Page 61 of The Heart of an Earl

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.

She nodded to herself, her shoulders curling as her chin settled onto the pillow. The long faded scent of her mother—honeysuckle and roses—drifted into her nostrils as she looked at the tan gravel of the main drive.

Des would come back and be introduced to her father properly. He would. He wouldn’t abandon her.

Except it had been too long. Something must have happened.

He should have come for her by now.

Jules’s mouth pulled tight, her eyes narrowing on the main drive, willing the fates to drop him magically onto the road.

He didn’t appear.

She stifled a sigh, the certitude of Des coming for her dissipating long past when it should have.

Her shoulders pulled back, her spine straightening. If he wasn’t going to come for her, she was sure as hell going after him. She would make it right—would make him see she hadn’t chosen her father over him—she’d been trying to save him in the only way she knew how.

Jules stood up, leaving her mother’s chambers and marching through the cavernous, empty halls of Gatlong Hall and down the stairs.

Not bothering to knock, she charged into her father’s study.

He looked up from his desk, the look of derision on his face palpable. The same look that had been on his face every day, every time he so much as glanced in her direction since she’d been back. “What?”

Jules stopped directly across from him at his desk, her knuckles tapping on the front of the heavy oak wood. “I need to see her grave.”

Dismissing her, he looked down at the ledger he’d been studying. “Where is the box?”

“No. This has nothing to do with the box. This has to do with the fact that my mother died and I want to see her grave.”

An exasperated sigh, and he leaned back in his chair, his vacant blue eyes piercing her. “Fine. Go to the Isle of Wight. Visit her gravesite. Your aunt can tell you of her death. She lived there until the end.”

Her head snapped back. “Mother was not here when she died?” Her father had not spoken any words to her that weren’t of the box and its whereabouts during the last fortnight. Nothing from his lips but the box, much less any information about how her mother had died.

His top lip curved up at the corner, a sneer. “I sent her to her sister. I couldn’t watch the simpering mess she had become.”

Her jaw dropped. “But—but you loved her. I know that of you, Father. You loved her.”

He shrugged. “Love only goes so far.”

Her fingers curled into fists and her knuckles clunked onto the desk as she leaned toward him. “No, love lasts until the end. Until the last breath. That is what love does.”

He guffawed, his jowls shaking. “You’re a wretched dreamer, just like your mother. The world doesn’t work that way, child. It takes and takes and takes but never gives back. Not for anything you sacrifice for it. You think you’re different, but you’re not. It has taken from you just the same, but you don’t want to see it for what it is.”

“I see it for what I know it can be.”

“You know, now? Years on a pirate ship and you know how the world works?” He shifted on his chair, his head cocking to the side as his look skewered her deep, reading everything she’d had to become on that ship. “I would think you would know exactly what life can deliver. The cruelty of it that will take everything you hold dear. What did you do to survive, child? Think about that. What you are now. The filth that you are.”

Her right fist slammed down onto the desk. “If you lost her—it was your own cowardice that did it, Father. She loved you—loved me—and that never would have ended. Your failing is not her cross to bear.”

His mouth pulled tight, red splotches dotting his forehead. “Keep pushing me, child, and I’ll lock you into your room for the next ten years—and you’ll disappear. No one will ask on you. You have no friends. No family. No one that cares.”

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