“Here.” Roe unclamped his hands. He’d been clutching the Box of Draupnir in his clasped hands hovering over the water. He held the box out to Des. “I need you to have this. You’ll know what to do with it.”
Des shook his head, a crooked, bitter smile on his face.
“You don’t want it?”
“No.”
“I can’t have it.” Roe shoved the box toward him. “I saw what it did to the captain. When Captain Folback held this thing, he was controlled by it. It made him crazy, time and again.”
Des made no motion to take it from Roe. “And then his thread of sanity snapped when he saw his wife tied to the mast of the Minerva.”
“Aye, it did. Everything came at a price. It always does.”
Des glanced down at the box. “You can keep it—by captain’s rights it’s yours now.”
“No. I’ll not have it. I can already feel the wicked draw of it.” Roe reached out and grabbed Des’s hand and set the box into his palm. “Doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons—it’s a path I’ve already walked down and I don’t intend to do so again.”
A shiver skittered down Des’s spine. The blasted box in his hands again. The last thing he ever wanted.
Both hands on the box, Des flipped it over again and again in his fingers. “You could give it to someone else—Wes or your brother.”
Roe shook his head. “No. You’re it. You’re the only one that I’ve seen that doesn’t start shaking when he sees it.”
Des looked down at the box and the image of Jules crawled into his mind. Jules watching him the first time he saw the box. The way her blue-green eyes glowed—shocked—when he’d had the same reaction as her. The box was an object. Nothing more.
Almost four years and the memory of her hadn’t tarnished or eroded—still as crystal clear as though it had been yesterday.
Match. She had been his match and he’d never told her. Never told her he loved her. Never admitted it to himself until it was too late.
Tears welled and he closed his eyes, dropping his head.
“Just toss it into the sea.” Roe looked down at the box spinning in Des’s fingers. “You’re a better man than me, Des. I imagine if anyone can do it, you can.”
Des heaved a sigh, his stare fixed on the box. “I cannot. It’s not where it belongs. She knew it. She wouldn’t have wanted it there. Anywhere but there.”
“Jules?”
Des nodded, refusing to look up.
Roe’s hand went on his shoulder. “Ghosts that haunt are their own burden, Des. You don’t need this reminder as well.”
It took long moments for his gaze to rise to Roe, his voice gravel in his throat. “If I toss it, I lose her. I lose the last bit of her.”
“Maybe that’s the curse of it.”
“No. Not a curse. My only salvation.” He heaved in a breath, looking out to the sea. “The box…as long as I know where it exists, I still have her.”
Roe’s head tilted to the side and he scratched the back of his neck. “I say this as the new captain—I don’t think the Firehawk can hold it anymore. I think the box has to get off this ship—off to a place where men don’t speak of it—covet it. It will fall into the wrong hands eventually if it stays on the Firehawk. And I don’t want it to be the cause of my first mate’s death. My death.”
A raw chuckle escaped Des’s throat. “You? You can’t be killed, Cap.”
“One never knows.” Roe shrugged. “And I’d rather not chance it where I can.”
{ Chapter 21 }
Port of Bilbao, Spain
Fall 1825
Love. Another blasted battle for love.
Only this time it was for Captain Roe’s love. Lady Apton.
The curse hadn’t left the Firehawk when the box did. Roe became cursed in love just the same as everyone else had.
Maybe it was the ship that was cursed. Maybe it had been all along.
Maybe it was his own curse that followed him from years ago, infecting those around him.
Not that it mattered, for Des was no longer made for love. Never again.
Des blocked a sword at his face.
They were losing this ill-advised battle outside of a smuggling warehouse in the Port of Bilbao.
For love. For revenge.
Captain Roe was determined to eliminate Lord Bockton once and for all for all his sins—for killing Captain Folback and his wife, for threatening Lady Apton—and Des was determined not to let his friend die under his watch.
A prospect that was looking less and less likely as this battle wore on. Bockton’s men had the Firehawk’s crew outnumbered three to one, and Des’s crewmates were dropping around him one by one.
A clash of steel inches from his ear rattled his head and Wes backed into his shoulder.
“Don’t take another blasted blade for me, Wes.” Des hissed through the air of shouts, screams and blades clanging. “The last time nearly killed you.”
“And let you faint away at the sight of your own blood? Not likely.” With a raucous laugh, the huge mass of Weston moved away from Des’s side, drawing blades from all sides. Repelling blades from all sides.
Des had never figured Weston out. The man was angry in peace. Laughing in battle. Happiest when he was one strike of a blade away from death.
And it had only gotten worse through the years.
With one eye on Weston’s back, Des swung his cutlass at the man in front of him as he ducked a sword swinging at his neck from the left. He spun and yanked a dagger from his left boot, only to see Murray take a blade deep in his shoulder that sent him to his knees.
Des dove away from the two men he was battling and sent his dagger into the side of the cutthroat about to end Murray.
The two brutes followed him, attacking him before he could even swing back around. He blocked a sword from severing him at the belly just as Captain Roe appeared at his side.
“Hey, Cap.” Des blocked another blow of steel with his cutlass.
“Des.” Roe spun around him and swung at the man charging at Des from the side.
Des lifted his foot and kicked off the man attacking him from the front. “We’re not doing so well, Cap.”
Des didn’t have to yell the words. Roe knew. He just needed someone to say it out loud.
“Fuck.” Roe searched the carnage about them.
“Aye.” Des lunged with a heavy swing, his blade connecting with the stomach of the man in front of him. He looked to Roe. “You okay, Cap?”
His jaw setting hard, Roe nodded.
“What are you thinking?” Des jumped to the side to avoid a dagger swinging at his ear.
“I’m thinking I will do what needs to be done.”
“Roe, what’s that mean?” Des stilled, looking at him square, be damned the swords coming at his body.
Roe looked at Des. “Bockton wants me—let him have me and then you need to cut the rest of the crew off. Retreat.”
“We’re not about to do that, Cap.”
“Do it.” Roe didn’t even look at Des as he ordered it, his glare centered on the line of men protecting the warehouse opening.
Des spun to his right to slam his fist into a man lunging at him with a dagger. When he turned back, Captain Roe was gone.
Des searched the flailing bodies.
Seconds—precious seconds before he spotted him.
Roe was at the line of Bockton men still protecting the opening to the warehouse. A fist slammed into Roe’s face, then another. Des started to work his way through the melee to his captain.
Just as the hilt of a cutlass cracked down hard across Roe’s temple, a roar came from the dock that joined the lane in front of the warehouse.
A band of men—thirty deep—appearing from the dark shadow of the pier, rushing into the melee.
Heaven above, let them be with us.
If not, they were about to be crushed, each and every one of them.
An elbow slammed against Des’s jaw, sending him to his kne
es.
Into the muck of the street, he managed to spin around in time to see the men from the pier scattering into the battle.
There—that one. Logan.
Logan—Roe’s brother whom Des had met a year ago—was the first to clash steel against steel. Just behind him, what looked to be ten of the fiercest Scotsmen he’d ever laid eyes on were already in the scrub of the battle. The Scots would only be here on request of dear Lady Apton.
They were here to help.
Des jumped to his feet, the weariness in his battered body dissolving. Death would not be his today. Now it was his job to see as many of his men survived as possible.
Renewed fury exploded in his veins and he attacked the closest cutthroat. A blocked swing to the man’s neck and then Des sank a surprise dagger into his gut.
Yanking his blades free as the man dropped in front of him, Des moved onto the next. And the next. Blood splattering, blurring his vision. He kept swinging until his back hit an immovable rock the same size as him.
He spun, his cutlass high in attack before the man could react.
His steel froze in the air an inch from the man’s neck.
The man didn’t react as quickly, his blade stopping only after it had made contact on Des’s neck, drawing blood. Deep, but not too deep.
The two men stared at each other, panting, their steel frozen on the other’s neck.
“Wolfbridge?” Des choked out the word.
“Troubant?” Wolfbridge seethed out the word.
Des hadn’t heard the voice in eighteen years.
The voice speaking his name.
His title.
{ Chapter 22 }
“You’re still as feeble as you were at Eton.” Shirtless, Wolfbridge dunked a cloth into the basin of water in the captain’s quarters of the Firehawk and dragged it across the deep slice along his upper arm.
“Aye—that I always will be with the blood.” Sitting at the small table, Des blanched, looking away from Wolfbridge’s arm. He’d made sure all of his men were taken care of—broken limbs and cuts and bullet wounds—and with all the blood sending his head light, he’d barely made it into the captain’s quarters.
His quarters, now.
Without looking directly at the wound, Des flicked his thumb toward Wolfbridge’s arm. “Does it need stitches? I can’t do it, but I can round up Wes or Vally. They’ll be crooked, but it’ll be closed. Our best stitcher has a broken arm.”
“It’s fine.” Wolfbridge tossed the bloody rag into the basin of water and set the knuckles of his fists onto the table between them, leaning towards Des. “What the hell are you doing here, Troubant? What the hell are you doing alive? We gave you up for dead years and years and too many blasted years ago. What the hell happened to you?”
Des sighed. He’d been waiting for this question since they’d left the Port of Bilbao—bloody and bruised, but victorious. That the duke had held his tongue this long was monument. Wolfbridge was not a patient one. But maybe now he was. Eighteen years should change a man.
Des’s look met Wolfbridge’s livid stare. His brother-in-law was decidedly furious with him. “I was pressed onto an American warship just before I was due to set sail on the ship to follow Corentine home.”
Wolfbridge’s light brown eyes pierced him. “And then what, you loved the sea so much you decided to become a privateer?”
“No. I sat for seven years on that blasted warship and then when I finally was freed and on a ship back to England, it was set upon by pirates.”
“So what?” Wolfbridge’s right fist lifted and slammed back down onto the table. “You never bothered to come back? You’ve been alive—did you never get my letters? Any of them? I sent them to every governor across the whole bloody world, looking for you.”
Des’s look narrowed at his brother-in-law. Wolfbridge’s ire was beginning to vex him. Why should he care if Des never wanted to step foot in England again?
Des’s mouth pulled to a thin line. “Yes, I got your letter. I saw it and then there was nothing for me to come back for. Corentine was gone. So I disappeared. Got on the Firehawk and tried to forget everything.”
Wolfbridge jerked back, pulling to his full height for one full breath before he leaned forward, slamming both of his fists onto the table. “Nothing to come back for? Are you mad?”
“No.” Des’s head shook, his lip curling. “The title means nothing to me.”
“Nothing to come back for?” Wolfbridge’s voice sank low into a deadly growl.
Des met his glare. “No.”
Wolfbridge leaned further forward, his mouth snarling. “You have a bloody child, Desmond. A girl. She wasn’t important enough to come back for?”
“I—what?” His head snapped back.
“Your child. Your child that is now eighteen years old and has never seen her father.”
Des’s heart stilled in his chest. “I—what—you never—the letter…”
His eyes closed as his mind flashed back to that abhorrent moment on the Primrose when he’d read the letter—read that his wife had died. The crew of the Red Dragon had attacked, and Redthorn had grabbed the letter from his hand. Laughed at it. Laughed at him. Des had never got to read the full of it.
Never thought he needed to read the full of it.
Des’s eyelids crept open and his look centered on Wolfbridge. “Tell me again what that letter said, Reiner. I—I read that Corentine had died—and then…” His eyes closed, his head shaking. “And then it was taken from me. I never read the whole of it.”
“Wait—you don’t know that you have a child?”
Des opened his eyes, shaking his head, the shock of it rolling through his body, waves drowning him with every breath. His stare went onto the table, his hands gripping the edge of it. Gripping it so he didn’t fall over, didn’t lose consciousness.
“Ah, hell.” Wolfbridge stood straight, grabbing a chair and setting it back, then landing heavy into it. He exhaled a brutal sigh as his hands went to his face, rubbing his eyes. “Hell, Desmond. Had I known I would have moved heaven and earth to find you for her. You…you just…disappeared.”
Des took in several breaths, rocks into his throat, his head bobbing slightly up and down as the reality of what Wolfbridge was telling him settled in.
His gaze lifted to his brother-in-law, his voice cracking. “She’s…she’s eighteen?”
Wolfbridge nodded.
His eyes closed. “I would—I would have moved heaven and earth just to come back to her. Just to meet her. To see her. To see her mother in her.”
His words stopped and he had to draw a ragged breath. “I’ve been gone for eighteen years? No…it cannot be. Not eighteen years. I was only eighteen when Corentine and I left for the East Indies. She cannot be that old. Not my daughter’s whole life. Her whole life has happened without me. I never saw her as a babe. Never held her in my arms. And I don’t even know her name.”
“Her name is Victoria—Vicky,” Wolfbridge said, his voice soft. “Corentine named her. She lived long enough for that. To hold her daughter. To name her. It meant everything to her. Those minutes. Those hours.”
Des shoved his chair back and bent over at the waist, burying his head in his hands. Searching for breath. Searching for a way to turn back time. Time he would never get back. His eyes flew open, his head jerking up to Wolfbridge. “Does she—does she look like…”
Pain flashed across Wolfbridge’s brown eyes, and his voice went to just above a whisper. “She looks just like my sister. Dark hair, blue eyes.”
Des’s eyes closed as he gasped an inhale. “I have to get home, Reiner. I have to get home.”
Wolfbridge nodded. “That you do.”
{ Chapter 23 }
Des looked across the ballroom at Wolfbridge Castle, stifling a sigh.
In between the middle two matching pillars that lined that side of the room, Lord Flouten was entirely too close to his daughter. Entirely too forward with the third glass of punch he’d del
ivered into Vicky’s hand. Any more and she’d turn into a fountain.
“That is a new height of sour countenance you’re sporting.” Wolfbridge moved next to him, a glass of port in his hand and a slight grin on his face. “I know these things can be arduous, but you’re scaring into the corners the slew of widows that came to entice the recently reinstated Lord Troubant onto the dance floor. My wife took the greatest care in selecting—as she put it—only the kindly, wealthy, healthy widows to attend.”
The frown on Des’s face didn’t budge. “Sloane shouldn’t have bothered. I don’t have the slightest interest in the widows.”
“You’ve been hiding in the billiards room most of the eve.” Wolfbridge’s gaze swept the ballroom. “Did you even look at them? Meet any of them?”
“Just the few Sloane managed to steer toward me—despite my caustic disposition.” Des heaved the sigh he’d been swallowing for the last half hour. “Again, she shouldn’t have bothered.”
A peculiar grin crossed Wolfbridge’s face. “It’s her way. She thinks everyone should be in love, whether they want it or not.”
Des cocked an eyebrow. “One would think nine years married to you would have cured her of that.”
Wolfbridge chuckled. “One would think that, wouldn’t they? Yet I have charms you know nothing of.”
“I beg you to continue to keep them hidden from me.”
Wolfbridge shrugged. “But still, you should take at least the slightest cursory sweep of the room, if only to placate my wife.”
“Not necessary.”
“Now that the title is back on your shoulders, you may want to rethink that. Your cousin was a bachelor to his core and never had the slightest inkling to marry and further the line after he had taken over the Troubant title. He actually seemed quite relieved that you appeared back from the dead.”
Des nodded, his look shifting away from a blond woman—in a deep purple mess of a gown lined with ostrich feathers—on the far left of the ballroom staring at him. Making accidental eye contact would not do. “George was. I was not expecting it of him. And the arrangement we came to suits him fine. He enjoyed managing the estate, so he’ll continue to do so—as he does it far better than I ever would. And he’ll continue to live in the comfort of the main estate, so has voiced no complaints. Especially since I don’t intend to live at Troubant Manor in Wiltshire and won’t get in his way.” He tilted his head toward his daughter across the ballroom. “Wherever Vicky is, I am, so I’m afraid you and Sloane are stuck with me for the time being, sour disposition or not.”
The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1) Page 16
