we are just a small part of it. Even today there are new lands being discovered.”
He watched her face light in awe. She truly found amazement at the world around her.
“You know, my family is from the Highlands, and are not considered all that wild.”
“I’m sure there are. Just as I’m sure there are parts of England that are truly wild as well. But none of that matters right now, does it? I have to find Papa. That is all that I care about.” She squared her shoulders and gave her horse a kick to speed it up. Justin adjusted his horse’s gait to match hers. He took a deep breath, not sure that he really wanted to broach this subject here and now. “What is it?” She turned and looked at him.
“Clare, you know there is a very strong chance we will not find your father.” He watched as she became even straighter in the saddle, if that were possible. They rode for several miles before she spoke.
“Believe it or not, I have actually come to that conclusion as well. More than a fortnight has passed since I have last seen or heard from him and I know that does not bode well. However, I have to have closure one way or another. He will either be alive when we find him, or he will not. I will not lie and tell you that I never think about him not being alive, but I prefer not to dwell on it, and instead hope for a miracle. Miracles are infinitely nicer than the truth on most occasions.” Never once did her voice break during her speech. Justin studied her quietly. They spoke little the rest of the day.
***
Two days later, heralded by a flash of lighten
ing and a loud thunderclap, the sky let loose its fury on their heads. It had looked overcast all day, but when the wind picked up, and the temperature began to drop, they had nowhere to go for cover. Out in the open they coerced their horses to make time as quickly as possible. Soon the road bogged down in mire so thick and sticky, the horses were having trouble remaining surefooted.
They traveled, heads down to avoid the whipping wind, for what seemed forever to Clarissa. Justin had just suggested they take cover beneath a large oak when a lightening bolt hit one of the old tree’s branches. Clarissa’s horse took offense to nature showing itself so close to her and reared. She barely kept her seat before the horse bolted across the countryside.
It seemed with every clap of thunder, the horse picked up speed. She had a tenuous hold on the reins and knew she had to do something, or the poor animal would die from sheer exhaustion. Clarissa began to gently pull back on the reins, but that did not seem to phase the horse either. Instead, it began bucking to dislodge the rider, and run away from the cacophony and bolt of light.
Quickly deciding it would be better if the horse tired itself out sans rider, Clarissa executed a very ill-performed dismount. She landed in a mud hole that some wild animals had claimed it as a temporary home. She landed on her bottom and then the rest of her body flopped out in the grassless area, letting the mud cover her clothes, and the rain pour over her. She heard the galloping of hooves, both leaving and approaching. Unable to hold herself together anymore, she erupted into gales of laughter.
“Clare,” Justin’s voice carried on the wind towards her. She let the laughter and rain dampen her anger at herself, her horse, nature, and the entire situation she found herself in. Justin’s horse came to an abrupt stop, spraying her with more mud.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered under her breath, between fits of dying giggles.
“Clare,” Justin ran to her, sliding to a stop. He bent over her, blocking the rain from falling in her eyes.
“I heard you the first time,” she answered between giggles.
“Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I’m sorry,” she held up her hands to block her face from the rain. “That should have been the first thing I should have done. I should have settled your rattled nerves. Whatever was I thinking?”
“Are you all right? Are you laughing?” he growled the two questions, straightening and looking down at her from his towering height.
“I was thrown from my horse in a hole of mud and who knows what else? I’m just dandy. And until you came up being Lord High and Mighty, I found the situation to be quite hilarious.”
“Are you physically hurt?”
“No,” she muttered pushing herself up to a sitting position to avoid his out-stretched hand.
“Fine. You don’t need my help? Great! I’ll just go back to London and my townhouse. You can finish looking for your father on your own. I’m finished with you and this entire situation!” he yelled to be heard over the pouring rain. Tired of her silent treatment over the last few days, he had finally reached his limit.
He turned around and walked towards his horse. The rain eased, turning into a fine English drizzle. Justin was cold, wet, and tired. He had helped all he would. Miss Independent could bloody damn well find her father on her own. Justin had almost reached his horse when he felt a plop of something on the back of his head. It began sliding downward towards the collar of his shirt. Reaching behind him, he raked his fingers through the back of his hair. They were covered in muck and mud. He began turning around when another clump waylaid him on the upper arm.
“What in bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he bellowed.
“Do you think this is all about me? Do you think I’m doing this for my health? I’m trying to find my father, damn you!” She accentuated these statements with an even larger mud ball, this time landing squarely on his chest. “Do you think a moment goes by that I don’t think he could already be dead? But I keep pushing myself, trying to stay positive, hoping for the best.” Another mud ball. “Well, Lord Southerby, you just go back to London and whatever harlot awaits you. I’m sure I can manage just fine without you.”
She turned to track down her horse and felt a hard arm wrap around her waist and pull her backwards. Once more she flew through the air and again landed in the muck. “What, in the name of Hades, was that for?” she shrieked.
“Are you through ranting and raving?”
“I don’t know,” she looked at him mutinously.
“I’m going to go find your horse. Apparently, we both need to calm down.”
“You think putting me back in a mud hole is going to calm me down?” she raged at him.
“Apparently, not,” he said and turned to mount his horse feeling one last mud ball hit him squarely between the shoulders and the words “obstinate ass” filter to his ears.
Almost an hour later, Justin returned with the horses to find Clarissa gone. “I am going to throttle her,” he growled. Justin turned the horses towards the road and traveled along the grassy edge as much as possible. Almost half an hour passed before he saw Clarissa stumbling in front of him. She must have heard the horse whinny because she spun around and then her shoulders drooped when she saw Justin.
“I thought I told you to wait,” he growled as he dismounted and slung the reins of both horses over a low-lying branch.
“Hmm,” Clarissa put a finger to her lower lip as if deep in thought. “No, Lord Southerby, I don’t believe that word ever entered our conversation.”
“That’s it. I’ve had it,” he trudged through the mud and grabbed Clarissa’s wrist. He looked around and hauled her towards a stump of a tree. He propped one foot on it, and swung her around until she lay on her stomach over his thigh.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded before feeling the sting of leather across her sodden, cloth-covered rump. “Hey!” Clarissa yelled. She felt two more stinging blows before he let her slide from his leg to the ground.
“When I say stay put, you stay put. Do you understand?”
Clarissa bit her lower lip and nodded, tears smarting her eyes.
“There’s a farm not too far from here. The owner is going to let us stay in the barn. There’s a brook behind the house where we can clean up.”
“A brook? In this weather? We’ll freeze to death,” she indicated the snowflakes that had begun to fall while he was gone.
“The owner said we can build a fire and heat the water, but you can do whatever you damn well please,” he turned and untied his horse’s reins before mounting. “I’m sure you will anyway,” he muttered before turning his horse back the way they had come.
“Fine,” she said, jerking her horse’s reins free before mounting. Her stinging rump caused her some discomfort in the saddle. Clarissa would never admit it to him, but she had truly worried that he had left her. Her sore backside and the tense silence between them made the travel to the barn unbearable. They arrived at the farmstead just as the snowflakes turned fat and lazy, filtering down on them from above. They took care of their horses.
The farmer and his wife gave them a hot meal and several blankets to bed down on in the barn. When the farmer’s wife saw the condition of their appearance, she insisted they take a bath in the house, which ended up being difficult with the number of children the couple had. Clarissa was not used to so many people in such a small area, but was not about to complain. The couple also let Clarissa and Justin borrow some clean clothes while theirs were drying by the fire inside the barn. Justin walked into the barn after having dumped the bath water and helped the farmer take care of his livestock.
“Look, I said some pretty horrid things to you that I probably shouldn’t have. I’m sorry we have not found your father yet. I know we are on the right track, we are just so far behind him.”
“I shouldn’t have hit you with the mud balls or called you an ‘obstinate ass,’ though you can be sometimes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Aren’t you sorry for not staying put?”
“No. I didn’t think you were going to return. Are you sorry for spanking me?”
“No. You should have stayed put.”
“We have to stop this. I am trying to remain strong and positive, yet my stomach is constantly upset. I know the weather is an irritant neither of us can control, but imagine how I feel on top of the physical discomfort. He’s my father. How would you feel if your father came up missing, and you were unable to find him?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured thinking back to when he had found out about his older brother’s death. It had been a dark time for his family, him especially. No one would have known it by the way he had acted though, turning to women, drinking, and gambling. Only those close to him had seen the excessiveness and how it was destroying him. Then there had been the lies Liam had told him about Jonathan. Lies that even now had his blood boiling and made him want to take out his anger on his ex-best friend.
“Exactly. I didn’t know either until I had to live it,” Clarissa said, bringing Justin back to the present. “I’m doing the best I can. Do you understand?”
“From now on, it goes without saying. You stay put, unless I tell you otherwise.”
“Fine.”
They lay side by side that night, seeking warmth from each other, having come to an unspoken truce.
Chapter 5
They ended up spending an unexpected three days with the farmer and his wife. The snow had not stopped for hours, and they waited until they could travel with some confidence. They avoided each other as much as possible while there. She would help the wife with chores, cooking, and the children. Justin would help the farmer outside the house. Each night they fell asleep, lying stiffly next to each other.
Into their second week of searching, they stopped by a brook to cool off. After the snow, the temperatures had turned unseasonably warm. The water felt cool and soothing to Clarissa. She lay stretched out on the bank, her eyes closed to the world around her. They had come across some leads in regards to her father. The stress depleted her energy, and she fought against a headache that threatened to bloom into a debilitating one. She and Justin had not sparred lately, but the tension between them did not help her any.
To Love and Protect Page 6