She nodded to herself, her shoulders curling as her chin settled onto the pillow. The long faded scent of her mother—honeysuckle and roses—drifted into her nostrils as she looked at the tan gravel of the main drive.
Des would come back and be introduced to her father properly. He would. He wouldn’t abandon her.
Except it had been too long. Something must have happened.
He should have come for her by now.
Jules’s mouth pulled tight, her eyes narrowing on the main drive, willing the fates to drop him magically onto the road.
He didn’t appear.
She stifled a sigh, the certitude of Des coming for her dissipating long past when it should have.
Her shoulders pulled back, her spine straightening. If he wasn’t going to come for her, she was sure as hell going after him. She would make it right—would make him see she hadn’t chosen her father over him—she’d been trying to save him in the only way she knew how.
Jules stood up, leaving her mother’s chambers and marching through the cavernous, empty halls of Gatlong Hall and down the stairs.
Not bothering to knock, she charged into her father’s study.
He looked up from his desk, the look of derision on his face palpable. The same look that had been on his face every day, every time he so much as glanced in her direction since she’d been back. “What?”
Jules stopped directly across from him at his desk, her knuckles tapping on the front of the heavy oak wood. “I need to see her grave.”
Dismissing her, he looked down at the ledger he’d been studying. “Where is the box?”
“No. This has nothing to do with the box. This has to do with the fact that my mother died and I want to see her grave.”
An exasperated sigh, and he leaned back in his chair, his vacant blue eyes piercing her. “Fine. Go to the Isle of Wight. Visit her gravesite. Your aunt can tell you of her death. She lived there until the end.”
Her head snapped back. “Mother was not here when she died?” Her father had not spoken any words to her that weren’t of the box and its whereabouts during the last fortnight. Nothing from his lips but the box, much less any information about how her mother had died.
His top lip curved up at the corner, a sneer. “I sent her to her sister. I couldn’t watch the simpering mess she had become.”
Her jaw dropped. “But—but you loved her. I know that of you, Father. You loved her.”
He shrugged. “Love only goes so far.”
Her fingers curled into fists and her knuckles clunked onto the desk as she leaned toward him. “No, love lasts until the end. Until the last breath. That is what love does.”
He guffawed, his jowls shaking. “You’re a wretched dreamer, just like your mother. The world doesn’t work that way, child. It takes and takes and takes but never gives back. Not for anything you sacrifice for it. You think you’re different, but you’re not. It has taken from you just the same, but you don’t want to see it for what it is.”
“I see it for what I know it can be.”
“You know, now? Years on a pirate ship and you know how the world works?” He shifted on his chair, his head cocking to the side as his look skewered her deep, reading everything she’d had to become on that ship. “I would think you would know exactly what life can deliver. The cruelty of it that will take everything you hold dear. What did you do to survive, child? Think about that. What you are now. The filth that you are.”
Her right fist slammed down onto the desk. “If you lost her—it was your own cowardice that did it, Father. She loved you—loved me—and that never would have ended. Your failing is not her cross to bear.”
His mouth pulled tight, red splotches dotting his forehead. “Keep pushing me, child, and I’ll lock you into your room for the next ten years—and you’ll disappear. No one will ask on you. You have no friends. No family. No one that cares.”
The shaking in her arms travelled down to her fists and she yanked her knuckles away from the desk, hiding her trembling hands in her skirts. Control she had to pull from deep within snaked around the fury in her veins, squelching it. “It is best that I leave in the morning for Aunt Eliana’s home.” She forced her head downward, bowing her head in the first docile act she’d produced since arriving home. “Thank you.”
Jules turned and moved out of the room before he could rescind his approval.
She had to pack.
At the door to his study, she turned back to her father. “If Des appears here while I am away, please give him the message that I am currently on the Isle of Wight.”
“Why would I do that, child?”
“You know my conditions.”
A seething exhale, and her father waved his hand. “I will impart the information to him.”
“You swear it?”
“I do.”
Jules nodded again. “Thank you.”
She bounded up the stairs, desperate to pack. The Isle of Wight was only a short distance from Portsmouth. She could go there after visiting her aunt to check with Captain Folback. If anyone knew of Des’s whereabouts, it would be him.
She should have trusted Des in the woods. Believed in him and only him.
But she hadn’t.
She’d put her hope where it didn’t belong—in her family.
And now she had to find him.
She just prayed she wasn’t too late.
{ Chapter 18 }
Des opened his eyes, his vision not blurry for the first time in forever.
Days. Weeks. Months.
He didn’t know.
His gaze focused on the dried rushes of the thatched roof above him. Staring at the individual stems. Dried, cracked, dead. Worthless on their own, but bundled together—shelter, warmth.
Where in the hell was he?
His head flopped to the side, his neck muscles jelly, barely able to control the motion.
A woman leaned over and poked at the contents of a black cauldron hanging over a fire on the far side of the room. The far side being only a few steps away.
The room was tiny. But still, she seemed an ocean away from his body. His body he could barely feel.
Grey hair peeked out from under the simple round bonnet on her head and her dress was grey wool, serviceable.
Pulling herself straight, she turned around. Her look caught on his face, on his open eyes and she yelped, her hand on her chest.
Laughter immediately bubbled from her throat as she scuttled across the room to him. “I told him—I told him I was right. He was the one that dragged ye back here, frozen to the bone, but then he wanted to give ye up for dead once he saw yer back.”
She set a hand on Des’s chest and then jumped away, laughter overtaking her again as she went to the small round table near his feet. She fiddled with a pitcher and a tumbler, then came back to him, pressing the lip of a tin cup to his mouth.
He took a sip. Two.
Giggles bubbled through her chest, her wide bosom shaking above him. “Saints be praised.” Her eyes and hand lifted to the roof. “They have looked kindly upon ye. I told him a strong man like ye could survive. That shot went through ye—mostly.”
The shot.
In his back.
Lord Gatlong’s footmen.
And then the river. Cold. Freezing. It’d shocked him awake.
His eyes squeezed shut.
Then nothing. Nothing.
“No, no, no, sir. That won’t do.” Her thick fingers grabbed his cheeks and she shook his head. “Ye stay here with me. Ned won’t believe me, otherwise, that ye awoke.”
Des opened his eyes. “Where—where am I?” His voice not his own, it grated in his own ears like glass crushing under his boot heel.
“Yer at our farm.”
“Where?”
“Here in Gloucestershire.”
Jules. He was still near her.
He tried to move his right arm. Pain. Pain everywhere in his body, thousands of knives sawing at his nerves.
<
br /> Her hand went to his arm, pushing him down and stopping his movement. “Yer in no shape to be moving yet, sir. We’ll get some stew in ye and then we’ll see if ye can sit up.”
She stepped away from him, going to the hearth.
Des pushed air from his lungs. “Who—who are you?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Jean Plinton. Ned is my husband. He’s the one that plucked ye from the river.”
Des nodded as much as his weak neck could.
If his lack of head control was any indication, he wouldn’t be sitting upright any time soon.
“He tells me not to take in the strays, but every time I show him wrong.” She smiled, chuckling to herself, and then turned back to the cauldron on the fire. “Fix ‘em, I do. Every time.”
~~~
It was another fortnight before he could stand on his own two feet. Before the pus of the infection in the bullet wound of his right shoulder cleared and started to heal properly.
It was enough. He had to get to Jules.
Mrs. Plinton fought him—tried to keep him in bed—said he was still too weak.
Which he was. But it didn’t matter.
He told Jules he’d be back for her, but it had been four weeks. Four weeks since she’d left him in the woods. In the sleet. Left him with no hope.
Four weeks under that roof with her odious father.
By now, she would believe he’d abandoned her.
With a heave, Des, slid off his horse’s saddle, staring through the trees at the weathered, dark tan structure of Gatlong Hall looming over the sea of white snow on the front lawn as he tethered his horse to a low branch.
For how weak his limbs were, he forced his body to move.
Mrs. Plinton had been right. He was too weak. But no. He’d had to leave the Plintons’ farmhouse today. Had to set a frown that would last for days onto Mrs. Plinton’s kind face.
For all the Plintons’ generosity—for saving his life—he could never repay them.
That hadn’t stopped him from sending a request to his solicitor in Plymouth to have their farm bought outright and given them. No more rent to worry on or they could sell the farm and settle elsewhere, the cost of it affording them a comfortable life of leisure.
Though Mrs. Plinton would be hard-pressed to convince Mr. Plinton to stop working. That farm was in his bones, and Des knew they would be there until their dying breaths. At least now, the farm would be theirs.
The ache in his bones dragging his feet, Des stepped along the last line of trees and looked up at the side of Gatlong Hall.
He’d had no cause to approach this estate with wariness before. This time, he’d taken every precaution. He’d shaved. Mrs. Plinton had given him a haircut—so short he could have easily fit into a line of Wellington’s soldiers. Crisp, fresh clothing. His tailcoat sporting the latest high horizontal front cut and a waistcoat with the finest embroidery had been procured from the tailor in Buckland where he’d bought his horse.
He now looked the man he was. Not a disposable sailor to be shot.
Yet that wasn’t enough. Des was taking no chances this time. He had two pistols loaded and strapped under the sharp lines of his new coat. A dagger in each boot. One in a scabbard at his waist.
Anything to get Jules out of there. Whatever it took.
He’d gladly hold a pistol to Gatlong’s temple if that’s what became necessary.
Des strode out of the woods, stalking a hasty line through the shin deep snow to the front doors of Gatlong Hall. Before stopping, he’d circled the estate on his horse and determined this was the quickest way to and from the front door. At the angle opposite the long drive, he also knew he wouldn’t be seen approaching.
He’d hidden all of his weapons—best to not barge in with hostility if it wasn’t necessary—situations escalated far too quickly when blades and pistols were drawn.
Even if he hoped things would escalate.
He could barely move his right arm, yet he hoped to get a chance to drive a blade into one of the cowardly footmen that had shot him in the back. No matter how it would tear at his own wound.
But Jules was the most important thing. Extract her without blood if possible—without putting her in danger.
He reached the double front doors and banged on the knocker.
Footsteps shuffled slowly from within and the left door creaked open. The elderly butler—Mr. Charles—looked out at him.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I am here to speak with Lady Julianna.” Des set his tone imperious—not to be questioned.
Under his bushy grey eyebrows, the butler squinted. “Forgive me, do I know you, sir?”
“I am Desmond Phillips to speak with Lady Julianna.”
The wiry hairs of his eyebrows drew together, tangling, as he looked Des up and down. He opened the door farther. “You may wait in the drawing room.”
Des exhaled a breath. Right clothes, right demeanor opened almost any door. How had he forgotten that fact?
Mr. Charles showed him into the drawing room, the very same one he had been dragged from weeks ago.
The butler left him and Des walked over to the window that faced the front lawn of the estate, looking at the long winding gravel drive. Snow had held oddly to the ground this past month and an unusually heavy snowfall in the past days had added another layer to the lawn, the drive barely perceivable except for the tracks of a carriage and horses in it.
“Mr. Phillips.” The distinctive wheezing voice of Jules’s father filled the room behind him.
So the butler had recognized him and fetched her father first.
Des turned to Jules’s father, the line of his jaw set hard, his spine a steel rod. “I am here to speak with your daughter, my lord.”
Gatlong nodded, his thick hand going to his cheek, rubbing it as he sighed. “I imagine you are, since you are still alive.”
“I am. No thanks to you or those cowards you employ.” Des’s look flickered past him to the foyer. Unlike last time, no footmen had appeared with Gatlong’s arrival to the room. “I will see Jules today.”
Gatlong took two short strides farther into the room, his voice as heavy as his belly. “I understand your anger, son. And I’m sorry. I never should have done what I did to you.”
“What?” Des’s head cocked to the side, his fingers twitching, aching to grab one of his pistols as his eyes narrowed at Gatlong.
“I should have let you stay—should have welcomed you last time. I was—I was in shock. If I had…if only I had.” He sighed, his head shaking. “If I had—she wouldn’t have gone out—gone with you.” His meaty forefinger and thumb went to his face, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “If I had only let you stay—she never would have run.”
Des stilled, his voice grave. “What are you speaking of, Lord Gatlong?”
His fingers dropped from his nose, his look piercing Des. “She died, son. Pneumonia—it took her quick. She was frozen to the bone after she ran into the storm with you—we warmed her, but it was too late—it was in her lungs by then and she died two weeks ago.”
The words hung in the stale air of the drawing room, Des unable to hear them properly.
Lord Gatlong stared at him until Des found a way to shake his head. “No. You are mistaken.”
“I am not, son.” He sighed, his jowls arranging into undulating folds. “She is dead. My only child.”
“No.” Des charged across the room, his hand wrapping around Gatlong’s throat and he shoved him back against the wall, hitting a sconce and sending the glass of it to shatter on the floor. “What the hell are you saying, old man?”
“She’s dead. Dead, son. Two weeks. She’s been gone two weeks.” He choked out the words through Des’s grip on his windpipe. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about it all. Sorry about everything—the damn curse.”
Des pulled him away from the wall and then slammed him back into the plaster. “I don’t believe you.”
His head shaking, Gatl
ong’s finger clasped onto Des’s wrists. “Come—come—I’ll show you.”
Lies. Bloody lies.
Kill him. Kill him now before he hurt Jules further.
It took every miniscule scrap of control Des possessed to peel his fingers away from Gatlong’s throat.
Jules’s father coughed, bending over as he choked in air. “Come.” He waved his hand at Des. “Come. I’ll show you.”
Gatlong walked out of the drawing room to the front door, dismissing Mr. Charles with a flick of his wrist as he passed him.
Without stopping to gather a coat, Gatlong opened the front door and walked into the snow, his steps dragging tracks through the drifts.
Des followed him, his feet stomping in the snow behind the odious man. Silent, Des’s stare fixed on the thin line of brown hair at the base of his balding head.
It wasn’t until Gatlong’s feet slowed that Des looked up from the strip of brown hair.
A cemetery.
Gatlong opened the latch on the gate into the graveyard and shoved his weight against the metal, pushing it against the snow far enough to get into the cemetery.
He walked to the middle of the headstones, stopping at a tall obelisk gravestone in the middle of the burial ground.
“Here.” He heaved a breath. “She’s here.”
For all Des couldn’t bear to lift his eyes—to look at the tall granite spire that pointed toward the heavens, Des forced his gaze upward to the letters etched in the cold stone.
Julianna Fiona Hawnley. Beloved daughter.
Des stumbled backward. Falling. Tripping over headstones. One, then another, his feet beneath him gone. He landed hard on the ground, the heels of his boots kicking at the snow, kicking him away.
“No. No. No.”
Gatlong turned around to him, his cold blue eyes haunted. “I am sorry, son. I wish—I wish so many things. I am sorry.”
Des flipped onto his hands and knees, scrambling away. Away from the grave. Away from the thought of Jules’s body underground. In the cold. In the dark.
He clambered to his feet and ran, shoving past the half-open gate and across the estate.
In a sprint, every step laden with snow and ice. Every step dragging him down.
The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1) Page 14
