Page 25 of The Heart of an Earl

He nodded and his fingers lifted, touching a rogue strand that had curled along her right cheek. “Yet you cut some of it, here around your face.”

Her hand went up to touch the lock and she tucked it behind her ear. It fell loose almost instantly, cut too short. “I did. How did you notice?”

His hazel eyes swept about her head, a curious quirk to his mouth. “I’ve been staring at those braids about your face for two weeks now. I know how long they are. Why did you cut it?”

Her lips drew inward, the tips of her front teeth biting hard onto her skin as her look flew out to the darkness of the sea. The tiniest bit of moonlight flickered on far-off crests of swells. Her chin dropped, her look going to her hands on the railing. “For him. For the death of him.”

The words so soft, she could barely hear her own voice.

Yet it was loud enough.

Des went deathly still, his voice laced with barely controlled malice. “Redthorn?”

She nodded, her eyes still downcast. “Aye. It was his way. For as cruel as he was, for all those he sent to the otherworld—he had an odd heart. For every death of a crewman, he’d lose a braid. He loved each of them when he wasn’t being cruel to them. He was always crazy—a complicated paradox like that. More so as the years went on and his obsession grew.”

“Obsession?”

Damn her mouth.

Jules shrugged and reached up to touch the ends of the hair determined to curl about her cheeks. “I owed this to him.”

“He deserved that?” The twinge of hostility was now unmistakable in Des’s rumbling voice.

She looked to her right, studying Des. Studying the hard set of his jaw. Studying the twitch of the vein just above his left eye. Anger. Tightly held anger.

But that was nothing new.

Everyone had always hated her husband. She couldn’t fault Des’s reaction. Redthorn deserved every ounce of hate directed at him.

Jules looked away, a heavy sigh leaving her lips as she stared at the faintest line across the horizon where the sky met the sea.

“He—Redthorn—he loved me. As much as a ruthless man like that can love.” Her head shook slightly. “For all his brutality. For all the people he killed. He never once lifted a finger against me.”

“He never—”

“No.” Her eyes closed for a long breath, then opened, locked on the night sky. “It’s hard to explain it—even harder to fathom it. But he never struck me. Never caused me any physical pain. It took me six months to understand that. A year to trust it. He was never going to hurt me. Yes, he enjoyed threatening me—at least in those first months—but I never received the slightest scratch from him. And he ensured none of his men would touch me.”

“So you married the bastard because he managed to keep the cut of his rings away from your face?”

Her look went to him, her glare slicing him through. “I don’t know what would have happened if I had refused to marry him. I wasn’t about to take that chance. It was eighteen months after I had boarded theRed Dragon. Eighteen months and then I married him. I wanted to survive at any cost and I didn’t know how much longer it would be before I fell out of his favor.”

Des seethed in a breath, tethering his fury. “Aye. Of course. My apologies. You did what you had to in order to survive. I understand that.”

“Thank you.” The words stiff from her mouth, she watched the cut of the waves as they met the side of the ship.

Silence fell on them, heavy for long minutes.

“Tell me about the box, Jules.”

Her gaze didn’t leave the water. “Why do you insist that there is a box?”

“Because there is.”

“Whatever you think you saw, Des, you were mistaken.” She looked to him, her eyes meeting his straight on. “There is no box. Just me and me alone that came off that ship.”

He nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly at her. “As you say.”

“I do.”

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