The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1)

by K. J. Jackson

  His hand moved out, clutching the top of her bare knee, his thumb dipping to the inside of her thigh. “You don’t need leverage, Jules. All you need is me. I swore I would get you home and I intend to keep that oath.”

  “I know.” She leaned forward, her hand landing on the side of his cheek. “And you don’t know how much that means to me—your surety of how easy it will be to get me home. But anything can happen on a ship at sea—I know that well. So I need this. Need it for my own peace of mind. In case something happens to you.”

  He bristled. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”

  A teasing smile came to her face. “You just coupled with a cursed woman. I’ll not tempt the fates any more than that. Please just leave it be, Des. The box is on the ship, well hidden. That is all you need know.”

  His gaze shifted to the right, looking out at the sea. Several heartbeats passed before he looked back to her.

  “Aye. That is all I need to know.”

  { Chapter 12 }

  Jules squinted as she leaned forward on the forecastle deck railing, attempting to bring back into focus the tip of land she was positive she’d just seen.

  Land.

  True land, her home. Her home waiting for her. Her feet on floors that didn’t constantly move beneath her.

  She squinted harder.

  “Don’t expect the land to be all that ye hope it to be, child.” Captain Folback’s gravelly voice cut into her ears, jarring her attention to her left.

  He stepped along the railing, his red coat catching the few rays of sunlight and setting the color to sparkle, almost as if gold thread had been woven through the fibers. He wasn’t as tall as Des, but she still had to crane her neck to look at his face, his red-brown beard full across his chin, his weathered brown eyes intent on her.

  She had to blink twice. The captain had never spoken a word directly to her—only to Des in front of her.

  A quick glance back to the far-off land she was determined to spot and her full attention shifted to him. “It won’t?”

  He shook his head, his finger going to stroke his long beard. “You survived much, there is no doubt. But the land will disappoint, eventually. It always does. And ye’ll be wanting to be back on the sea.”

  She turned to him, her right hand gripping onto the railing. “Forgive my opposition, but I disagree. I don’t think I’ll ever look at the sea again, much less willingly step foot onto a ship.”

  He chuckled, a shrug lifting the wide berth of his shoulders. “Ye are an ornery one. But life won’t be what ye hope it to be. It never is. And it’s best to prepare yerself for that eventuality.”

  Her eyebrows lifted at him. “What do you know about it?”

  “Des mentioned to me who yer father is. And living on a pirate ship for six years is a long fall into the derelicts for a highborn lady such as yerself.”

  Panicked, Jules glanced around, looking for ears that may have overheard what he’d just said. Her voice went low. “Des told you who I am?”

  Captain Folback set a thick, ruddy hand on the railing with a nod. “He mentioned it to me, and me alone. It is not common knowledge—not knowledge to anyone but Des and me.”

  Her eyes closed and she drew a deep breath. Of course Des wouldn’t betray her confidence like that. She looked at the captain. “Did you know that fact before or after you made me shine Bart’s boots?”

  “Before.”

  She nodded to herself. “You would have tossed me overboard without that knowledge, wouldn’t you have?”

  His lips pursed for a quick second. “I would have considered the option of the briny deep with more viability. Ye know as well as I, lass, that a ship doesn’t run without an iron fist atop it.”

  “Aye.” Jules drew in a deep breath. Of course she knew it. Knew it too well. She should have known the worrier in Des would have made him tell Captain Folback who she was. Anything to keep her safe. All eventualities covered.

  Her look centered on Folback, studying his face. There was kindness in it, kindness she hadn’t seen before—not that she’d ever searched for it.

  She inclined her head to him. “Then I thank you for that. And for resting easy on the whip to Des’s back.”

  His left eyebrow lifted up. “I don’t rest easy on any sailor of mine.” A twinkle flashed across his eyes and he looked down, reaching into an inner coat pocket and pulling free a grey cloth wrapped around something. “I’m actually here to deliver this.” He flipped back the grey cloth and the delicate silver tips of a fork, a knife and a spoon flashed in the sunlight.

  Her forehead scrunched. “Why?”

  “Ye need to learn to eat proper like again.” His head nudged toward the far-off line she’d been trying to spot. “We still have a few days before we reach port and ye need to learn to eat like a lady again—before ye set foot into yer father’s home. I’ve seen ye at a plate and it ain’t a pretty sight. They won’t take kindly to a lass that eats with her fingers. I know that much about yer lot.”

  Her words tongue-tied, she took the fine silverware from his grip and then managed to find her voice. “Thank you—it is most kind of you.”

  He inclined his head and winked at her. “It is my pleasure, Lady Julianna. It was worth your feet on my ship to see Des’s eyes alive for the first time.”

  “Alive?”

  Captain Folback nodded. “He’s been an empty soul since I’ve known the man. Six years of his vacant eyes. He’s the best of men—no one I would rather have at my back in a fight. But six years of lifeless eyes looking at ye is a tad much.”

  A crooked smile lifted her lips as she chuckled. “I can imagine. Thank you for not tossing me into the drink.”

  He shrugged. “I done it for Des. Never met a man hiding from life as hard as he has. Whatever he sees in ye, he’s starting to reconsider that choice. And he deserves that. Deserves a life.”

  Her head tilted to the side. “Thank you. I think so as well.”

  Captain Folback dipped his head to her, bowing slightly. He turned away, then stopped, looking back at her. “Oh, and ye might be privy to the knowledge that I’ll be cutting Bart from the ship’s fortunes after this voyage. A man like that has no business on a ship of mine.”

  Her eyes went wide and all she could do was offer him a single nod.

  He moved away, disappearing onto the main deck of the ship.

  Jules stood frozen in place, clutching the silverware in front of her belly.

  An apology, of sorts.

  Or what would constitute one from a captain like Folback.

  Des had said Captain Folback was a good man and she knew too well what it took to keep order on a ship.

  That there were still people like Captain Folback in the world—fair—kind. The mere idea of it took her aback.

  Maybe there was hope to be had.

  As long as the captain was wrong about what awaited her on land.

  ~~~

  Des looked down at Jules as she set Patches to the deck, her fingers sliding along the cat’s back and tail as it scurried off. She stood straight as he shifted the knapsack across his back.

  Her hands went to the railing, gripping it tightly, her white knuckles bright in the spotty morning sun. Trepidation on her face, she worried her lower lip, the pink of it slipping in and out of the grip under her teeth.

  A quick scramble down the ladder to the approaching skiff, a five-minute oar ride to the dock, and she would be on English soil again.

  He would be on English soil again.

  The pit of his stomach churned.

  He’d been in English ports before, but he’d never ventured out of the seaside towns. Never took a step into the heart of England. Towards the towns and roads and lands that were once his home.

  But for Jules…for Jules he’d do it. He’d sworn he would get her home and he meant to see that oath through.

  Beyond that task, he’d refused to think any further on the matter.

  He gave himself a slight shake, hi
s look recentering on Jules.

  Even with worry filling her brow, she was beautiful. Something he’d come to appreciate during the last weeks at sail as they approached England, and he’d been inordinately pleased when the winds slowed and they’d had to spend a few extra days at sea.

  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 the Firehawk with 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.

  He would get clothes. And he would speak with her father. Court her properly. She deserved that after everything life had stolen from her. After what little he could offer her on the Firehawk.

  She deserved balls and gowns and jewels and heated kisses under torches in a garden.

  Everything she’d missed. Everything he wanted to give her.

  A courtship, but the quickest one possible as he didn’t know how long he could go without her in his bed. Without her body under his hands.

  Not that he could tell her any of this yet. It was too much.

  Bringing her home was the first order of business. And the rest…the rest would come. He just had to be patient.

  She hadn’t breathed a word about the future. Never asked him for anything beyond the very minutes they were together. A remnant, he was sure, from her life on the Red Dragon. Living for survival meant living for the moment. And she had spent too many years surviving.

  But he didn’t want to give her up. His body didn’t want to give her up.

  She never spoke about what would happen now that they were back on English soil, but it was all he’d been thinking about for the last five days.

  What he was willing to give up for her. The secrets he could no longer keep.

  “This appears to be the best fit on hand.” Jules’s face ashen, she walked past the curtain the shop girl had pulled aside with both of her hands clutched flat to her belly, her cheeks scrunched upward.

  Wobbling, Jules went directly to the counter along the side of the shop where she could lean against the polished wood. She still couldn’t walk straight. His own legs had only just solidified to the earth moments ago.

  His look riveted on her, Des froze in place.

  She’d gone from a pirate bride to a lady riding along Rotten Row in Hyde Park. The wool carriage dress, blue as the deepest waters of the Caribbean, was trimmed along the edges and at a slant across the front of the dress with black velvet edging. The matching blue pelisse draped open and a white lace collar set against her neck, making her sun-kissed skin look even darker. The tan of her skin was far from the fashion, but it set a glow about her face he’d always found endearing.

  The whole of the outfit fit her body perfectly, the swell of her breasts mounding up enticingly from the cut of fine lace across her bosom. Elegant and enticing at the same time.

  The smooth fall of the wool hiccupped on her left thigh where a small lump poked outward along the folds of the skirts. Another deep pocket to hold the box.

  With no pins to hold her hair, she had gone with one thick braid along the back of her head. The shorter auburn strands about her face accentuated the crinkle of hesitancy around the edges of her blue-green eyes as she looked at him. “But I fear it is much, much too expensive, Des. The dress
and then the pelisse that accompanies it for warmth. But Lucy has assured me it will do for travelling and I will not be an embarrassment arriving at Gatlong House as it is apparently of the latest fashion—fashion I know nothing about.”

  “Nor I.” Des shrugged without blinking, his look trained hard on her. “But it is perfect for you. It sparks to life the blue in your eyes.”

  “I cannot ask you—”

  “Do not refuse the clothes, Jules.”

  “But Des.” She glanced over her shoulder at the shop girl staring at the assortment of bonnets and caps lining the back wall of the shop, then took several steps forward to him, her voice low. “The cost—it is too much, but I am sure my father will be able to repay you.”

  Des leaned toward Jules, his own voice dipping to just above a whisper as he set his hand under her elbow to balance her. “You never asked, and I never told you, but I am a wealthy man. The trade of the Firehawk has been overly generous, and in all honesty, I’ve had nothing to spend the riches on through the years, so this is a delight.”

  Her blue-green eyes looked up at him, uncertain. “Des—”

  “Jules.”

  “This is the perfect bonnet for the carriage dress.” The shop girl walked toward them, cradling a simple black bonnet with wide blue trim in front of her. “You said you would be travelling, so it has a low profile, simple lines without too much fuss—just as the dress.”

  Jules looked to the shop girl. “It—”

  “It is perfect, as you said, miss.” Des stepped to the side of Jules, setting his hand on the small of her back. “We will take it as well.”

  “Excellent, sir.” The shop girl smiled at Des with a bob of her head, then handed the bonnet to Jules and scurried behind the counter to write the bill of sale.

  Her fingers going reluctantly to the ribbons of the bonnet, fingering the fine satin, Jules set it on her head, tucking the loose strands of her auburn hair about her face up into the confines of the hat as Des paid.

  With Jules’s hand solidly in the crook of his elbow to keep her feet steady, he walked out of the shop and a break in the clouds sent a ray of sunlight directly into Des’s eyes. Jules lifted her hand, blocking the sun. The brim of the hat did nothing to hide the harsh sunlight from her eyes.