Page 24 of The Heart of an Earl

“What?”

“The other one I chose to drop down upon.”

“On theRed Dragon?”

She nodded. “It was you or him and you were the fortunate—or unfortunate—one to walk under me.”

His head tilted to the side as his look pinned her for a long breath. “I call it fortunate.”

The cat shifted in her arms, wiggling, and she bent to set it onto the deck. “Or maybe she lets me hold her because she knows that I’ll let her go when she wants to be free.” Jules watched the cat scamper across the deck, disappearing amongst the shadows of a row of crates. “Does she have a name? I call her Patches because I’ve only heard the men say ‘cat.’”

Des turned back to the water. “It’s ‘cat’ as far as I know it—and why name her Patches? She’s striped.”

“Have you never noticed the patch around her right eye?”

“I cannot say I have.”

She grinned. “Well, there you go. Patches.”

“I will thus forth refer to her as such.” A slight grin curved the edges of his mouth and he looked to her. “So why are you not sleeping?”

She moved next to him and set her palms onto the railing. “I have discovered I have a hard time sleeping without you in the room. Without you long against my back.” A grin quirked the edges of her mouth. “Or my front.”

His look stayed focused on the water. “Security?”

“Yes. And warmth.”

“That’s understandable. Your bones don’t hold any heat—we still need to get more meat onto your body.”

She chuckled. “Hard to do on a sailor’s diet.”

“Aye.” His gaze finally tugged away from the sea and he looked at her. The moonlight lit the left side of his face, the right side deep into the shadows. Half rogue, half savior.

And handsome. Devilishly so. Handsome in a way she could vaguely remember from her life in England before her father had set their family onto a fool-headed quest across the globe.

Handsome not only because of his fine cut cheekbones, a jaw that looked like it could take blow after blow, and those hazel eyes that had watched her like a hawk since she’d been on the ship. Handsome because of who he was—who he’d been for her during the past two weeks.

The current slight stubble along his jaw was unusual, for he somehow managed what constituted a fresh-shaven face on a ship on most days. But it was deep into the night and the dark stubble had appeared. Yet it was still less than the constant beards of the men around her.

She’d not witnessed a fresh-shaven face in years.

Des had been a passenger on thePrimrose, so he’d been of wealth at one time. He’d taken himself out of that life, but he could never escape what he truly was.

A gentleman, through and through.

If she knew one thing at this juncture, it was that Des had been a gentleman to his bones before his life had veered so terribly off course.

Of course it made him all the more handsome—a dream from another time.

Des was from a different land, a different world, one that she barely remembered, except for the fact that she had loved that life in England. Loved the gaiety of it. Waking up without a care, without wondering if it was her last day on earth.

Every day for the last six years death had been a real, distinct possibility. And she was just starting to imagine life without that threat hanging over her head every second of every day.

Des’s eyebrows furrowed as he eyed her. “You let your braids out.”

Her hand flew to the left side of her head, her fingers entwining deep into her loose hair, the crinkle of the braids bumpy under her touch. She’d combed it over and over with the whalebone comb she’d found in the drawer of the desk in Des’s cabin, but the braids had been in so long they still sent sharp waves into the locks.

“I did. I’m hoping if my hair can rest unplaited the crimps in it will loosen.” She grabbed the whole bundle of her hanging hair, twisting the auburn locks together and dragging them forward over her left shoulder. “It’s what I’ve been doing for the last four hours as I couldn’t sleep. It was time to let them go.”

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