Page 36 of The Heart of an Earl

Her fingers found her threadbare linen shirt on the bed and she slipped it on, the bottom hem of it brushing against her thighs. She turned from him and picked up the wet rag from the floor, then shuffled over to the basin, rinsing the cloth as Des pulled on his trousers.

“Yet this in no way sated that pull,” he said from behind her. “It satisfied it for a moment, but the second you just stood up and away from me, it’s back.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, a grin lifting the side of her face. “I’m going to finish cleaning your cuts. Pull or no pull.”

“Jules, what is that?” Des’s brow went wrinkled, his stare on the back of her left thigh. His finger lifted, pointing to her leg. “You said Redthorn never hurt you.”

The instant fury in his hazel eyes sent a chill down her spine—like he wanted to go back and find theRed Dragonand rip Redthorn’s dead body limb from limb.

She glanced down at the rear of her leg, knowing she’d see the long ragged scar that ran across the back of her thigh. Her veins went to ice at the memory. “It wasn’t Redthorn. It was one of the crew.”

“What happened?”

“It was early on.” She squeezed the excess water from the cloth and then turned back to him, her fingers twisting the rag. “The man had attacked me, dragged me down to the hold, his dirty hand across my mouth.” Her face went dark. “I stopped him.”

Des’s head tilted forward, his eyes upturned as he studied her. “You killed him?”

Her head shook ever so slightly. “No, but that would have been kinder. I managed to get to the blade on my calf that Redthorn insisted I keep strapped on me at all times. I sank the knife into the man’s back. It was enough to scramble away, but then he sliced the back of my leg with his dagger. His scream, my screams of pain and Redthorn was there in an instant.”

The weight of the moment long ago fell upon her and her chin dropped toward her chest. “I should have killed him, for what Redthorn did to him. I had to watch, the entire crew had to watch.” She shrugged, heaving a sigh as her voice dipped to a whisper. “Maybe that’s when I lost my humanity. Watching his body being ripped apart like that. I wanted the man dead for what he was about to do to me, but that—that went beyond all sanity. Redthorn kept him alive, tortured him for a day. No wind in the sails. The ship bobbing in the swells. The man’s screams in our ears. None of us were allowed to leave the deck.”

She shuddered, sucking in a garbled breath, and glanced up at Des. “It was every nightmare, the very kiss of hell, rained down upon that man. Redthorn made him an example. And not a man on the crew ever lifted a finger to me after that.”

“Did you ever have to kill anyone?”

Her eyes closed for a long breath, then she shook her head, looking to him. “Not directly—but so many of the deaths on theRed Dragonstill weigh upon me.” Her fingers twisted along the wash cloth in her hand, her knuckles turning white. “There were ones that I did not fight for. Did not know how to help as they were tossed overboard, still alive, still breathing, still trying to stay alive. I did nothing to stop it, time and again. Those are the deaths that haunt me, for how brutal many of the men were—some were not. Some had glimmers of kindness—some had just lost their way at some point in their lives. Some were ones that should have been saved—if only I had known what to do to help them—if I had been brave enough to stand against Redthorn. But I wasn’t.”

Silent seconds passed as Des’s eyes darkened, the pain she was feeling deep in her chest reflected in the creases about his eyes. His voice, soft, filled the void hanging between them. “The deaths I’ve caused—justified or not—sit upon me just as those sit upon you.”

“They do?”

“Where you lose part of your soul. The part that made you whole…good. Yet you would still do anything for your own survival. Anything. So you trade it away, that part of you. You do that and it turns you into something you can’t recognize, can’t identify—not the person you once were, not the person you’ll ever be again. You lose what you were. A death.”

She nodded, staring at him. The little piece of her soul that had been missing for the last six years, crystalized in just a few words.

Des returned the nod and with a sigh turned around, settling himself backwards on the chair again so his bloody back was to her.

She stepped forward, silently drawing the cloth across the next line of blood. Gentle, careful. The strokes wanting to take the pain of the past from him just as he wanted to do for her.

Pain neither one of them would ever escape. No matter how she washed away the blood.

Des cleared his throat. “We do have something else we need to talk about.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “What?” She set the wet cloth onto the second lowest cut.

“The box.”

Her hand stopped mid-swipe. “I cannot.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “So you admit you brought one aboard?”

She looked down at his bare back, at the lines of long-healed scars. Why wouldn’t he let this be?

She nodded.

“Why can’t you tell me about it?”

Her look lifted to him, her voice haunted. “You’re already cursed, Des. You said it yourself.”

---