Loving the Earl: A Loveswept Historical Romance (22 page)

Nathan glanced at her. Tension radiated off him. Even the snowflakes seemed to sense it for they skipped away.

A shout arose from the pub. Claire turned toward the sound to find people swarming out of the doors, shouting. Like a school of fish, they turned toward her and Nathan.

“Bloody hell.” Nathan shoved her back in the coach.

Claire landed on her hands and knees and scrambled onto the seat to peer out the window. The flickering flames of lighted torches bounced around the once deserted street, casting orange and yellow shadows over the buildings. A loud pop broke through the noise, causing the horses to whinny in terror. Blythe climbed onto the box and took the reins. The carriage jolted forward, racing down the street, tilting one way then the other.

A cry arose from the crowd. She heard more popping and suddenly realized what the
sound meant. The crowd was shooting at them! The blood drained from her head and she clutched the seat. What if they shot Nathan?

Oh, dear Lord. Never so terrified in her life, she prayed to God to keep Nathan safe.

He turned the carriage into the line of trees. She feared there wasn’t enough room to fit the wider conveyance but Nathan managed it. The coach bounced along nearly unseating her, but she held tight.

The moon shone through the skeletal branches of the leafless trees, as snow danced around the carriage. Claire lost sight of the crowd but didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief. Terror kept her in its relentless grip and she strained to hear anything that would tell her what was going on.

Eventually the horses slowed, their hoofbeats more like plodding. The poor beasts couldn’t keep up such a pace, especially in this cold and deep snow.

She ventured a look out the window but they were well and truly shrouded by the trees, for there was nothing behind them but the darker shadows of larger tree trunks and the mounds of snow glittering in the moonlight.

The carriage stopped with a shout from Nathan. Moments later he jumped down from the box and opened the door. His hair was disheveled and his cheeks and nose bright red from the cold, yet he was a sight to behold. Her relief was enormous and she had to stop herself from falling into his arms.

“They turned away.” He was winded, his great chest heaving with each breath.

“Wh—” She licked her dry lips. “What was that all about?”

“Peasant uprisings.”

Peasant uprisings. Of course. She’d heard of them but never encountered one before. Nor did she want to again.

“The horses—”

“They can’t go any farther. I need to let them go. Hopefully they’ll make their way back to town. The peasants won’t harm them. Good horseflesh is expensive and hard to come by.”

Claire looked about her but there was nothing to see other than endless trees, their limbs covered with snow and more snow falling on them.

He looked at her and even in the half darkness, with the light of the moon illuminating only part of his face, she glimpsed his concern.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“The driver was shot. He’s dead, Claire.”

She made a sound and covered her mouth with her hand.

“I need to bury him. Will you be all right?”

She removed her hand and straightened her spine. “Of course I will. What do you need me to do?”

“Gather as many branches as you can. The ground is too frozen to dig a hole. We’ll need to bury him under branches.”

She nodded, sick to her stomach at what they had to do. The poor man. She shook the thought away and turned to her duty, determined to be an asset rather than a drawback to Nathan.

She returned five times with armfuls of branches, each time dropping them at Nathan’s feet before turning around and heading out to find more. She never ventured far and kept her ears tuned for angry crowds, but Nathan had driven them far into the woods and it was so cold that the peasants surely would have returned to their warm homes by now.

He released the horses and slapped them on the rump. They plowed through the deep drifts, disappearing into the mists of swirling snow. Claire couldn’t help but think that they were releasing their only chance at rescue.

Nathan climbed up on the box and hoisted the driver over his shoulder. As he climbed down, the coachman’s arms dangled at his side. Dark blood dripped onto the pristine snow. Did he have family? A wife who would miss him? Children who might grow hungry since they had no father?

Claire helped Nathan cover the dead driver with the branches until there was a large pile. They stepped back and Claire reached for Nathan’s hand. His fingers were ice cold but he held her hand firmly. They bent their heads and Claire silently said a prayer. After a few moments, Nathan squeezed her fingers and turned to her.

“There’s a hospice farther up the mountain but we’ll never make it there tonight. A bit up the road we passed a small cabin. The monks have them scattered throughout the mountain to aid those lost in storms. We can stop there until the weather clears.”

She drew in a deep, frozen breath, then nodded, the despair lightened by the thought that she and Nathan were in this together and working as a team. She wasn’t alone, as she had been in the past. That single thought gave her the hope she needed to square her shoulders. “Let’s go
then.”

Nathan trudged onward, his ears tuned toward town and the rabid crowd that lay within it. God willing, they’d all be sidled up to the bar, drinking their anger away.

He glanced over his shoulder. Claire was a few steps behind, her head bent as she watched the ground. Occasionally she would stumble but would right herself before he could catch her, and not once had she complained. A few days ago he would have been shocked at that but not now, since he learned more about her.

He still seethed inside at the thought of what her bastard husband had done to her. She never mentioned specifics but Nathan had been able to fill in the blanks. Men who struck women weren’t men. Men who struck women were cowards.

If the bastard were still alive, Nathan would kill him. Then again, if the bastard were still alive, Claire wouldn’t be here now, freezing to death in the Swiss Alps with angry peasants after her.

He glanced behind him again. This time she made eye contact and smiled. Not the sunny, mischievous smile he’d come to look forward to, but a strained, painful smile.

His heart was heavy at the thought of their driver. Dead because he was driving nobility. Birth was a gamble, a person’s lot in life, the hand they were dealt. Very few, if any, rose above it. He and Claire had been lucky with the hands they’d been dealt. Those people in that town hadn’t been and they were angry for it. Nathan couldn’t blame them but when they threatened Claire, they’d made an enemy of him.

He’d never felt such terror before. Not even when his father’s solicitor told him they were penniless, thanks to his father’s neglect. That had been a different sort of fear. This had been bone-deep terror that those men would rip Claire from him.

He peered through the wall of snow lashing out at him. The wind whipped around him, its fingers biting into his skin. The trees above creaked and groaned, protesting the weight of the snow.

Claire tugged on the back of his coat. “Did you hear that?”

Nathan stopped to listen but all he heard was the howling wind and the
tap-tap
of
snowflakes as they hit the frozen trees.

“That. Listen. I think it’s a dog.”

Faintly he heard barking but it was impossible to tell from which direction it came. The crowd had whipped up the frenzy of a few dogs but surely they wouldn’t have sent dogs after them in this storm, would they?

Claire moved closer, her shoulder brushing his arm. Nathan pulled her to him and drew in a deep breath. The frigid air froze his throat. He couldn’t feel his nose, his cheeks hurt and his eyes watered from the cold.

“Do you hear?”

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. The barking had become more frantic, more insistent, yet no closer. He tugged on her hand as a silent command to continue walking. A few moments later he glimpsed the outline of a large structure through the blowing snow.

He stumbled toward it and pushed the door open.

For a moment he simply stood there, unbelieving. There were four walls. No snow. No wind. A fireplace with wood stacked neatly next to it. There was a bed and, thank you God, a blanket.

Claire stepped in.

When he closed the door, the howling wind instantly lowered to a dull roar. He spied a box of matches next to the wood. His feet were like leaden blocks of ice. His hands and arms moved in jerky motions as he stacked the wood in the fireplace and fumbled with the matches, dropping them because his frozen fingers couldn’t grasp them. They fell, scattering across the floor. Nathan swore and tried to pick one up but it was a futile effort. He couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers, couldn’t move them appropriately to grasp the match.

With a growl of frustration he sat back on his heels. Claire knelt beside him, cupped his hands in hers and brought them to her lips. She blew warm breath over his fingers. Their gazes locked. More body parts came to life. Parts that had no business coming to life at this moment. Slowly his fingers began to thaw.

It took a few more minutes before he was able to pinch his fingers together to grasp the match, but he did it and wanted to shout with joy when he did. Amazing what such a little thing—something one took for granted—could mean.

After several attempts he finally managed to get a small flame to lick the wood, then take
hold. He watched the play of light in the fireplace, almost mesmerized by the varied colors as warmth stole into him degree by small degree.

Claire’s toes and fingers felt as if they were being stuck with thousands of tiny needles. She was hot on one side, cold on the other, and beneath her was most definitely not a feather mattress.

She peeled her eyes open and gasped. Inches from her face were the biggest, whitest, most deadly set of teeth she’d ever seen. And the breath that came from the panting mouth was atrocious.

A large, brown eyeball rolled in its socket to look at her. The animal stretched its mouth into a grotesque sort of grin while a big, thick, pink tongue hung from droopy jowls.

She sat up. The scratchy blanket that had been covering her slipped to her lap, and she looked down in shock to find she was clothed only in her chemise. Even her stays were gone.

Quickly she gathered the blanket to her chest.

A dog—for that was who the large teeth and tongue belonged to—was fully stretched out next to her, and the reason she was so warm on one side. He lifted his head, let it drop and beat his tail against the rough wooden floor they were both lying on.

A large fire burned merrily in the grate. Her clothes were draped across the bed on the other side of the room.

Her cheeks heated in what had to be a tremendous blush. She remembered feeling so warm after Blythe got the fire going and once she was warm, her eyes grew heavy and she became extremely drowsy. Apparently she lost the fight to sleep, and Blythe had then undressed her and laid her clothes out to dry.

Where was Blythe, anyway?

The cottage was small, just the one room, and he was nowhere in it.

Slowly, painfully, she managed to push herself to her feet. Bereft of her warmth, the dog whined, rolled to his stomach and laid his massive brown and white head on equally massive paws to watch her, brows quirking one way then the other as he followed her hobbling progress across the small room.

She hissed in a painful breath as feeling slowly returned to her feet. The tips of her
fingers were whiter than the snow blowing outside but at least she was feeling them again. That was good. She’d heard of people who lost fingers and toes in blizzards such as this.

The door burst open. Wickedly cold wind blew snow in, swirling it around the cabin. Claire dragged the blanket over her shoulders as Nathan stepped in, looking down as he stomped the snow off his shoes, his arms loaded with large sticks.

The dog’s tail thumped.

Nathan closed the door, fighting the wind by putting his shoulder to the door and using his body to push it. He turned, spied Claire and froze.

Her toes curled into the cold floor and she clutched the blanket tighter around her, embarrassingly aware of how little she wore. Wholly conscience that Blythe was the one who undressed her.

The dog let out a sharp bark and wagged his tail.

Broken from his paralysis, Blythe moved to the fireplace, dropped the wood beside it and brushed the snow and dirt off his hands.

He tilted his head toward the dog. “He found me while I was gathering wood earlier. I couldn’t leave him out in the cold.”

“I wonder if he was the one we heard barking.” She shifted, her toes cold.

“Come closer to the fire, Claire. You need to keep warm. How do your toes and fingers feel?”

“They hurt,” she admitted.

“That’s a good sign.”

She moved closer, drawn to the heat of the fire, and sat on the floor next to Blythe. A week ago she would have never guessed that she would be trapped in a cabin with him in the middle of a blizzard, wearing very few clothes. A week ago she would have been appalled.