CHAPTER 272: THE VIEW THAT CHANGED

In a haste, Joanna picked up her pace to the knight’s quarter, where her husband had told her to be before he left her room this morning.

As if having visionary insight, which made him sure that she would look for him, or it was his way to assure her that he was a good husband who would always inform her where he was going before leaving home, or he was being overly confident that she would miss him soon once they were apart, Canillas said that she could ask someone to reach for him there if she wanted to see him.

Enduring the cramp in her abdomen while maintaining her brisk pace, Joanna felt so glad and relieved when she found the sight of Canillas to be in the backyard of the quarter without her entering the building to ask his whereabouts.

Though her current position was quite far from him, where she was under the shade of dense trees while he had no roof above him but was in direct contact with the stream of afternoon sun, she was more than certain that the person that she immediately spotted in an instant was Canillas.

Joanna increased her speed with a smile gracing her lips. But soon the smile faltered as she came to an abrupt halt and quickly hid behind the trunk of an almost bare tree that was not far from the spot where she stood and was fortunately large enough to cover her figure.

There, in her hiding place, with her rampant breath, Joanna clasped her hands and brought them against her heaving chest only to let them feel her heart thump rapidly.

The timing was not right. Joanna talked inwardly while closing her eyes, which had captured a view that she had never seen before, making her contemplate changing her plan.

She was relieved that she could think rationally in the middle of her disoriented mind and the urgency to come near Canillas to tell him what she needed from him.

When her brother agreed to her idea to ask one person that was in good shape to help him in carrying out the research that he had planned, the only one person that appeared in her head was Canillas.

She did not think about Bianca or Lucy, as her brother mentioned, or someone else.

It was not that she forgot them or solely had Canillas fill her mind. But in her mind, Joanna thought that her husband was the only right person who had equal status to stand between her brother and Valerie, whose presence would not be overlooked, especially by the latter.

Moreover, Canillas, with his nonchalant personality, could blend easily with them and would not bother if he could not. Thus, she did not hesitate to chase after him here in the knight’s quarter to ask him to lend her his hand.

Had she trusted Bianca or Lucy to take on the task on her behalf, Joanna was certain that they could not help her achieve her goal because there was a clear border of hierarchy that could not be crossed by them. They could only obey what was ordered.

But now, her determination was shaken by what had been caught by her eyes.

Perhaps it was a sign for her to change her strategy, deviating from the route towards what had been thought by her brother.

Nodding her head as an approval with herself that assigning Lucy to do such a task was not a bad option, concerning her quite canny nature, Joanna opened her eyes only to have them unblinkingly nailed at the view that was not present before she closed her eyes.

Her breath was caught in her throat. Her heart made a dive for a moment.

Moving her eyes from the chiseled chest that was bare and had never been seen by her innocent eyes before, Joanna slowly trailed her gaze upward, carefully scanning inch by inch like a child first learning about an object that they saw for the first time in their lives, and stopped when her eyes fell on the face that she had seen the most lately.

For a moment, she froze like a statue, leaving her eyes to lock on his. Her throat felt parched.

With the sound of her heartbeat ringing loudly in her ears, Joanna took a step backward until her back leaned against the trunk that she previously thought to be kind enough to give her shelter from many eyes that she did not want to find her whereabouts.

Finding the man before her lowered his head with his body slightly bent over so that his face would be the same level as hers, Joanna shrank, pressing her back tightly against the trunk, as if she expected to be absorbed inside the trunk, to be the one with the tree where many leaves fell on top of the grassy ground.

Avoiding his piercing eyes by lowering her head, Joanna directed her eyes to see her shoes, which coincidentally were close to the color of dry, yellow-to-orange leaves that piled up beneath her feet. And she froze once again when suddenly the sight of the fallen leaves changed into the face that she had just avoided seeing.

Blinking her eyes, Joanna broke her gaze away by lifting her head so that she was now looking up at the tree canopy above her, where golden leaves beautifully stretched skyward against the blue sky. But soon, before she was able to take her third breath, the mesmerizing view changed into the same face that was now about three inches away from hers.

"Are you here to play hide-and-seek with me?" The face above her spoke to her.

"No," Joanna answered in a voice barely above a whisper, turning her head to the side to have her eyes meet another trunk of a tree that grew next to the tree that was now supporting her back.

"Are you here because you miss me already?" The face that previously was above her face stubbornly chased after her to now be back in front of her face, blocking her sight from the trunk of the tree on which her eyes just caught a few scratches and a little hole.

Finding the corner of the lips of the face before her curved up, Joanna turned her head to the opposite direction, but what her eyes captured made her startled. It was not another tree, as she had strongly believed it would be.