Life Without Life
Chapter 17:
"Timothy, slow down!!" Josette yells, trying to catch up.
"Will you please hurry up! We do not have time to waste! We have got to get to the Mountains before they send someone after us!" She reaches him and he grabs her hand, pulling her along.
"Where are we going to rest once we come to the Mountains?"
"There are caves we can sleep in until dusk. Then, after nightfall, we will start moving until dawn, where we will rest in the shadows," he says confidently.
She stops him by pulling on his arm and looks straight into his crystal blue eyes. "For someone who sounds so confident, your hands are shaking!" she mocks.
"I'm cold, what can I say?" he shrugs as he pulls her into his arms. No sooner had they begun to kiss more intensely, when a snap of a branch in the distance snaps them back into reality.
"Come on!" Timothy shouts, grabbing her hand and pulling her through the thick brush. Finally stopping at a clearing to catch his breath, Timothy pulls Josette into his arms, holding her as tightly as he can. "That was close. What do you think they would have done if they had caught up with us?"
"I'm not so sure. Probably bring me back to Matthew and marry us on the spot!" she says, a little out of breath.
"Well, we have too far to turn back around. So, let's find a cave before they find out." He starts to walk away, then adds, "I wonder what they would do to me after they take you back to him."
"Let us not think about that, all right?" Then she adds, more quietly, "I hope Katherine's plan works."
After a while of running through brush, getting caught in thickets, and losing almost all of their breath, they finally reach a small cave at the bottom of one of the mountains. They scramble into it only to find it cold, dark, and damp. They huddle close together, trying to stay warm and dry.
"Timothy, we made it!" Josette says after a while of silence. He wraps his arms around her waist and answers, "Now we can stay here together without any worry."
He kisses her long and incessantly, pulling her as close to his body as possible. "Josette, tell me you love me."
"Timothy, you know I love you and I would never leave your side for anything in the world."
"We will stay here in the shadows until nightfall and then keep moving until dawn. That is the plan in which was told to me by Katherine."
She moves around in his arms (for she was sitting sideways in his lap) in order to see him better. "Timothy," she says while looking straight into his blue eyes, "tell me what I can do to show you how much I love you."
"You can kiss me the way you did last night!" he says without hesitation.
"But, Timothy, I was not with you last night," she tries to protest.
"Aye, you were, Josette. I remember it clearly!" he interrupts her.
"Well if you remember it so clearly, tell me about it!" she says, beginning to get aggravated.
"Well, first you came into my room, saying you wanted to see me once more, and that you were told you were to be married the next day."
"Go on, I am interested in what you have to say."
"You came over to me and started to kiss me."
"Well, what was so different about the way I kissed you then and the way I kiss you now?" she asks suspiciously.
"For one thing, you took those soft lips and ran them up and down my neck. It was completely intoxicating, the way you kissed me, so I started to- - -."
"Why are you stopping? What is wrong?"
"I know what is wrong!" Out of the shadows of the cave steps Katherine, her hair in disarray from running to keep up with them.
"Katherine! What are you doing here?! How did you know where to find us?!" exclaimed Josette, unable to believe her eyes.
"My, my, aren't we full of questions tonight? Timothy, why don't you finish your story. You were just getting to the good part!"
"Katherine, please, leave me alone! I did nothing to you to deserve this!"
"What do you mean, nothing? Everything that happened the other night meant nothing? I bet there is something you have been meaning to tell Josette."
"Timothy, what is she talking about? I don't understand." Josette asks bewildered.
"Go ahead, Timothy, tell her all about the other night. Tell her that I was the one who visited you in your room! Tell her I was the one whom you caressed! Tell her I was the one whom you made love to that night, not her! Tell her!!"
With that last sentence ringing through her ears, Josette turns her back on both Katherine and Timothy and weeps until she cannot weep any longer. Timothy tries to comfort her but she pushes him away, saying that all fate had brought them together and it would also tear them apart. She tells him that she is going to march herself back to the manor, marry Matthew, and live a peaceful life, forgetting that she ever knew him.