The Guardian (Chronicles of Dover's Amalgam Book 1) (9 page)

Elizabet sighed, sort of snorted, and crossed her arms. She must realize she was caught. He did not need to utter the words that he was wise to her false claim.

“Why don’t you just tell me why you are here?” She lifted her shoulders. “Obviously, I’ll never keep my mouth shut long enough for you to get a word in elsewise,” she murmured.

Personal conversation was difficult for Jareth as well, and he felt a twinge of remorse for becoming cross. He tilted his head and studied the way she flushed when she was nervous. She was having a difficult time meeting his gaze. He felt for her—something; probably mercy. “We are both inept at being civil,” he murmured.

“You think?” she asked with a sarcastic bend to her lips.

“Yes,” he said. “But I also believe we are getting better.” His mouth curved upwards on one side. “You have not thrown anything at me, nor have you run screaming. You have not vomited once in my presence today. I think we are making progress.”

“Maybe,” she said, and her mouth also tipped into some semblance of good humor. She appraised him, up and down. “But I wouldn’t say you’re safe with the vomiting part yet. You could always flash your scar and I’d probably chuck all over your cute black boots.”

Jareth smiled and shook his head. “I like these boots. Hoby.” He tapped the heel of his left foot to his right toe. “They were a gift for my birthday from Minh. Please, do not . . .” His grin widened. “Chuck on my cute boots. It would break my heart.” His hands folded over his chest, where his heart lay beating under his fingertips.

Elizabet laughed and lifted her hands. “Okay. I won’t. Just keep all things gross to yourself and we should be good.” Jareth nodded. His smile wavered as he turned to the stall where the hogs were kept. She cleared her throat. “So, tell me what you want. Why did you come here?”

His reply was swift. “I need your help.”

“That’s given. Just by showing up here you tell me it’s serious. Might as well spill it. Give it to me. I’m all ears. You have the floor, your majesty.” She bent at the waist in a slightly mocking gesture, and swept out her hand.

“There is a boy. His name is Jeremiah Cameron,” Jareth said. “He would be about nine years old in this time.”

“Whoa, whoa!” she said in a soft exhalation. Her surprise was obvious. She popped up, her head shaking. He had never seen that look on her before. “Slow down.” Her face scrunched in confusion. “One minute we are talking about my vomit issues and the next, Jeremy?” She waved her hands toward him as if to spur him to speak. “I know Jeremy. What does he have to do with you?”

“You did give me the floor.” He was spilling information, but she had asked for it. He needed to seize the moment while they were companionable. He had broken the ice by jesting with her. Jeremy was a topic he had to breach, and the time seemed appropriate. It was, however, upsetting that he could be as flighty as she when it came to ideas and topics. Elizabet motioned with her hands for him to continue. “And Jeremy has everything to do with me.” He winced and looked away briefly, not liking the way she was staring at him with suspicion in her eyes. “He will need my protection soon, but I cannot interfere with his life as of yet. I need you to watch over him for me until the day I become necessary to his existence.”

Elizabet narrowed her eyes. “What would you want with a little boy? How do I know you aren’t here to hurt him?”

“You know him well enough to care for him?” Jareth would not think on why that made him ache in a way he never had before. What would it be like to garner someone’s loyalty? For someone to protect him this way? Her guard was going up. She liked this boy. He sensed it.

“Of course,” she said. “Everybody knows the Camerons. They are the only ministers in this parish who aren’t regulated. They’re like area pop stars, and they’re Presbyterian. That makes them strange to this part of my country. Everyone else is Catholic. When the Great Regulation was passed, only the Pres’s were left unregulated. The other minor religions were forced to either merge with them, comply with the government, or go Catholic and under jurisdiction with Roman religion. But you didn’t answer me. What do you want with Jeremy?”

“I want to help him.” Jareth said. “There are things I cannot tell you yet, but I need you. Can I count on you?” He knew he sounded like a lunatic. How was she supposed to trust him when she knew so little? But Gabriel and Minh had not debriefed him on how much she should know at this time. The threads of time were delicate. He could change someone’s destiny with one small wrong move. Lives could be erased.

“I’m just supposed to help you without knowing why?”

“Frankly, yes. It would be easier if you were to cooperate. I need your help. You are critical. Have I ever harmed you in any way?” He appealed to reason and logic.

“Hmm,” was all she said.

“I sound quite mysterious, do I not?” he asked, but did not await a reply. The answer was written plainly on her face. “And I am bombarding you with my needs and begging for help. It must seem I speak in riddles and harbor secrets, and that is not all untrue. I am going somewhere with this, and I promise that one day you will know and understand it all.”

“I get that what you are calls for big secrets.” She smiled sardonically. “You carry a wormhole around your wrist and are as old as the dinosaurs. I just wonder how long you plan to string me along. It would make things better for me if I knew why I’m stupid enough to consider helping you.”

“What a blessed lady you are,” Jareth said, and his smile was sincere. “But I am not quite as old as the dinosaurs.”

He did not even care that she knew the time travel capabilities lie in wormholes. Nor did he worry that it was he who had given away the information. He was becoming sloppy with her already, and barreling uninhibited to his demise without a care. The truth was, he would reveal whatever she wanted to know, but she did not need to know that at this precise moment. The only thing he could not tell her was exactly what Jeremy would be.

“I suggest we compromise.” Her tone was strictly business. While he had been prattling on, apparently she had been calculating.

His smile faltered. “What is it you require?”

“Nothing earth shattering,” she replied. Her shoulders rolled up a notch; her nose wrinkled. “For every one thing I agree to do for you, you have to tell me one of your secrets, or a little bit about you—”

“My choice,” he interrupted. He knew where she was leading, and while he was open to honesty, he was medieval. Men set the course of things. She opened her mouth to disagree, but he swiped his hand through the air—so roughly that she stepped back. “I decide what you know. The more you know, the more vulnerable you become, and I cannot protect you while we are apart—in different times.” It was ironic that she made a game of something he was willing to give freely. But this way, he had an excuse to keep some of his secrets.

“Okay,” she conceded. But her posture remained stiff. “At least let me choose the topic.”

“No.”

Elizabet’s face turned pink. “If it wasn’t against my nature, I would call you a bastard. You’re not being fair.”

“Your nature is quite corrupt,” Jareth said, “so do what you must. Call me a bastard at your leisure.”

A sound of annoyance came from her mouth. “How rude! I’m not corrupt.”

“That is where you are wrong,” he argued. He leaned against the railing of the pig pen, his hands braced, his tall form at an incline. Now, this was a point he could debate with comfort. “We are all corrupt by nature of Adam. We need divine grace.”

Her face scrunched up and a puff of air left her nostrils as they flared. “What are you? A man of the cloth?”

He gave her a smug smile. “Actually, yes. I am one of the early Church’s first reformers. I aid The Morning Star of the Reformation to translate scripture.” He crossed his ankles, and reclined heavily on the rail at his back. “Does this count for the first of my secrets?”

“It most certainly does not,” she stammered. She looked as if she wanted to kick dirt on his expensive boots. “I didn’t agree to let you decide.”

Jareth laughed. A full belly laugh that both felt and sounded foreign. When was the last time he found anything that amusing? “They’re not your secrets, so that would be unfair.” His grin made it hard to speak. “But I will give you one concession. What will you ask of me?”

Elizabet smirked and looked away. Her shoulder drooped a bit. His laughter dwindled to a bemused snicker as she pivoted to him. Her gaze was intense. “I want to know, why me?” His smile immediately dropped from his face. “Why me, when there are millions of people who could help you. Your people came out of nowhere to get me. Why?”

His genetic makeup would have been an easy request. He could explain mild Asperger’s in detail, the why and how of what made him the way he was. Or concepts of doctrine in early church history perhaps. He could expound on the laws of physics, chemistry, medicine, or most definitely theology, until she screamed in boredom. He did not wish to speak of things he barely understood. She was unfair, just as she had claimed him to be a second ago.

Jareth pushed away from the railing, his hands going to his temples where he raked his short-cut hair as he thought of something clever to say to appease her. He looked up into the rafters, and willed anything to come to mind.

“I know I’m not the brightest person,” she said, her voice softer. “I’m not smart. I’m not rich. I don’t come from a prominent family in time.” She lifted one shoulder. “I’m confused. Why me?”

Jareth regarded her, took in her presence. She was muddy and probably smelled. Her hair was tangled and drooping and soggy with sweat. She had the strangest hair he had ever seen. It was yellow, brown, and even apricot in small strands. There was a smudge of dirt on her chin that he had not noticed earlier. How he missed a speck of uncleanliness was beyond him.

The girl scrambled the very essence of what made him tick. Choosing her would create a challenge. His life would become a series of compromise and heartache because he would have to protect someone other than himself. She lied when she was nervous and she talked too much. He had many enemies who would prey on that.

Elizabet brought her chin up slightly under his perusal. Her short legs stiffened as she planted her booted feet in a widened stance. She crossed her arms and glared at him as she waited. The silence stretched between them as he pondered a proper response that would not get him slapped. Everything about the way she stood let him know she realized exactly what was going through his mind and that she was under his scrutiny. He swallowed—and felt his pride slip down his throat.

“Time and chance, perhaps. Your location is vital to the future of the League I have organized. Jeremiah is from this area and he is an essential player in the future of things.” He shrugged. “It is possible you are just in the right place at the right time.”

“Or the wrong place,” she replied, her lips a severe line. “It all depends on perspective.”

Jareth was not ready to delve into every detail of the whys. Some things needed to be handled with great care, but he felt the need to clarify, too. “It is also because only you shall do,” he said. His voice was a low, deep rumble in the space they shared. To his ears, he sounded weak. He did not like it, but soldiered on. It was necessary to be truthful. It was all the blasted girl would accept. Unlike her, he did not lie when he was under pressure. “You are, quite possibly, the only female who could stand the sight of me—as I am.” He opened his arms. “You say that you are not smart, but I am not what I seem.”

“You’re a duke,” Elizabet said, her brow furrowed.

Jareth gave a rueful grin. “The word bastard is the ugliest word, no matter what century. Your words, not mine.”

“I don’t care about that.” His grin faded as she took a step toward him. Her arms remained crossed, but she closed the distance until they were only an inch apart. She had to flex her neck almost unnaturally to stare up at him. Her expression dared him to deny her loyalty. “I don’t care if you’re a bastard,” she said slowly.

Jareth stared down at her, that pert nose of hers pointed up at him. “No, you do not,” he agreed, just as slowly. The top of her head reached him at mid-chest. For the first time in his life, he had the urge to reach out and embrace someone. How precious and innocent, as a child, that she could toss aside propriety. That she could laugh in the face of his birth status. Her response was the answer to her own question, although he was too stunned to tell her this.

“My second question—” She was convinced that he believed her.

“No,” Jareth said. He stepped back. His hand came up to ward her away; the trance she had over him was broken. “You had one question and I have answered it.”

“Well, I have another and you’re going to answer it or I’m not helping you.” She jerked her chin up a notch. “I want to know what you plan to do with Jeremy. It sounds a little perverted to me that you would be interested in a young boy. You don’t look like a predator, but I can’t be sure unless you tell me why you want me to spy on a friend.”

Jareth pulled a face. So, that was the wall she erected when he questioned her about Jeremy. “Is that what you think?” He sputtered something unintelligible, and briskly waved his hands he still held before him. “I want to help him. I am to be his guardian. How could you . . . do you . . . I would never hurt a child.” He let his expression turn thunderously angry. “I am to be the only thing that stands between him and disaster. His guardian.”

“You’ve said that,” she said, and propped her hands on her hips. “But I’m not stupid. I need more information before I jump into this. Tell me why you want me to watch Jeremy Cameron.”

Jareth lips twisted in irritation and in resignation. She was right. He needed to clarify things or it
did
sound creepy. He drew in a deep breath, and inhaled quite a bit of stale barn air. “Fine,” he said, and leaned once more onto the rail of the stall behind him. This time it was not an arrogant pose, but a weary one. Life with Elizabet would be exhausting. “I will relent and answer your question.”

“Sweet,” Elizabet said with a smile unlike the word she used. It was diabolical.