Page 23 of The Heart of an Earl

She had her parents to go home to. A life waiting for her.

They lay back to back for long seconds, the past swallowing him whole, dragging him down into the darkness of all he’d done. Faces of dead men. Blood by his blade. The face of his wife. His unborn child.

Darkness. Down to the depths he knew too well. Darkness he could not escape.

Jules twisted in the small space between him and the wall and then flipped over, throwing her arm across his waist, holding him just the same as he’d held her over the past week.

The simplest act of compassion fracturing a deep crevice into his cold heart.

He attempted for one futile second to resist, but then his fingers moved, wrapping along the back of her hand and clasping her palm to the center of his belly.

A moment he couldn’t have anticipated.

A moment he didn’t want to let go.

{ Chapter 8 }

Jules exhaled a breath, stepping out onto the main deck of theFirehawk. The winds had mellowed, though still sent loft into the sails, the brigantine cutting through the swells smoothly for a change.

She looked up at the gently billowing sails against the night sky, the white of the canvas glowing like clouds under the moonlight.

Quiet. Too quiet.

She had left Des’s cabin for that very reason. The quiet haunted her, made her mind wander in directions she didn’t want it to go.

Turning to climb the ladder to the quarterdeck, her bare feet wrapped onto the cool wooden rungs. The air had turned chillier, not thick and suffocating as it had been in southern waters.

She’d forgotten what it felt like to not have the thick warm sea air constantly filling her pores.

She stepped onto the quarterdeck and stumbled, almost tripping over the ship’s cat. The lean tabby had darted out from the shadows and rubbed against the front of her right ankle. A chuckle to herself and Jules picked up the cat, snuggling it onto her chest as she scratched it just behind the ears where the cat’s tiger stripes started.

“You should be sleeping.” Des’s words came soft across the night air to her.

A smile came to her face and she found him on the starboard side of the ship, leaning forward with his forearms balanced on the railing. His gaze shifted from her and trained on the ink of the night bleeding into the waters.

Jules glanced at the helm and the lantern hanging beside it. The wheel had been locked into place and the deck was empty except for the one soul she held and the one soul ten strides away from her.

She moved across the deck, stopping by Des’s side, her fingertips deep into the soft fur of the cat’s neck.

Des looked to the cat and he shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone hold her like that—a hand around her belly and she usually bolts, hissing with claws bared.”

“No one?” Jules lifted the cat, looking into her face, touching her nose to the sweet tip of the cat’s nose. The cat’s face scrunched, her whiskers twitching. “I don't see why not. She's a love.”

“Or no one has tried to tempt her with half their rations before.”

Jules settled the cat back against her chest, her fingers stroking along the bumps of its spine. “She's skin and bones.”

“You’re skin and bones.”

“Still, she clearly wants the love.” Her look lifted to Des and she pondered him for a moment. “Maybe no one has approached her with just the right amount of compassion before.”

“I don’t know if that’s the case—she’s wild, that one.” Des shrugged, but then curled a hand forward and scratched the cat under its chin. “She doesn’t even let Wes pick her up, and it’s his belly that she sleeps curled up on.”

“Wes—he’s the big one if I remember—bigger than you?”

Des’s lips pulled to the side, slighted. “Marginally bigger than me.”

Jules stifled a chuckle. “He was the other one I had chosen.”

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