“Jules—shit.”
Her head swiveled, searching for him. His hand was pulsating, wrapped around hers, but she couldn’t find him through the black spots that had taken over her eyes.
“Jules—you have to sit.” His hands went to her sides and he steered her to the left, pushing her down to land on a stump. Muttered blasphemies growling from his lips, he set a hand on her upper back and pushed her downward so she was doubled over. “Breathe, Jules. Don’t do anything but breathe.”
His hand splayed on her back, rubbing, trying to move air into her lungs.
The black spots dissipated and just when she thought she could stand again the sound of horses’ hooves and dogs barking echoed into the air about them.
A shiver ran down her spine, spreading to the tips of her toes and fingers. She seized onto a breath—enough to get words out. “Hell—his dogs—the bloodhounds. I left my cloak. We can’t outrun them, Des.”
Des spun from her, his fist hitting a tree. A blast of rage that flashed and dissipated so quickly it was gone by the time he turned back to her and grabbed her hand, tugging her to her feet and back into motion. “Come. We can still lose them. We get back to that brook we crossed and walk along it. Our feet will get wet, but they’ll lose the trail. We can still outrun them.”
Her head shaking, her heels dug into the ground. “It won’t work, Des. He’ll find us. He went around the damn world to find that box. And he did.” Her stare met his hazel eyes. “He will find us.”
Des shook his head, meeting her stare. “Don’t give up on me now, Jules. Not now.”
Not now.
Hell.
Her eyes fell closed, her chest lifting in a breath that choked down her throat.
Don’t give up on him.
But that’s exactly what she needed to do.
She’d been living on hope the last few weeks. Hope that she could go home. Hope that she could have Des. Hope that she could somehow cobble together a life of normalcy.
Hope she had no right to court. Not with the curse.
That was the thing about curses. They hovered. Patient. Plotting. Letting hope sprout. They waited until the moment you thought you were safe. The moment you had the world at your fingertips.
They waited to crush you from the highest of highs into the bowels of hell.
Des tugged her hand.
She opened her eyes and yanked her fingers from his grip. “I cannot. I cannot hope—not with this curse that hangs over me. If I want you—if I love you, the curse will take you away from me. It’s what it does—the curse. I see it—I see that now. It will not let me be.”
Des stepped to her, his glare slicing her to her soul, his lower chest hitting her breasts as he grabbed her upper arms. “Don’t do this, Jules. Don’t hide behind that bloody box. Damn the blasted curse—damn the blasted ring. You need to leave with me. Leave now. We can still make it.”
The vibrations of thundering hoofs on the ground made way into the soles of her boots.
“Except we won’t escape him—my father—I heard what he said to you. I saw it in his eyes too—even though I pretended it wasn’t there. Someone has to pay for taking me and he’s decided it will be you.” Her head shook, her cold wet hair slapping across her cheek. “We won’t be free of him—we won’t be free of Redthorn’s crew. Not ever.”
The sting of her words—of the loss of hope—ran across Des’s face and it shook her to her bones.
Pain. Pain she was causing him.
“Jules, we’ll never be free if we don’t try.”
The dogs were only moments away, yelping filling her ears.
A shrill whistle and the dogs stopped in place, running in circles, whining. She glanced over her shoulder at the footmen and her father quickly approaching on horseback, weaving through the trees. All of them had rifles in their hands.
Rifles at the ready.
Madness. Pure madness.
The long-ago image of Mr. Draper dying from her father’s bullet—his blood smearing across her hands as she took the box from his grasp—flashed in her mind. Blood on her hands. Blood from her father’s brutality.
She couldn’t let the same happen to Des. Not if she could stop it.
Her look flew back to Des. “No. I have to stay. I have to pretend I want this. It’s the only way. I haven’t even seen my mother. I have to see her. She will fix everything. She will, Des—she will.”
Des glanced at her father bearing down upon them, his words wooden. “He’s never going to let me have you, Jules. Believe me on that score. You need to leave with me now.”
“Des—my mother—she will fix this. I have to trust in that.” She drew a raw breath. “I can’t let what’s about to happen here, happen.”
His head dipped forward and he took a step backward. His eyes lifted and he held out his hand to her. “Take it, Jules. Stay with me. One of us has to learn how to hope, Jules. Hope for the future. Hope we will be fine, come what may.”
Come what may.
Her fingers twitched, almost stretching out to his palm.
But then she locked her arm at her side.
One of them needed to hope. But it needed to be the one with a plan. And she had her mother on her side.
It needed to be her.
With a shake of her head, her heart crumbling inside her chest, she spun around, holding her hands up high, blocking any sort of shot her father or the footmen had on Des.
“Jules.” Des’s anguished roar throbbed in her ears. “No matter what you do, Jules, I’ll be back.”
Weaving through the trees, she ran toward her father, toward the yipping dogs, and leaving Des’s scream in the air, not turning back to him.
She would have her mother fix this.
And then Des would come for her. He would.
She just had to believe in that. Hope.
Come what may.
“Stop. Stop, Father.” Her shrill scream cut through the wet sleet falling from the sky. “I will come back with you. But only if you leave Des be.”
Her father pulled up on his reins just before his enormous black mount trampled her. He glared down at her, fury puffing in steamed breaths from his mouth. “Now why would I do that, child? He almost just stole you away again.”
She met his stare, her glare unflinching. “Because I know what you want, and I know where it is.”
~~~
They followed him, as he knew they would.
Walking along the half-frozen river that cut along the edge of the forest, Des didn’t bother to even hide his tracks in the slush of snow. The scent of him was just as much on that cloak as Jules’s was.
He had kept his feet moving, walking in the direction of the village Jules had said was only a few miles away.
She had chosen her father. Chosen to go back to the blasted coward.
Des had never told Jules what he thought of her father. Never spoke of her father’s cowardice on the Primrose when it was attacked by pirates. Des knew it was something she never wanted to hear. But if she could admit it to herself, she would have recognized his actions the same as Des did.
The coward’s way. Refusing to protect his own daughter.
Which was probably why the man was murderous.
Evidence of his own cowardice, back in the living, back to confront his failings. Of course the man would want to kill that. He couldn’t kill his daughter, but he could kill Des.
Des kept his feet moving, refusing to look back over his shoulder at the men on horseback he could hear quickly approaching.
They got to him before he reached the town.
He heard the shot before the pain hit him. The crack of a rifle echoing over the frozen landscape, bouncing off the cold trees.
Into his shoulder, an explosion that swallowed his torso whole. Sent him flailing, stumbling forward.
They shot him in the bloody back.
The bastards shot him in the back.
Cowards. Just like their master.
D
es hit the ground, his head heavy into the snow. The slushy muck caked his face, frozen chunks slipping into his mouth as he gasped a breath, blood splattering from his lips onto the white crystals.
Boots by his head, in front of his eyes.
A numbness fell over his body, taking the need for breath. The need for thought.
“We drag him to the river.” Words from above. High, high above.
One last gasp.
Blackness.
{ Chapter 17 }
“Where is Mama?”
Jules sat at the table in the enormous dining room of Gatlong Hall. The same as she’d remembered it. Tapestries lining one wall, the row of windows behind her encased in gold-gilded trim. Four heavy crystal chandeliers lining the center length of the room. The nooks under the sideboard where she would hide from her mother, giggling, in games of chase.
Yet only two place settings on the long oak table capable of seating thirty-four.
Her at one. Her father at the other.
She’d gone through the motions of bathing, changing into clothing that had still been in her room from her past life here at Gatlong Hall, and letting the maid that she didn’t know plait and style her hair. She’d done it all, waiting.
Waiting for her father to calm. For her mother to intercede.
When she’d been called from her room to dine, she’d assumed her mother had worked her magic and had nullified the beast that her father had become.
But now this.
Two place settings.
A deep, dark rock swallowing her stomach, her palms went flat on her belly, pressing inward as she looked to her father. “Father. Where is Mama?”
The rage in his eyes from earlier had abated somewhat, but it still sat there in his odd blue eyes, searching for the slightest spark to reignite it.
Her father set his fork and knife down, his hands going to the edge of the table, clasping it as though he was about to throw the whole table end over end. He met her stare. “Your mother is dead, Julianna.”
The cold words entered her ears and she sat, trying to understand them, trying to grasp the true meaning of them.
A full minute passed before her hand flew up between them. “No. No, I don’t believe you.”
His face flared, the blue of his eyes sparking against his pink skin. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for four years. She wasted away after we got back to England.”
A vise, invisible and vicious, wrapped around Jules’s chest, squeezing the breath out of her. “No.”
“Yes.” He picked up his knife and fork and jabbed a morsel of venison, shoving it in his mouth before waving the fork in her direction. “Stop blathering about it and go to the Isle of Wight if you don’t believe me. Visit her sister—she’ll tell you the same thing. She’d dead. You can visit her grave.”
Jules’s hand dropped from the air between them. “Her—her grave?” Jules had to choke the words out.
“Yes, her damned grave.” His lip curled as he looked at her. “She demanded she be buried there. By the bloody sea—so she could be close to you. Not here where she belonged—in her home. You, she always chose you. You over life at the end—even in death she had to be by the damned sea.”
Her arms wrapping around her middle, Jules curled into herself, holding her ribcage, holding back the sobs that threatened but couldn’t quite yet break free upward and into her chest, her mouth, her eyes.
She couldn’t let go of the disbelief—of the last threads of hope. “No—not Mama—you cannot—”
His fork and knife slammed to the table. “I want the box, Jules.”
“You—” Her eyes lifted, his face blurring through the tears that had finally surfaced. “You want the box? The box? You tell me this of Mama and then you demand that blasted thing?”
Her father jumped to his feet, leaning across the table to her, his fist slamming onto the wood and sending the plates clattering. “I lost everything because of that damn box—it’s the only thing I have left and I damn well will have it back. The bloody thing has taken my wife, my only child and I’ll be damned if I don’t reap the just rewards of it.”
Her jaw dropped. “But I—I’m your child. I’m here. Here. Alive. In front of you. Me.”
His upper lip snarled. “You’re not my child. I saw it in the woods. My child is dead. She died six years ago. And she’ll never come back. What sits before me now is nothing but a used, broken shell of what my daughter once was.” He leaned down, his mad blue eyes level with hers. “But the box. The box I can have again. If I have that box, it’ll be worth everything. Everything.”
She jerked backward, her head angling away from him as fury instantly dried her tears. “I’m not letting you have the box, Father.”
His fist slammed onto the table again. “What—you said—you swore it in the woods. You would give it to me, you little wench.”
“No.” She shook her head, her lips pulling tight.
Where once she’d been afraid of her father, that fear had long since left her. There was only one thing she was afraid of now and that was losing Des.
She’d figured that fact out the moment she’d gotten onto her father’s horse and rode away from Des in the woods.
He was everything.
And she was going to be with him again. No matter what. No matter what it took.
He was the only thing left that mattered now that her mother was gone.
“Child—”
“No.” She angled forward, meeting his ire straight on. “Not until I see Des again. Not until you welcome him into this home. He was the one that saved me from the Red Dragon—saved me from those cutthroats, and you sent your bloody dogs after him—after us.”
“He’s a pirate, I could see it in him, through and through.”
She leaned forward, her nose almost touching his. “He’s a sailor. If you had stopped for one minute, I could have explained that. But you went off—condemning him without a thought.”
“The box, Julianna.” His jowls flapping, spit flew from his mouth with his growled words and landed on her cheek.
She didn’t flinch. “That is my offer. You welcome Des into this house and the box is yours. Do not speak a word to me until that time.”
“You ungrateful little witch.” Just as his fist started to rise to strike her, he pulled back and spun from her, stalking out of the room.
Leaving her. Leaving her alone in her misery.
The side door to the dining room opened and Mr. Charles shuffled into the room, his pace agonizingly slow.
He reached Jules and gently set his crooked fingers on her shoulder. “He shouldn’t have done it like that. I am sorry, child. I didn’t think it my place to tell you. But you deserved better than what his lordship just did. He has been…addled since returning from the West Indies years ago. Losing you, losing her ladyship, it has been…hard. It wasn’t my place, but I should have told you, nonetheless.”
She forced a sad smile onto her face. “Do not fret on it, Mr. Charles.” Her hand lifted, her fingers wrapping over his boney knuckles. “But thank you for saying so.”
“It was a broken heart—he won’t speak to it, but your mother’s heart was broken, never to be repaired. Her ladyship had no will after losing you. She loved you, child. Loved you like no other.”
Jules looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes. “I know, Mr. Charles. I know.”
~~~
Where was Des?
Jules’s fingers played with the edge of the translucent pink drapery as she stared out the window in her mother’s chamber. Clutching the pillow she held to her belly, she sat on the settee she’d dragged over to the south windows two weeks ago. The south windows that faced the drive, the forest.
He said he’d be back.
He swore it.
She had gambled everything—everything on those words.
The only thing she’d wanted—prayed for—for the last six years was to be home. To be normal again. It had been everything. The stupid,
naïve dream of a silly girl.
A dream she never should have held onto—for in her heart she’d always known it would never be hers. She just hadn’t been able to admit it to herself.
And now it stared her cruelly in the face.
Everything she had wanted meant nothing. Nothing.
For in that moment in the woods when she turned away from Des to save him from her father, she knew with every fiber of her being that she didn’t want home. Didn’t want normal.
She wanted Des.
Him. He was her normal. He was where she wanted to be. Needed to be.
So where in the hell was he?
Her look moved along the white expanse of snow on the sweeping lawn that unfurled toward the house from the woods along the main road, stopping to trace the gentle curve of the drive to Gatlong Hall as it weaved up the hill.
If Des came—when he came—he would come up the main drive. He wasn’t about to cower from her father—she knew that much of him.
So why hadn’t he shown?
Two weeks and nothing. Nothing.
Not him. Not a note. Not a message from Snowshill.
Nothing.
The Firehawk was set to leave port again soon—they had moved on from Plymouth Dock and were about to leave from Portsmouth if she remembered what Captain Folback had told Des. The thought, the doubt—like a dirt-encrusted worm slithering into the back of her brain—surfaced, as much as she had tried to ignore it.
He couldn’t have gone back to the Firehawk, could he?
Abandoned her to go back to the sea?
The hope that she’d felt in the middle of the woods when she’d last seen Des was dwindling. She’d been so intent on veering her father off of his murderous rampage—long enough for her to explain, for him to understand that Des was not the enemy—that she hadn’t considered how Des would have felt after she deserted him.
He’d asked her—begged her—to believe in him, and she had turned her back on him. Betrayed him. Left him.
No.
She shook her head.
Des would not think that of her. He had to have understood what was about to happen. What she prevented from happening.
The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1) Page 13