by Amy Richie
“Who was that? Why is he chasing me?”
“His name is Ryan.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Absolutely not.”
My eyes pricked with unshed tears. “Why is he chasing me?” I asked again. “What does he want?”
I heard his deep sigh. “Ryan has been following me for a while now.”
“You mean tonight?”
“No. He seems to show up where ever I am.”
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head back and forth quickly.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” He took a hold of my elbow and pulled me back out into the open.
“What if he comes back?” I squealed.
“He’s far from here by now.” He looked in the direction the rider had disappeared. “Does he really think I would make the same mistake twice?” He murmured as if to himself.
I ran my hands briskly along my arms. “So what do we do now?” My voice shook.
Marcus looked down at me in surprise. Could he have really forgotten that I was standing there? “We’ll…uhh…we can make a fire.”
“A fire?” My mouth fell open.
“You’re cold.”
“Shouldn’t I get back to my bed?” I raised both eyebrows. It seemed obvious enough to me.
“When he doesn’t find us up there,” he pointed towards the long-gone Ryan, “he’ll go back to your house.”
“Well…” I didn’t know what to say to that. We couldn’t just spend the night together in the woods. Is that what he was suggesting?
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” He started walking further away from home.
“Marcus! We can’t just…I mean, you have to take me home.”
“Don’t worry Claudia, I promise I’ll get you home before first light. No one will ever know you were missing.”
Chapter Six
We stopped at a small clearing not far from where we had hid. A large tree was lying on the ground, rotting. “You stay here,” he ordered with a wag of his finger.
“Where are you going?” I inched closer to him, unwilling to be alone yet.
“I’m just going to get some wood to make a fire.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You stay here,” he repeated.
“Why?”
“I want to know where you are at all times.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better if I stayed with you?”
“Just stay here, Claudia. I’ll be right back.”
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth.
He was gone before I could call him back. I had never felt more vulnerable in all my life as I did while I stood there waiting for Marcus to come back. The darkness seemed to take on a life of its own, and it was trying to smother me.
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, shivering from both fear and cold. I couldn’t hear anything except the wind rustling the leaves. I couldn’t even hear Marcus. How far had he gone to gather firewood?
I took a step forward, preparing myself to go after him when I felt someone touch my shoulder. I whirled around, panic closing the scream inside my throat. “Marcus,” I gasped when I recognized his brown curls. “You scared me.”
“Where were you going?”
“To…to help you.”
“I told you to stay put.” He lightly pressed his finger against my nose.
“I was just worried,” I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.
“No need to worry, Claudia. May I call you Claudia?”
I groaned and covered my face with my hands. “I guess it hardly matters now.”
“Excellent!” He clapped his hands together excitedly.
I almost smiled. “Should we get the fire going?”
“We should.” He smiled again, which I couldn’t help but return.
He piled twigs and brush expertly and somehow had a small flame blazing before much time had passed. He added a large log and then settled himself on the ground.
“This is definitely bad,” I breathed. “We should go.”
“We’re fine here.” Marcus leaned back against the large fallen tree. The fire blazed bright against the dark sky.
“If anyone knew we were out here alone…” I let my doomsday prediction trail off.
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
“No,” I gasped. “But what if Ryan tells someone?”
“He won’t.” He lazily brought one hand to rest behind his head and stretched his legs out in front of him.
“Aren’t you worried at all?”
“Nope.”
I ground the back of my teeth together in irritation. Of course he wasn’t worried; he wasn’t the one getting married in three–now two–days. I couldn’t just sit out here all alone with a man I hardly knew. I crossed my arms tightly across my chest to keep the cold away. “We need to go,” I repeated.
In a flash, he was up on his feet and standing right in front of me. “Here,” he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“I cannot.” Even as I protested, I pushed my arms into the too big sleeves. The warmth inside was too hard to resist and I found myself pulling the jacket closed tighter.
“Now,” he fidgeted a little too long with the collar before going back to his makeshift seat on the ground, “we can’t go back to your house. If you would like, we can go to mine, but,” he wrinkled his mouth into a half frown, “that might be more difficult to explain.”
“We…cannot possibly,” I sputtered.
“Well, then,” he wriggled his eyebrows and patted the ground next to him.
My mouth fell open. “This is nothing to joke about,” I hissed. I stood stubbornly on the opposite side of the fire as him.
“I’m not joking, just trying to make you more comfortable.”
“I would be more comfortable in my bed.”
He pursed his lips and glanced around me into the dark trees. “We can go.”
“We can?”
“But I’ll have to stay with you–the entire night.” He grimaced.
“Oh,” I grumbled. “Fine, we’ll stay out here, but I need to be home by morning.”
“By first light,” he promised.
I brushed some leaves and sticks aside so I could sit on the ground close to the fire. After several attempts, I finally managed to get semi-comfortable.
“Well, this is…cozy.”
“It’s a shame we don’t have any tea.”
“Indeed.” My eyebrows shot up. Marcus’s stare from across the fire was intense; he didn’t even blink. I tried to look everywhere but at him.
“Do I make you uncomfortable, Miss Sinclair?”
“Actually, you do, Mr. Letrell.”
He chuckled lightly. “And why would that be?”
My eyes widened. “I wish you wouldn’t stare at me so severely.”
“I’m only watching to make sure you don’t disappear.”
“I’m not going to go anywhere,” I widened my eyes for emphasis.
“Not on purpose.”
I shivered when a cool wind blew at my back. I turned to peer over my shoulder to see if I could see anyone coming up to take me away into the darkness. I saw no one, but I heard a branch snap. “Is he out there watching us?” I whispered.
“Not right now,” he didn’t bother to whisper.
“Do you expect him back, then?” I glanced nervously at Marcus, then back over my shoulder.
He grinned and patted the place beside him again. This time I didn’t hesitate to sit beside him. I tried to keep a respectable distance between the two of us, but the cold coupled with my fear made me scoot closer to him.
“You should try to sleep,” he suggested.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Too much excitement? Or is it just being this close to me?”
I rolled my eyes. “It probably has more to do with the fact that we are being chased by a crazy man on a horse.”
I heard him chuckle lightl
y, but I didn’t dare look up at him; not when we were sitting this close to one another. “You don’t have to worry about him, not with me around.”
“Will David and Sylvia miss you?”
He scoffed at the idea. “They will never know I left. You should lie down,” he suggested.
“I’m fine.” I stretched my legs out in front of me after they started cramping from being pulled close to my chest for too long.
“You’re too stubborn.”
“Aunt Dora says the same thing,” I admitted. My thoughts flitted to my aunt. She would be so disappointed in me if she knew that I had stayed in the woods with Marcus.
“She’ll never even know you were gone,” he said as if he could hear what I had just been thinking.
“I know,” I looked down at my hands. “She’s been really good to me. They both have.”
“Since your parents died?”
I nodded my head. “They took me in and I didn’t even know who they were. Aunt Dora is my mother’s sister.”
“Why did your parents go to the States?”
“I only know what my Aunt Dora has told me.”
“Which is?”
“My father loved adventure and an old friend of his was going to the States to acquire some land,” I shrugged. “He couldn’t resist.”
The wind picked up suddenly, sending little orange sparks toward us. My nightgown was covered in dirt and ash. I tried in vain to wipe away the fresh ash.
Marcus smiled and shook his head. He scooted himself lower until he was lying on the ground. “Do you ever look at the stars, Claudia?”
At his words, I obediently glanced up at the night sky. “I haven’t for a long time.” I didn’t feel any guilt as I lay down beside him on the ground so I could see the stars better.
Chapter Seven
“The stars seem so much closer out here,” I murmured softly, “like I can reach out and touch them.”
“I doubt they are that close.” I smiled at Marcus’s response. “It just seems like it.”
“I know,” I chuckled. “When I was young,” I began without looking at him, “when my parents died and I had to come live with my aunt and uncle, I was so sad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I used to be, but now,” I smiled to myself, “now I’m starting to think maybe it was my destiny to be here.”
“Hmm,” he scoffed.
“You don’t believe in destiny.”
“We choose our own lives.”
He spoke in a low voice, more serious than I was used to hearing him.
“Anyways,” I rolled over on my side so I could see his face, “I used to lie in the grass and look up at all those stars and pretend that my parents were still alive.” His eyelids closed slightly. “Because the stars here looked exactly the same as they did at home.”
“Well, there would have been differences, but a child would not have noticed.”
I shook my head before rolling onto my back again. “You’re probably right,” I conceded. One thing I was learning about Marcus was that he knew a lot about things he had no business knowing.
“Do you still miss them?”
“I wish they were here, but really, I can’t remember them much anymore.”
“Ah, the gift of human memory.”
“Whatever that means; sometimes I don’t understand the things you say.”
“Believe me when I say that’s a good thing.”
“You think it’s a good thing that I can’t remember my parents?”
“I meant it’s a good thing you don’t understand me.” He let out a deep sigh. “And yes, I think it’s a good thing you can’t remember your parents.”
“That is…an awful thing to say.” I sat up so I could glare down at him. “Do you know how much it pains me to not be able to recall the sound of my mother’s voice?”
“I can only imagine that it pained you more when you could recall it. Your faded memories are your body’s way of numbing the pain of your loss.”
I opened my mouth to argue his faulty way of thinking, but then closed it again. In a strange way, he was right. “Have you experienced much loss in your life, Marcus?” I asked instead.
He hesitated before he spoke. “I suppose no more than the next person,” he said softly.
I fell silent, allowing the silence to envelope us. It was obviously something he didn’t want to talk about and I wasn’t going to pry. “Uncle Philip told me there are thousands of stars up there,” I said after a while.
“Thousands?”
“Can you imagine it? That’s so many.”
“It makes us seem so small in our own little worlds, doesn’t it?”
I crinkled my nose at his words. Marcus had a strange way of looking at things. I had never met anyone who said the things he said, who thought like him. It was disturbing. “It doesn’t make me feel small. Why should it?”
“Because it’s so big.” He spread his arms wide to indicate the night sky with all its tiny pricks of white light.
“Huh,” I breathed. “I had never thought to let it make me feel small by comparison.”
I felt him shake with silent laughter. “I don’t suppose you would.”
“We’re all so important in our own little worlds to the people that love us…and that we love in return.”
“Agreed,” was his response.
“I bet you’re important to a lot of people,” I fished.
“I’m not so sure about that anymore.” He reached down to brush his hand lightly across my forehead. “Not as sure as you are.”
“Me?” My nose crinkled.
“Yes, you.” I heard the brush crackling when he moved to get more comfortable. “Miss Claudia Sinclair, who is about to be married in just two more days.”
“I…doubt that he loves me.”
“Hmm,” I heard him grunt slightly at my words. “And do you love him?”
What could I say to such a question? Why would he even ask such a thing? Were we so far from society that all the rules were thrown out?
“Of course I don’t love him; I hardly know him.” I bit my bottom lip nervously and refused to look at him.
“Why are you marrying him if you don’t love him?” His voice wasn’t accusing; just a soft-spoken question; one I had been asking myself a lot these past few days.
“It’s…hard to explain.”
“We probably have a little while.” He settled himself further onto the ground until he was lying completely down with his head propped up on a small log.
I felt a small twinge of guilt for taking his jacket, but I pulled it closer to my body. I couldn’t give it back now and sit with him in only my nightclothes. I situated myself better against the fallen tree.
“He’s very wealthy,” I finally said.
“You’re marrying him for money?”
I was instantly defensive of his disdain. “It wouldn’t be the first time a situation such as this has arisen,” I fired at him hotly, “There is nothing wrong with a marriage that improves one’s station in life.”
“You don’t seem the type to care about one’s station in life.”
“Of course I do. Everyone does.”
“I don’t think your aunt and uncle would mind if your husband of choice was a stable hand.” I was surprised at how accurately he guessed at their hearts when he only barely knew them. “So it must have been your choice.”
“It…” I angrily brushed my tears away.
He was instantly contrite. “There is nothing wrong with it, Claudia; it’s wrong of me to question you. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay,” I sniffed quietly. “It was difficult for Uncle Philip to deny him.” I surprised myself by speaking the truth. “Edmund came around asking for my hand and Uncle Philip is not as strong in character as Edmund.” I looked up to see Marcus watching me intently. Surely my life wasn’t so interesting to him. “Besides, I had no other suitors; it made sense to accept Mr.
Harris.”
“And he is wealthy.”
“We will be happy together,” I said sadly.
“Happiness in a marriage is a fool’s dream.”
“Are you saying I can never hope to be happy?”
“I’m not saying that at all; but if you want to be happy, then I suggest that you don’t concern yourself with your husband’s happiness.”
My eyebrows drew together in confusion. “That doesn’t seem like very good advice.”
He laughed easily. “I’m only saying this: be concerned with your own happiness only, Claudia.” His dark blue eyes bore into me, stripping away all my pretenses. My breath caught slightly. “If you like to ride horses, then have your husband build you a ridiculous stable with enough horses for each day of the week.”
“How do you know I like to ride?” I murmured.
He shrugged. “It was only a guess. You don’t live amongst society; what else is there to do?”
“Indeed.” I was still mesmerized by the intensity in his eyes.
“Just worry about your own happiness,” he continued, “I’m sure he’ll be doing the same.” I tore my eyes away from him to stare at my hands. “It’s human nature to be selfish.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is.”
“You don’t believe that you can care more for someone else’s happiness than your own?”
“No,” the single syllable was softly spoken, but sincere.
“My aunt and uncle are proof that you are wrong. They took me in when they didn’t have to.”
“I have never had experience with a child, but I suppose it must be different with them.”
“Even with each other though, they love each other very much.” I looked up to make eye contact briefly.
“Maybe,” he shrugged.
“And what will your wife be like?” I challenged.
“My wife?”
“Yes, the woman you will one day marry,” I smiled wide.
“I will never marry,” he appeared momentarily confused by the very idea of him getting married.
“I’m sure one day you will find some young woman worthy enough for you.”
“I can assure you that I will never marry.”
I let any further arguments die on my lips. He seemed very decided on the matter. “Why not?”
