Page 69 of The Heart of an Earl

She met her father’s steely gaze and her jaw flexed back and forth. Of course he wanted the damn box. Of course that was the only reason he’d welcomed Des into Gatlong Hall. But this would be worth it. This would be worth anything. “I’ll give you the box.”

“It’s about bloody time, child.” He crossed his arms along his chest, the smoke of the cheroot swirling up along his face.

She shook her head. “But only if you let me go. I’ll give you the box—if you give me free rein to go to him.” Her look pinned him. For all she believed that he’d held up his end of the bargain, she didn’t trust him to not interfere in her life further. The box was the only bargaining chip she had and she was damn well going to use it.

“You never bother us again, Father. You never threaten Des again. You give me your word on that and the box is yours.”

Her father nodded. “Deal. But we get the box first.”

Two hours later, Jules flexed her hands, attempting to keep blood flowing into her cold fingers as she searched the trees across from the sheep field. The vantage point from atop her horse was as she remembered and her father waited on his steed behind her.

She looked over her shoulder across the road. Three capstones in from the left on the stone-stacked wall. Her look swung back to the woods. An oak. A pine tree. Another dormant oak with an odd bulge in the shape of a troll nose with a wide knot directly above it.

There.

She nudged the horse six strides back into the thick of the woods.

There it was. Just above the top of her head, an empty hollow in an oak.

She glanced at her father. “Hold my horse steady.”

She positioned her horse next to the oak and her father maneuvered his mount to the front of it and grabbed the bridle. Jules lifted herself up on the stirrup of her sidesaddle. The reins wrapped around her left hand, she twisted and shifted to balance her shins on the saddle, facing the tree.

She reached up, her hand going into the cavity of the tree.

Nothing.

Air.

Her hand slapped around. Bark. Nut shavings.

Nothing else.

She tore off her glove, thrusting her hand back into the hole, her fingers frenzied, running along the interior of the hollow.

No box. No dagger that Des had stuck through the cloth that they’d wrapped the box with, then jabbed into the wood so rodents couldn’t drag it about.

No blade. No box. No cloth.

Her hand still searching, she looked about her, her eyes frantic on each tree. Maybe she had the wrong tree. Maybe—

But there. Her fingers landed on a gash in the wood in the back of the hole.

A gash made by a blade. A blade now gone.

Her hand slipped out of the hollow, curling onto the wool cloak lapped over her chest. “It’s not there.”

She sank onto her calves and slowly turned, her legs slipping along the sidesaddle.

“What? No.” Her father dropped the bridle and shoved his horse between hers and the tree.

“You’re mistaken, girl. It has to be there.” He pushed himself up on his stirrups, his weight against the tree as he looked into the hole, his hand diving in, rolling around the cavity.

A growl bubbled up from his chest, turning into a roar. “Bloody cutthroat. I knew it the moment I saw him.”

“No. No.” Jules gasped a breath, thinking, trying to imagine a scenario where Des would need to take the box. There had to be an explanation. There had to be. “No—there must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake, Julianna.” The fury of her father’s booming voice shot at her. “You were taken in by a scoundrel—just as I said, just as I saw him for what he was, as God is my witness.”

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