Page 54 of The Heart of an Earl

No life except for the deadly rage directed at Des. “You don’t tell me I’m wrong, child. This cutthroat took you from me—from your mother.” He looked to his right and lifted his hand, twitching his fingers.

Three footmen appeared from the foyer. All tall. All muscular like any valuable footman was.

Gatlong’s glare landed back on Des. “Get this trash out of my home.”

“Father, no.” Jules grabbed his arm again, tugging on him. He swatted her away like a pesky fly.

Jules stumbled to the side and just as Des moved to catch her before she fell to the floor, he was yanked from his feet, two of the footmen grabbing his arms and dragging him backward.

Jules fell the to the floor, terror striking deep in her blue-green eyes. “Des, no.”

Des glanced at the man on his right. On his left. Burly, but he could take them. But it would be bloody.

Bloody in the drawing room of Jules’s home. Bloody in front of her father.

Exactly what the man thought of him.

Control he didn’t know he possessed flooded him and he looked to Jules dragging herself back to her feet, her hands clutching the edge of the settee.

Not now. He couldn’t do this to her. He needed to let her father settle. Let the shock of Jules appearing out of nowhere dissipate.

Caution.

He had to side with caution at this juncture. It was the only way to abate the fury in the room. To find a path forward.

He didn’t fight the footmen as they dragged him out of the drawing room. “Jules.”

Her face snapped up to him.

“I’ll be back for you. I swear it. Nothing will stop me. Just calm. Calm. Just let this be. I’ll be back. But this—right now—you need to sleep in your bed. Talk to your mother. Talk to your father without me here. I will be back tomorrow.”

“Des—”

“Let it be.” His words cut her off, cut hard through the air as his boots hit the marble of the foyer. “Let it be, Jules.”

Through the front door and into the drizzle of rain and sleet that had started falling.

The footmen shoved him, sending him to the crunch of snow just beyond the marble step.

The door slammed closed behind him.

{ Chapter 16 }

The crash of the door closing echoed through the foyer and into the drawing room.

The crack broke Jules free of the shock of what had just happened. What had just happened to Des. What he hadlethappen to him.

Des could have easily bested those footmen. She’d seen him fight on theRed Dragon—she’d seen him crush those three brutes outside the carriage. Those footmen were nothing.

But Des hadn’t lifted a finger—he’d chosen the path of peace.

She could not hold onto the same sense of decorum.

Fury surged through her chest and she ran at her father, shaking his arm. “What have you done? He’s not what you think he is, Father.”

She rounded him. “Where is Mother? Where is she? I need her.”

Her father’s head jerked back, his face paling as though he had just been slapped out of his rage. Her mother always had that effect on him—could snap him free from the demons of anger that would coil around him and take over his entire being.

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