Page 20 of The Heart of an Earl

“Exactly—and they’ll latch onto that certainty if you never face them again—or if you wait too long. You need to do this, Jules. You say you’re not civil—well, this is the way back to it.”

She shook her head, her body pulling away as hard as she could against his strength.

“Stop, Jules. Just stop.”

She stilled.

He pinned her with his stare. “You are around me, are you not?”

“What?”

“You’re around me, you talk to me, you listen to me, and you are as normal as they come. You have quirks, yes—you tear into your food with your hands like a wild animal, you slip in and out of a sailor’s accent, your edges are rough—but you are not mad, Jules.” His head shook. “You’re a survivor. You are not given up for the damned and discarded—I won’t give you up for that.”

Her eyes closed to him. To what he was asking of her.

“But it starts with a step. One step.” His hold around her wrist tightened. “I can drag you into that step—and I will drag you into it, make no mistake.”

He released her wrist. “But it’s better if you take the step on your own, Jules. One step.”

Her forehead fell forward, her chin dropping to her chest, all air in her lungs leaving her. She shook her head. “I’m mortified. Humiliated. I didn’t remember that this feeling existed. Not until just now.”

“Then you’ve already taken the first step.”

Her eyelids cracked open and her look lifted to him.

He nodded. “Now take ten more.” He held out his palm to her.

She drew a breath. Then another, deeper.

She set her fingers onto his palm.

One step. Two.

Her chin lifted and she walked past him out the door.

Her grip on his hand didn’t break. If anything, it got tighter.

A buoy in the storm.

She would need that during the next few weeks.

{ Chapter 7 }

Des stepped into his quarters.

For the first time in six days—since landing on theFirehawk—Jules wasn’t crying when he entered the cabin deep into the night.

Each of the previous evenings, he would come into the cabin late after taking the first night shift at the helm. Every night he had been greeted by tears. Not always the deep, earth-shattering sobs that sometimes shook the whole bed. Sometimes just tears streaming down her face. Quivered breaths.

Not tonight.

Facing the window as always, she was on her side, silent, her torso lifting and lowering with each deep breath. Sleep. Truly calm sleep, no hiccupped breaths sending her body to flip and flop.

It helped that she had started to interact with his crewmates on board. After her disastrous cackle at Freddy when he fell from the rigging, she had apologized profusely to him, doing what little she could to comfort him and his cracked shoulder. And then she had apologized to the crew—one by one, and it had taken her two days, her humiliated steps dragging her about the ship. Days, but she had now met everyone on board.

She’d even coaxed a smile out of a few of the sailors.

Des had been with her every minute of those days and he’d found it peculiar how her accent would change depending on who she talked to. She parroted what was in front of her. A common sailor’s accent. A cockney accent. So very different from the drawing room English she used with him. She’d mastered how to talk to sailors, how to make them listen to her without being off-putting because of her gender.

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