Page 22 of The Heart of an Earl

But he wasn’t about to use her like that. No matter how insistent his cock had decided to be.

Drawing a deep breath to mask how he shifted his hips backward, he hoped she’d fallen back asleep immediately or was on her way there before she noticed the iron rod jutting into her back.

“Tell me a story.”

He silently chuckled into her braids that had fallen onto the pillow and curled under his cheek. Not asleep.

He cleared his throat. “A story?”

“Tell me how you came to be on this ship. Why you aren’t back in England—you were on your way there when thePrimrosewas attacked.”

“I was. But after the letter of my wife’s death was handed to me on thePrimrose, I didn’t care. Didn’t care to return to England. Didn’t care about anything. I’d spent seven years before that moment with one goal in mind. To get back to my wife and child. I didn’t care who I hurt in those years, didn’t care who suffered. The only thing I obsessed upon was getting back to my family.”

“Why were you away from them for so many years?”

“I was pressed onto an American warship. I was so young—eighteen when Corentine and I left for the East Indies to look into investments my father had purchased there before his death. We were both so very young.”

“And it did not go as planned?”

“No, it did not. We discovered Corentine was with child just before we reached the East Indies, so once the ship made port, she immediately boarded a ship for home. Neither of us wanted her to have the child anywhere but in England. I was to follow her back in two months’ time. But that never happened.”

“Where did they steal you from?”

“An African Gold Coast port. In a piss small tavern with a few beds by the waterfront. I was changing ships and so eager to get on the schooner bound for England that I stayed as close as I could to the docks. I was naïve. Naïve to a fault. They stole me in the middle of the night—knocking me unconscious from my bed—and I awoke in the middle of the sea. No chance to escape.”

“Redthorn brought far too many men aboard the ship in that way—those were the most unfortunate souls—they rarely stood a chance on theRed Dragon. Most were dead in two months’ time.” A shiver ran down through her body. “How did you manage to survive?”

“I was stronger than most, I guess. But I also didn’t care what I had to do—I didn’t care who I had to kill. Who I had to bow to. I didn’t care where my loyalties needed to lie. I only cared about one thing—getting home. Anything asked of me, I did it for the very goal of getting back to my wife.”

“Your instinct to survive overcame anything?”

“Aye—that it did.” He drew in a deep breath and exhaled it in a long sigh. “And because of it my sins during that time were too numerous to count. The lives I took. The pain I inflicted on others. It was a bloody, bitter time. I was not a good man. And I have paid and paid for those sins.”

Jules’s voice went low and soft. “Your wife and child dying?”

“Yes. And I have been attempting to atone for those sins ever since. To lift the curse that I have inflicted upon myself. But I have yet to do it.”

“When will you know it’s been lifted?”

“When I can go back to England and know that I belong there again. The few times I’ve gotten off the ship and set foot onto English soil, I’ve never made it past two streets from the docks before needing to turn and escape back onto the sea.” His head tilted back along the pillow, his look on the thin crescent of the moon. “Until then, this is where I stay. I stumbled onto theFirehawkunder Captain Folback’s encouragement. He saved my life in a treacherous tavern after we got thePrimroseback to port. I was looking to die and he was looking for strong sailors without a care for life or limb.”

“Is that how most of the men ended up on theFirehawk? Recruited by Captain Folback at their lowest?”

“I imagine, yes, that is true.”

She gave a slight nod, her head rustling the pillow. “That makes so much sense now. I wondered on it as you made me…meet each of the crew. There is such a mix of men, and most of them have shadows in their eyes—shadows of the past that haunt them. Like you. And you all fight like that—not afraid of death.”

Des paused, heaving a sigh. “Most of the men are like me. All for their own reasons. Which makes us a formidable force when we are in lockstep. It’s why I figured this was as good of a place as any for penance of my past. Captain Folback is a good man. Honorable. All of us are atoning for one sin or another, and to help with that we take down ships that need to be taken down for the harm they do.”

“Like theRed Dragon.”

“Exactly like theRed Dragon.”

She heaved a sigh, her body lifting his arm that sat draped over her side. “It is not easy being cursed.”

“No, no, it is not.” The weight of the past heavy upon him, crushing his lungs, Des drew his arm away from her body and flipped over onto his other side, setting his back to her.

What he was, she should have no part of.

---