Page 91 of The Heart of an Earl

“No. I fear if we do that the curse will never leave us.” Her bottom lip pulled under her top teeth, worrying. “But it cannot be in our lives anymore. Not in our possession. This—us together—I am not willing to risk the curse wreaking more havoc on our lives. We just lost five years to the blasted thing. We cannot just destroy it or keep it hidden or we’ll always be saddled with it.” Her fingers tapped on his chest. “We need to impart the box to someone evil—someone that deserves the curse of it.”

Des’s chest lifted against her hands in a heavy sigh. “Aye, as much as I hate to admit to the curse of it, I’ve seen too much to not believe. Getting rid of it would ease my mind.”

“Where did you hide it? Where do we need to go to get it?”

“Gatlong Hall.”

Her eyes went wide as her forehead crinkled. “My father’s estate? What? Why?”

The corners of Des’s eyes cringed. “I hid it with your grave. In a metal box, buried next to your headstone. It was the only place I could think of after Captain Folback died.”

Her mouth pulled into a thin line. “Then we need to go retrieve it.”

He nodded, his right hand lifting to play with the curls of her hair that had fallen from her upsweep. A streak of darkness swept across his face as he stared at her hair entwined with her his finger. “I love you, Jules. But…”

“But what?”

He met her gaze, his voice near to cracking. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. Loving you. Not again.”

“You’re the strongest man I know, Des.”

He shook his head. “Not when it comes to you.”

She lifted her hands to his neck, pulling herself closer to him. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Terror flashed across his face and he opened his mouth, his voice rough. “It already did. You died.”

She stared at him, at the pain that still haunted his eyes and her voice cracked. “Three blows and you will never be the same?”

A grim line pulled back his lips. “Aye.”

Her cheek lifted in a half smile, even though she knew exactly what he spoke of. The pain of losing him. The pain that refused to yield. That sucked the very life from her marrow. She’d lived through it, just the same as him. But that was the point. She’d survived it. He had as well.

Her fingers curled up along his neck. “So you have nothing to fear. You’ve already lived through it.”

Both of his hands went to the back of her head, burying into her hair. “You don’t understand, Jules. I just found you, I just got you back. And when I’m not with the women I love, they tend to die on me. I cannot live through that again.”

Her half smile turned into a full smile. “Then we’d better avoid that third blow. We’d better stay together.”

“You think it is that easy?” His hazel eyes searched her face, searched her soul. “Dare I say that you have found hope, Jules?”

She shrugged. “Quite possibly. It had deserted me for a long time, but in the last twelve hours I appear to have stumbled upon it again. Death or not, I would never sacrifice a minute of the time I spent with you if it would have lessened the pain of losing you. Never. And that is where my hope lies. Us together. I will hold onto that for as long as fate has decided to grant me it.”

He pulled her to him, the smallest smile breaking through on his lips. “I think I have just managed to stumble upon my own hope as well. Or at least a fool’s prayer.”

{ Chapter 27 }

Des sent the shovel into the ground beside the center of the granite obelisk grave marker, the tip digging through the hard dirt with ease under the moonlight.

They’d waited until deep into the night. The better to avoid any of the staff at Gatlong Hall. The better to avoid her father.

Des swallowed hard, his look avoiding Jules’s name carved into the heavy stone by his right hand. He’d stared at the tall stone twice in his life—the first time when her father had brought him to it, the second time when he’d buried the box.

Both times he’d vomited, his body unable to accept the fact that she was dead. He’d thought the second time when he’d brought the box to be buried, visiting her grave would be salve on the bitter, shattered shards of his heart. It had done nothing of the kind—only sending him into a dark whisky-fueled fortnight that he didn’t remember, and wasn’t about to escape except for Roe finding him and dragging him back onto theFirehawk.

Des shook his head. “I cannot believe your father has left this in place knowing you are alive.”

Stripping off her kidskin gloves, Jules lifted her hand, her bare fingers going to the pointed tip of the stone obelisk.

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