Despite Jasper’s efforts to appear calm and genial, he looked worn and thin. A light spattering of gray had appeared in his dark hair, just at his temples, and there were fine lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there before either. He looked as if he’d spent every moment of the last four months on the road.
No one had told her flat out where he’d been, but Callie suddenly knew that what she’d suspected was true. He had hunted down those men. He’d killed them for what they’d done to her. The realization should have shocked her, sickened her.
It didn’t.
Did such indifference for the sanctity of human life make her well suited to her new profession, she wondered? She hadn’t told Jasper yet, but he would learn sooner or later that her new limbs and superior strength were to be put to work for the War Office, for General Black himself.
Chapter Six
Callie was the first to look away. She abruptly pulled her hand from his and took a step back, but hope lifted Jasper’s heart at the confusion he saw in her face, believing it meant she was finally softening toward him.
He turned and indicated that she should precede him, gently placing his hand at her back. Mrs. Campbell’s footman was waiting for them and Jasper frowned. He’d forgotten all about the man’s presence at the front door.
“The carriage has been readied, Lord and Lady Carlisle. Samuel will be your driver. You have only to tell him where you’d like to go.”
He bowed and opened the door just as Mrs. Campbell herself exited the drawing room to greet them. “Lady Carlisle,” she said in a bright voice. “How lovely it is to see you getting out for some fresh air. It seems as if the colonel’s presence is having a much better effect on you this time than the last—” She broke off suddenly, as if realizing what she’d said.
Callie’s back went ramrod straight against his palm, but no one else would have noticed. Jasper noticed, but he wondered if her reaction was more a result of the open door. She was fixed on it as if a torture chamber lay beyond it.
He grabbed hold of her hand again and squeezed. “Good morning, Mrs. Campbell. I think we’ll take a short ride through the park. Thank you for allowing us to make use of your fantastic ski carriage once again.” He was trying to give Callie a chance to muster her nerves.
Mrs. Campbell smiled. “Not at all, Colonel. I’m only glad the storm has passed and the sun finally decided to make an appearance so that you and Lady Carlisle can enjoy it.”
“We will. Thank you again.” He turned back to Callie, whose jaw was clenched tight.
The footman suddenly stepped away from the door and left the room without a word. Mrs. Campbell nodded with understanding before she also returned to the drawing room so that they could be alone.
Grateful for the grande dame’s insight, Jasper let go of Callie’s hand and stepped between her and the open door. “Are you ready?” he asked.
She blinked as if his movement had broken her trance. “Ready?”
He waited patiently.
Finally, she lifted her chin and came forward. There was no more hesitation until she stopped at his side and looked past him to the frost-covered morning. “Callie?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
Callie understood that her fear was unreasonable. But what if she slipped on the ice and fell? Going out in public meant someone was sure to notice her eye, or her legs. She didn’t want to see disgust or pity in the faces of strangers.
Worse, what if she was recognized? They would say how awful it was that someone who had once been so graceful and had danced so beautifully was now little more than a mechanical marionette, her every step gauche and bumbling.
And just because she’d been dragged from her home into the outdoors, and carried through the woods to a hunting cabin by strangers who had brutalized her until she’d begged them to kill her… That wasn’t where these irrational feelings came from.
It wasn’t.
“You know those men will never be able to hurt you—or anyone—ever again,” Jasper whispered in her ear. He so easily saw right through her. “I made sure of it, Callie.”
She nodded and stepped through the door. When he moved to assist her she shrugged him off, making her way down the flagstone steps to the carriage on her own.
Before she knew it, she was sitting inside the box with a warm wool blanket tucked to her waist. The carriage swayed on its frame as Jasper climbed in and nestled beside her. He leaned forward to rap on the closed panel separating them from the driver, and after a brief moment, they started moving.
Callie refused to look out the window, instead focusing on the seamless slide of the carriage’s smooth blades in the fairly deep snow. She found it hard to believe that the contraption was powered by nothing more than hot steam. In fact, the small stove which converted the odd shovelful of coal to usable energy kept the entire carriage warm as well.
Then again, she only had to look down at herself to know that whether she wanted to believe it or not… “The world rushes headlong into the future,” she murmured. “Heedless of whether we wish it to or not.”
He glanced aside at her in surprise. “I believe I said something similar to Mrs. Campbell and she chastised me for it,” he said. “She was right to do so. Whether we are prepared or not, the future must come. We can decry the advancements it will bring and shut ourselves away from it out of fear…or we can accept them and make them work to our benefit.”
He made it sound so simple, and maybe it was. Maybe he was right to say she should rejoice in the fact that she’d been given a second chance at life, even if it wasn’t the life she’d planned for herself.
Callie tried to relax. At least within the confines of the cozy carriage, nobody was able to see her. After a few minutes she chanced a peek out at the bustling city. The heavy snowfall hadn’t seemed to slow anyone down. Horse-drawn rigs as well as quite a few ski carriages like the one they rode in claimed the streets, while people went in and out of shops and called holiday greetings to one another.
As she watched, they passed an old man sitting on the ground at the mouth of a dark alley. He wore a grimy uniform jacket, torn at the shoulder, and held out his misshapen hat to passersby and begged for spare change, but he was mostly ignored by the busy pedestrians. She gasped as she realized he only had one leg, and quickly dropped her gaze back into her lap. Guilt over her shameful reaction made her look up again, but the carriage had already moved on and she couldn’t see the man anymore.
Caught up in morose thoughts, she was startled when the door swung open and the driver stepped aside to let them out. She hadn’t even felt the carriage stop.
She carefully stepped down. Jasper followed. “Shall we walk?” he asked.
Did she dare?
She’d reached up to clasp the turn of his elbow before she even thought about it, but before she could pull away, he’d already clamped his hand over hers and started forward so that she had no choice but to walk with him.
The public park was fairly busy, considering it was still early for the fashionable set to be out and cold for almost everyone else, despite the sunshine. Jasper led them along a path veering away from the crowd and they were soon almost alone.
Callie realized she hadn’t stumbled once. The control that had slowly come more and more under her command was now almost instinctive. She didn’t have to think about every step. Although she still watched where she placed her feet, she felt sturdy, balanced and strong.
“I should walk by myself.”
“Why? We would have walked together just like this back at home. If I take your hand, or put my palm to your back, it has nothing to do with whether or not you can walk alone. I know you can. But I don’t want you to walk alone, and I don’t want to walk alone either. I want to walk with my wife. I want to hold her close to me.” To reinforce his words, he stopped and faced her. They stood next to a trio of large spruce trees with long sweeping limbs that hung low, heavy with snow. His arms wrapped around her waist and she found herse
lf pulled flush against him.
She remembered the watch resting in her pocket. Jasper loved that timepiece. Callie understood what he’d meant by the gesture of returning it and a soft spark fluttered in her belly as she looked up at him. Yes, she was softening, and part of her was afraid of what the emotions could do to her. It had taken so little for Jasper to burrow back into her life, under her skin. To force himself into her heart again and prove that she couldn’t lock him out completely, no matter how desperate she’d been to do it. She was vulnerable to him when she couldn’t afford to be vulnerable ever again.
Even as she thought it, another part of her bloomed with hope like a daffodil coming to life after a long, cold winter. “Jasper.”
“I’m going to kiss you now. Don’t hit me, all right?”
She frowned. “Why would you—?”
“—want to kiss my own wife?” He smiled. At first she thought he was being cruel, but she couldn’t possibly misunderstand for long. It was in the set of his jaw, the arms holding her tight and the solid body pressing against her through the layers of clothing between them. “God, Callie. I’ve wanted nothing else than to have you in my arms once again, whole and safe.”
She didn’t argue his idea of “whole.” Not now when his words and voice made her want to lean into him and the fingers of her good hand curled into the fabric covering his arm. In all the time she’d been consumed by pain and horror—not to mention anger—she’d never once thought there would ever be anything for her beyond that. She hadn’t thought about laughing again. Or kissing. Or sex. She hadn’t thought there might still be a life for her to lead. Not until this moment when that life suddenly seemed possible again, real again.
Now she couldn’t take her gaze from his mouth, couldn’t stop thinking about Jasper’s kiss. She sucked the corner of her upper lip and worried it between her teeth.
He groaned. “I love when you do that.”
That surprised her. It was something she did involuntarily and hadn’t really noticed before. Jasper had certainly never brought it up in the past, at least not that she could remember. “Why?”
“Because it always means you’re thinking about me,” he said with the ghost of a grin that raised memories of playful afternoons in bed. “About kissing me, and how it will make you feel.”
“During the harsh light of day, right here in public where anybody could be watching?”
A crisp breeze had picked up, slapping the hem of her coat against her legs, which she couldn’t feel. She could, however, feel the chill teasing the back of her neck where her short hair failed to protect exposed skin. And she could see the pink settling into Jasper’s cheeks, beneath the stubble coating his face because he still hadn’t shaved. She could feel the quickening of her blood as she looked at his mouth, the moisture on her lips as she pressed them together in anticipation.
“What better time than the bright light of day when I can watch the way you blossom under my touch?” he answered. “What better place than here, so everyone else who sees will know you’re mine?”
He lowered his face to the curve of her neck. The prickly hair on his chin scraped gently, making her shiver, but not so much as his hot breath, or his lips as he parted them over her skin and his tongue tasted her.
His kisses moved to the underside of her jaw. His hands slipped up the middle of her back until he cupped her face and looked right into her eyes. One green, and the other a gunmetal gray.
It was the first time that Callie’s instinct wasn’t to retreat and hide herself away when someone looked at her. She might not be beautiful anymore. She might never dance again. But just maybe she was strong enough that it didn’t matter…and her life could have purpose. Her life could have meaning.
He lowered his head again and his mouth covered hers. Tentative at first, as if expecting her to bolt, but then more firmly when she didn’t. Callie didn’t want to run, but couldn’t remain still. Her eyes fluttered closed. Her heart was thumping, which energized her. She could almost feel the tiny organisms that kept her limbs working rushing through her blood faster and faster.
Electricity shot through her. Jasper caught her moan and gave it back to her with the slide of his tongue into her mouth. Wet and deep. The pleasure was a hot wind that swept her up.
He made a sound low in his throat and pulled back, but quickly bent again and dropped another kiss on her lips. And another. Short, hard ones as if he hated the moment to end as much as she did.
She braced her open palm against his chest and blinked, taking deep breaths. A flickering movement caught her eye and she glanced over Jasper’s shoulder. She couldn’t see anything and thought maybe it had just been her imagination, until a reflection of the sunlight bounced off metal.
An earsplitting crack burst into the late-morning air just as Callie threw herself at Jasper and tumbled them both to the ground. He let out a muffled grunt as she landed on top of him.
Something smacked into the juniper beside them and sharp wood fragments flew over their heads in every direction. Jasper quickly twisted in a smooth move that reversed their positions so she was beneath him, completely covered by him. Cold snow immediately found its way beneath the collar of her coat and trickled down her neck, but she paid it no heed. Her heart was pounding so hard she swore she could hear it in the short moments before screams rang out around them as other patrons of the park scrambled to find shelter.
“That was a damned shot.” He swore and looked up, first at the tree the bullet had crashed into, and then scanning the park. His mouth compressed into a hard slash. He gazed back down at her. “How did you know? What did you see?”
“I saw movement. Something. I…I just…reacted. I don’t know.” She shook her head, not even sure what she’d seen or why she’d reacted the way she had. She didn’t like the fact that they remained unprotected, and tried to push him off her. “Jasper, we have to get out of—”
He must have seen something, because his gaze narrowed and he got to his feet and pulled her up with him. From inside his coat, he pulled out a weapon of his own. Small and compact, but it had a wide round barrel and she imagined the bullets that came from it would do as much damage as any other.
He shoved her backward a few more steps into the shade of the trees. “Here. Stay out of the open until I come back for you.”
Jasper wasn’t actually going to leave her here and try to catch the shooter?
Oh, bloody hell, he was.
He took off at a run toward the same small copse of evergreens where she had seen the flash of a reflection, taking care to remain covered in a line of tall cedars along the way. Callie looked ahead of him, searching the area, aware that her mechanical eye was taking in more detail than she would have been able to see without it. Whoever had been standing behind those bushes was already gone.
She chased after Jasper, feeling surprisingly calm considering there was no doubt in her mind that whoever had taken that shot had meant the bullet for either one, or both, of them.
“Bloody hell, Callie. I told you to stay put.”
Stopping just behind him, she said, “And you thought I would listen to you because…?”
His angry breaths puffed into the air and he glared at her, but held his tongue. Instead, he replaced the pistol in the holster at his back and pulled her into his side before crouching low to the ground. He dragged his finger through a patch of snow that had been speckled with black dust.
“What is that?” she asked.
“The faint smell of cigar smoke still lingers in the air. The shooter must have been smoking while he waited here to take his shot, but he was smart enough to remove the evidence with him, except for this bit of ash.”
“But why would he bother to take a spent cigar butt with him?”
“Because it’s evidence. Something that might be used to identify him.” He paused before straightening as if the evidence of cigar ash meant something else to him. His gaze followed the footprints that disappeared a few feet a
way where another set of prints—hoof prints—started and blended in with all the rest along the narrow path. “Which means we are probably dealing with someone—”
“Someone we know,” she finished. The implications of that revelation hit her, and her stomach turned. “But who? And why?”
He frowned. “Come. We had better get back.”
“Jasper, tell me what is going on. Why are we being shot at?” Callie grasped his arm with her gloved hand when he would have turned from her.
She had never been the type to shrink from confrontation and wasn’t impressed with his silence. A woman of modest family didn’t become a world-renowned ballerina by hiding away in the shadows and letting men take care of her, nor did she learn to walk on mechanical legs if she was afraid of falling.
You are afraid of falling.
She silenced the inner voice, but had to acknowledge the truth. Yes, she was afraid. It was a constant in her life now. Fear of falling. Of what she’d become. Fear of what the future would hold now that everything she’d worked for was gone. She’d even been afraid of Jasper—of how he would look at her, and what he would make her feel when she finally saw him again.
But fear was useless and she refused to be brought low by it. Anger was better. Anger and emotional distance—which would have been easier if the walls she’d put up to protect herself hadn’t already started crumbling.
She looked up and saw their burly driver rushing toward them. He carried a short-barreled Tesla pistol that would have been confiscated as illegal if the constabulary had caught him with it, but even though word of gun shots in the park had already spread like wild fire if the screaming was anything to go by, the Manchester police were nowhere to be seen.
“Tell me what this is all about,” she repeated.
“Not now.” His jaw clenched and he took her hand to pull her back to the carriage.
A Clockwork Christmas Page 34