Free To Love and Protect by Tammy Jo Burns Page A

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