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.