“Vicky.”
She yanked her arm free from him and ran to the open doors. Just before she stepped inside, she spun back to look at him, her face full of spite. “Now I have two fathers that think they know what’s best for me when neither of you do. You know nothing—nothing. And I don’t want you in my life. Go back—go back to the sea or whatever hovel you were hiding in.” She turned and stormed away from him, stomping into the ballroom.
Des stood, frozen in place.
Frozen in time. In air.
What had he just done?
Ruined his daughter to him forever?
A deep breath and he watched her through the French doors until he saw her make her way through the crush of people and find Sloane. Good. Maybe the duchess could talk some sense into his daughter.
He blinked.
Jules.
He jerked around. Lord Flouten had disappeared. Probably crawling to a burrow to cower in.
Des ran down the stairs and through the gardens to the alcove where he’d just abandoned Jules without a word.
Out of breath, he brushed past the yews that framed the entrance to the alcove.
Empty.
It was empty. Jules was gone.
{ Chapter 24 }
Dumbstruck at how he’d just left her without a second glance, without a word, Jules watched Des dart across the garden and jump in between a man and a woman strolling toward the maze.
What in hades?
He dipped out of view and she stepped to the end of the row of evergreens, her look trained on Des.
Des reached back, punching the man in the jaw and then whipped toward the rather beautiful woman with dark hair.
“Come with me right now before you make an utter fool of yourself and me.” The roar of Des’s voice vibrated through the air to her—an unmistakable growl she could hear over the cacophony of people and string ensemble spilling out from the ballroom. A growl of possession. Of every right to the woman standing next to him, fighting the grip he had on her arm.
Des yanked the woman toward the ballroom, dragging her back to the party.
No.
Jules’s hands flew up to her open mouth and she staggered a step backward.
Des was married.
Married to a young woman. A beautiful young woman.
And he had just…just…just been deep inside of her. No.
The core of her twanged, an intermittent wave of the orgasm still playing within her body.
Another step backward and the prickles of the cold yew needles dug into her bare shoulders.
A dream. All of this had to be a dream. A hallucination. A nightmare.
She had to get out of here for she truly was going mad.
Without another glance back to the ballroom, she ran as fast as her legs—still weak from clutching onto Des’s body—could carry her. Darting around the hexagonal castle she found the waiting line of carriages that snaked along the lone lane to the castle.
Black—carriage after carriage—all of them black.
What did Lady Hewton’s crest look like?
She stumbled along the carriages, looking at crest after crest under the row of torches on the drive—looking for something she recognized. She hadn’t taken close enough notice at the carriage when she’d gotten into it with her Aunt Eliana and Lady Hewton.
She squinted, looking back and forth along the horses and black carriages, panic squeezing her chest. So very opposite from the fun—true nonsensical fun—it had been with visiting her aunt’s friend, Lady Hewton, these past two months. Fun she hadn’t experienced in the last eleven years.
Jules had become quick friends with Lady Hewton. Her aunt and Lady Hewton were both widows and they were of similar age as Jules, as Aunt Eliana was several years younger than Jules—born of her grandfather’s second wife when Jules was three years old. And they were akin to Jules—women with no need for men in their lives.
Damn that fun. The three of them had been laughing as they had stepped up into the carriage earlier in the day to come to Wolfbridge Castle.
Laughing instead of looking at the bloody crest.
“Lady Julianna?”
Her head whipped to the left.
A carriage driver approached her.
She nodded. Thank the heavens the driver recognized her, for she only partially recognized him.
“Are you looking for the Hewton carriage, m’lady?”
“I am, thank you.” Her right hand lifted, wrapping around the front of her neck to help squeeze words from her throat. “I am not feeling well and Lady Hewton bid you to take me back to her residence, then return for her and my aunt.”
A lie, but her aunt would understand and would make Lady Hewton understand if her missing carriage became a problem. The driver could be back at Wolfbridge well before the festivities ended. Eliana enjoyed these events until dawn, and Lady Hewton was of the same inclination.
“As you wish, m’lady.” The driver nodded to her and led her to the Hewton carriage. “Did you have a wrap, m’lady?”
Jules’s fingers went to her bare shoulders. She shook her head. “I did, but it is fine. I would just prefer to leave, please.”
He inclined his head to her as the footman pulled the stairs for her then held out his hand to help her up into the carriage. “There are two lap blankets inside to warm you.”
“Thank you.”
Jules collapsed onto the cushioned bench in the dark confines of the coach. Her legs, her body giving out, all sense of muscle and solid bones leaving her body.
The well-sprung carriage started to move and she dragged the red wool blanket onto her lap, curling her bare forearms under the warmth of it and closing her eyes.
Des.
Des alive.
Alive and here in England. In Lincolnshire.
Des at a bloody ball.
Alive.
Alive and with a damned wife.
Years—years she had closed herself off from the world, to everyone around her for how hollow her chest had become, for her heart that had shattered when she’d learned Des was dead—never to be put back together.
And he’d been alive, moving on. Moving on with a wife. A young, beautiful wife that could give him children.
Tears spilled over her lower lashes and her hand darted out from under the blanket, her thumb wiping away fat droplets. Her fingers still smelled like him. Smelled like the heat of him.
She jerked her hand away, driving it under the blanket and scrubbing at it with the wool cloth.
No. No tears. No thinking of him.
This was a dream. An awful dream that she would wake up from. Wake up at any moment. Any moment. Surely the Duke of Wolfbridge had sourced absinthe and slipped it into the punch. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen with the drink? Hallucinations? Fairies? Dead lovers?
Except she wasn’t foxed. She was wholly and fully—and painfully—sober.
Jules stared at a dark corner of the carriage, the rocking of the coach grating on her nerves for far too long a stretch of time. She wanted to be far—far away. In a room where she could hide, hide away under blankets until the nightmare of this night was over.
Lady Hewton’s estate was two hours away, and they’d only travelled an hour’s worth of the distance at most.
Jules seethed in a breath, her skin starting to crawl. Then the coach started to slow.
The pounding of the hooves of the team of horses waned and the coach drifted into a crawl.
Jules sat upright, scooting along the bench to lean forward and pull the dark curtain aside. She couldn’t see anything in the moonlight ahead of them from her angle. They were definitely coming to a stop. But they were still far from Lady Hewton’s estate.
Prickles spiked along the back of her neck and Jules looked around the interior of the coach, her eyes desperate. A box for liquor, but she’d already peeked inside of it on the journey to Wolfbridge. What should have held weapons—at the very least a pistol—for just such an insta
nce only held varying bottles of brandy and wine.
Damn that she had only one dagger strapped to her leg. It’d taken her a year back in England to break the habit of attaching three blades to various parts of her body. And now that she truly needed it, she was nearly defenseless. The short blade on her calf was good to ward off overly zealous gentlemen in shadowy corridors—not to truly injure someone.
“Lady Julianna—is she in the carriage?” Des’s voice, loud and commanding, cut into the interior of the coach.
Damn.
She froze, her fingers pulling the curtain back into place.
Please don’t tell him. Please.
“I’m not at liberty to impart any information, sir,” the driver said.
Thank you. No. No, I’m not in here.
“I’m Lord Troubant and I do need verification from you, good sir.”
Lord Troubant? Who the hell was Lord Troubant?
“Yes, m’lord, the lady is inside,” the driver said. “She requested to be brought back to Lady Hewton’s estate.”
“Yes, well, Lady Hewton needs her carriage back at Wolfbridge immediately,” Des said. “I was sent to fetch you and then accompany the lady onward to Lady Hewton’s estate.”
Jules’s fingers clutched onto the corner of the back curtain as her forehead scrunched. Escort her onward? What madness was Des thinking?
“Well, that…is unusual. Of course, Lady Hewton is an unusual sort.” The driver’s words paused for a long moment. “On horseback? You are positive? Perhaps the lady can accompany us back to Wolfbridge.”
“We could ask her,” Des replied far too casually.
The bugger. Jules dropped the curtain and sank back into the corner of the carriage. What could Des possibly imagine she would say?
Please, oh please let me climb onto your horse so you can swoop me away and ravage me again while your wife waits for you back at Wolfbridge.
The door of the carriage opened and the footman peered in at her.
“M’lady?” He opened the door further.
Des sat on a horse behind the footman, his look finding her instantly, the glare in his eyes skewering her.
The carriage jostled as the driver scampered down from his perch and came to the door of the carriage. “Did you hear what Lord Troubant said, m’lady? Do you know this gentleman?”
No. No, she knew no Lord Troubant. Her head shook, but her blasted mouth opened. “Yes.”
The driver glanced over his shoulder at Des, his gloved hands twitching as he looked back at Jules. “Would you like to ride back to Wolfbridge with us? It is advisable, m’lady.”
Des coughed. His stare eating her from the inside out.
She looked to the driver, pasting a smile on her face. All conventions aside, Jules knew that the driver had seen much more promiscuous behavior with Lady Hewton and wouldn’t bat an eye at her riding off with a man alone. The situation was helped by the fact that Jules was a spinster and had no reputation to worry on. “No, it will be most convenient to have Lord Troubant accompany me to Lady Hewton’s estate. If you think you can spare a lap blanket for me to borrow?”
The driver frowned for a long second.
“It is most practical for how ill I am feeling,” she offered to ease his worry.
He looked back to Des one last time, and then nodded to the footman to pull the steps. “As you wish, m’lady.”
Des dismounted, waited for her to alight from the carriage and then lifted her onto his horse. She tugged the lap blanket about her shoulders as he mounted, trying not to cringe in front of the driver as Des set his arms about her, grabbing the reins.
Silently, they moved down the road as the carriage reversed course behind them.
Ten minutes past the point where they were out of sound range, Des leaned down to her ear, his voice rabid. “What in the blasted hell are you doing running out on me?”
She hadn’t seen it from the carriage. The shake in his arms, the quivering of his bones.
He was livid. Livid beyond the pale.
But he had no idea what livid was. And he was about to find out.
“Let me off this horse.” Her voice hissed into the still darkness.
“So you can run again? I don’t think so. I had a devil of a time finding where you’d disappeared to as it was.”
She pulled her right leg up and grabbed the dagger strapped to her outer calf. Her body twisting, her face spun to him, her look piercing him as the tip of the dagger went under his chin. “Let me off this damn horse, Des, or I will jump.”
His top lip twitched in fury and he jerked on the reins, stopping the horse.
The second the mount’s hooves stilled, she shoved his arm away and slid down the side of the horse, landing with a thud on the cold ground, the vibration of the impact surging up through her thin slippers and into her toes and feet, threatening to crack her bones.
“You carry a blade again.”
“Yes.” The word seethed out as she shifted onto the outside edges of her feet to buffer the shock on her bones.
“Why?”
Pulling her shoulders straight, her look sent daggers up at him. “The world is not safe. I only believed in that idiotic thought for a very short time. I’ll not be without a blade again.”
Des glared down at her. “Where do you think you’re going, Jules? There isn’t anything out here for miles.”
“I’m not going anywhere, but I’m also not about to speak to you when I’m at the mercy of being captive in your arms.”
He stared down at her for a long second, then heaved a sigh and slid off the horse, moving to the side of the road to drop the reins around the branch of a tree.
He paused by the horse for a long second, not turning back to her. “You bloody well left me, Jules.”
“And you have a blasted wife. Did you not think I would see that? Did you not think I might be upset at the fact that you just tossed up my skirts and then left me without a word to run out after her?”
Clasping the blanket closed at her neck with her left hand, she bent to tuck the dagger into the sheath on her calf. He turned around to her and she straightened, her right hand flying upward at her side. “What did you expect, Des? For me to wait around in the cold for you to meander back to me? To stand in that ballroom and watch as you danced with her? Talked with her? In what bloody scenario do you see me standing around and witnessing that? Because it isn’t going to happen—I’m not your mistress. You may not respect me enough for that, but I respect me. And I’ll not be your trollop.”
“Jules—”
“And who in the hell even are you? Lord Troubant? Where did that come from?”
His palms lifted to her, wary. “Can you slow down for just one second, Jules? You have this all wrong.”
She yanked the red lap blanket higher around her shoulders and clasped her arms in front of her. “Do I?”
“Yes.” His voice turned into a roar. “I’m not married. I love you, Jules and that has ruined me so fully I haven’t even been able to touch another woman since I last held you.”
She sucked in a breath, her head tilting down as she pinned him with narrowed eyes. “But I saw you. I heard you with that woman in the gardens—she was going to embarrass you.”
His head shook. “She’s my daughter, Jules. My daughter.”
She fumbled a step backward, and then another. “You have a daughter?”
Des nodded. “Yes. Vicky. She’s Corentine’s daughter. I never knew she existed. I read in that letter on the Primrose that Corentine had died and I assumed the babe had died with her. The letter was taken from me before I read it through.”
Jules exhaled a weary breath. “By Redthorn.”
He nodded. “If I had known, I would have gone back for Vicky. Immediately.”
Jules looked past him, her head shaking, her gaze on the white stripe of the horse’s black nose.
Redthorn.
Of course.
Of course everything went back to that
one moment in time. That blasted second he had boarded the Primrose.
Her gaze shifted back to Des. He still kept his distance. Smart man. “How did you discover she was alive?”
“I went back onto the Firehawk after I learned you were dead. I was on it for five years. And then I was found.”
“By whom?”
“By my brother-in-law.” A slight wince crinkled the edges of his eyes. “The Duke of Wolfbridge.”
Her brows lifted high on her forehead. “The duke is your brother-in-law?”
He heaved a sigh. “Yes. And I am the Earl of Troubant—though I wasn’t at the time we met. My cousin took over the title as they believed me to be dead and I never dissuaded them from that notion. After Corentine died, I didn’t want to be an earl, couldn’t bear the thought of that life without her. I never told you and I should have.”
“What?” Her right hand lifted to her forehead, squeezing it. “Bloody hell—do I even know you, Des? Des—is that even your name?”
“Yes, you know it is.” He took a step toward her. “You know me, Jules. You know me better than anyone.”
“No.” Her hand ripped away from her face, her palm out to him to stop his advance. “No, I don’t. Do you realize all of this could have been avoided—my father—his manipulations—all of it? Had you told me we could have walked into Gatlong Hall and presented you as an earl and he wouldn’t have turned into the maniac he is. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I should have.” He stared at her, his face pained. “I kept it secret because I didn’t know you at first—the only one on the Firehawk that knew of my past was Captain Folback. After Redthorn’s attack, after I left the Primrose in port—knowing that Corentine was dead—all I wanted was to disappear and I couldn’t do that if I was the Earl of Troubant. So I wasn’t. I was just Des.”
Fresh ire spiked through her. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Yes. After I got you home—settled.” His fingers ran through his hair. “That was all I wanted to do at the time, get you home. Get you safe. Because it’s what you wanted most. So I needed to get you to Gatlong Hall as quickly as possible and I didn’t want to upset anything before that.”
The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1) Page 18
