Page 40 of The Heart of an Earl

He could spend day after day watching the warm glow of the sun stream into his cabin in the evening and make the green in her blue eyes sparkle. Staring at the delicate lines of her face, the curves of her body—flesh was on her bones again, real flesh that he could hold onto, press his fingers into, set his mouth upon. He could spend an eternity reveling in the smile that would light up her face, set the very air about her to mirth when she laughed, her spirit filling his room—a hundred times larger than her slight build.

Yet she was still rough from her years on the pirate ship—feral actions or words slipping into odd moments. Asking him to pass the grog. The turtle bones she kept in her pocket for good luck that would poke his legs when she was pressed against him. Sea shanties she would hum to herself when she was pondering something. She would catch herself time and again—she was too intelligent not to recognize when she slipped into sailor’s manners. Yet she had managed to shift herself back into the woman she was before being taken—back into the lady she was once meant to be. Mostly.

Though her tattered clothing and too large coat still left much to be desired in the way of covering her properly.

Captain Folback slipping her the fork, spoon and knife had been a tremendous help. It had taken several meals before she could control her pace enough to eat bite by bite with the fork. But just holding the utensils in her hands had switched something in her brain, and she’d begun to hold herself differently—with a straighter spine.

If it wasn’t for the dark depths of her eyes, the sadness flashing in them when she thought he wasn’t looking, he would be convinced she’d never left the comfort of her father’s estate.

For all she believed she was cursed, not one unfortunate happenstance had befallen her since she’d told him about the Box of Draupnir. Life had been so calm, in fact, that he’d begun to think she had started to waver in her belief of the curse that hung over her head.

Beside his own best efforts, he’d begun to think of his own fortunes changing, the curse haunting him finally lifting.

Jules glanced up at him, her brow furrowing. “Promise me we’ll be fine. Or maybe we should stay on the ship?”

“Forever?”

She shrugged.

He gave her a half smile. “We’ll be fine.”

She nodded, her unconvinced gaze shifting out to the dock and the busy port beyond it. “I haven’t stood on land in six years, Des. Six years. Redthorn never once let me come ashore.”

He slipped an arm about her lower back, wrapping his hand along her waist and tucking her into his side. “You’ll be fine, Jules. We will be fine. Just hold onto my hand as long as you need to. The world will settle, your legs will work, life will move on. Trust in that and ignore the first steps if they wobble.”

A hesitant smile came to her full lips. “Aye. Trust in that. Trust in you. That, I think I can do.”

She shifted her feet alongside him and the hard corner of a small box jabbed into his thigh from deep under the ragged strips of the peach skirt she continued to wear.

She’d disappeared from his cabin early this morning before they’d made it into port. Retrieving the box from wherever she’d hidden it, he’d presumed.

He didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell.

The box being discovered by any of the crew at this juncture would be disastrous for the trust Captain Folback put in him.

Her hip jerked away from his thigh when she realized the box in her pocket was wedged between them. The worn peach muslin of her skirt floated, jerking in the wind as she attempted to put space between them.

The damn skirt. An atrocious remnant of the past, but she’d refused to give it up and walk about solely in the boy trousers. Stubborn.

But he also admired that about her.

To a point.

Stopping at a ready-made dress shop was his first order of business. She’d gone too long without proper clothes.

Crewmates streamed past him, descending on the hanging ladder to the rowboat below. Des squinted, looking at the lane that led to the dock. A coach had just pulled up and stopped—hopefully it was the one he’d sent Murray to hire, as he’d been one of the first men off theFirehawkwith the captain.

Grabbing Jules’s hand, Des moved to the ladder. “Off to land we go.”

{ Chapter 13 }

An hour later Des was standing in a women’s shop located well into the respectable area of Plymouth, waiting for Jules and the shop girl to emerge from the back room of the shop.

He was out of place.

And not just because he was in a women’s shop, surrounded by muslin and silk and lace, but because the fine clothes surrounding him accentuated the fact that his own clothing was well past its useful life. Rumpled and worn, his jacket had long since gone threadbare at the elbows. He hadn’t bothered with new clothes in years.

Something he would have to rectify after he returned Jules to her home in Gloucestershire.

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