25 Closer Than Ever

  Joseph held the reins tight while straddling his horse. The Pedlar was with him, between his arms, her back against his torso. He had never touched too much of her. It felt wrong and right at the same time. Her long black braid had become loose, and a few strands branched out, distracting Joseph while riding. How could any man in his place concentrate? He nudged himself in his mind and looked at the road again. He wasn’t supposed to feel that way.

  The Pedlar felt shy riding the horse with Joseph like that. He wasn’t just a person anymore. He was a man, sometimes gentle, mostly strong, and always protective. His soft touch pierced into her skin like burning coal. She wasn’t oblivious to Joseph’s secret glances at her. Joseph claimed he wanted to pay his debt back by saving her life, but his actions said otherwise. She could guess he was just as affected by her as she was by him.

  “For how long do you plan on doing this?” she asked, not acknowledging the connection they felt toward each other.

  “On doing what?” Joseph asked.

  “Riding on a horse and keeping me hostage.”

  “You’re not a hostage.”

  “So, if I were to leave now, you would let me?”

  “No.”

  “Then I am a hostage.”

  “Yes. You are. You are my hostage. And I won’t release you any time soon. Do you have a problem with that?”

  She was too stuned to speak. “I am a woman of principle. I heal people and help the ones in need. Do you know how precious my time is?”

  “I do. Finding you has been quite hard.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “Before that, tell me your name.”

  Joseph had predicted her silence yet it was overwhelming. He tugged on the reins’ right side to make the horse turn, and the pedlar watched his moves without speaking.

  “You’re suddenly quiet,” Joseph said.

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Your name.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Still don’t trust me?” Joseph asked, his breath touching the Pedlar’s shoulder.

  His distance with her was respectful but close enough for her to not be able to focus. Why did his presence feel so good? “It’s not that,” she said, shaking the thoughts away. “It’s bad omen.”

  “So, you do trust me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “All right. Why is it a bad omen to tell me your name?”

  “It just is.”

  “Nothing will happen to me. So, tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I want to call you,” Joseph said, the need in his tone evident as his breath tickled her shoulder. “I want to know you. The only thing I have of you is this cloth that you left on my wound. Don’t you think it’s unfair?”

  The Pedlar noticed the piece of fabric around his wrist, the one she had put on his wound at the brothel. It was now half-hidden under his sleeve. Why would he keep that handkerchief? She touched it, her heart warming. It wasn’t bloody or stained. Joseph had washed it. Her gentle touch on his wrist formed goosebumps on his body. She didn’t know what she was doing, but Joseph appreciated it either way. He secretly admired her thin fingers on his hand, even though he had gloves.

  “You kept this,” she said while trying to unwrap the handkerchief.

  Joseph stopped her hand. “What are you doing?”

  “This handkerchief is important to me,” she said. “I thought you would toss it away. Can I have it back?”

  “No.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I need it.”

  “For what?”

  “For a reminder of you.”

  She melted at his confession, and Joseph was aware. Finally, a proper sentence to say to an independent woman who couldn’t wait to escape him again. Affecting her and having her under his control satisfied him deeply. It seemed like his low, purring tone was working on her. She didn’t dare touch the handkerchief anymore.

  “What does the symbol on it mean?” Joseph asked.

  “It’s not a symbol. It’s a letter.”

  “What letter is it?”

  “Not an important one.”

  “It’s the first letter of your name. Isn’t it?” He whispered against her ear. The Pedlar blinked, trying to hide her expression by not moving at all. She didn’t want to tell him the truth. “I happen to know it’s a P,” Joseph said.

  “It’s for the Pedlar.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I can feel your heartbeat rising against me.”

  She tried putting a gap between them. “I think it’s best if we part our ways here.” She was trying to loosen Joseph’s grip slowly and escape as soon as possible.

  Joseph tightened his hold around her and pulled her to his body. It was a subconscious reaction to losing her again. His tongue might have been an idiot, but his hands sure knew what to do. She gasped at the sudden action.

  “What was that for?” she asked, turning her head a little to see his face from the corner of her eyes.

  Joseph moved his head toward her. “A little precaution to keep you with me,” he said, sending shivers down her spine. She became sensitive to his hoarse voice and his debilitating control over her body. He shook the reins heavily, and the horse sped up, taking the Pedlar’s balance away. She held onto Joseph’s forearms to keep herself steady as the air passed them swiftly.

  She didn’t speak a word throughout the ride. He slowed down when they reached the beautiful landscape of the woods. The Pedlar realized she was still holding onto Joseph’s forearms. She let go of them.

  “Why are we here?” she asked. Joseph said nothing. She turned her head to see him. “Lord Mainwood?”

  “To keep you safe from yourself,” Joseph said. “God knows what other crazy place like the brothel you’re planning to enter only to spy on Lord Parlings and his men.”

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  She wanted to protest, but he was right. She would possibly endanger her life. “Can I get down?”

  “If you run, I’ll catch you,” Joseph warned. She looked at the road as if his warning had given her a good idea, and calculated her pace and Joseph’s. “Are you really thinking about escaping me?”

  “No,” she denied immediately.

  “I can read it in your eyes.”

  “My eyes don’t have scripts.”

  “I’d beg to differ,” Joseph said, his gaze lingering a bit more than he intended.

  She sighed. “All right.”

  Joseph first dismounted his horse. After tying it to a tree, he stretched his arm to help the Pedlar. She didn’t take his hand and got down without his help, which annoyed Joseph.

  “What is this?” the Pedlar asked, looking at the rope around her ankle. She followed the rope with her eyes and noticed it was tied around the same tree as Joseph’s horse. Her mouth opened. “You must be jesting!” her voice rose.

  “You don’t listen to me. I had to.”

  “You kidnapped me, and now you have tied me to a tree like an animal. Untie me now!”

  “You would escape me again. And I can’t let you risk your life. Those English men that you saw at the infirmary work for one of the men who is supposed to witness your death.”

  “What?”

  “The confidential letter asked three men to attest to your death by the end of this month. I know two of them; Lord Sherman and Captain Marchessi. Lord Sherman is already in Persia. I saw him in the palace and talked to him. He confirmed he was here for a mission.”

  The Pedlar waited for Joseph to continue, barely controlling the shock on her face.

  “The Queen wrote about how satisfied she is that Lord Parlings has discovered your gender, and since you are a woman, she doesn’t want to see you in England.”

  She didn’t know what to say. The information was too much to bear.

  “Who are you?” Joseph asked, forcing her to look him in the eye. “You owe me this explanation.”

  The pedlar looked angry. “I owe you nothing!”

  “I saved your life! I need to know why they want you dead. I am on your side!”

  “You have my ankle tied to a tree. I don’t trust you.”

  “All right.” Joseph breathed to calm down. “I swear on my beloved son that my only intention is to save you. I would never harm you.” She didn’t look eased, so he walked toward her and put something in her hand. The pedlar looked down at her palm and saw a wooden horse in a small size. She wondered what it was.

  “This is my son’s toy,” Joseph said, and the Pedlar looked up at him. “It was his toy. I have nothing else left of him but this. This piece of wood is possibly the only thing on this earth that I feel attached to and keeps me alive when life doesn’t seem worth living. I don’t know what else I can give you to show you my true intention since nothing else matters to me in this world.”

  Joseph looked sad as he looked at the little toy. It was heart wrenching to watch him remember his son. She considered lying, but if Joseph was planning to kill her, he could have done it more than once. She put the horse back into Joseph’s palm. Joseph looked her in the eye, thinking she still didn’t believe him “I never use my son’s name in vain. I never swear on his name ever.”

  “I know,” The Pedlar said, sighing. It seemed like she was finally ready to tell him everything, and Joseph held his breath not to jinx it. “I didn’t know how much of this story was correct until you told me the court of England is involved. I’m still not sure how much of it is true.”

  Yes. She was opening up. “How much of what is true?” Joseph asked impatiently.

  “My mother was a whore,” she said, and Joseph stared at her, “Entertaining the king.”

  “Which king?”

  “King Simon of England.”

  Joseph’s mouth opened in shock. He put the pieces together and completed the puzzle in his mind but didn’t interrupt the Pedlar.

  “I’ve been told that my mother became with a child,” the Pedlar said. “King Simon sent her away to the farthest spot from England, Asia, because her presence was a stain on the royal family's name.”

  Joseph already guessed what the story would be, yet it was shocking to him.

  She continued. “I was abandoned by my mother. The Persian Emperor was kind enough to raise me as a maid in the palace. When I came to a certain age, I became a healer and chose to travel around the world to find a place I could call home. But I couldn’t. Ironically, nowhere around God’s massive lands belonged to me. I felt even lonelier and more abandoned.”

  Joseph related to the Pedlar’s struggles more than he could have imagined. It really was a lonely life to never belong to any place. He knew that more than anyone else. Since his wife and son’s death, he had been looking for an escape. And finding the mysterious pedlar was an excuse to leave London and search for a ‘home’. For the first time ever, he felt seen without ever expressing his feelings. She was like him from many aspects, which made him feel even more connected to her.

  “However,” she said, “fate brought me to a group of people who shared my profession and traveled without settling, just like me. I have been working with them since. Last year, I received a letter from the princess while I was in London. She needed to see me. So, I returned to Persia only for her. I don’t intend to stay here for long. I shall leave soon.” She sighed. “That’s all my life. Nothing more or less.”

  “It must be a lonely life,” he said, not judging her, only sympathicing. She nodded without saying a word. “Takes one to recognize another,” he added.

  She raised a brow. “You have a home. An estate, a title, wealth—“

  “None of which could accompany me in my loneliest nights.”

  That was a raw confession. Joseph felt embarrassed to show vulnerability to a woman. He had lived a very lonely life, but never complained about it so openly.

  “I chose to be lonely,” the pedlar said, a hint of blame in her tone as if she regretted her choice of solitude.

  Joseph shook his head. “You chose to protect your heart,” he said gently, reading her like a book. “Perhaps you never found the one to hold your hand when the times were rough. If you did, you could be each other’s home, a safe place where you could finally belong to.”

  His words were too intimate for a man like Joseph. She never expected him to know her heart more than her. Perhaps she really had a script in her eyes, which he could easily read. She looked down, feeling oddly exposed from only a penetrating gaze that could see her entire life like Bibi Banoo.

  Joseph thought about her words for a few seconds, trying to understand the court of England. “King Simon and Queen Adeline’s only son passed a few years ago,” he said. "Queen Adeline worries that the court might start looking for the bastard child to name as the heir. That’s why she was glad you are a girl and not a boy.”

  “But it’s all rumors and stories,” the Pedlar said.

  “If it were, the court wouldn’t look for you with this intensity, sending a God damn human hunter and his dozen men here to fetch you.”

  “A bastard foreign woman can’t be the heir.”

  “How do you know you’re a foreigner? You could be English as far as we know. You don’t know your mother.”

  “Look at me. I look nothing like an English woman!”

  He agreed to it in his mind. She had thick long eyebrows. Her skin although fair, it rarely lacked pigmentation like the snow pale color of English women. There was a slight crook on the brige of her nose, which although could sometimes be seen in England, it differed somehow. Her eyes were big almonds, the irises fiercely dark, and the lashes thick and long.

  “You could be half Persian,” he said. “They considered the most insane cousin of mine to inherit my possessions and title. The ironic thing is I’m not even sure he is my cousin. No one is. But they were desperate since I had no other relatives. So they chose him as my heir.”

  “But I could be anyone’s offspring, considering my mother was a whore. She could be lying about my true sire.”

  “The court believes you’re the heir.”

  “I am illegitimate!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters!” she shouted. “It matters to me! They want me dead!”

  Joseph had never seen her that distressed. She always looked calm and preserved. “Nothing will happen to you,” he said gently.

  “The English Queen has hired assassins! You said that yourself!”

  Joseph got closer to her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” She got silent and stared at Joseph. “I won’t let anyone lay a hand—no—lay a finger on you.” He took her hand to give her reassurance.

  Tears filled the Pedlar’s eyes. It felt wrong to be that vulnerable around him. Joseph’s heart ached to see her so sad. “Why?” she asked, desperately wishing he could give her an answer she secretly yearned for. She didn’t know his words would mean so much to him when he first appeared in Persia and startled her in the woods.

  Why, indeed? Joseph thought about it. It wasn’t a matter of paying his debt anymore.

  Perhaps it never was.

  She was fate’s gentle reminder that life was worth it. It was worth living it, getting hurt, and finding someone like her to heal the wounds. It was worth caring for a woman and living only for her to protect her, listen to her, and love her intensely. Behzad had said Joseph needed to give life another chance and spread the love of his wife and son. Now Joseph was filled with that love, and he wanted to give it to someone, not anyone; just the pedlar. He wanted to hold her hands like that and calm her, touch the strands of her braid, kiss her cheeks, and promise her everything would be all right. He wanted to hug her and give her the world if that was possible.

  But it was all a fantasy. He had yet once again imagined things that could not be true. He was an earl, and she was a castaway. So, he bit his tongue to prevent himself from confessing his true feelings. He wanted to tell the truth but couldn’t do that to himself or her. His stupid tongue got the best of him again as he formed the next words:

  “Because I owe you,” he said, looking down to hide the truth that could be flowing in his intense gaze. “You’re my responsibility, an obligation that I must protect.”

  The Pedlar wiped her tears quickly and pulled her hand away from his hold. He turned around to silently punish himself in his mind. He really was a terrible man. She had every right to leave him now. Perhaps she already had. Alarmed by his own thoughts, he turned around to check if she was still there, but her absence confirmed his doubts. The rope around her ankle was now untied on the ground, and she was nowhere around him.